Our piece of bread

I was minding my own business yesterday when this landed out of nowhere in my email inbox:

"I am smoo-ooth and you are chun-ky. I'm low fat and you're working on that. Cuz you're peanut butter and I am jelly and we're so happy on our little piece of bread..."

Let me show you our little piece of bread, circa 2008. I stole this from Candy's blog.

This was not too long after we bought our little piece of bread. Lucy was little. Don't worry, now we have a few plants in the front flowerbed instead of (along with?) the weeds. This gives you an idea.

We also have another dog, Lola. We got her about 6 months after we moved in because Lucy needed a friend. Lucy is our dog and Lola is Lucy's dog. 

But she was with us that day in 2008 when we had our pictures taken, a blue fawn spirit. Today, if you were to take a picture, you would also note that I have longer hair, Ruben is also in the picture, and we have heart bubbles constantly floating out of our house because we are so happy and in love. Like this: 

The end. Thank you for your patience.

Where we live

Besides a state of constant disarray... that is a post for another day. I am going to tell you about where Alex and I have made our abode for the next few years, since I am guessing that at least half of my extended relatives don't know, because I am that good at keeping in touch with people. When people here find out I am from Idaho, they often ask how I like Illinois. I usually say the same thing "I am getting used to it." And then I complain about how flat it is and how much I miss the mountains. And then if they are from around here, they say "oh I see but the mountains make me claustrophobic." That took me aback the first time I heard it, but now I have come to realize that it is just one of those Midwest things. Like putting fake flowers in your front yard. Midwest idiosyncrasies aside, my goal is to tell you some of the great and interesting things about this community. Because, in spite of its flatness and winters that last two years (and come on, I am from Idaho and I should be able to deal with it... sheesh) it has some great things going for it.

By the way, if you didn't realize it yet, I am talking about Champaign-Urbana! Or Chambana, as it is colloquially known around here. Or Chambanana, as it is colloquially known in this house.

So if you google it, you come up with images like this:

And this:

Which is apparently a lightning strike that occurred on a golf course not .75 miles away from our house. All of a sudden, I feel very safe.

One more:

You can already tell this is a great city.

First of all, it is the home of the flagship University of Illinois. U of I was a land grant university way back when. The campus here has about 40,000 students and has phenomenal chemistry, engineering, and physics departments. Quite a few Nobel laureates have come out of this school. With the university come all the perks that come from living in a campus town. It is also happens to have a veterinary school attached to it. With only 28 vet schools in the nation, that is quite a big deal and a happy coincidence for us.

Second of all, Urbana has a really great farmer's market in the summer. There are goat cheese and toffee samples every week.

Third, Alison Krauss was born not too far away and grew up in Champaign. She is my all time favorite bluegrass artist.

Fourth, we are close (3.5 hours driving or less) to St. Louis, Indianapolis, and Chicago, two of which cities have temples in them. Here is a picture of the St. Louis temple:

Beautiful building, no? Those are all the great things that I can come up with right now, but I am sure there will be more once winter is over in another year and a half.

Valentine's Day Recap

But first, Public Service Announcements from Martha Stewart:

Right. Just need to find my flower frog (?)...

Yeah. Ha. I tried that once. It was fun. Right, Joe and Ashley?

You know, if my sweetheart had a cup of cappuccino, I might just do that. Why not?

Okay. Thanks, Martha. Our Valentine's involved lots of good food, as all good holidays should. I won't subject you to a full run down, but here are some highlights:

If anyone ever feels like getting us a gift, a meat tenderizer would be appreciated. Pots work to flatten meat, but only kind of. Although, if you really want to get us a gift, you might want to get us something that we would use more than once every three years. I have to say, that was the first time I had ever in my life thought to myself "you know, it would be really convenient if I had a meat tenderizer right about now." This is a piece of smashed chicken breast that is about to meet its meat fate as chicken roulade. See the following:

It was good, folks. But I have to say that my favorite was the dessert. Please refrain from judging it based on how it looks. It is called Indian Pudding and it was truly wonderful. Now that I think of it, it is kind of a glorified hot breakfast food, but still, it was really good. Maybe that is because breakfast is my favorite meal of the day.

Even better than the dessert, I liked our company, Jeremy and Tiffany. They were awesome company and they had some of the funniest figures of speech. I was cracking up all night. I wish I could remember some of them, and I also wish I were as cool as Jeremy and Tiffany. Yes, yes, that is a picnic table for those of you who haven't been in our house yet.

And finally, because I can, some pictures of me and my exothermic love. Alex coined that term. He also told me this morning that when we get together, our delta G is negative. It was very romantic. Thank you, thermodynamics.

Wow, this is double trouble. Did you notice? This blog is rated PG.

Don't know what's going on here, and I am not sure what that light streak is, but I think it is our poltergeist. No, really, his name is Harry and he is nice. He only turns the radio off every now and then:

One more. We look happy, don't we?

A Typical Morning

Since not all of you are lucky enough to be in vet school, I thought I would share some tidbits from my morning so you could live it vicariously. I just got done with an equine lameness exam. This one was awesome enough to include a video, from which I diagnosed a forelimb lameness. I already forgot which side it was.

In ruminant class today, I learned all about how not to milk a cow:

Don't have an inadequate vacuum or Daisy ain't happy.

Another tidbit: Did you know you can turn this

into this

with the use of a propane torch? And that people actually do this on a regular basis? My question is, why hasn't someone made millions marketing this technology to women frustrated and tired of shaving? Valid question.

And in my poultry class (in which I think we set a record today - 126 slides for a 50 minute lecture!) there were all sorts of wonderful pictures. I like this one in particular:

I think I liked it because my teacher pointed out that this is chicken snot:

Who would have guessed? What fortuitous timing!

And finally:

This is a case of a chicken with fowl cholera. Trust me, you do NOT want to know what is inside those wattles, folks. If you really, really want to know, email me and I will whisper it to you.

Oh, yeah, this is what happens to you if you get chlamydophila psittaci. I hope I spelled that right. This is a zoonotic disease, so you can get it from birds, but don't ask me anything about it because we cover that on Wednesday.

The Papilloma Chronicles

Warning: This post is not for the faint of heart.

Alex and I and Lucy's tongue have been through a lot over the past few months. It all started about six months ago, when we noticed a little white, raised bump on Lucy's tongue. As the weeks wore on, the bump started getting bigger. So then we got worried and took her to the vet for that and some unrelated issues. The vet gave us the diagnosis: PAPILLOMA. Does that word send shivers down your spine? Here is the tongue at about the time of the vet visit.

So I went back to my virology notes, because I had supposedly learned all about papillomas, and (re)learned that:
1) Papilloma viruses are small, double-stranded DNA viruses of the Papovaviridae family.
2) Dogs have 3 distinct papilloma viruses. (Humans win with >20 and cattle have 6. Rabbits have 2.)
3) The different papilloma viruses often have considerable species, site and histologic specificity (no worries of that ugly thing spreading to me!)
4) The virus is transmitted by direct contact, fomites, and possibly insects.
5) Good news: infectious papillomatosis is a self-limiting disease (she will fight it off on her own)
6) Bad news: it is infectious (Lola can get it)
7) Good news: If Lola hasn't gotten it by now, she probably won't.
8) Bad news: Infrequently, viral papillomas in dogs may progress to invasive squamous cell carcinomas (cancer).

So the vet prescribed Azithromycin, which is an antibiotic, so it shouldn't do anything against viruses, right? In the doctor's defense, there is some anecdotal evidence that this might be helpful in cases of papillomas. But not in our case. It continued to grow and grow... and then this happened:

First of all, to explain the color of Lucy's mouth: we took the picture because we got home one day and Lucy and Lola had both eaten a few of our red styrofoam apple Christmas tree decorations and their mouths were ridiculously pink. Since we are very observant animal owners, we didn't actually notice it until a while later, but LOOK:

 

WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?!? That's right, folks, The Papilloma is taking over Lucy's mouth, threatening to occlude her airway and snuff out her last breath!!! Something had to be done and soon. So, we scheduled an appointment with the dermatologist. We would fight The Papilloma to the end. 

Dermatology didn't get the memo that this was obviously a life-threatening situation for poor Lucy and they were taking their two week Christmas break so we had to wait. About a week later, The Papilloma was gone, including his little friends in the back. Her immune system had finally stepped up to the plate and kicked out the invaders. Yay for immune systems! So now our life is much more boring, Lucy doesn't wonder what that weird bump on her tongue is, and we didn't have to pay the dermatologist. Life is good.

A labor of love

To me, the definition of a labor of love is doing something that takes way longer than you expected it to take, but you do it anyway. That may be a silly definition, but then again, I don't have kids yet.

I had a labor of love today. It involved this:

Now, now before you rush to judge my housekeeping skills, let me explain. This tragic scene is what happens when two busy grad students are simply out of energy at the end of the night to do something as unglamorous as wash the dishes. But tonight, as I was reflecting on this:

which is a quote posted on our refrigerator after a particularly lazy weekend after which both Alex and I felt somewhat chastened by our lack of productivity, I decided to bite the bullet and clean the dishes. It also doesn't hurt that we were running out of clean dishes.

This was the effect of my labor of love.

If you are wondering about the painter's tape, no it is not a new decoration fad. It is the result of a well planned and controlled scientific experiment that proved that yes, the millions of sugar ants were indeed coming up through a crack at the edge of the counter. Maybe that was too much information.

Speaking of labors of love, check this out (the floor, not the dog):

Alex and I naively thought that Thanksgiving break two years ago would be plenty of time to lay 600 square feet of tile. It wasn't finished until, oh, May or so.

Here's another one (again, the floor):

My mom and dad came out and visited last fall and my dad and Alex laid a whole room and hallway of this oak floor in 3 (long) days flat. It was AMAZING. I am in love with it. I would marry it if I weren't already happily married.

Here is a another HUGE labor of love:

This rug. It sat under our kitchen table in Idaho for decades, suffering under the strain of chairs constantly being pushed in and pulled out, and it had millions of holes between all of the braids. My mother sat for hours and hours and hours and stitched all those holes up so that we use have the rug in our living room. I think of her every time I see it.That was a true labor of love.

Finally, the last labor of love for the night:

This little rascal, Ruben. He sucks my time and energy, always looking for a spot on my lap and in my face. Good thing he is so cute.