Jem's bath

This week we took care of Izzy while the Walkers were out of town.


Jem and Izzy got to play EVERY day. They were totally psyched. And totally dirty. So Jem has had frequent baths lately.





After her bath she becomes super hyper. She runs up and down the basement stairs, stopping to flail on couches, carpet, and bean bags.




Afterwards the humans ate some strawberry muffins. (School's done and my oven is working overtime!)

Summer treats

Left: I forgot to take a picture before digging into this chicken salad with zucchini, red peppers, and feta.
Right: Leftovers from the salad along with Olathe corn, garlic, parsley, feta, and parmesan made a tasty pasta. Greg's bountiful artichokes have a been a regular on our table this summer.



Left: Mixed berry cobbler with ice cream.
Right: With leftover cobbler filling I made a pound cake


AWESOMELY tasty and easy chocolate pudding cake. The recipe is here. It's a very unusual recipe, but it really works!

Summer Vacation

Last night was the last final for my summer session, which gives me three weeks of so called summer vacation. Hardly seems fair to call it that, since I didn't have schoolwork during the other seasons :-) But at the end of August I'll return to Red Rocks for the second part of Anatomy and Physiology, Nutrition, and some dumb liberal arts courses that Regis requires. Now, I love me some liberal arts, but you have to understand how many I've already taken through CU. I'm gonna try to get Regis to wave some of their requirements based on my previous work, but it's likely I'll have to take two religion classes (of all things!).

But before all that, Ben and I are leaving Thursday to celebrate our FIVE year anniversary!!! We're going to spend three glorious days in Niagara Falls, Canada. I'm very excited for this vacation/second honeymoon. It will be a much needed break. No studying, no work, no puppies tearing up shoe insoles, no kitties meowing for breakfast at 6 am, just peace and relaxation. And swimming.

Real Age

Since so many of you enjoyed the cadaver calculator, here's another fun one.

I'm only 4 years old! Test yourself here.

Jem sits, stays, comes, jumps

When I was in GJ showing off our dog, Andy seemed unimpressed that she could only really "sit." I tried to teach her to jump tonight, and we worked that into combinations of commands. She did pretty good!

This was the second take. She did two really good combinations the first time, but I accidently hit the "record" button in quick succession and failed the capture them. What a doofus mistake :-)

You can tell she's enjoying the games by the serious side-tongue action and the splayed hind legs when she sits. I love that. We had been working on these commands about about 30 minutes, off and on.

tick tick tick

How did people procrastinate before the internet? Seriously, WHAT did they do? And I think the way I use the term procrastination has shrunk. It used to mean putting off a term paper for days or weeks until the deadline. Now it means minutes or hours.

Ok, lecture ended at 3, I have roughly 1 - 1 1/2 hours before I meet Ben for dinner, then go to my 5:30 lecture. That's plenty of time to work on my Mumps virus term paper.

Plan = check emails, start typing report.
hmmm ...
now plan = check emails, chat with Ben, start typing report
hmmm ...
now plan = check emails, chat with Ben, click links on emails, start typing report
hmmm ...
now plan = check emails, chat with Ben, click links on emails, check favorite rss feeds, start typing report
hmmm ...
now plan = check emails, chat with Ben, click links on emails, check favorite rss feeds, check all feeds, start typing report
hmmm ...
now plan = check emails, chat with Ben, click links on emails, check favorite rss feeds, check all feeds, find cool flash game, read snarky posts, ogle textiles, post on blog

And suddenly 30 minutes are gone.

Feeling the rush

I'm getting burned out as the weeks fly by. 13 days to go and I'll be finished with microbiology and anatomy. It's really too bad that I had to take these as summer sessions. Between the compact lectures, long days with two labs, and trying to go to work, I'm not absorbing as much information as I'd like. Sure, my grades are fine. Great grades, in fact. But I'm afraid I won't retain as much. Anatomy 2 in the fall should be easier to dive into.

So it's been go go go until late night every night lately. And apparently I'm writing palindromically. Like the inverted repeats on DNA and RNA that signals repressor protein binders, posttranslational enzyme regulation, and recombination DNA sites. Gah, I really should be studying for tomorrow's exam but my brain is checked out for the night. It would probably be better to study in the morning or leave work early. I think I'll upload some photos to my computer before I go to sleep though. Laters.

My cat cannot be trusted

This morning Molly was BEGGING to be let outside. She sniffed and rolled around while I ate breakfast and packed my lunchbox. I went upstairs to put on my shoes, and when I came down Molly was gone. Huh, did she go back in the house, I wondered, since I left the door open. But then I spotted a cat three doors down, on the fence. I called and, sure enough, she turned and gave a sheepish meow. (my neighbor has two tiger tabbies, I've often mistaken them for Molly). I ran along the fence and tried to coax her back to our yard. She jumped too soon, right into the neighbor's yard. I tried calling to get her to hop the fence, but she was simultaneously panicked and intrigued by the neighbor cat smells and new plants - she paid me no attention.

I tried to open the neighbor's gate, but it was latched from the inside. Our kind neighbor Don saw my hand over his fence and came to let me in, not noticing Molly yet, who had darted into his house when he opened the door. I told him my cat was in his yard and now his house! By then Molly had run into the patio again and climbed straight up the fence! I finally grabbed her, tight, apologized profusely, and tossed her in the house.

No more unsupervised patio time! I had no idea she could just scale the fence like that. This was too much drama for my morning. I wonder what Don would have done if I hadn't found her and he suddenly had three tabbies?

I also love a good mash-up

And this one is really good.

Love this

What a kuribo?

How much is my corpse worth?

$4925.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth

Find out here