The other day I got a message through my Flickr account asking permission to use one of my photos. Lots of people are using my photos without permission, so I figured it's really not a big deal. This one will be used in a travel writing website. A travel writing website that lies.

This is the picture they used:


This is the description that goes with it:
Horseback Riding Into the Sea in St. Maarten, Lesser Antilles

Lucky Stables' guides take their guests on a leisurely horseback ride on a rustic trail filled with chirping birds, brilliant hues of native flora, and the occasional, meandering stream. The real treat, however, is arriving on L'Embouchure Beach, where you are able to take your horse out for a swim. Riding bareback, in the clear blue water, the tame creature you have come to appreciate takes you gently into the subtle surf—first walking, then swimming, in deeper portions of the sparkling stillness. When you finally dismount back on the beach, you may want to give a hug of thanks to your handsome friend. Also included is a complimentary drink at the Tropical Wave Beach Bar. It would be difficult to find a more relaxed and enchanting way to spend a morning or afternoon in St. Maarten.

Okay so,
a) there was no meandering stream
b) bareback?
c) complimentary drink?
d) they forgot the part about the power plant that's visible from most of the rustic trail
e) they also forgot the part about all of the horses shitting into the clear blue water while you're immersed in it

On Tuesday of last week I was officially done with my graduate program. I will have my MS in animals and public policy on November 15th and if I decide I want to, I walk in May. I thought this would be a good time to list some of the major events of what has been the best, worst, best, worst, best year of my life so far.
To make a long story short, since May of last year I: Got accepted to Tufts, quit my job at TSE, moved back to MA, borrowed $50,000, started school, got engaged, got Deacon, got dumped, lost almost 20 pounds, found a job, stopped eating meat again, stumbled upon my soul mate, found 2 more jobs, found a new home for PacMan, moved again, paid off my car, and finished school. Serious fucking roller coaster.

I feel SO relieved to be done with school and car payments, but there is the ginormous loan payment looming, plus a good chunk of credit card debt. The new apartment is helping with that via lower rent and a shorter commute, but it also comes with a drunken landlord who, when I ask for new locks on the building to keep the homeless guy from sleeping in the hall, says, "wait for him to come back and call the police". Awesome. So even though I'm feeling just a bit yucky due to my financial issues and living situation, I am happy with my recent luck in stumbling into true love and decent jobs. Despite the ridiculous way I got here, I'm definitely better off now.

Got everything into the new place on Saturday despite the fact that one of my strong helpers had to work and despite the fact that I didn't really start packing until Friday.

I lucked out when the truck rental place didn't have any 10' trucks and had to give me a 15' one. I had way more stuff than I thought. We totally could have crammed it all into a 10' truck, but it was nice not to have to stack things to the ceiling all the way to the end. My plants appreciated it, I think.

I lucked out again when I discovered that several of my neighbors want to share their wireless internet with me. They told me this by not securing their networks.

I did not have time to go to a grocery store today to get produce for dinner, but since I am so lucky, tayarrow planted some yellow cherry tomatoes and 7 of them were ripe enough to pick on Saturday. Now they are in my pasta belly.

Even though I will probably not be entirely unpacked by the time my lease is up, I am pretty happy with the place. There are a few things that aren't great, like the lack of spoon rest space and the thing where a bunch of my neighbors used to work for my boyfriend but were fired, and now want to hurt him... but there is a new bathroom sink and vanity, and a big red bug (see figure 3.2) on the wall, and ghosts on the window, and a 20 minute commute, and $100 monthly rent savings, so I'll just get some mace and hope the guys next door don't hold a grudge too long. It's very likely that they are all illegally in this country, so I'm thinking they wouldn't really do anything to get into trouble, and that their threats are empty.
Let's hope anyway.

Other Things That Are Good or Bad
TacoCat has lost his mind and spends daytime in my bed and nighttime howling at nothing. (This is bad, but will hopefully gradually decrease over time)

There are people living above me and they move around sometimes and I can hear them. (This is bad, but I will get used to it)

I bought tons of tulip bulbs with money I don't have. (This is good, once I figure out where to plant them)

Indoor plants will do really well here because of the large amount of light pouring into the place. (This is good, if we ignore Mr. Wallace's bulimic tendencies)

Last October I started volunteering as a NEADS weekend puppy raiser. I was placed with the contract trainer who works with the Norfolk prisons. When Deacon got to Pondville Correctional Center, he was placed with me. He is a super laid back dog. People have said he's almost like a cat. I think what they mean is, he's not really in your face and annoying and demanding of your attention like some dogs can be. Some cats are like that too, but I guess it's more noticeable when the animal demanding your attention is big and drooling and not elegant and graceful. or something.

Anyhoo, Deacon will be returning to NEADS headquarters for formal training in about a month. Since his most recent evaluation, they are thinking they would like to place him with a disabled veteran, most likely someone with PTSD. The fact that he is so laid back is the reason he will make an excellent PTSD dog. He is not really afraid of anything- except Mr. Wallace, but he has been exceptionally cruel to Deacon pretty consistently for an entire year, so I guess that's understandable. We have gone through car washes, sat through fireworks, watched kids skateboarding, gone to parades...all stuff that would make lots of dogs at least a little nervous. He just does not care.

So say you have PTSD and loud, sudden noises freak you out. Your dog (who is your constant companion) barely turns his head toward the noise. This probably makes dealing with loud noises easier. Plus, if you have issues entering dark rooms, Deacon can go in before you and flip on the light switch. He will also alert you if someone is approaching you from behind. Hopefully he will also be a really good friend.

He was a pretty good friend to me, and even though I tried really hard not to get too attached to him and not think of him as my dog, I'm going to miss him a whole lot.

( Here are pictures of Deacon and some things we did together )

Today I saw this commercial for Orbit mist:




Near the end (24 seconds or so in) the people are standing in some water that is supposed to represent the refreshing-ness of the gum and there are penguins swimming around in it.
Has anyone ever been near water that has penguins in it? It stinks. Bad.
Penguin water is really gross and I will not buy your stuff.

First
The college I work for has a funeral services major. People donate their bodies to the school so the students can practice on them. One of the labs I work in (the one where the triplets live) is next door to an embalming room. I frequently overhear (though a door that says "danger formaldehyde" on it) people moving bodies around and having conversations about how long said bodies have been dead and whatnot. Once, across the hall, there was an actual funeral service being held for a guy who had donated his body. The family didn't get to see the body (just a photo of the guy) and the funeral was in a classroom.

One day, a woman came in and asked if she could use the lab benches to grade student projects. She had lots of smallish boxes. It turns out that each box was just the right size to hold a human head, and the projects were for a class called "restorative arts" where the students recreate a dead person's face using wax, like so:


Creepy. Especially when there are like 20 of them in the room with you.

Second
My boss quit. What a jerk. I mean, really. He actually has the nerve to deprive me of having an awesome boss just so he can pursue a better teaching opportunity? So selfish. I really got along with him, and I have a feeling that the new guy (while also very nice) might be more of a micro manager. Bleh.

Third
My mentor for my final project (which, BTW, I should really be working on as I write this) is really optimistic about me finding a really decent job. Like, I might be able to be an animal welfare auditor for a pharmaceutical company that does foreign outsourcing. Having this job would mean traveling to places like China and Singapore and touring their animal research labs and telling them "ur doin it wrong". This could either be really good or it could totally suck out my soul. Of course, if I don't finish this fucking paper, I won't get my degree and I won't have to worry about such things.

1. Sometimes religious bookstores have really good food in them.

As part of my process of rediscovery I am no longer eating meat. Again. It's the new old me.
Recently I have been fortunate enough to make a new friend who is a food genius and also happens to be a (really amazing) vegetarian chef. Today we went to the Adventist Book Center (ABC) which is a Jesus book store that has a health food grocery store in the back of it. The Seventh Day Adventists don't eat meat, so it's specifically a vegetarian health food store. Going there is a little awkward at first if you're not like, REALLY into the religion, but once you realize that all you have to do is walk past some books to get some fantastic food, it's not so bad. This is the sort of place that makes it super easy to be a vegetarian.


2. If you melt potassium chlorate in a test tube, and drop a gummy bear (or other form of sugar) into it, you get a nice violent reaction with fire and smoke.

There is lots of potassium chlorate at work, and I am hoping that one of the chemistry professors will be willing to do this at some point.
These folks really should have been using a fume hood:



3. I can play "twinkle, twinkle, little star" on a guitar (really slowly).

I'm sure it doesn't impress you, but it is incredibly exciting to me.

My new job is pretty fantastic. I am almost always completely alone which is a nice change from the ridiculous drama of my last job. Besides, my boss is super nice (not to mention easy on the eyes) so when he is around things are still totally fun.

One of the things I have been working on is creating more space in the anatomy & physiology lab. In order to do this I have to rearrange the anatomy models, which has made for some pretty great photo opportunities.

These three are obviously in charge of Everything, and I call them "The Triplets"



I noticed the other day that these two seem to be falling in love.

I am a big fan of eating wild mushrooms. I don't actively hunt for them, but occasionally I come across some and it's really exciting. Some people have a weird reaction when I tell them that I've eaten mushrooms that I've found growing outside. Almost like it's similar to going through someone's garbage or something. Mushrooms are decomposers, so I guess it is sort of like that, but these people would be fine with it if I bought them at a store, which is just weird to me.

The thing is, you can't normally get these types of mushrooms at a store, and if they happen to be there, they are ridiculously expensive.

Awhile back, growing on a tree in a neighbor's yard I found some chicken-of-the-woods.



This stuff is really common and pretty much impossible to misidentify. I made pasta sauce with it and it was really yummy.

Today, in a field next to a tennis court, I found morels!!



These are like the topmost mushroom of the fungi-eaters universe (besides truffles). People get seriously obsessed with hunting them and they can sell for up to $120 per pound. They are dense little guys so there aren't that many in a pound... If you find some you have to be careful that you don't have false morels (they produce rocket fuel- yes that's right, rocket fuel- and can make you really sick).
I sauteed them in butter, and they were good, but I have to say they did not really live up to the hype. I will totally eat them again if I come across them, but I do not feel compelled to go searching for them, and I would definitely not spend tons of money to buy them.

The meme goes like this: Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.


( 1) Turtles as pets 2) Octopi 3) Why New England is better than everywhere else 4) The tattoo on your arm 5) Interesting eyeglasses )

1. Last week I was dropping Deacon off at the prison and updating Scott on how he did.  There were some inmates coming back from working out in the world, which is sort of an involved process.  From what I've seen out of the corner of my eye, they get a breathalyzer test and a body search, so they tend to bottleneck.  At the time, there were about 5-6 inmates going through this next to Scott and I, and then a line of them outside waiting for their turn.  All of a sudden one of the corrections officers comes flying through the door BACKWARDS from outside and pretty much falls on his ass. Everything froze for a fraction of a second and my immediate reaction was this: oh fuck, he's been attacked. here comes a riot. I wonder if I'll be a hostage...but then there was laughter from the inmates outside and all of the other COs blinked and then went about their business.  I guess the guy just tripped or something.  I looked at Scott and said something like, "yikes" and he smiled and we continued our conversation.  All of this took about 2 seconds, but felt much longer.  I bet that me and the guy who tripped are the only ones who remember it.  On second thought, those inmates don't have much going on, so they probably remember it too, but for them it was funny.  For me it was scary.  For the CO it was humiliating.
Good times.

2. Last night I went to the prison for a volunteer appreciation dinner.  I got to see Deacon and Scott, mostly just to say hello.  I guess they weren't invited to the dinner.  There was a newsletter type thing in the program that had thank you notes to some of the volunteers from the inmates, and the first one was from Scott to me- it was very nice.  At the end of some really good food and all the speeches from the state employees (that were heavily laden with Massachusetts accents, somehow no longer endearing) they gave us all bonsai trees!  This is very exciting, but also a little intimidating.  It's like this ridiculous responsibility that they just threw at me without determining whether or not I could handle it.  Sort of like Deacon.  Hope I don't fuck it up!

I've been volunteering at the wildlife clinic at school- lots of wild baby orphans to feed this time of year..
I was there yesterday afternoon and I noticed Percy, the screech owl who is sort of the mascot of the clinic. He just hangs out where ever he wants during the day. I pointed at him so my friend could notice him too, and apparently he thought I was holding my arm out for him to land on. He flew over to me, landed on my shoulder, snuggled up to my head, and "coooo"-ed in my ear. It was sort of a throaty rolling coo- a very soothing sound. I was instantly in love. Then one of the vet students said, "Can you take that away from him? He shouldn't have that." He was pressed against the side of my head behind my ear so I couldn't see what it was- I didn't feel him steal anything off my body, so I was pretty sure it wasn't my fault that he had an illegal item. It turns out that he had a tail in his mouth. A severed tail from whatever rodent he ate that morning. I don't know why he wouldn't be allowed to have the tail (why wouldn't they cut it off before they fed the rest of the body to him?) but I'd like to believe that he was trying to share his forbidden object with me.

I applied for this job a few months ago and had given up on it already. It's a part-time science laboratory assistant position with the possibility of teaching.
I got an email yesterday inviting me to an interview. The email began, "Hello Mr. Morgan,"
This happens to me all the time, but I've never been in a position where I had to correct a person- it's usually credit card applications that call me Mister. It actually wasn't as bad as I'd imagined (which reminds me that I read this recently and it was extremely helpful with my current mental state). The guy was apologetic, but didn't seem to be too embarrassed.

So this job is at Mount Ida College. They have a veterinary technician school. If I can get this job, I might be able to worm my way into the vet tech school and create an army of veterinary nurses that are doing things correctly!! (or at least doing things my way)

Studying public policy involves looking at lots of governmental stuff- agencies, laws, regulations. The government loves acronyms. Studying research animal policy involves looking at research organizations who also love acronyms. It is sort of fun because some of them are like nonsense words in CAPSLOCK, but it also is sort of driving me crazy, because there are too many.

My favorite is IACUC (pronounced "eye-uh-cuck")

I'm pretty sure Mr. President just made a Special Olympics joke :o

Thursday
Drove to NJ for a visit with runstaverun.

Friday
Got some work done in the Drew library while runstaverun worked, then went to dinner, laser tag and Watchmen with runstaverun, jedimentat, and kingfox. Dinner was great- I forget the name of the place but it was Mongolian barbecue and yummy. Then, I WON AT LASER TAG!!!! My code name was Cinderella which somehow made winning way more awesome. Watchmen was really good except for the boys giggling really loudly at Dr. Manhattans penis. I actually liked the movie ending better than the novel ending.

Saturday
Got home from the movie around 2:30 AM. Around 3 AM and at regular intervals thereafter, runstaverun did a whole lot of vomiting. We initially assumed it was the tuna from his dinner. I didn't sleep partly because of my severe emetiphobia and partly because I was really worried. We ended up going to the emergency room around 4 PM and they pretty quickly diagnosed appendicitis. I learned that I am really bad at "staying strong" for the sick person. I cried when the doctors were pressing on his abdomen over and over and it was obviously really painful, I cried when I was updating my future mother-in-law about surgery plans, and I got up and walked away when the love of my life was vomiting because his rotting appendix was poisoning him.

Sunday
Got home from the hospital around 1 AM, slept for a few hours then went back and spent most of the day there. At one point I was in the hallway on the phone and there was a little ball of dust swirling around in the corner on the floor. It reminded me of the soot sprites from My Neighbor Totoro because it really really looked like it was alive.

Monday
I left NJ around 1 PM feeling really terrible about leaving runstaverun but feeling really stressed about being really far behind on school work. Then about an hour later he called me to let me know he had been discharged from the hospital!
I still hate that I'm up here while he's down there- even more than usual- but I'm glad he's home and hopefully more comfortable.

I'm not getting nearly enough exercise these days, but today I forgot my student ID and could not get into the gym. I was just looking for exercise videos online so I could have a little workout at home and I found this:



If only laughing would get me into shape. This would be perfect.

I have just finished the first draft of my literature review for my capstone project. It will explore the animal welfare implications of the increased use of foreign contract research organizations.
Writing a literature review is an awful lot like having a constipated poo.
It is really uncomfortable, maybe even painful at times, but once everything gets lined up the right way and things start moving along it's not so bad. It feels really nice when its over, but then when you look at what you have produced, it's not at all as grand as you thought it would be.