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!

bah for moving targets.

since i got my new digital camera for christmas, i've been very excited about its portability and convenience. i kept thinking of all the times i'd seen things and thought "i have to take a picture of that!", only i didn't have my bulky 35mm on me at the time, and the photo op was lost. well, in the past 24 hours, i have seen 2 such photo ops that were shot down because the desired targets kept moving. pooh.

target #1: a man at the bowling alley last night was wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the following saying: "the flogging will continue until morale improves." i thought that this would be a perfect t shirt for my friend ray, and i really really wanted to take picture and email it to him. but the big jerk kept moving, and the one picture i did manage to take left the back of the t shirt undecipherable. bastard.

target #2: this morning, mike and i were driving behind a pickup truck with 3 girls and a goat in it. yes, three girls and a goat. not in the truck bed; i'm talking about inside the cab, all nice and cozy. a goat. i thought at first that perhaps it was a dog, but no. it was most definately a goat. where were they taking the goat? i don't know. but it would have made a great picture if the damn goat didn't lay down (and therefore put itself completely out of view) as soon as we got up next to the truck. bastard goat.

tonight we are driving down to stamford to see deanna, georges, and anjeli. i hope all of you have a very happy new year's eve, whatever you end up doing. and please, DON"T DRINK AND DRIVE!!

Happy New Year!
love krista

what a happy happy christmas :)

everyone seemed to really like the gifts that i made/got for them, which was fantastic. my little brother was especially psyched about his one-of-a-kind custom pie shirt (long story), and the fleece scarves went over pretty well, too. *and*, i got lots of really great gifts, including some things i didn't even ask for (like an incredibly nice digital camera and a stainless steel crock pot) or think that i would ever get (like the *entire* Trials of Life video series hosted by sir david attenborough--my dad rocks ebay!). it was wonderful, happy end to a very trying year, and i don't think we could have asked for anything better.

and on a completely unrelated note: lobster barbie.

i am done done done done done with my undergrad work! after five and a half years, i have finally finished the requirements for *both* of my bachelor's degrees! (happy dance, happy dance). and it's almost christmas. and we've had two good snows, which i love driving around in. and we got a new bed on saturday--a queen size, brand new, grown-up bed! things are good right now. i'm a happy camper. lisa and abbie are coming over tomorrow to make cookies, and hopefully on wednesday we'll be getting a christmas tree (a REAL christmas tree. hear that, landlady? a REAL tree). so there.

alrighty...i have lots of crafty presents to work on :)

twinkle, twinkle little pit...

maybe i'm missing out on something here. maybe i'm old fashioned to think that shaving and washing my armpits is good enough. maybe i'm just not "hip". whatever the reason, i can't for the life of me imagine why someone would want to buy deoderant that sparkles. above and beyond that, i can't even imagine why someone might think that creating such a product might be a good, lucrative idea. is there something fetching about sparkly pits? please, if you or someone you know uses sparkly deoderant, tell me what is going through your mind. i'm intrigued.

i used to have a donkey that i loved a lot...

my brother introduced me to weebl and bob a few months ago. this adulterated version of "jenny from the block" made me chuckle, so i thought i'd share. apparently, mtv has somehow bought into this whole thing, so check it out before it's eaten by the corporate monster ;)

goodbye, miss mouse...


i lost my pippa mouse today. with the help of dodi's blood, she did make it through surgery. however, opening her up revealed that not only was her stomach overwhelmed by a hard, lime-sized tumor, but there were also between 50 and 100 smaller tumors scattered throughout her body. while coming out of anesthesia, she went into shock. she stopped breathing while i was kissing her head and talking to her. she died in my arms at around 5pm.

pippa was abandoned in a muck bucket with three other kittens at the first veterinary practice that i worked at, about 4 and a half years ago. she was only 7 weeks old. one of the other kittens looked almost exactly like her, but i chose pippa because of her fat, round face and "chipmunk cheeks". she lived everywhere i lived--in my dorm room, in my series of apartments. she comforted me when i was sad. she was a little (okay, sometimes a lot) cranky with strangers, but she was a squishy lump of love to me. i absolutely cannot believe that when i go to bed tonight, she won't be there to jump up and snuggle with me.

thank you so much to everyone who's been there during pippa's sickness with kind thoughts and words. to all of you who pippa ever growled at, i am sure she did it with love. well, maybe not love, but i'm sure there was a hint of fondness... :)

goodbye, miss mouse. momma loves you.

a quick pippa update...i've decided to let my boss go in and take a stomach biopsy from pippa on monday. i've had a long talk with dodi, and he has agreed to spend the day at the hospital as well in case the Dr thinks that a blood transfusion will lessen miss mouse's anesthetic risk (since she's so anemic). i figure with the biopsy results, i can at least decide if chemotherapy is a viable option or not. please keep pippa mouse in your thoughts on monday, and cross your fingers for a realistically chemo-treatable prognosis. she's only 4 years old, and while I don't want to prolong her suffering, I don't want to "give up" if there's anything I can do to fix her. (i know "give up" isn't the best word choice; i know that my job situation affords me the opportunity to explore different avenues that otherwise i literally might not be able to afford. just wanted to clarify that i don't think someone else in the same situation would be "giving up" if they chose to euthenize w/o further exploration...).

i feel like i've hit a ten on the crappy-week-o-meter.

i've been sick all week, which isn't necessarily the worst possible thing, except that i hate being sick. but who doesn't? work on monday was about as horrible and stressful as it possibly could have been. i'd go into detail, but it would take far, far too long. that's all just crappy-week filler, anyway. the main thing that has me down right now is that last night, i found out that pippa has stomach cancer. most of you probably know that she's been sick for about 3 and a half months now, losing weight, refusing to eat, etc etc. i brought her in to work over the weekend so that someone could force feed her while mike and i were in the city, and since she was there, we did some more bloodwork and x-rays, and an ultrasound. she's severely anemic (normal kitty red blood cells should be at ~ 35%; pippa's are 17%). the new x-rays show a considerable increase in the size of her stomach wall, and the ultarsound shows it to be dense and inoperable. i have few to no options. i was a total and complete wreck last night. that cat has been everywhere i've been for the past 4 and a half years...she lived in the dorms with me, she's apartment hopped with me. she's my baby. i don't care if that sounds dumb. as up and down as the past three years have been, she's been through it all with me. and now she's sick and there's nothing i can do. i want to just crawl under my blankets and not come out.

meh.

fangoriously...gelatinous...and, uh...linebacker...

i keep having the urge to say these three words. blame it on strong bad. and while you're there, you can also check out trogdor.

hope they're handing out depends...

can you spot the error in this email sent out to UConn students and staff? abbie's mom did :)

This years Homecoming Parade will take place this Thursday, October 23, 2003 from 6:00pm to 7:00pm.

Glenbrook Road will be closed beginning at 5:00pm for the parade to form up. The Busway from Gully Hall to Glenbrook will be closed from 6:00pm to 7:00pm and there will be no parking on Stadium Road from 5:00pm to 8:00pm.

The parade route will turn right off Glenbrook onto the Busway to Gulley Hall; right on Fairfield Way, left on Hillside Road and right on Stadium Road. The parade will end at the Memorial Stadium.

The entire University Community is invited to view the parade.

We apologize for any incontinence the parade may cause individuals entering or leaving the campus at this time.

"Go Huskies"
M. Kevin Fahey, Associate Director, Campus Activities
University of Connecticut

i got peed on by a 19 pound cat named buford today.

that is all.

so disappointing...

last fall, dunkin donuts introduced the seasonal and quite yummy pumpkin spice doughnut (or, "donut" if you prefer). lisa and i were both interning at the same conservation center at the time, and would frequently hit up the d&d (no, we did not play dungeons and dragons) for pumpkin spice donuts and hot chocolate on the way back to campus. so needless to say, we were very excited for the return of the pumpkin spice donut this fall. well, maybe not *very* excited, but excited enough to set up a special "hot chocolate and pumpkin spice donut" date. so why is this all so disappointing? because this year, some wiseguy thought it would be a good idea to put frosting and sprinkles on the already perfect pumpkin spice donut. egad! what were they thinking? *sigh*. they tried to make up for it with a non-frosted (and also quite tasty) apple cider donut...and it almost worked, but not quite. :P . dumb ol' dunking donuts, popping my little pumpkin spice bubble. gar.

Windup Hopping Lederhosen

"Somewhere, there's a tiny Bavarian man hopping around with no pants!! These little tiny lederhosen, or "leather pants" in English, will brighten even the grumpiest person's day. Just wind them up, let them go and then shout, "Oh! Meine Lederhosen! Dey haf escaped!" This is one of those products you have to buy just to prove it exists."

i love archie mcphee :)

no, it's not "platy-ma-pus", you idiot...

i don't know how many of you have happened to stumble upon the excercise in futility that is jessica simpson's thought process on Mtv's Newlyweds, but lord almighty is it hysterical to watch. hysterical in a sad, disbelieving way, but hysterical all the same. in case you've missed it, check this out. feeling better about yourself already, aren't you? that's what jessica's here for. kind of like me and bowling--just there to boost everyone else's ego.

my sister got engaged! my sister got engaged!

erika called me up last night to tell me that rich proposed! ever the planner, my sister has the wedding date (march 20th 2005) picked out, and has asked me to be one of her maids of honor (there will be 2 of us). i'm so excited! i've never been in a wedding party before. what fun :).

it's pouring again today...at least we had a beautiful weekend. went to the Big E yesterday with mike, jim, courtney, and lisa, and we met up with deanna and georges while we were there. ate like pigs, saw the world's largest rodent...what more could you ask for? we even all got goofy hats at the carnival (thanks jim!). best overheard comment of the day? "what's a rodent?". i kid you not. thank goodness for stupid people, or we'd have no one to laugh at :)

today is national talk like a pirate day. armed with that information, i expect you all to speak appropriately. landlubbers.