Monday, November 24, 2008

aw, Dakota said goodbye!

So last night I dreamt that I was in bed and Dakota came to say goodbye. First he flung his paw onto my arm and I scratched behind his ears, and then he curled up with me for a few minutes before giving me one last woowoo and walked out with his tail held high. It was very sweet. And kinda sad. :(

Saturday, November 22, 2008

I hate housework. Anyone want some free fish?

I hear there's an ad for a free 50 gallon tank in the Tehachapi paper, yay! I called her, but she didn't answer. Hopefully she does. Now, the tank does have fish in it, which is a minor problem, but I'm sure I can find them homes. I hope I can. I don't want a 50 gallon fish tank. No, no, no! That's one of those things that sounds like it's totally easy. I mean, it's already set up, there's already fish in it, all I'd have to do is toss some food in once in awhile, right?

If only it were so.

My mantella laid some eggs, yay! But I can't find them. Which is kinda tricky. I'll wait another week or so (until the eggs are ready to come out of the tank) and then I'll tear it apart and get them. I'm pretty sure she laid them underneath a log that I have in there. They've dug several holes under it.

umm... I need to wrap Lacey's present. It's still in a Target bag.

Hmm... Rachel said she could bring me the tank (if I get it) but I'll have to have somewhere to put it. I guess I should wrap the present and then clean for the next couple of hours.

Ugh. I dont wanna clean!!

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Pics of my black Kingsnake!

Isn't (s)he so pretty!! :)

Ignore all the crap in the background. And, um, the crap on the wood. ;)


See, he's huge now! Three feet long! He's sure pretty though.

Pics of my gravid pulchra

I got some pics of my very fat female mantella pulchra. The pics don't really show off the coppery color of her head, or the bright orange flash marks, but they definitely show how gravid she is. :)

Here's the side view-


And the top view. In this one her head is sorta in the shadow, but you can see how round her belly is.

Nifty!

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Mushrooms are grand fun!

There's a mushroom growing in my pulchra tank! lookie!


It's growing against the glass in the corner, so the only way for me to take a pic is through the glass, which doesn't make for a great pic, but that's ok. The fun thing is that while I was taking that pic the female frog hopped out from her hiding space. And why is that fun? Well, you may remember that the pulchras are the ones who've been bugging me with their constant calling. And this female is FAT! Like, HUGE! GINORMOUS!!! So in another day or so she'll be all skinny again and there'll be some eggs in the tank. Unfortunately, the first pics I took I apparently didn't have the CF card in my camera (so it didn't save them) and the second ones the flash was blocked by the tank lid. The really tricky thing though is that there's only like 2 places in that tank that I can get to, so if she lays them anywhere else (which she probably will because the spots that I can get to aren't exactly prime laying spots) so I might have to tear apart the the tank a little.

I am really pissed that I managed to screw up the pics so much. grrs.

I'd take some more, but I've already bugged her enough.

Hm, so let's see. Mom and I went shopping yesterday. It was fun. :) I got a new purse, and some nice grown up clothes, which is always good. lol

and... umm.... school is school. Lab is always fun though. Except that today after I scrubbed I had to wait forever before I could put on my gown and gloves, which meant that for about 15 minutes I was standing holding my arms and hands up, which is harder than it sounds.

And I didn't sleep at all the night before, and then last night Matthew was playing on the computer and keeping me up. Getting up this morning at 6 was very difficult.

That's pretty much it. We're starting to get a bit busier at work, so that's good. I'm making a bit more money. I want to go to Portugal, and for that I'll need money. I'll also need to talk school into letting me take my finals at least a week early. I asked the program director about it today, but she wasn't sure. She said that she's never had someone ask to take it that early (a week is a lot in an accelerated program) and that I'd need to talk to the dean, but that's it's definetly good that I'm doing this early, so maybe. I figure after we talk about it on Thanksgiving and I have definitive dates I'll make an appointment with the dean. If he says no then I wont get to go. :( I really want to go! Although, I must admit I don't have a huge interest in Portugal itself, I just want to get out of Bakersfield. Out of CA. Out of the US! That could be that I don't know much about it though.

anyway.

I'm eating ginger snaps.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

no furry tail for Cassie

So I'm kinda worried about Cassie. In the last couple of weeks I've noticed her tail didn't seem to be as poofy as it was. I've pointed it out to Matthew, but he never really paid attention, until I finally made him look today, and he was surprised. You know how she used to have a super thick, poofy tail? Not anymore. Now the fur is very thin. It's weird, she's not losing fur anywhere else, and the skin on her tail isn't at all irritated, it's just not there anymore. I tried to look it up online, but didn't really find anything. Everything that I found were all skin problems, so the skin would be red, or have a rash, or be dry or something, and it's not! Her skin looks fine! She just doesn't have much fur! There's not even a real bald spot. So I dunno. I'll keep an eye on it, but if it doesn't get better soon (although, how would it, if I'm not doing anything about it?) I'll take her to the vet. Stupid expensive vet. He's gonna yell at us for not being on top of their vaccinations (none of them have gotten any in over a year), and not giving them any flea medication (which we stopped because the kind he said we needed (and we agreed) is only available by prescription, and with 4 cats that's a couple hundred dollars every 3 months). I don't wanna feel guilty dammit!

gah!

So if anyone knows why a cats fur would suddenly be thinning, please let me know.

Thank you.

And, of course, I still need that tank.

At least my frogs are happy. I actually saw two of them (two species I mean, the pulchras and the expectatas, so 4 frogs total) in amplexus today, which was kinda cool. They're being so noisy that we can hear them from outside, but they're only calling during the day, so it's ok. I mean, our neighbors used to have a bird that wouldn't shut up at any time of the day/night. A little light frog calling during the day is way better.

Anyway.

I have to go to school on Friday cuz our lab was supposed to be on Tuesday, but we didn't have school that day, so that kinda sucks.

Stupid fake holidays.

Matthew took me to Mama Toscas last night. It was very nice. :) Certainly not something to do every day, or week, or even month, but nice as an occasional treat. I got a nice glass of wine, Matthew actually liked the pork chops, it was nice. And yummy. I got some chicken covered with Swiss cheese and pancietta (and yeah, I know that's spelled wrong, but whatever, I don't know Italian). We even got all dressed up. Matthew looked very nice in his black pants, black shirt, and silver tie. He took a couple pics on his cell phone, but he hasn't sent them to me yet, so I can't put them up. I think I need to make him do that....

In fact, I might have to go bug him about it now!

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Aw crap, anyone wanna give me a 50 gallon tank?

So for the first time in quite awhile my snake shed all in one piece. Which means that I was actually able to accurately measure how big he is. 3 feet. My poor snake is 3 feet long and stuck in a 20 gallon tank. Which means that he can't spread out all the way, which means that he's very susceptible to a respiratory infection. Unfortunately, I live in Bakersfield, where people believe in charging twice retail for their used tanks. ugh. I mean, I guess I can sorta afford a new tank at retail, but I was really looking to spend less than $100 on it. grrs.

In other animal related news, my pulchra wont stop calling, which is cool, cuz that means that they might actually lay some eggs, but there's no way I could get eggs out of that tank. So I don't know what to do. Very tricksy.

Last night at work we had a million servers on, so I had a tiny section, so even though I was closing on a Friday night I only made $80.

That wont even cover my damn tank!

>:o

But other than that I'm good. :) How are you? Do you happen to have a large, empty fish tank lying around that you wanna give me?

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Lots of homework, not a lot of free time, and cold, hard cash

I figured out that I'm actually at school between 18 and 19 hours a week. Not terribly bad. And then I have at least an hour of homework every night, sometimes more, so we'll say that's like 27 hours a week doing school related stuff. Then of course, there's the 25 hours I work, and since I usually get there 20 mins early and hang out for a bit afterwards that goes up to 28 hours a week at work. So now we're at 55 hours a week where my time is not my own. I know, that's not really even all that much, but see, a few months ago, I didn't have ANYTHING going on. The whole getting up at 6 to go to school until 2:30 and then rushing home and going to work where I close so I'm there until 11 and then trying to get some homework done before I have to go to school again thing is just not fun.

I don't know how people do this with kids.

sheesh.

I think I'm just too much of a wimp.

Anyway.

So aside from how busy I've felt, school is going well. I like almost everyone in my class. It's not difficult yet, but it's a lot of memorizing stuff that I never thought I'd need to know. I also discovered that I suck at opening sterile "pill pouches." Of the 8 or so that I opened I only managed to get 3 on the table, and I didn't do a very good job on those three, but that's ok. I'll have the next 15 months to practice. :) We have daily quizzes in all my classes and I've done well on all of those, which isn't saying much, cuz like I said, it's not hard yet, although some people for some reason aren't doing so well. I think it's just cuz they're not used to actually having to study. It's amazing, the same people who complain that the flash cards are useless and not at all helpful so they wont do them are the same who aren't doing well on the quizzes (we correct each other's papers, so we all kinda know how everyone else is doing).

Work is going pretty well too. It seems to be picking up a little, which is nice. I haven't walked with less than $50 in awhile, and I did manage to save $500 this month, so yay!

Umm... let's see..... I haven't really been playing with clay too much. Which is too bad.

Matthew is doing well. He's getting a business license for computer repairs so he can fix the computers at work and get paid by Hilton (this was something his managers insisted he do) so that's cool, cuz they'll pay him a lot. He's also done a lot of work for people we know lately and has made some pretty decent money, so yay!

All in all, life is going pretty well I suppose. I wasn't the least bit surprised by the election results, although I do wish Prop 8 hadn't passed. I know there are those who were for it, but I'm not. It is really nice to be able to drive through the Stockdale/New Stine intersection with a gazillion people waving signs.

And with that I must be off. Class in 30 mins. :)