In case you've bookmarked lea724.blogspot.com I've come to tell you I've moved the weblog to my geocities site.
http://www.geocities.com/wolfieandstanzi/Weblog.htm.

I'll be posting updates on that site, not this one anymore.

Yesterday's veterinary clinic event was both short and sad. Short because there was only one surgery, so I watched that (boxer puppy's spaying, awww, how cute), and then left, but sad because (short story) a stray had a broken leg that the clinic couldn't fix.

Now, for the long story. The humane society brought in this stray dog that had been hit by a car, and had a broken leg. The dog was very sweet and didn't really seem to be in any pain, although he must have been. So we plan on fixing the leg, but we call the humane society to verify it, and they say not to bother, because it would cost too much, and after the requisite 6 days that they have to keep the stray, they're just going to put it to sleep anyway, could we just give him something for the pain? So everybody at the clinic is understandably shocked and disgusted that the humane society would do this, so we call them again to make sure and let them know that they do automatically get a discount, do they understand that? Yes, they do, but okay, since we keep bugging them, check the dog for heartworm. If the test is positive, then absolutely no surgery, but if it's negative, then maybe.

We test the dog for heartworm (they let *me* draw the blood, whoo hoo), and find out it's negative. Good news, right? Well, we call back the humane society and tell them the good news and in the meantime, we put the dog under, and we set him up to get an x-ray. The woman on the other line at the humane society says that she spoke with a higher-up, and they said no, still don't bother doing the surgery, just give him something for the pain, and bring him back over.

So no surgery for this beautiful dog who was sweet and nice and at the whim of a person who had no sympathy for him. Feh.

Day two of watching surgeries in the vet clinic occurred today and another victory was had! Yay! This time it was a spaying of a stray cat somebody had brought in, then a neutering of a Humane Society dog that somebody was going to adopt, and then the declawing of a cat.

The weird thing about declawing is that I always thought I was against it. I mean, I knew that it involved cutting off the knuckles, and I couldn't believe that people could be so cruel. And then when I would volunteer at vet clinics, and just see the after-effects of the declawing (the bandages around the cat's paws, the bleeding sometimes when the bandages were removed, the tenderness with which the cat afforded its paws, etc.), I was even more so against declawing. But then today when I was watching the actual declawing, I wasn't as grossed out as I thought I would be. The cat was thoroughly anesthetized, and the veterinarian clamped the nail right where it hit the cartilege or bone (you know, the part where if you cut too near it, your cat or dog will cry out in pain and it may bleed), and then started sawing away at the first knuckle. She had previously put a tourniquet around the cat's elbow, so there was very little bleeding when she cut off the knuckle. After cutting off the parts that she wanted, a vet tech put some glue (not Elmer's, just in case you were a goof and thinking that) on where the bone was cut and then pushed the skin around it to close it up. Then the vet bandaged the paws and there you go.

But it wasn't only that the surgery wasn't as bad as I thought (although, gentle readers, you may have a different opinion), but Albert pointed out to me that while he's not entirely for the whole procedure, if declawing means that a cat will stay with a family instead of being abandoned to the streets or to an animal shelter where it may be put to sleep, then he's all for it. Surprisingly, I had never thought of it that way, and that helped ease my mind, since before I had had absolutely no thinking of why declawing could be good (for that cat, that is. I know people seem to think their furniture is more important than a living, breathing animal, but that's another rant).

It's nice to learn something new and grow wiser from it.

I did end up watching a couple of surgeries in a veterinary clinic on Monday. I am very proud to say that I did absolutely fine. The first one was a repair of a fractured bone in a Weimeraner (sp?), and I couldn't watch all of it, but the parts I did watch I was fine with. Then a neutering, and not only did I watch, but I leaned in real close and was asking the vet all sorts of questions, it was great. Then the removal of a lump on a cat's neck, which turned out to be a gun pellet (poor baby), and then it was time for me to leave.

But then (and here's the cool part) my dad offered to have me watch a surgery he was doing later that night, so I said okay, and met him at the hospital and got into the OR scrubs and went into the operating room and watched the entire surgery (not that it was heart surgery or anything; it was just the insertion of two cathetors (sp?) and the removal of an infected cathetor), and didn't feel faint once! How awesome is that? Last time I watched a surgery, I couldn't even sit in the room, and what I did see was from far away. So I'm extremely proud of myself for that. Go me!

"Tonight, I'll plunder heaven blind!
Steal from all the gods!
Tonight, I'll take from all mankind
Conquer all the odds!

And I feel I"ll live on forever
With Satan himself by my side!
And I'll show the world
That tonight and forever
The name to remember's
The name Edward Hyde"

I was listening to "Jekyll & Hyde: the gothic musical thriller" in my car today as I was driving home from school, and while I always love those above lines, I decided today was the day to post them on my blog. Aren't you excited?

I feel that I was misnamed. I think that in the alternate universe that exists parallel to ours, my name is Melissa. Not because I love that name or anything, but on two completely separate occasions, people have called me Melissa. I must look like a Melissa. Take a gander over to my main page with my picture on it and let me know what you think, because I don't think I look like a Melissa. Of course, I don't know what I look like. I'd like to be known as just Lane, but that's never gonna happen. If I ever become famous, I'll make my stage name/pen name/whatever name Lane something, and then I'll be happy. Then I can sign autographs using Lane. Yay.

appurtenance, n:
1. An adjunct; an accessory; something added to another, more important thing.
2. [Plural]. Accessory objects; gear; apparatus.
3. [Law]. An incidental right attached to a principal property right for purposes such as passage of title, conveyance, or inheritance.

It's extremely rare for my cat to sleep through anything, especially if she's in the same room with me, and if I get up from my chair to go someplace else. In fact, it's so rare, whenever she doesn't wake up when I move around, I check to make sure she's still breathing. Seriously.

But just now, I got up from in front of the computer, and the cat, who was sleeping on another chair next to me, didn't move, so of course I watch her body to check her breathing, see that it's all right, and then just watch her in general. When pets dream, it's always really cool to see if they twitch or move their paws or anything. Betty had her eyes half open and was curled up, and her eyes kept blinking and all four of her paws were twitching and moving on their own. So I walk very quietly and carefully back to my chair, and of course, as I pass her by, she wakes up with a start. Everything she does is with a start. She's a very nervous cat. So now she's fully awake and licking her nether regions, thinking whatever it is that cats think and probably damning me for waking her out of a dream.

So I want to eventually become a veterinarian. You would naturally think that that involves surgery when required. Okay, no problem. So I volunteer at this one vet office and the first day I go in, it's in the morning, when all of the surgeries are done. However, I can't watch it. I get lightheaded and have to leave the room. Okay, it's my first time, that's to be expected. But I'm still so out of it when the surgeries are over that I can't even go into the examination rooms with the vet techs to watch them as they do routine examinations on the animals.

Since that first day, I've gone back in the afternoon a couple of times when surgeries were finished, and I've been fine. I'm worried about how I'll react when I see surgeries again, which will happen in a couple of weeks when I go to observe a different veterinarian during his work.

Impudicity, n: lack of modesty; shamelessness

There are some perverted people out there in cyberland. And I'm not talking good perverted. I'm talking sick perverted. Perverted like you wouldn't believe it. Let me give you an example (c'mon, you had to know I wasn't just talking to hear myself talk, there had to be a reason for my rant). Two days ago, this random guy IMs me. I talk with him, but keep it very superficial, because people are, as a whole, freaks. So he leaves and yesterday he IMs me again all excited saying that he finally has pictures up and his quiz is ready and all of that, and would I look at those? Now, only once in my entire "career" online has the pictures somebody's wanted me to look at been non-pornographic. So obviously I'm pretty wary, and I tell him that I won't look at them if they're pornographic. He responds: "No, they're not, I'm not like that." So I click on the link in his profile for the pictures, and while I'm waiting for the page to load, I scroll to the bottom of it, and when the picture does actually load, all I can see is the bottom half of it, and the caption, which reads something like, "This is a picture of a dead guy after he fell out of a helicopter and smashed his head in." And the part of the guy's head I did see was pretty disgusting. Completely freaked me out. Needless to say, I terminated any further communication with him.

Now you may be saying that I was a goof to be that innocent and to have looked at them at all. And I would say you're right. But I also say that if I hadn't looked at them then, then I would have been curious about whether they were good pictures or not the entire night and would have eventually given in and viewed them, therefore completing the circle. So there. Call me a goof, but you know you would have done the same.

Chagrin, n: Acute vexation, annoyance, or embarrassment, arising from disappointment or failure.
Much to my chagrin, I couldn't resist the lure of looking at pictures of somebody who claimed to be innocent, and then turned out not to be.

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So the test for biology is in 48 hours. That means while I sort of know the information, I don't completely know it and I have to really memorize. I hate memorization. Complete waste of time. Until you know it, of course, and then it was worth it. But the getting to it is the annoying part.

ameliorate, v: To make better; to improve.
I will ameliorate my test score by studying every night with flashcards and looking at images of protista and bacteria.

I have a biology test on Thursday. I'm not *too* worried about the regular exam part of it (only 80 or 90 questions, geez), but we also have a lab practical, and that might get a little sticky. We'll have to identify under microscopes and images on Powerpoint what certain bacteria and protists are, and why we think they are what we think they are. I'm making out a chart to list the different protists and all of their characteristics, but it's a lot more work than I thought it would be. I'm going to have my work cut out for me when I start memorizing.

Phantasm, n:
1 : a product of fantasy: as a : delusive appearance : illusion b : ghost, specter c : a figment of the imagination
2 : a mental representation of a real object
I thought a phantasm had come into my room after I read a scary book late at night.

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You know how when you watch a movie, and then just one part of it, not even a main part, will stay with you for whatever reason? I was watching The Siege tonight on video, and to give those viewers out there a quick synopsis, it's about terrorists bombing New York City. Sort of rings true to home, doesn't it? So on one part, the terrorists bombed a Broadway theater right as intermission began, and Denzel Washington (the main character) shows up at the scene of the crime and it's sort of in slow motion as he's looking at the complete destruction that was done to the building and all of the flashing lights from the ambulances and police cars and all of the screaming, bloodied people, as well as the dead ones being zipped up into body bags. Then his gaze falls upon a beautiful woman in a beautiful dress coming slowly down the stairs of the theater, and as she's walking, she turns completely around, as though she's in the middle of fainting (remember, this is in slow motion), and you see that her arm, which had been hidden from view until she turned around, is missing. It's just a bloody stump.

That's going to stay with me for a while, I think.

Bane, n: A source of harm or ruin.
The terrorists bombs were a bane when they were set off at public places.

'The Importance of Being Earnest,' that clever Oscar Wilde play, opens in 40 cities today. Did it open anywhere near where I live? No. Of course not. The closest and only place it's playing in Central Florida is a solid hour and a half drive away. Now how many of you would voluntarily drive that far away for just a movie? Actually, Star Wars fans, don't answer that.

Chary, adj:
1. Wary; cautious.
2. Not giving or expending freely; sparing
I feel chary about driving by myself into a city that's over an hour away just for a movie

One of the best things about being online is you get to see all of the new things that are out there. One of the worst things about being online is if you don't constantly stay up to date with everything, you're bound to get dragged underneath, with only a slim chance of recovery. This is what has happened to me with the "invention" of blogs. Who knew?

One of the first blogs I ever read was Things My girlfriend and I have argued about. I think we should all try to achieve that perfect blend between "I'm-going-to-kill-you" with "Let-me-get-to-the-computer-so-I-can-write-this-down-before-I-forget" mania.

I hate those days where every single thing frustrates me. It brings me back to when I was a kid and was very easily frustrated. Sometimes being brought back to a kid is great. This time it isn't.

Bete Noire, n: Something or someone particularly detested or avoided; a bugbear.
On those days when I'm frustrated, everyone is a bete noire to me.

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