Wednesday, November 23, 2005

On a happier note, bcs I can do that as well!

1 - You have, again, saved my flickering sanity. THANK YOU. Again. I very much want to read blogs and answer comments, especially the newcomers', but see #2. I have done my share of copious crying in the car on the way to school but that's bcs it's the only place where I can bear to listen to Israeli music. I suppose it's a good sign that I can listen to it again. And we all know when you're sitting in a car you're invisible, ask anyone doing impromptu Pessach nasal cleaning. Also, my psychiatrist kicks absolute ass. That wa sthe best decision I ever made, if I hadn't started seeing her I think the tsunami may have made another victim, indirectly. It's horrific and unbelievable enough that my Tig was killed, I will not allow it to not allow me to enjoy his memory. AMEN.

2 - VET SCHOOL

2.1.- Academic life is cylindering me right now, as we say. The presentation went well, I did the Mandible (lower jaw, yes, WELL DONE Dana!) and my he-colleague did the Hyoid and the Pterygoids, and then my she-colleague did the Basisphenoid and I ended it w the presphenoid. Behold the beauty of my ppts! I was actually mad happy when during the Hyoid one colleague turned to me and whispered You didn't do these, did you?

[I have recently found out my he-colleague's mum has been in the hospital and truth be told, after those weeks of wasted time, he started working like a maniac and hasn't stopped apologising for the whole mess. She, OTOH... Ten min bfr we were due to start she was still inserting the captions bcs she had wanted to know what we thought bfr she did them. Captions are a bloody pain bcs of all the different views but both my colleague and I had finished ours already and so I told her I thought she'd better get started on them after showing up for the meeting an hour too late, this was her responsibility and we were not going to do it for her and that she dared to show up with unfinished work was beyond belief. She said That's life! and I said no, at the most that was her life, life is not being lazy, life is owning up to one's responsibilities and group work means EVERYONE works, did she see the beauty in that, and she said well that's not the way it was in high school and I said I couldn't care less abt her high school experience but actually that wasn't high school at all either, that was her and why was she talking instead of typing already, and then my colleague said he'd never work w her again and somehow everything was finished on time. I had to interrupt her once during the presentation to add something (bcs she'd neglected to say it, yes?) and she looked at me as though she could kill me. Truthfully, I can only wish she'd try, she can't dislike me more than I dislike her sorry disrespectful ass.]

We have these classes in an anfitheatre and the acoustics, well, I can barely hear my colleagues, so I decided I would speak louder and I did and kept expecting them to complain bcs believe me, it felt like I was hollering. Mouth-dried hollering at that, much mortification on my part over it. At one point I forgot what bones form the ethmoidal foramen (sphenoid + frontal + ethmoid), I knew there were three of them but couldn't remember the frontal so I just smoothly sailed over it and NO ONE NOTICED! After the presentation was over the Professor evaluated my colleagues' performance and then got up and started walking down the stairs to collect his laptop. I stood there, my body in the shape of a HULLO, WHAT ABT ME!, and I asked him if I didn't get an evaluation and he said No, we only do negative criticism, your voice projection was brilliant and your presentation was excellent, no need to speak abt you. Whatever works, dear teacher, whatever works.

*Start reminescence*

An Anthropologist in vet school may not make much sense to you if you are thinking abt Cultural Anthropology, which you shouldn't, ever, it is horrendous and you will be made to do field work in a very cold and ultra-ultra-ultra conservative Northern village where women smoking is frowned upon when you couldn't care less abt St. Sebastian of the arrow-riddled chest, really you don't, Catholic saints are very bizarre and somewhat perverse, you think, but there you go, there you are, going round being offered ALCOHOL for pity's sake and you can't say no to the natives so you probably ended up killing every potted plant in the village bcs you certainly are not going to drink beer-oh-blech, and your very mad - and the term is not used loosely - 40-ish colleague, your fieldwork partner, is sitting w you at the table in the home of the family that has most graciously offered you a bed to sleep in bcs the plan till then was to sleep in the village Chief's stable, yes a stable, in December, in Northern Portugal, no one would have been surprised to see the Angel of God come down and impregnate a woman AGAIN and, considering the rumours, it might have just been the Jewish female AGAIN and try and explain that to your family and friends and the TV crews, ha!, so yes, mad female colleague has just spent a good 15 min talking abt her several operations in great detail and also abt James, on and on she went abt James while you cringed bcs see, you know fully well who James is, and then the matriarch asks, full of village curiosity, Is James your husband? and mad colleague laughs and says Oh no, my husband's name is Felitius, James is my boyfriend and into the shocked silence that fills the ultra-ultra-ultra conservative Northern room so fast no one seems to be breathing anymore you gulp down a good portion of the horrible red wine and hope there will be an angel visiting indeed, the Death one, but it would all have been lost anyway when during the village dance she fled to Spain w a men she'd just met bcs she missed her children or something or other and who cared abt fieldwork, weren't people free to do as they pleased, the villagers would just have to understand, and you were the one left answering questions abt her absence bcs they were seen leaving, and then to top it all you ended up having to bitch-slap a man in the middle of the crowd when he drunkenly grabbed your ass and you must confess you didn't give a thought to the ramifications of said action to your fieldwork, you just reacted, what, he hangs on to your buttock for dear life and you stop and consider whether smacking a wanker across the mouth might be inconvenient?, hell no, so NO, Cultural Anthropology is full of perils and people, and you most definitely can't be bothered abt why they do the things they do, especially in a Catholic, pig-slaughtering environment (you were lucky to have just.missed.that), what you want is Ethology, animal behaviour, and you manage to work in the field, first in the Ocea*narium and then doing actual research in Israel w dolphins, no big leap really from there to realising that more than understanding why they do the things they do, which is quite interesting in itself, you want to make a difference in the animals' lives daily, you want to not be powerless, you want to *gasp* be a vet if it kills you, which it just mite. [Get it? HA! I kill me, as Alf says, albeit less delicately.]

*End reminescence*

2.2. - I have come to terms with the fact that yes, I WILL HAVE TO BONE UP LIKE A MADWOMAN to get this bloody degree. [As an aside, when I wrote that post I prepared myself for the ensuing slaughter. I truly expected many of you to say, as my American friends would put it, Get over yourself. That you didn't, and that you found it funny is still a mistery but at least you don't think I'm a rotten person. Yey!] I will have to work hard and no amount of running away or avoiding it will save me. I will, therefore, study. And behold! Last Sunday a colleague came round and we studied bones for 6 hours non-stop! I still can make no sense of the temporal but really, who can? The temporal is an experiment within an experiment designed by the white mice, see if I'm falling for it. We'll see who laughs last, white tossers, see you in the Bioterium, HA HA HA HAHAHAHHHHHHHH!

3. - I'll now go and try to inject a reluctant cow and that donkey in the jugular, wouldn't you know it. If they're anything like last week's sheep, well, what did they expect when we were given the only three sheep that have no jugulars? I swear it's true. Blood-drawing from sheep is a pain, they have all that fleece and you can barely see the vein engorging, and this is the best bit, for the exam you have to be able to walk into the pen, grab a sheep and haul her over and then have her literally sitting on her little sheep ass, with you positioned behind her, sort of sitting on her and holding her head to the side with one arm, and w your head hanging down and only one and a half arms and hands hold the syringe and the cotton swab, find the jugular, apply pressure on it, be so lucky as to notice it engorging, release vein, memorise its general vicinity, insert needle, stay inside the vein, check for blood, inject the fluid, stay in the vein, check that you're still there, inject some more, repeat it all, finsih injecting and still not have had your head exploding from the pressure or the sheep fighting you all the way.

4.- Go give Diana a hug, her dog is still puzzlingly ill. Diana dahling, we have your back, lean in.

11 Comments:

At 23/11/05 15:10, Blogger Diana said...

Oh, you make me feel so much better, dahling! Hurrah on the presentation. The only thing worse than bones are skull bones. White mice, indeed. Would explain everything and then some. I had no idea that cultural anthropology was so very dangerous! And the sheep! The poor bloody you and the needle and the swab and the sheep! Tears! You've go my back, I've got yours. Lean right back.

 
At 23/11/05 16:58, Blogger Nancy said...

Wish I could send you a cutting of the rose I have, but I suspect the people at the border wouldn't think kindly of it.... and rightly so I suppose.

SO, you'll just have to plan for a trip to Houston, in the summer, where I'll meet your plane with at least one of these roses for your very own nose.

I think you're right by the way, animals are less looney than people.

Study on dearie!

 
At 23/11/05 19:54, Blogger Dale said...

No one, no one can do these headlong narratives like you! Thank you!

 
At 23/11/05 20:36, Blogger brooksba said...

I do adore you.

I love that you can write a narrative like this. You are brilliant.

I know we spoke about the presentation before and I think you did a fantastic job. I also think your professor should give positive feedback, but at least you know that you did wonderfully. You rock!

 
At 24/11/05 03:31, Blogger JoeinVegas said...

No, we only do negative criticism. Well, what did you expect?

 
At 24/11/05 03:47, Blogger paulmonster said...

Congratulations, Lioness. Way to make the healthy decisions, and to manage your work with discipline and distinction.

Personally, I'm rather annoyed by teachers who only do negative criticism; I find that focusing exclusively on the negative is just as myopic as focusing exclusively on the positive. But that's just me.

Poor, jugular-less sheep.

 
At 25/11/05 14:23, Blogger CarpeDM said...

Sheep abuser. Just kidding, of course. But I could never do this. You are a far braver woman than I.

As for saving your flickering sanity, well, you're also one of the things I'm thankful because you helped save mine during some of the really depressing times.

Yay! I know what a mandible is! Although yesterday I humiliated myself by not knowing what the scapula was (although my mom mixed it up with the sternum so not so bad).

I think you should smack she-colleague. What a pain she was.

Anyway, love you much and lots and lots of beijos!

 
At 25/11/05 20:45, Blogger Coffee-Drinking Woman said...

I'm in awe of the beauty of those powerpoint slides. Awe I tell you. (Here via Dana & Diana).

 
At 25/11/05 23:41, Blogger Udge said...

I bet the keyboard just glows after you write one of these posts! Nice to hear you roar again.

Yes, Kaas was indeed Patricia. I was surprised to hear that an American knew and liked her, I thought there was an embargo on French culture.

 
At 27/11/05 05:14, Blogger Kristin said...

Great post and AWESOME slides! I'm so glad I remembered to check in.

 
At 28/11/05 19:25, Blogger Lioness said...

You lot are very very bad. Hardly anyone has bothered seeing my beautiful bone presentation slides. Bad people, mean people!

Diana, you should have seen us last week. Donkey. NO JUGULAR EITHER, what are the odds! Bad bad donkey. I must write a post on that, it was another enlightening Wednesday afternoon.

Nancy, your roses, I can almost smell them! Deal. And yes, am studying, God help me.

Manuela, Goddess of the Free Range Chicks [Ha!], if you'd read the archives, you'd have known sooner. Like you have better things to do or worry abt.

Dale dahling, so happy I made you laugh, so so happy. (Am avoiding you just the tiniest bit, sorry. Am hoping it will end soon.)

Beth, I think he should, oh they definitely should. This is bloody wrong, we have a right to be corrected and lauded. Simply wrong and an abuse of sorts. Yes?

Noorster, go swim in our beloved ocean some more, you lucky cow!

Joe, I expected a bit more. I know, silly of me, should know better by now, but there you go, I don't.

Paul, it's not just you you know. Everyone has a right to know what good and bad things they did, not just the bad. This is actually disrespectful. And as it turns out, it seems we have loads of jugular-less species in the stables this year!

Dragonfly, maybe just like that, especially if yours bit and kicked to high heaven as well. I am not fearless. In fact, I distinctly remember my heart following the arch made by a swinging hooved leg on more than one occasion as we madly ran around trying to avoid it. Damn that donkey.

DM, haha, morelike the other way around. Well no, the sheep are actually being abused, poor things. Always here, you know that. A scapula, also a very handy bone to have in one's skeleton. VERY handy.

Teri, hullo! Welcome to the Pride. If you're pulling my leg w the slides you're twisted and unappreciative of beauty. If you mean it, as anyone sane would, aren't they gorgeous?? I KNOW! (I have visisted but was too dumb to come up w a comment and Lioness Was Here is a bit too daft. Will persevere.)

Udge, no, my soul just becomes all singy and clean. So it was The Kaas, love her voice!

Kristin, so happy you enjoyed them, hardly anyone bothered ton click on them. Er, still have not shipped off package. Am very very bad. A rotten person. Gabe will be walking and I will be in hell, being poked by sheep and donkeys, as it should be.

 

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