i saw a dog die today.

not that this is anything unusual...as unpleasant as it may be, i see a lot of people's pets die. it's part of my job. the bizarre thing about this is that i saw this dog die twice.

a woman showed up for her appointment this evening with contessa, her little cocker spaniel who had been acting very lethargic and shakey. i went out into the waiting room to get her, and saw that contessa, who was lying on the floor with her head slightly lifted, had left a large puddle of urine. i ducked in back to grab a towel to lift her up with since she was wet. when i got back to the waiting room (literally seconds later), contessa was flat out on her side. the owner appeared unalarmed, but it was apparent to me that the dog was glassy eyed and not breathing. it had literally walked into our waiting room, laid down, and died.

i scooped up the dog and brought her in to the doctor, who listened for a hearbeat, but found none. she checked for ocular reflex, and found none. she listened again with the stethoscope...and there was a faint, erratic heartbeat. and then contessa started to breathe. and then, contessa sat BOLT UPRIGHT. as amazing as this unaided return from death was, it was apparent that the dog was shocky and in poor condition. we rushed her in back to begin stabilizing her, but as we were putting in her catheter, contessa began breathing laboriously. we put her on oxygen, but almost immediately, contessa died. again. this time, for good. i can honestly say that this was the first time i ever saw a dog, or anything, for that matter, die twice. Not fade a little and then come back, but honest-to-goodness lack of breathing, lack of heartbeat, completely limp, flat-out die...and then start breathing again. the body, human or otherwise, never ceases to amaze me.

Came across this on the blogger site today: a blog devoted to poems written entirely from snippets from spam emails. Aside from being a very clever concept, the poems are actually pretty darn well put together. Apparently spam does have some modicum of worth. Who knew?

hoo-hah! i ran 5 miles this morning! i am en fuego! well, to elaborate, i didn't run the *entire* 5 miles, but i ran most of it. had to take a few little walk-breaks here and there (cold air+lungs=eek, i can't breathe!), but in any event, i am still en fuego. and i am loving my new running pants, which are very very comfy and well worth the $40 i spent on them. my long running pants are very comfy as well, but the new ones are nicer for slightly warmer weather. stop laughing. yes, i consider this slightly warmer weather. so what if it was 27 degrees this morning? it was sunny. and besides, it's warmer when you're excercising. so there.

found this link today--it has video files for all of the saturday night live "jeopardy!" skits. frickin' hilarious. 4/15/00 cracks me up every time ("i know kung fu." "for the last time, no you don't."). any whoo, enjoy :)

oooh, by the way, the sticker-maker i mentioned on february 11th is now mine, all mine! [thanks dad :)]. much sticker making will ensue.

"if women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle, when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long?" --gloria steinam

*snicker*

in loving memory of my nana

small world...i was just upstairs looking for the departmental secretary, and i ran into a girl that i went to high school with. she was a few years ahead of me, and had done her undergrad here at UConn, but i hadn't seen her in quite a while. it turns out that she decided to come back for grad school, and our departments share a building. she mentioned that she was going to have a "welcome back" party for a guy that we'd both been friends with in high school who is coming back from florida, and that now that she knows where to find me, she wants me to come. so that should be nice, seeing a bunch of old familiar faces. neat-o.

oooh...
this, my friends, is a sticker maker. and i want it.

i'm enthralled. you can stick anything you want through the little machine and turn it into a sticker. well, not anything you want, but any image small enough to fit. there are some larger versions, including this one which can also laminate, but at $9.99 i think this happy little yellow guy is a steal. someday, when i'm rich and famous, it will be mine.

oh yes, it will be mine.

yay! i went running today, after cruelly neglecting my sneakers for lord knows how long. i've been sick the past few days, and it was cold and windy, but man did it feel good to be outside being active. i definately need to schedule running in at least three days a week and get back in the habit of getting out there. it makes me feel ever so much less sloth-like :)

this is the dress that i might be wearing for erika's wedding...isn't it lurvely? she wants danielle (matron of honor) and i (maid of honor) to wear strapless dresses, and i really like this one a lot. it's pretty and fun. it's not definately "the dress" yet (i don't think), but in any event, it'll be something like that. i've never been in a wedding party before (well, almost, but we won't go there ;) ). i can't wait to see what erika picks out for her dress.

weddings are so fun :D

hooray for feeling useful! i spent my entire morning in the water lab running nitrate and ammonia tests on various water samples. it was nice to feel useful, since my project isn't really up and running yet. the testing isn't something i can do on my own yet; there are about a bazillion steps, so i'm sort of relegated to "helper" status for the first several runs. but eventually i'll be on the rotation to do them on my own. that's several months from now, but still. neat. who would have thought that i'd actually enjoy working, for all intents and purposes, in a chem lab? it all changes once you relate it to something interesting, though. it'll be nice when i actually have some sample of my own to run. hopefully in the next few weeks we'll be able to get something started with the wetland. at any rate, i'll keep you posted :)

so that's what's in that truck...

so, when i lived in windham, i used to see the schwan's truck all the time. i vaguely knew that it involved food delivery; mostly ice cream, i thought. honestly, i never really gave it much thought at all. then kelly brought in a catalog to work the other day. i did not realize that these people bring food to your house. like, any kind of food you want. you just call them and say "bring me prime rib and mashed potatoes and green beans," and then the little truck comes to your house and brings you prime rib and mashed potatoes and green beans! holy convenience, batman! i had no idea things like that existed. i can't wait until i have some more money, b/c you bet your sweet bippy i'm going to their website and stocking up my freezer. really. did everyone else know about this? i'm amazed.

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.