Everyone, this is our new baby!

Lucian is an 18 month old Russian Peterbald hairless cat. Mike affectionately refers to him as "Mr. Mutants" and I keep calling him Lucy, so he definitely needs whatever the cat-world version of a barn name would be! He feels like an overripe peach, but in a soft fuzzy good way!

I already love him!

Who needs Cancun?

Seriously, who needs a beach vacation when you have such lovely sunbathing conditions right in your own pen? Princess doesn't! I love this little horse; she's like an exercise ball with little stick legs! Every time I see her I crack up!

Story is, she came in sick and on the thin side so she spent all of last winter in the barn getting yummy mashes and high quality hay. By May, the visiting girl scout troops were asking if she was having twins or triplets and everyone was embarrassed about how obese she'd been allowed to get! Believe it or not, she's lost at least fifty pounds since starting her diet and learning to long-line. I usually feed her last on cold mornings and her whinnies of impatience are priceless! She's just so... pathetically adorable!


Anyhow, my spring break is a much needed brain break and house cleaning time. Brain broken. I swear I'll start my paper on the molecular abnormalities in the bone marrow of transgenic mice with Von Willebrand's disease... tomorrow...

St Baldrick's Day was AWSOME!

I love being bald, and I love all the support people have given to this cause via my now being bald! Thank you, everyone!

Sick sick sick

Ugh,

I thought I'd done so well at not getting this sinus-fever-weakness-unhappy virus, but here I am snorting saline and wishing I was dead. It doesn't help that I'm having bleeding episode precursors, too, like a second period a week after my last one ended. I really liked only getting my period once a month, damn you body!

I haven't been to the rescue except to feed since Tuesday. I feel guilty, having not lived up to my responsibilities with this new paint mare, but I should have known better than to commit in the first place.

Saturday, Greg and I went up to Keystone and skiied for a few hours. It was sunny at the base, and I hate skiing in goggles so I wore sunglasses and stupidly did not put my goggles in my goggle pocket just in case. Keystone has the most skiable acrage in the world, apparently, and to get to the Outback you have to go up and over 2 other mountains- lift up, ski down the backside, repeat. The morning was gray and the runs were hard-packed but the Outback at least wasn't icey. Not too many people back there, either. Beautiful! After lunch, however, it started snowing like mad! Which was awesome, because it instantly covered up the hardpack with our famous champagne powder, but sucked because I couldn't see a damn thing without my goggles! Fuck! It took us an hour to ski back to the car, and by then we had to get home anyways. :-( And, of course, it was still sunny at the base. I really, really should know better!

Won 3 of our games (bowling) that night, replanted the tomato seedlings and leek seedlings into bigger pots yesterday. Everything looks so good! I can't wait to be eating fresh veggies again!

This week: Cancer Bio "quiz" tomorrow, Cell lab practical Wednesday, Cell Bio exam Thursday, Friday off to go skiing, shaving head on Saturday. The Cancer quizzes are the hardest tests I have ever taken, and I love them! 4 questions, multiple choice, open note. +2.5 for every correct answer, -1 for every wrong answer. Completely conceptual. For example, our practice quiz had 2 pie graphs with 6 equal wedges. Each wedge on the first one had a genetic alteration- "deletion of promoter sequence," "homologue in virus," "translocation of..." etc. The second one had genes that affect cancer cells: Myc, p53, APC, ARF, ATM, TERT, etc. Challenge: line up the second graph with the first one so that each gene is altered in a way that will most benefit a cancer cell. First round, only about a third of the class got it right, to give you an idea of how hard that actually is.

Mass E-mail, but too tired to write a new version...

On Saturday, March 14th at 10 am I will be shaving my head to show support for children undergoing and recovering from chemotherapy and to raise money for childhood cancer research. Every few minutes, a child is diagnosed with cancer. Chemotherapy is not always affective and makes the patient incredibly sick, yet it's often the "best" treatment option. Please help contribute to finding treatments that are more affective at killing tumors and less harmful to the rest of the body! Check out some stories from families with children in treatment at the link below, view my before (and, after the 14th, after) picture, and make a donation if you can. If you think this is a worthy cause, fwd this on and/or sign up to help in other ways!

http://www.stbaldricks.org/participants/shavee_info.php?ParticipantKey=2009-339484

Thank you so much for your support! I hope I see some of you at The Foundry on Saturday!

*every penny counts, as they say! Please make a donation, however small, if you feel like this is a good cause! I would love to see those dollars add up for a cause I truly believe in!

Running on Empty

Okay, another weekend of doing too much and not getting even half of the things I wanted to done. I did:
-Drive up to Sterling and pick up Shaggy the ball python (a 4+ hour drive, total, for a goddamn snake)
-Got Shaggy all set up and also re-did Spot's tank because I felt bad he was getting less attention
-Cleaned the other two tanks in the house, and boy did they need it!
-Won all 4 games during bowling league! Yay!

What I didn't do:
-any of my cell reading, at which I am already 3 weeks behind
-any cancer bio review
-my lab report for chemistry
-my cell lab presentation for our independent projects
-the mandatory tractor training at the rescue
-ride Kahlua, again at the rescue and who I said I would ride at least 2x/wk and haven't ridden yet
-get Shaggy to her actual new home in Boulder and all set up there
-write something for writing group
-sleep at least 8 hours or nap to make it 8 hours of sleep per day

Today, we're getting ready to go to a financial workshop in South Denver. My parent's financial adviser had offered to give us a free 20 minute phone consultation as a favor to them even though he doesn't take on clients with less than $500,000 to invest (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, yeah, right!). I guess he started thinking about all his clients with children in their 20s inspired him to hold a free workshop to get us started in smart investing. So, it'll be a great opportunity to learn about our investment options for when we do have money to invest in things and I feel a bit obligated to go since he set it up to avoid doing multiple phone consultations!

It just means I won't get anything else done today, either.

Crap.

Gah! People, hold your horses!

Crazy week, full of decision I don't want to make.

I'll probably update more on my sister's inability to get home to Oz and such later, but for the moment, I'm thinking happily about the cutest stunted little sickly underfed mangy 2 year old filly known to man. Someone saved her off a kill lot about a month ago- they went to pick up a mule they'd bought at the auction and this little girl was so attached that it broke their hearts to take away her friend and leave her to die. So, she's with us now, in a REAL quarantine pen (not just in the incoming owner-surrendered horse "quarantine"). Everyone thought she couldn't be more than a yearling she's so little, I'll try to snap a picture to show you what I mean, but the vet's both guessed closer to 2 and a half based on her teeth! Apparently she's registered, papers from the QH world are on there way, but she slipped through the cracks somewhere...

So, I'm figuring out what to do with a 2 year old. She's sweet as can be, easy going, and clearly had been handled a lot in the past- she got right in the trailer, stands for the farrier, and lets you touch her all over, ears and everything! The negative side of that is it appears she's already been ridden- she has what appear to be saddle sores and her back is a bit swollen. Another volunteer who has experience with young horses is going to see what she can do with her, and I'll probably join the BM in haltering her, grooming her, enforcing some basics on the ground, etc on occasion just to up her human contact. She's gained enough weight in the past few weeks to look like a real horse again, and her coat's coming back in nicely. She really is a nicely put together horse with the sweetest face you've ever seen. I bet once she catches up with her growth, she'll adopt out quickly to a great home!

So, off to pick my mom up at the airport... more on that later. For now, just keep picturing the adorable little filly getting a grand new life with enough food to let her grow up big and strong and all the medical care she needs to feel better!