cricoarytenoideus dorsalis

- I spent the entire evening in the anatomy lab studying for my exam tomorrow. I feel pretty good about it now. It is going to consist of 50 timed stations on dog and cat anatomy. We have 1 minute per station and have to know all of the major parts of the body (organs, vessels, nerves, etc), all of the bones and bony processes, the major joints, intrinsic and extrinsic muscles of the thoracic limb (the front leg), thoracic limb radiographs, and palpation techniques on a live animal. I hope i kick ass.

- There's this little stray dog who has been hanging out on campus lately. She's small and brown and has the prettiest little face. Some of the students call her "Honey" and some call her "Spaz". She knows that the vet students will pet her and feed her, so she's always near our buildings. Tonight, she hung out with us in the anatomy lab while we studied. She curled up in a little ball on the floor after she got all tired out and I sat with her for a bit and scratched behind her ears. I really miss my dog Neko now. I haven't had a good dog-snuggle session in forever.

- All of the students in my class were on my nerves today. Even my friends. I don't know what's wrong with me but I need a serious time-out from people for a bit.

- I heard that the University of Saskatchewan might be accepting 2nd year transfer students soon. Apparently, when students drop out of school, the university will try to fill the open spots by transferring people in from other universities. One of the girls in my class has the contact information so I am going to seriously look into it for next year if I continue to get good grades. As much as I love it here, I would definitely come back and finish my degree in Canada if given the opportunity. It would be about 1/3 of the cost... and the less debt I have at the end of this - the better. Fingers crossed.

anatomy

we have our first anatomy exam coming up this week. i'm nervous that I may not pass.

wait... you're probably thinking "you have gotten all As so far. i'm sure you will kick ass at this exam too".

not true. I have a lot of trouble retaining new words... and anatomy is almost entirely composed of strange vocabulary... lots of it. There might not be enough time for me to repeat all the names of the bones, nerves, and muscles of the dog and cat enough times for them to all stick. In addition to that, we have to apply what we know and identify structures on radiographs (x-rays). It is not easy and I haven't had a great deal of practice at it yet. I hope I do ok.

I will do another update later on and talk about my cliff jump and post the (crappy) video of it.

also, i do not like valentines day. the one last year was much nicer. that is all for now.

recovery

I somehow managed to pull off As in all of my exams this week and my friends did great too. We were all so happy and spent yesterday afternoon/evening celebrating (which included some interesting cliff jumping and some going out on the town). I am still kind of tired so I promise I will write all about it in detail tomorrow.

here is a little video I took while I was riding on the public bus yesterday on my way back from the downtown post office. I was sitting in the front seat beside the driver because the bus ride on the way to the post office made me feel super car sick (too much window tinting + windey roads + heat + not sitting by a window on a crowded bus = recipe for vomit). There's not really much of anything in this movie, but you can see what a typical street looks like in town. Its very green and lush but as you can see, it is quite third-world as well. There are more people and cool buildings closer to downtown, but I haven't gotten a good chance to really film/photograph it yet. After I took this video, the bus driver told me that he thought I was pretty. He was nice looking and was very polite, but I got off the bus before he could ask me what my name was. hehe.

Please disregard the watermark in the middle of the video. I am working out some movie format compatibility issues and am playing around with some video converters to try them out. the watermark bugs the hell out of me, and this blog website compresses my videos so the quality is awful, but i like the song that is playing on the bus in this movie, so at least there's that. Anyway, enjoy!

The hunter

I am pretty busy studying for my physiology test tomorrow, so this post is gonna be short, but sweet.

Here is a funny product I saw for sale at the tourist mall last weekend. An awesome gift pack of sexy patterned man-ginch.
RAWR!

zomg tests

so school is getting a little intense. I survived my histology exam as well as the weekly anatomy quiz. On Friday we have our first Physiology exam and everybody is freaking out. The professor is this happy german man who is the WORST at explaining concepts. His notes are very confusing, and apparently he writes his exams in german and then uses an online translator to convert the questions to english... so the grammar is all messed up and its hard to tell what he is asking sometimes. When I have asked upper-termers how to prepare for his exams, the advice they have given me is "pray". lovely.

Hopefully I will lock it down and pull off a decent grade. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

In other news, to help with stressy feelings, I have been going to the gym a lot. I kick the living shit out of the elliptical machine, and then I feel nice and tired and calm.

I also just found out I got the Jason Lang Scholarship for my good grades in monkeyschool last year. $1000 in mah pocket! woo! I have also been nominated for the Louise McKinney Scholarship which is $2500. It would be fantastic if I got that one too. I would have enough money for a super-pimpin new macbook pro AND I would put the rest towards my old old multimedia school loan (yes, I went to multimedia school... what you think i'm naturally this awesome at making websites? heh)

Finally, on Friday after our physiology exam some of us are going to celebrate by jumping off this big cliff by the library into the ocean. I am really looking forward to that. I have also made friends promise to film me jumping... so you can enjoy it too.
The cliff is right here - but the jumping spot is on the other side of the building! Just imagine me jumping not into rocks and into nice water instead. :D


click the image to see the full sized awesomeness of my photoshop drawing skillz.