The Great Turtle Race

This is way cool: http://www.greatturtlerace.com/

"Biologists will switch on satellite trackers strapped to the backs of 11 female leatherback turtles on Monday, starting what conservationists have dubbed the "Great Turtle Race" to raise awareness of a species threatened with extinction." - Discovery Channel News, Animals (April 16, 2007) [click here for full story]

Cat, vets, stress and pet food equals relief

About two months ago, my cat Hannah developed an awful, scary looking bald patch between her shoulder blades. It was sore and she had scratched it to the point that it was bleeding a bit. She'd had some smaller bald patches that we'd been keeping an eye on, but over the course of a day this one had developed to be quite large. We got home and she just wasn't herself - she didn't talk, she didn't play, and when I picked her up she just lay in my arms. So at about 9:30pm on a Friday night, we packed her up and drove 20 minutes to the emergency vet clinic in Cambridge.

We managed to be home again before midnight, the cat pumped full of steroids for what the vet said looked like an allergic reaction, probably to food given the symptoms and the time of year. Food allergies can take a while to develop fully, and we'd had her about 7 months. The next morning Hannah, clearly feeling more energetic, was unceremoniously packed up again for a visit to her regular vet. Long story short, she was on steroids and antibiotics for over a month, with a special hypoallergenic diet that she's still on. It was, and still is because we haven't yet been able to confirm that it's a food allergy, a stressful time. The cat spent one night throwing up, presumably due to an upset tummy from the food change, because her bloodwork the next day showed normal liver function so it wasn't liver damage from the steroids. I didn't sleep well waiting for the results. Every time Hannah scratches, I tense until she stops, afraid that the special diet isn't helping.

Then came the news of the pet food recall, and the contaminated wheat gluten. Of course I was on edge. But despite the stress I have been through, the many vet appointments, the vet bills draining my savings, as pain in the butt as this available-only-from-the-vet diet has been, never has anyone been so relieved and happy that their cat has gone through this.

Because the hypoallergenic cat food contains rice gluten.

Mutts cartoon for my cat

Halloween Party

A little delayed, but here are photos from our Halloween Party.

Halloween Party

Secondary education first

On Feb. 7 there will be a rally to reduce tuition fees and make post secondary education more accessible. A couple of the CSA execs posted it as an event on Facebook: "Guelphs [sic] February 7th Day of Action!". I truly believe that the ability to correctly use an apostrophe should be an admission requirement for post secondary education, especially if one is going to be representing university students as a whole.

Why?

You know what I love? When you've been doing steady my-eyes-are-starting-to-cross work for a solid two and half hours, and your supervisor pops his head in 2 minutes into your 5 minute "I'll play with photos" break. Now he knows I'd never just goof off when there's work to be done, but still! Why not walk by while I'm highlighting trees or plate maps? The world has an interesting sense of humour.

Little Elody

On Sunday afternoon I was at my parents' to celebrate my birthday and we ended up visiting my cousins Ryan and Liz, who had a new baby on January 12. Her name is Elody and she's adorable.

This is me with Lianne holding Elody. She was nice and calm and sleepy at this time because she'd just been fed (by me!).

Ryan made us hot chocolate after coming in from the snow with the twins. From left: me, Teia, Camryn, Lianne. The girls are drinking from their travel mugs, which they take to Starbucks, where they have their own card. I am assuming they get hot chocolate and not coffee.

Aw.

Double Aw.

Triple Aw. Liz says the girls are at the point now where they know a picture is coming and try to smile, so they end up with these adorable expressions.

One last photo.

The Elm Hurst Inn: My Birthday and Shannon's Wedding

I'm 24!

Click on the album below to view photos from this past weekend. I recommend watching the slideshow. I may or may not get around to updating this entry with actual text.

Christa's Birthday & Shannon's wedding

Grey's Anatomy rocks

Two proposals on last night's Grey's?! Seriously, this show is currently one of the absolute best on television (this statement is independent of the proposals). It never fails to make me laugh, and it never fails to make me cry. Well, get teary. It's not like I'm bawling my eyes out every episode, though there have been a couple.

So who gets married and who doesn't? Place your bets now.

AAARRRGGGG!

Can somebody please explain to me how technology has improved our lives? Because I'm just not seeing it. Of course, my view is rather clouded by the fight I've been having with my computer over whether or not it will actually copy, play, and then burn "The Life of Birds". The lab across the hall has a couple of burned discs with all the episodes from the series. 10 episodes at just under 50 minutes a piece. I think that watching the entire series will take less time than burning a copy of it.

So far, I have succeeded in getting all of the files onto my hard drive, and they all play back. Yay. What I have not succeeded in doing is getting my computer to recognize the blank DVD. My disc drive is conveniently labelled with "DVD+R DL" RW symbol. I have inserted a DVD+R DL disc. The computer refuses to acknowledge it. It did, once. My burning software was all ready to go, said I had 8.5GB of space. Then I realised I had missed one of the files. So I took out the blank DVD, put in the one I'd borrowed with the episodes on it, copied the missing file, took out the DVD, and then replaced the blank DVD.

And the disc drive made that awful grinding sound that spells doom. I took the disc out and put it back in. Several times. No luck. I rebooted. Nothing. I don't know what went wrong.

If anyone has any idea what's going on, please help me! Kyle, I'm looking at you...

Look out world

"On behalf of the University of Guelph I am pleased to inform you that your application for the Winter 2007 convocation has been approved"

Until this email landed in my inbox a few minutes ago, there was still this vague possibility that something had been horribly confused and they wouldn't let me graduate. It's now a little more real than it was before. Too bad all my friends either graduated last summer or won't be graduating until next summer.

A Christmas tale: part I

'Twas two nights before Christmas and we (my Mom, my sister and myself) had spent the day feverishly preparing for having the family over the next day. It was time to relax and the cat was determined to figure out which presents were hers. Actually, to be more accurate she had simply laid claim to everything under the tree.

Aaron was due to arrive from Shelburne at any minute. It was our first Christmas with Hannah and to be honest, I was surprised that she hadn't yet brought down the tree, or at the very least a few more of the ornaments. The poor thing had been without her favourite toy for a couple of weeks. This being because she had torn it to shreds, but nevermind that. Long story short, she was driving my family nuts with her excess energy. Apparently keeping a close watch on the evil vacuum cleaner wasn't a taxing enough job for her.


"Ooh, I think this one actually has my name on it!"

It was fast approaching happy hour (5:00pm), but we (read: my dad) resisted pouring drinks prior to Aaron's arrival. By 5:30pm, that plan went out the door and drinks were served despite the absenteeism. Not too long after, Aaron finally arrived, with his lateness satisfactorily explained by driving conditions and the bottle of wine he'd just purchased from an incredibly busy pre-Christmas LCBO. We never complain about a bottle of wine showing up at the door.


Lianne: "What are we looking at?"

So we enjoyed a lovely dinner and then settled in the living room to relax and let Hannah open a present. We'd already given it to her, unwrapped, earlier in the day when she was going crazy (oops - Aaron didn't know that!), but we pretended she didn't know what it was. I'd been at PetSmart earlier taking adavantage of a sale on catfood. And trying to replace 'the green thing' (her favourite toy) but they were completely out, in any colour. But I found something similar and crossed my fingers that it would be equally entertaining. It was. And for a while, it succeeding in keeping the cat out from under the tree (except when she used it as cover while stalking her 'prey').

So the evening consisted mostly of watching the cat discover Christmas trees. I felt it was time well spent. There was also some watching of DVDs before we finally tucked ourselves into bed. We had to wake up early enough for Christmas lunch with my dad's side of the family. But more on that in part II.

I Think I've Got It

The new layout editor really is nice to work with once you've repeatedly hit the template with a blunt object to force it into accepting your customizations, while in the meantime your blog looks ridiculous. But I think I figured it out in such a way that it will be easy to undo later and it was relatively simple in the end (just don't ask me to tell you what a "widget tag" is). That said, it won't surprise me if there are still bugs for a while or if things are displaying incorrectly on other people's screens and/or browsers. So if something in the layout seems like it might not be what I intended, please let me know and I'll dive back into the weirdo template code.

Occaisonally, work can be amusing

I'd like to hear the story of how Etheostoma tippecanoe (a fish) got its name.

Temporarily under construction

I've decided to embrace the blog design editing capabilities of the new Blogger, but unfortunately that means that I will temporarily lose my customization. Don't worry, the butterflies will be back in a couple of days.

Random update

Wow. I hadn't been to Stone Road Mall in way too long. They've been doing construction work for a while now, with a couple of areas blocked off by those construction-in-the-mall wall thingies (I haven't had my caffeine yet, so please excuse my lack of vocabularly). So Aaron and I stopped by the mall to pick up a couple of things from the dollar store, and just about fell over. There was a brand new food court where there used to be a barrier! Further exploration revealed an entire new section with new stores! It was crazy. The SportChek store is now upstairs where the cinema used to be. It's just weird.

In other news, this past weekend we visited Aaron's family and went out to the tree farm to find a Christmas tree. There was no snow, a stark contrast to last year when walking was somewhat diffucult. I didn't even have a hat or gloves on. Didn't need them. Friday night we watched 'Pirates of the Carribbean: Dead Man's Chest', since Aaron's mom had been waiting ages to see it. I'd forgotten how absolutely hilarious and entertaining that movie is. I think what makes those movies so much fun is that they don't attempt to take themselves seriously at all, so there's no pressure to be a 'good' movies. But neither do they resort to the cheap, often disgusting, stupidity that seems to pass for comedy these days. The result is total entertainment.

Saturday evening we headed out to Chris and Emma's for a birthday/Christmas party. Someday we too will throw a party with such yummy, classy nibblies. They actually had a Christmas tree up and decorated, the first one we'd been in the same room with. Suddenly Christmas felt a lot closer. There was even personalised wrapping paper, aka newspaper that had been printed with "Chris and Emma's Christmas 2007" over and over in red, green and black. I guess working for a newspaper has its advantages.

I baked my first set of Christmas cookies. Chocolate chip. I'm pretty sure I must have added extra flour, because the dough was awfully dry, and the recipe made significantly more cookies than it was supposed to, but they turned out really well. Instead of the moist, chewy cookies I was expecting to make, we now have really yummy and light cookies. Ones that didn't spread at all, so they are fun, lumpy shapes from me squeezing the dough into lumps assuming they'd spread out and not have imprints of my fingers on them.

Despite still having some shopping to do, I am eagerly awaiting the end of the week and the beginning of my holiday. For now, I am stuck at work.

Freedom!

As of 9:15am, I completed my final undergrad exam. Yes, it was an 8:30am exam and I was finished at 9:15am. Actually, I was finished before then, but checked it over a couple times. Dr. Bogart said on the first day of Herpetology that he wanted us to have fun and that he wasn't looking to fail anyone. He meant what he said, and I'm finishing on a high note. I feel strangely light. Always do after my last exam of a semester, but this is different. Now I suppsose it's time to get started on the job I'm being paid to do.

The beast

The cat is entirely fascinated and somewhat weary of the startling beast that is the printer. She seems to feel that sitting on top of it and accidentally hitting buttons with her paws is an excellent idea. I guess she thinks that she can keep an eye on it more easily that way. She can't seem to figure out why she keeps getting hit with a jet of water from the squirt bottle every time she approaches it to see what all the noise is about. Little paws swatting uncertainly at the paper as it comes out onto the tray. Last thing I need is my study notes scattered about the apartment with little claw and teeth holes in them.

2007 Canadian Wildife Calendars!

Great gift idea! Help support the UoG Wildlife Club and WEEP. All photographs are taken by UoG students who volunteer at WEEP and/or are members of the Wildlife Club. Cost is $15 and they'll be available before Christmas. Check out the photos at http://www.uoguelph.ca/~wildlife/calendar.htm. If you'd like to order a calendar, let me know.

(yeah I know, this doesn't actually count as a post)

Welcome

I suppose the first thing that's needed for a new blog to get off the ground is a first official post. Therefore, let this be the first official post of my new blog, Metamorphosis.

It's already been observed (see comments on the previous post) that the theme "Metamorphosis" suggests a lot with just a simple word. This is, of course, the intent, and I'm not going to spoil how much the theme holds by explaining what would inevitably be only a small fraction. Use your imagination to understand it - it's the only limiting factor here.

One thing I will explain though is "all the pretty butterflies". Yes indeed, they are more than simply "pretty butterflies". They are monarch butterflies; Danaus plexippus to use bionomial nomenclature. And yes that is, not coincidentally, the main part of the address here! I had a monarch butterfly Halloween costume when I was little and I think it may have made a small part of me believe that I'm actually part monarch. I'm not, as far as I know, but I still have warm fuzzy feelings towards monarchs and they happen to be one of the prettier, showier native species so I thought they'd be appropriate decoration for "Metamorphosis".

I'm writing this entry at the beginning of my lunch break and before heading out to help with the CBS Luncheon. It's the middle of Orientation Week and I'm an OV (Oriention Volunteer) with OCUS (Off Campus University Students) and the College of Biological Sciences (CBS). There are a lot of acronyms at Guelph. OV Training was last Friday and Saturday. Sunday was move-in day. OCUS obviously doesn't have anyone to move into residence but we did help with the backlog at the South residences for a while. Then there was the Pep Rally, with the infamous OV Boogie. Basically, about 600 volunteers in matching shirts spelling and making patterns on the football field while doing choreographed moves to about 15 mins of song clips. It's WAY more impressive when you're actually watching it from the stands. I managed not to lose my voice cheering. Since the Pep Rally, I've also served breakfast to first year off-campus students, been part of attempts to break the world records for the largest Locomotion dance and the most simultaneous high fives, passed out on the couch in the Ontarion office for 3 hours, served Chinese food to hungry first years, attended the President's Welcome to New Students & Luncheon (free food - it's what O-Week is all about), and been one of two Wildlife Club representatives on a tour of the research area of the Arboretum. That's actually not a whole lot compared to my previous experiences as an OV. I decided to be more low key this year, and I'm also working part time. Today, as I mentioned, is the CBS luncheon. That will the end of my official involvement with O-Week, although I'll still wear my shirt around campus so people know they can ask me stuff and so I can get the OV discount at the Bookstore.

This afternoon I will have to get back to work. I'm doing DNA barcoding with a professor here on campus. My funding for the next eight months is coming from the Smithsonian Institute. There will inevitably be posts with further details in the future, but that's the Cliff Notes version. Check out the Consortium for the Barcode of Life (CBOL) link on the right for more info.