Another addition to my managerie

Her name is Sadie. She's two years old and feeling just a bit needy and abandoned.

She is my new little Yorkie. She doesn't like to be separated from people. She despises her kennel. She barks a little when left alone. She also poos on the floor in order to tell me just how much I have offended her.

She is a little bit lazy. She isn't very active on her leash.

But she is sweet and adorable and lovable. For such a tiny dog, she is a little bit of a bed hog. She doesn't bark unless she is left alone.

She isn't house trained.

She isn't spayed.

She needs some shot updates.

Overall, I am very happy to have her.

It will take time to get her trained up a bit. But I am confident that I can do it.

I feel horrible every time I have to leave her alone. I'm sure that's normal. In time, I will get over it.

I you have not seen The Painted Veil, you NEED to. It is a fantastic movie. I own it, so if anyone want's to borrow it, let me know.

I am officially going to go to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir concert on June 20th. Me and Ben. I was really hoping to get a few more friends involved. But I guess $37.00 was too pricey. Now it will just be me and Ben which might be a little awkward. He said he wanted to go, but when I talked to him last, he didn't sound all that excited. Perhaps he was distracted by other things. I don't know.

I just know that this is going to be one of those friendships that won't last much longer.

It is always sad to grow further and further away from someone you were so sure was going to be your best friend forever.

Anyway, time for a nap.

I hope to make some phone calls to apartment complexes to see if there are any worth moving into in August.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Wednesday.

A few changes

Now that the semester has ended, I find myself making some decisions and accepting new challenges.

The terrifying unknown of the rent/money situation seems to have alleviated itself for the time being.

I have been picking up shifts at work. Mostly in the morning. Because I work most nights, this means that I have been working a few doubles. They may be exhausting, but my checking account is starting to recover from the drain it experienced last month.

I have a new potential roommate. Rachel. She is a really sweet sister from the University ward. We are currently looking for apartments/duplexes that are on ground levels, $500 and under per month and pet friendly. There are a few options. Some with really pricey pet deposits though. I am hopeful.

Speaking of pets, as of tomorrow, I will be the proud new owner of a young female Yorkie. One of my co-workers needs someone to take her little dog off her hands and I, being the sometimes spontaneous (especially when it comes to pets) person that I am, jumped at the opportunity. I'm getting her for free. I get to keep all the leftover dog food as well as the leash and other things that this co-worker purchased for her. Most pf you will think that this is a bad idea and tell me that I haven't thought this through.

All I have to say to you is...to late!

Maybe it will be a horrible mistake, but I have ALWAYS wanted a Yorkie and up pops an opportunity to have one. I am taking it.

End of the semester grades:

-British Literature: A
-Folklore: A
-Animal Population Dynamics: B
-Practicum: B-
-Ichthyology: D+

Current GPA-2.9 (I was really hoping to get it to a 3.0 this semester. I'll keep my fingers crossed for the next.)

There is obviously something horribly wrong with this picture. Sarah Lambson does not get a D+ as her final grade in anything. But not all hope is lost. As you all know, I have yet to complete this fish experiment. The next (and hopefully successful) trial will be next week. The first week in June. I am very hopeful. I just want to get this over with. With the completion of this project, the paper, and the poster, I hope to bring that D+ to at least a C. A nice round C. Sarah Lambson can get a C and live with it. I REFUSE to take Ichthyology over again because I got a D+.

Next semester schedule:

-Biometrics
-Behavioral Biology
-Behavioral Ecology
-Human Dimensions in Natural Resources
-Russian Literature.

Hm...Maybe I shouldn't have made it so hard on myself. I should have taken easier classes huh? Made it easier to get a 3.0? Yeah. Oh well. I'll get over it.

I'm a bit sleepy.

Zzzzzzzz.......

Breathing

In, out.

It feels good.

But I don't feel the complete sense of freedom that usually accompanies the end of a semester.

I am 100% sure that this has to do with the following things:

1.I still have a project on the effects of low oxygen on fathead minnow egg development to complete, write a paper, and make a poster for.

2. I was so sure that I would be participating in another internship this year, but mis-communication and lack of money has forced my to stay home.

3.I want to be doing something with my life and I'm just not there yet.

It doesn't help that this seems to be engagement season for everyone single and Mormon. It's always exciting for those parties getting engaged, but a bit of a downer to those of us not so lucky. I can only blame myself, really, but it does make you very aware of your single status when people are prepping to be eternally bound to their companion.

Enough of that rant.

Gloria is cooking something with octopus downstairs. My door is open so I can hear my home teachers when they arrive and the smell is rather pungent.

Not horrible, just...strong.

*****

Home teachers just left. It was good to have them here. I don't get that enough. Too bad one of them is leaving for the summer.

"Are you doing an internship this summer?"

No. No I am not. The more I think about that the more I regret it. I wish I had tried harder. Still, volunteering is also a good thing. Sometimes when you volunteer and do a great job, they take that into account and even try to get you to stay by offering you a job. I'm not counting on it, but you never know.

Sigh.

What is this feeling? I don't understand it. A pressure on my heart and my soul. Not bad, not good...restless? Not even that. I don't have a word for it and that means I don't know how to go about figuring it out.

"Children should listen"

I have to admit that I saw this coming from a mile away. EVERYONE told me that this would happen.

I thought that since things had been okay so far that maybe they would continue to be okay until the end.

This is all referring to my living situation. One of the individuals living with me is unable to pay rent or electricity. I don't know if she is going to be able to pay her portion of the water bill either.

So, now what? Do I call the landlord or the water company or the electricity company and tell them all that we cannot pay on time this month? Should that be MY job? Why am I the one who has to step up?

I have a headache. I slept too long this afternoon.

Why does this have to happen now? Right before finals week? Why didn't I prepare better for this?

I knew that she didn't have a steady job that was bringing in any significant income. Why didn't I just talk to her about it? It's uncomfortable. WHY!!

I don't want to think about it. I have a simulation on common pipistrelle bats figure out.

Not to mention a bison culling simulation to run and write a report on.

Then there is the paper on vulgar humor. And the studying for my last fish test which I have to get a 70% or better on this time in order to get a C for the semester.

And yet, here I am feeling sorry for myself because I didn't listen to my instincts and all my friends and family concerning this roommate situation.

Sorry I didn't listen to you all.

I am unhappy.

On the plus side, Elder Bednar gave a good talk. I don't think that blogging takes me away from the spirit. Often it invites it. Not if I am writing bad things about people.

So I will do my best to be charitable towards this roommate. Try to help her as much as I am able.

I wish that my headache would go away.

Dressed up and no where to go...

I'm in nice slacks, a blue button down shirt, and heels. I don't even get to present and I have to get all dressed up for professionalism's sake.

I am not very happy about it. Especially since I SOMEHOW got 3 sooty colored stains on my white tank that I'm wearing under the blue shirt. All between the half hour it took me to get to campus and the hour I spent in class. I have NO idea how they got there. But they were glaring at me as I was washing my hands in the bathroom.

Have I mentioned just how much I love The Fountain?

So, um...

I spent three hours with alcohol soaked dead fish yesterday. The forst 1.5 hours was taking my lab exam. I know I did better on this one than the last one, but is it good enough?

The rest of the time was spent identifying fish for one of the last projects of the semester. rubbing alcohol may not do any immediate damage to your skin, but after a while it starts to wear down on your fingers.

I'm just glad that's over. Now I just need to figure out how to do this fish experiment. I think what I will have to do is this.

dump some males and females together in the evening. Go home. Sleep. Give them some time. Then check back in the morning to see if they have spawned. If not, check periodically throughout the day. None of this sitting and waiting. Just pop in when my classes are done.

Once they spawn, I will check the eggs to determine what stage they are at and go from there. It's not as accurate as getting the eggs from the second they are spawned, but according to this expert that I e-mailed, it may take a DAY OR TWO for these fish to spawn. There is NO WAY I am going to sit there for 48 hours at a time waiting for these fish to get a clue.

I blame myself for all the failed attempts. Maybe if I had read more papers on the spawning habits of fathead minnows, I might have read that it takes DAYS not HOURS for them to be comfortable enough with each other to spawn. I don't know.

Anyway, I have to run this by my professor and then I can try again. I don't know when. I almost just want to tell him that I want to wait until after Finals. I REALLY don't want to go into the summer with this, but with this new tactic the schedule is unpredictable. I wont KNOW if I will miss classes or not. You can't predict anything based on unpredictable critters.

So I think my best bet would be to wait until finals are over. Heck, I am even okay with waiting until SUMMER is over and trying it next semester since I will be here. Plus I my be forced into taking another class from him. Ew. I would rather swallow 10 fathead minnows whole that take Fisheries Management.

I don't think being dressed up is worth pizza. It depends on how they give the pizza to us. It they give a few pizzas to each group, I'm sure we will all get our fill. If they just put all the pizzas in all 100+ of us students, I don't know if I will get any and that would make me cry.

If you have time and don't shy away from a little language (There are a few F bombs, in there) then go on over to Youtube and type in "32 songs in 8 minutes". Quite entertaining. The transitions are pretty good. The way he sings some of those songs in such a mellow way is great. Also he plays MUSE!! Which is great.

I discovered a fellow Muse lover in my class the other day. Soon they will be the best loved band in the world...or not.

Hm. I have three papers to write and another test to study for. Maybe I should get to doing that.

Happy Wednesday everyone.

By the way, if any of you are interested, there is a section of my story on my other blog. Shameless plug, I know. Nothing new form the one you have already read, mom.

Post Birthday

Thank you to everyone for the birthday wishes and gifts.

Even though I hate those stupid fish for their lack of spawning, I am kinda happy that I got to relax a little on my Birthday. Had they laid eggs, I would have had to worry about checking eggs on my birthday. Instead, I got to have a great day and eat my dinner with no worries.

Just so it's clear to everyone that DIDN'T know. I now have a laptop on which I do pretty much everything.

I just discovered that there is a musical of Lord of the Rings. HA! Funny. I can get it free off of emusic.

I think I might just get it. It kind of makes me smile.

I'm watching Ben-Hur right now. What a great movie in many ways.

"You're a Roman, I'm a Jew..." I always want to finish that line with "Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you!"

I am pretty sure that I have found my next Favorite Band. Elbow. And, of course, they are British! I think I would place them somewhere between Muse and Keane. Near Coldplay perhaps. Pretty fantastic stuff.

Someday, I will have an aquarium. Guess what I will not have in there? Fathead minnows.

Oh, those crazy guys and their leopard hats.

I wonder how much those people got paid to just stand there and glare at the Roman procession. It's the only time we see them.

Judah looks like he is going to vomit.

I am done commenting on this movie.

Just a few more weeks. That's all that is left of this semester. I think I have missed more work because of classes this semester than any other.

I like how in this movie, you never see Christs face. It shows respect. And how Judah looks at him in awe and then just reaches out and touches his hand ever so slightly. I know I said that I would stop. So this is me stopping.

Anyway, it looks like I will probably have to do this dumb fish experiment into the summer. I have one more try before the semester is over. Then I have to either go into the summer or try again in the fall and hope it works before I have to graduate. I am not taking complete failure as an option. This experiment will work. One way or another.

There are ants in my room...

I lied. I wonder how they have cymbals and drums in the parade since there are non marching.

This movie makes me think of The Count of Monte Cristo. A man who is betrayed. So completely down in out and then by some miracle becomes even greater than he was and uses that power to exact his revenge. But in the end he tries to learn to forgive.

I cannot WAIT for this semester to be over.

Judah is becoming the lord of the rings. He has Esther's and now he has the ring of Quintus.


Tee-hee. He LOOKS like a roman. With the curly bangs and everything.

This was a random, pointless entry. Sorry.

I'm done. Time for a nap.

The Re-re-try

Third times a charm, or so THEY say. Who do they think they are anyway? My third go around has not started promising.

I got an e-mail from my professor saying that most of the fish had died. His best guess was that it was an aeration problem. Great. So all I had left in the tank were three overstressed and smallish females. There was no way I was going to get great results from them.

So I spent the first part of this morning driving down to the CERC to pick up more fathead minnows. At 10:00 I introduced TWO females from the new batch right off. I checked the O2 levels. They are lower than last time. Significantly. That worries me. I wonder if there is something in the air in the lab that is causing O2 in the apparatus to be low and 02 in the tanks to be low. That wold explain all the fish deaths.

I am waiting again. I have until 2:00 this afternoon before it becomes a problem to do this with my schedule. After that, I am going to have to go for round 4 on the Thursday before finals week. Joy. In the meantime I am going to try to identify some dead fish in jars. If nothing happens, this play-by-ply will be very dull.

11:17am- I really hate the smell of fish preserved in alcohol in the morning. Stupid darters. They are SO hard to identify. You know, as much as I would hate to put this off, if nothing happens today, I will be able to enjoy my birthday. But then I would have to postpone this so that would be doing it into the Monday of Finals week. That is not a very happy thought.

-iTunes: "Friend is a 4 Letter Word-CAKE-Fashion Nugget

12:54 pm-4 of the 5 brand new males that I got this morning are dead. What on earth is going on here? I'm 75% sure that we can rule out an aeration problem. But I don't know what is. So I get to bale out most of the water in the tank and we will put new water in. In the meantime I am Still, still, STILL having no luck with these fish. I plan on e-mailing the guy we got the fish from and ask what suggestions he has. Okay. Gotta go bale water.

-iTunes-"Can't Stop the World"- Gavin Rossdale-Wanderlust

1:46pm-I've been kicked out. Out of the classroom that is next to the lab room where the fish are. There is a class meeting in there and I guess they can't share space. There is new water in the tank. We'll see if the fish survive. The male and one of the females are getting frisky. My professor says that this is a good sign. But they have 15 minutes to decide whether they are just fooling around or they are going to get serious. I REALLY can't go much past 2:00. If I go to 2:00, based on the development schedule, I will already be late for work on Saturday. If I go to 3:00 I will be even MORE late for work. Not a good thing. Anyway, of COURSE that would wait until the last minute to get it into their heard to spawn. I want to rip my hair out.

On top of all that, I am stuck in this noisy room. It is a small cramped lab room that is kept at constant temp. and the air kept clean. So there is this really loud fan coming from the very low ceiling. I am not pleased. Thank goodness I still get internet in this room or I think I would cry.

iTunes-I'm not playing it right now because they kicked me out and I turned it off.

2:01pm- There is still nothing going on other than the male keeps bashing the females head with his own head. Looks painful. I guess it's good that he has a fathead. Anyway, is it horrible of me that I want to just separate them, wait 20 minutes and then go to my professor and tell him it didn't work? Yes, that WOULD be dishonest. That is why I am not going to do that. However, if by 2:30 they STILL have not produced any eggs, I am going to tell him that even though things LOOKED promising, I can't wait around forever. Seriously. I could just call work and say that I won't be there on Saturday. But then what if all this head butting comes to nothing? What if she decides that his head butting is not good enough for her? Then I would have told work I would be absent for nothing.

2:06pm-Oooooookkkkkaaaaayyyyy, now she left. What did I say? He doesn't have the little bumps on his head that make all the other guys cool. He's cleaning the spawning surface like a good little male and trying to chase her back in. But I think she's not going for it.

2:16pm-Still not in the spawning area anymore. He keeps pushing her in there. Is it because I'm here? I'm sitting where they can't really see me and something tells me that fish don't really care about privacy. I'm going to go eat some of my lunch. You fish have 15 more minutes to do your thing or you can forget it!

2:21pm-There is something not right about eating food in the same place you are doing lab work. Not that I'm dealing with pathogens or anything. It's just...unsanitary, I guess? Doesn't matter. I'm hungry.

I have to wonder. I pray over these fish every day (crazy, I know). But I know that if anyone can help them spawn it's God. I can't help but wonder that there is some learning experience in this or some strange reason why now is not a good time. Maybe I am supposed to be showing my professor the perseverance that I have and then I can get a good recommendation from him when I want a job or to go to grad school. Who knows. Maybe my patience is just being tested. I don't know. Or maybe I don't have enough faith. All I know is I keep prepping myself for 5 days of unhappiness and then nothing happens. So I have this constant knot in my stomach.

Aaannnnddddd...

...what if the fish DO lay their eggs and it comes time to separate them. I do the rubbing in a circle thing and them I accidentally kill them all. I've read the procedures on how to separate fish eggs but that is very different from the application process. I will have waited all this time for fish eggs and then I ruin it. I can just see that happening. Or maybe, I'm doing the nitrogen wrong and the experiment it botched. Any number of things can go wrong and I just have o remind myself not to worry about it because I STILL don't have eggs.

Okay, it is now 2:30. I am calling it quits for the day.

You are all probably sick of these play-by plays. Let mew know if you are and I will not do one for any of the following experiment days.

I can't believe it didn't work. I was so sure about today. I guess the bad omen of fish dying should have been my tip off.