First Semester...Second Year--sounds like (but isn't!), lazy!

And we're back!  I'm reinstated in Pullman with so much procrastinating to get done, therefore naturally I have returned to this blog.  This is the first weekend since classes started and we've already got quite a load.  Additionally all the professors this semester are into something called "class participation".  Somebody look this up and get back to me because I'm unfamiliar with the concept.  They are also [almost] all very engaging and enthusiastic (oh god...50 pages of notes in one week enthusiastic!) which makes up for a lot of it.  Grad school is great because the professors, as well as the students, are interested in being there.  And let's see...we have on our plate Systems Pathology, Clinical Pathology, Virology, Bacteriology, Pharmacology, International Veterinary Medicine and Skeletal Prep (in which you make a dog skeleton...from scratch; I'll just leave that one to your imagination).  We've already grown your friendly neighborhood Staphylococci, learned to read a packed cell volume and plasma protein, and have a paper in which we get assigned a different kind of DIARRHEA! to research and then make up a case involving our DIARRHEA!, and on the way talk to another student with a different type of DIARRHEA! and then learn about it and teach it to our classmates (I think this may be getting at that pesky participation thing) and frankly they are all too excited that we are learning about DIARRHEA!!  But there's chronic and acute and necrotizing and cytotoxic--the wide, exciting world of diarrhea is seemingly endless.  Because we are all very mature there have been no comments at all about, What kind of diarrhea do you have? or No, I can't go out, I have to get home and deal with my diarrhea.

It is so nice to be around grown-ups (JESSICA).

I have a lot to tell you all about my epic summer vacation, starring some extremely unauthorized uses of a VW Golf (stay tuned! small rivers forded! ATV trails tackled! trees hit--really, really slowly!), blue water, really large Redwoods, and naked middle aged river beach intruders practicing their early morning yoga (hello, and welcome to northern California).  But that is going to wait until Eli has got his camera situations all sorted out and I can illustrate the points.  Except for the naked people, ew.  What do you think this blog is, gross?  I have standards.  That is the other best thing about Pullman.  Not that there are no naked people, although that is a definite plus, but that Eli is here for a while.  (Well, not right now.  Today he drove halfway to Montana to a ski hill to taunt gravity on a mountain bike, which is his favorite 'sport'.  I maintain that if you have to wear body armor, it isn't a sport, but then I go jump horses around in the woods so I am nothing if not hypocritical.  Whatever.)  He is taking some time to study and do the coursework for his captain's license before heading off to waters uncharted again.  In the meantime he'll be earning food money as the detail dude for a Ford dealership, which to me sounds like work but to him is like hanging out at the pound all day in that he wants to bring them all home with him.  Whatever floats your boat.  And cooks me dinner.  Mmm, dinner.

Off to have Monty Python night with a friend.  See previous comment regarding extreme maturiosity.