Meet George!

This is George! I've always, always wanted a chameleon and I finally got one! It was my Christmas present to me that I saved my cat-sitting money for. He's a young veiled chameleon and I named him George (for no apparent reason). My dad helped me build him a fantastic cage and he lives next to the desk where I study. He's fascinating to watch, and that's about all he'll allow right now. They get stressed very easily so a three hour ride to College Station and switching his cage has him ready to attack me at the moment. But he'll calm down after a while. He's already used his infamous sticky tongue to snatch mealworms off my hand ( coolest thing ever!) and seems to be adjusting slowly. Luckily the dogs don't have much interest in him. If you've never seen one up close you're missing out! They are truly one of the strangest little creatures. Of course everyone knows about the long sticky tongue and the eyes that can look in different directions, but their little feet are weird too! It's split almost perfectly so two toes are on one side and three on the other. But the little toes are fused until the ends so there are just little nubs with nails. And the prehensile tail is just too cool when it wraps around your hand. He's a neat little guy to watch!

Happy Holidays, Good Tidings, And All That Jazz...

The recent barrage of repetitive, grating Christmas Muzak blared over grocery store PA systems has alerted me that the four-month-long, never-ending Holiday Season is upon is. Yay!

A while back I walked out of another long OT weekday to be greeted by snow. A lot of snow. More snow than I would've expected. In fact, my car was covered with a good two inches of powdery frost. For one night it was quite the wintery wonderland.




We might've waited too long to get a Christmas tree. Our tally of broken necessities rose by an xbox and two cars (one since fixed) so we were a bit preoccupied. At first glance our replacement tree may appear to be a small ficus draped with a sad Charlie-Brown-esque strand of luminous plastic. A second glance would most likely confirm said cursory observation.


We'll be heading back to SA to soak in all the good food and company we can handle for Christmas! See you guys then!

1/8 a veterinarian

I have successfully completed my first semester of vet school! Finshed finals today...my brain hurts. I came home, curled up in a blanket on the couch and watched movies the rest of the day! It hasn't completely hit me yet but I think sleeping in tomorrow will help with that! I've been living the last few days in the library with my friend Jenny studying constantly. We would finish a final in the morning and study the rest of the day and night for the next one for 4 days in a row. Hopefully it paid off! But my body gave out before my brain did. I nearly cough up a lung on a regular basis, my nose is dripping, and my joints feel like someone severed them. It was worse yesterday so maybe it'll be a fast recovery. It's amazing what a good night's rest can do!

I've been locked away studying so much poor Simon hasn't hardly seen me at all the last few weeks. We're hoping to go hiking with the dogs (who are bored out of their minds) at one of the state parks in the area this weekend. The weather should be fantastic for it! Now that I have a decent amount of free time for a while maybe I can start wedding planning! Lots of good things ahead, I'm excited :)

Technology hates us...

So the good computer is still on the fritz, the camera won't upload to the surviving computer, the internet seems to be dragging, my 'check engine' light is on in my car, and the good Xbox just red-ringed! The red-ring of death means the Xbox is officially dead and needs to be sent to the factory for them to gut it and send a new one. I think a piece of Simon's soul went with it....

Apparently we have offended the cyber gods so perhaps we should put a disclaimer before offering any kind of technical/electronics advice: "Warning - Although we do the research and the maintenance on all our stuff it still has a 90% fail rate so we make no promises for what we've recommended to you!" Cheers :)

Recap!!

So the computer is still dead, but we can update anyway!

The vet school threw a big Halloween Party, which was actually really lame because the bar we reserved for the party didn't give us any of the drink specials they promised. That part really sucked for the first-years because we had a very long, extensive anatomy test earlier that day and were ready for some good times! Either way, the creative flavor was a sight to see. We had Angelina Jolie attend (a girl with hand-drawn tattoos and a stroller with as many different baby dolls she could find in it), many seductive female insects (which I still don't understand), a walking home pregnancy test (complete with urine-stained hat and a spinner to see if you were pregnant), lots of classics, and one incedibly slutty Victoria's Secret Angel! I've never understood the 'dress-up-in-lingerie' idea but this was a whole new level; she literally wore a white bra, tiny white undies, and wings. That was all!! Needless to say I couldn't get any drinks while she was anywhere near the bar. Simon went as a redneck trucker and I went as "party cloudy with a chance of rain". I sewed clouds to my sky colored dress and squirted people when they asked me what my costume was! A little lacking on the creativity, but more fun to squirt people in the face!!

Bogart was a pirate!! Moki did not care for costumes...

November 11th was my 23rd Birthday! It was Tuesday so I was a little bummed to be in class all day. But I have fantastic friends that made it all okay! They made me the best cake ever and brought it in, candles ablaze, and made the whole class sing Happy Birthday to me. Then Simon took me out to dinner and we had fabulous steak. He got me more presents than he was supposed to also. I got the first season of Futurama, the 4th season of The Office, biscuits, and fishy crackers!! He loves me :)

The semester is winding down faster than I'd like to admit. We have finals starting the Monday after Thanksgiving. Who's cruel idea was that?? I don't get to enjoy my days off, I'll be reading notes under the table as I stuff my face with turkey and other deliciousness. It feels like I just started school only a few weeks ago! Craziness. In January I'm going on a 'field trip' of sorts down to Corpus Christi with the ZEW (zoo, exotics, wildlife) club to get some hands on experience! We get to tour the Texas State Aquarium and the Sea Turtle Rescue with their vet and even get to do a dolphin and sea turtle necropsy. They're things that washed up or died in captivity, they don't kill any for us. It's a great opportunity to see the differences in anatomy among species. You would think that everything is built pretty similar...but you would be wrong.

Happy Turkey Day Everyone, stuff your craws!

Technical Difficulties

Technology is rebelling. Both of our computers decided to crash at the same time, as well as my camera. The fossilized laptop is back up and running, in a precarious state of overheating unless it is dangerously perched over a basket on the coffee table. But the big fancy computer is still down for the count. What started as a hard drive failure, catastrophic as that is already, advanced to motherboard, graphics card, and operating systems failure also. FAIL! Still not sure if all our documents, pictures, and graphics work is still recoverable. And the camera won't upload anything to laptop for some reason. Sooo I can't post about Halloween, or my birthday, or the reptile session I went to because it's just not the same without pictures! So pardon the hiatus, as soon as we have conquered our rebellioous technology we'll be back online!! :)

Little Visitors

This is kinda old, but I just got around to uploading the pictures. A while back, we had a small thunderstorm move into the area. Dayna just happened to be looking out into the backyard when she spied a skunk scurrying about carrying a wee baby skunk by the scruff (or whatever the equivalent of a scruff is in skunks). We watched as she couriered over each skunklet one by one right under our neighbors porch. A few days later they had relocated to ours...



We haven't seen them in a long time, but it was fun peaking out and seeing those puffballs aimlessly bumble about.

Interior Decorating

It finally looks like we live here!! Would you like a tour? Here's the living room FINALLY (almost) complete with wall decor. The windows still need curtains, but the huge walls look so much better with stuff on them! Yes I am watching Ratatouille if you can see it on the tv. Gotta love Disney movies! Like the green paint? Yeah me too.

And here's the kitchen, fully stocked with utensils, tools, and best of all, food! Nice and open, and behind where I took this picture is the back door to the yard (see post 'Aftermath!' below)

And here is the game/study room (because that's a logical combination right?) with it's newest wall decor also. The very large promo poster for a fighting video game, the mini banner with bathroom humor and a giant scribbly cartoon character, and the elegant works of a master glass artist Chihuly who we both love. The only time I got in trouble for skipping band practice was when Simon was about to leave for college and we snuck off to a Chihuly art exhibit at the San Antonio Art Museum. It was the most beautiful display of the most vibrant colors and shapes I've ever seen so if you ever get the chance to go I highly recommend it!!

More to come as donations are made! For only 10 cents a day you can support ... oh sorry.

Aftermath!

The dreaded Hurricane Ike has blown everyone away that wasn't swallowed by the floods! Well at least I hear that's what happened on the coast. But here in Aggieland all it managed to do was knock down a few branches, the occasional small tree, and barely water the grass before the sun came out later the same day. This is the one branch in our yard that was sizeable enough to notice, and that's Moki playing in it. So much for clearing out the store shelves and cancelling school in anticipation! Aw well, who can complain about a long weekend? :)

Hurricane day!

The impending doom of Hurricane Ike has shut down everything in the College Station - Bryan area for today! All the schools, even the entire University are closed mostly to offer more space for Houston/Galveston evacuees in town. But no class for me so can't complain! Ironically school has been cancelled for weather and it's sunny and breezy outside right now. The storm is expected to hit us here this far inland as a category 1 hurricane bascially so LOTS of rain, wind, and all the inconveniences of power outages and flooding. I tried to go to the store to stock up on snacks and batteries just in case and there wasn't even a hint of bread, milk, water, or fresh fruit anywhere. All the evacuees cleaned the groceries out and all the college kids who are out of school cleaned up all traces of alcohol too!

Last night we went to Hurricane Harry's, a local bar and drank hurricanes! I'm sure that place just loves hurricanes because everyone was there just for the irony. A lot of my classmates were there so they finally got to meet Simon and I got some fabulously tacky dancing from Courtney so it was all good! And now I have an extra day to study...yay...

Dr. Moki says stay safe from the hurricane if you're in its path and if not then don't dress up your pets just because you're bored :)

My Job in a Nutshell

I'm almost officially done with my training period (should be done tomorrow in fact), so I thought I would explain my job better. I've been getting a lot of questions about just exactly what it is I do. Well, I come bearing examples!

I'm a web developer (who tries to focus on rich/interactive media). What that essentially means is I write controls in a number of languages or markups that interact with your browser to render some kind of effect. Mostly, I write in CSS, Javascript, and Flash Actionscript 3.0. Due to the proprietary nature of our site building software, I don't actually have access to HTML which can make my job...difficult. I also make all my own graphics using a bunch of other nifty programs, some of which I'm sure you've heard of like Photoshop for instance. It's easiest to think of Web developers as a kind of hybrid between programmers and graphic artists. You can wiki all those terms if you like or I can just show you some stuff.


Click here to visit this Flash hub!
Above is an example of a Flash hub I made that uses Javascript and Flash to render animations and interactive elements (like the nav menu). If the site doesn't appear as it does above in the screenshot, you have a browser configuration we don't support (which means it's probably old).

Here's an example of a game I created using Flash and Actionscript 3.0:
Click here to play a piratey game!

A static hub:
A regular old graphic hub!

A home page with a lot going on including a Rovion character and a sound enabled flash control (Warning: This will kill your browser if you're connection is slow...plus it's pretty loud):
Click here to visit a dealer home page!

If you're wondering about all the pirate stuff, that's the "theme" of my training project to keep things fun and less monotonous.
Well, I hope that helps. As always, I'm happy to address questions in the comments section!

Dr. Me

Here's me getting ready for my first day of school, just like kindergarten all over again! Honestly I think this was the first time I was actually excited to start school since elementary school, and that was mostly just because of recess! So far I've learned to do a physical exam on a cow and a dog, which are so different you'd think it was between a plant and a rock, and have already taken the first exam in immunology. They don't waste any time throwing you into everything! I have a histology exam tomorrow, anatomy on Friday and physiology on Monday. And for you kids that only took one hour tests that you usually finished in half the time, just imagine an anatomy test for 4 straight hours. And that's just a regular test! Finals can last twice as long as the regular exams!

Our class is 132 students, of which only 36 of them are male and I have yet to really meet more than half of the class. But I've been assured I'll know every one of their voices by the end of the year. We spend every day from 8am - 5pm together in the same classes, which at the most are split into two groups just for the sake of space. We get a few breaks from class during some days of each week to try to give us some extra time, all of which is usually devoted to studying...or sleeping, whichever is more critical at the moment.

Oh and free stuff! They LOVE giving us free stuff! Obviously it's a HUGE financial burden just being in vet school so they actually do a lot for us to try to offset the costs if they can. Most of it is corporations wanting veterinarians to work for them (major drug and dog food companies) but the student organizations are good about it too. They gave everyone a free, really nice backpack that has enough room to hold even more than all our books plus basically all of our school supplies: pens, highlighters, notebooks, spirals, lunch boxes, just about everything! And the best part is the free food, for both me and the dogs! There are several low cost dog food programs, but there's even one where we get one free bag of purina dog food delivered to our door every month! All the organizational meetings are during our lunch break so I get free lunch at least 2-3 times a week, and they don't skimp on those. So it's actually really nice that they try to help with some things to relieve some of the stress.

So far I have loved every second of it (even though I occasionally drift off in physiology) and it is definitely everything I was hoping for! There isn't very much built into the curriculum with exotics (zoo animals, pocket pets, wildlife) because it's such a small percentage that choose that path but as far as the basics for dogs and horses go I think I'll be amply prepared! I'll be back after next week when the first round of exams has subsided...

Bored housewife here....

So while Simon is working all day trying to bring home the bacon I have nothing to do. The summer was too short and too busy for me to actually seek a job since I'd just have to quit next week for vet school. Class from 8-5 every day, and they expect us to pay for it how in the meantime?? Anyway, so it's just me and the dogs, sleeping, playing video games, and reading, which all and all is not a bad way to spend my summer...except I'm already bored of it! I've worked full time every summer and when I'm in school I work then too, ever since high school so this doing the housework and waiting for the 'hubby' to get home is not exactly my preferred role. So I can't wait to start school next week...

Simon is loving his job so far which is fantastic! Here I figured he'd resent me for having to move to this wee little college town. Good thing Reynolds & Reynolds decided it was a good place to be too!

Oh and it rained today (finally) which brings a whole new joy of cleaning up muddy paw prints everywhere. Yay!

I'm Employed!

I took time out of my busy schedule "playing house" to "play dress-up" and bring you this important announcement: I got a job!

I start this upcoming Tuesday at Reynolds & Reynolds as a web designer. The company has about 6,000 employees and is headquartered out of Dayton, Ohio. They do support services for car dealerships all over the U.S. - anything from customer service outsourcing, to inventory tracking software, to key tracking, to making websites. That's where I come in. I'll be the 9th person hired to the team that handles around 6k websites for 4k clients! It's a tall order but I'm really excited! It fits in perfectly with my web development and marketing background. Oh, and the benefits are awesome!

The Game Room

While the rest of the house slowly percolates into a form that is nigh livable, I took the initiative to at least organize the important stuff...you know - the games. The first thought that will pass through your mind as you look on at these pictures will probably be something like "whoa, that kid has a lot of friggin' games." This most likely will be followed by questions like "where the heck do you even get those?" or "why would anyone need so many?" I assure you those questions have good and reasonable answers.

I'll let you know them when I think of them...

Analog (Crokinole board on right):



Digital (Xbox, 360, Wii, DS):



(Not pictured: Guitar Hero controllers (3), Virtual Boy collection, Neo Geo Pocket collection, SNES collection, N64 collection, Dreamcast collection, PS1 collection...which is around 6 consoles and 100 additional video games)

Misadventures in Cooking, Part I

I was originally thinking of calling this section “The art of preparing edible substrate for human consumption” but it didn’t have the right ring to it. Anyway, this is a running series I have planned where I’ll explore the art of cooking thanks to the host of tools generously donated by the foundation of Mac and my Grandma.

Before I got a literal trunk-load of cooking utensils, I relied on one pan, one knife, and two seasonings (Great American Land & Cattle, and Cavender’s All-Purpose Greek). Which is to say, our food wasn’t bad per se…just a tad - simple. The only dish of mention made before Denise arrived with our gifts was a failure-turned-delectable risotto (thanks to a call to Pop).

Post the one-pan, one-knife era, we went for something a smidge more complicated. The American Test Kitchen Cookbook (also given to us by Mac and Grandma) had a pretty easy and tasty sounding recipe for brined pork with a garlic-hoisin sauce. Everything went mostly to plan, but I cooked the pork a little too long so once I took it off the burner, the residual heat made it cook until it was a bit tougher than I would have liked. I probably should also remember to buy thicker cuts of rib chop next time as well… The sauce could have used some tweaking. Six minced cloves of garlic made it a bit too, well, garlic-ee. The paired sweetness of the hoisin with the pork was a nice combo, but it could be a bit more subtle. As to ideas for an inert ingredient to draw down the punch, I’m all ears.

If anyone wants to post suggestions for my next challenge, I’ll also be happy to field those.

Engagement Picture Day!

Simon's Aunt Denise was passing through College Station and luckily had the time to stop by with a trunk full of goodies from Grandma and Grandpa Mac. They were nice enough to completely furnish our kitchen with every cooking utensil we could possibly need. I guess we sounded pretty pathetic cooking meals with only one skillet and a set of butter knives! It was like Chistmas in the middle of the summer when she got here! Now if only we knew how to use all of it...

While she was in town Denise took us out for a day of photography. We finally have some professional engagment pictures to share. She did an excellent job despite our laughable efforts to be models. The pictures are beautiful! Check out the full album here.

....still no plans set for the wedding though...

Doggies!

I thought I would post a few pics of the dogs for those who haven't been graced with their stinky, obnoxious - though undeniably cute - presence.

Here's Bogart the pug (4 years):

     

And Moki the plott hound mix (1 year):

     

Moving Day(s)!

As if we hadn't done enough moving in the last four years between Simon's four houses and my moving back and forth from college, here came the boxes yet again! For the first time in six years we will actually be in the same zip code for more than a few months out of the year! We found a nice little duplex with a yard for the dogs not too far from campus....did I mention little? My dad was nice enough to pay for the U-haul to get all of Simon's stuff the 180 miles to College Station. And now after a month of unpacking and organizing it finally looks like someone lives here!

Here's the living room, kitchen, and back yard pre-move-in:

   

Here's Simon NOT enjoying the move...

 

And here's our stuff everywhere after Day 2...



Stay tuned for suitable living conditions...