this picture makes me smile :)

it's called "you are my sunshine," and it's from a really neat site called, oddly enough, explodingdog.com. you submit a phrase via email, and the guy who runs the site picks some out and draws his own interpretation. it's an interesting concept, and a lot of the drawings are far less straight forward that this one, which, i think anyway, makes them very thought-provoking. worth checking out.

uneventful day--had a snow delay, and when i went in at 10 am for class i found out that it had been cancelled as well. so i hung out in my office drinking tea and eating chocolate pie (the breakfast of champions!) that erik's mom made. yum. went to work, which was dreadfully slow, fed kim's cats, and now i'm home. la la la. off to work on my hydrology homework, and reheat some of the vast quantities of chili that are in my fridge. hooray for 5-qt crockpots :). anyone want some chili?

man, work stunk today. we have a sub-in doctor while my boss is on vacation, and this evening both the sub-in and one of our regular vets, wendy, saw appointments until 7pm. the other tech was only on the schedule until 5:30, and offered to stay until 7, but the woman who does the schedule said we'd be fine with 2 doctors and me. well, sub-in decided that he needed to do x-rays and mondo bloodwork on a dog, on top of seeing the rest of his evening appointments. i told him we had time to do that, as long as we admitted the dog and did it right then and there. so i take the dog in back, set up for the blood draw and x-rays, and wait. no doctor. so i go to see where he is--he went into his next appointment. so now we're all thrown behind. i finally get him in the treatment room, and he tells me that he doesn't know how our x-ray machine works (?!?!?!?), and i have to do the x-rays myself. he graciously offers, however, to put the dog on the table for me. thanks a lot. so i set up, do, and process the x-rays by myself. then i have to tell him exactly how much blood to draw up for each blood test (how are you a vet without knowing this?!??), and what type of blood tube to use. i run all of the in house tests he wants, and prep and fill out lab forms for the ones he wants to send out. now, mind you, there is another doctor who also needs my help, so i have to run back and forth setting up all of sub-in and wendy's other appointments and getting them into rooms. plus, sub-in doctor won't learn how to use our computer system, and we don't use paper files, so i have to write bills for everything he does, plus type in all the exam comments for him. then, he wants me to find him paperwork from a pet he saw earlier in the day (with a different tech) so he can decipher the blood tests he did that i printed out for him because no one else bothered to do it. i don't know what you did with it, buddy! i wasn't even there! gah! i was so happy to leave there tonight...not looking forward to wednesday.

so on tuesday, i'll be a grad student. surreal. after five and a half years, i was just perfecting the art of being an undergrad ;)

uconn's financial aid department is giving me migraines. they mucked up my aid application so much last semester--after telling me over the summer not to send my revised forms into federal because they could do it faster, they completely forgot to do it. i had to remind them. twice. i didn't even get an aid package offered to me until a week after the semester ended. and the package they did offer me was pitifully small. they don't care that i've filed as an independent for the past five years. they don't care that i don't live with my parents, or that my parents don't pay for my schooling. as long as you're under 24 and don't have a degree (which i do now, but last semester i didn't), they assume that your parents are paying for everything for you. so i had to write a letter explaining my financial situation and why i deserve more money than i got, and maybe they'll reconsider the package. in the meantime, i can't register for classes, b/c i still haven't paid for last semester. gah. the woman i spoke with yesterday said that i'd written a good letter, and i should come back on tuesday to see if it had been reviewed. so that's the plan. hopfully they'll give me enough money to cover last semester...i apply for financial aid for a reason, people! i'm b-r-o-k-e! *sigh*

i love my new cell phone.

it's compact. it's user friendly. it has a color screen. it plays the theme from the muppet show when mike calls me. it plays "chariots of fire" when lisa or abbie call me. it plays "take on me" by a-ha when anyone else calls me (i love that video. did you know that? because i do). it lets me call anyone else with verizon for free for up to 1000 minutes a month. since most of the people i know have verizon, i think this is a pretty darn good deal, even considering that mike and i are on the same plan and have to share the minutes. most of all, i am simply overjoyed to have joined the world of The Real Cellphone, where you never have to hear "you have twenty five minutes to complete this call. please hold while your call is being connected," or "your balance is low. re-up today at any verizon or participating seven-eleven location." hooray!

so what are you waiting for? call me so i can bask in the glory of my digitally modulated 80's music!