so as i write this i am sitting in the living room of my new place. none of my roomates are home cause two are working, one hasn't moved in and the other has moved in and headed north for his summer job already.
for those of you who are unaware (though i am pretty sure i have told anyone that might actually read this), my cousin and her husband are moving home while they build their house, so as of tomorrow i would be homeless...and so i have moved into a nice little house two blocks from campus with a bunch of friends. well technically it is two conjoined houses, and i am friends with the people in both houses which is sweet. it was a good two and a half years living with my aunt and uncle. they were amazing, and i had a sweet roomate there this year (my sortof-non-cousin michelle). but i was kinda ready to live with friends, so this worked out perfectly.
i just found out that there is still some snow on the ground so i am stuck in the city for another three weeks before i can go out to pasture...thats a lot of hours of microscope work :( but it will be all worth it when i am back down south.
its been a busy couple weeks, finished classes, finished finals, passed with flying colours and get to keep my scholarship (YAY MONEY!!!). i went and spent a couple days with my sister and her family. played with my niece and nephew which was great. Cody has a toy grain auger, so we moved grain back and forth between buckets, too cute! Mom and Dad got a new dog and even bigger news...NEW HORSES! i am so jelous cause it is going to be a long time before i get to see them in anything other than a picture. i just want to ride one, or have my own...that would work too.
i can't decide how i want to end this post
Moooooooooo......that is all!
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
damn my life is glamerous!
As I write this blog I have recently returned home from another oh so glamerous day in as a grad student.
I have in the past year been a cold, wet grad student, a sweaty, filthy grad student, a bug-bitten, ichy grad student and a grinding room/lab bound grad student. But as of today I have reached a new high (low?). I am now...... a fecal sludge filtering grad student.
Hold your groans and looks of disgust!
It is here that I must point out that it has been dried, ground and soaked overnight in ethanol, so really as clean as bovine feces can be.
And you may now commence with your general revulsion.
Now Brian has pointed out to me that I have a job that only certain people could do, and I suppose this is very true, I mean most people that see pictures of my trailer get this look of horror and say they could never live there. and even a fellow grad student who also has to do fecal work looked at my sludge and said that it was gross. While I am not saying it is a barrel of laughs, it really isn't that bad.
But then I always have been kinda weird like that.
And so tomorrow brings another day of filtering fecal sludge, but really if this is the price I pay for the coolest summer job in the world, complete with government issue trailer, cows, a quad and when I am really lucky a truck, I say which way to the sludge!
I have in the past year been a cold, wet grad student, a sweaty, filthy grad student, a bug-bitten, ichy grad student and a grinding room/lab bound grad student. But as of today I have reached a new high (low?). I am now
Hold your groans and looks of disgust!
It is here that I must point out that it has been dried, ground and soaked overnight in ethanol, so really as clean as bovine feces can be.
And you may now commence with your general revulsion.
Now Brian has pointed out to me that I have a job that only certain people could do, and I suppose this is very true, I mean most people that see pictures of my trailer get this look of horror and say they could never live there. and even a fellow grad student who also has to do fecal work looked at my sludge and said that it was gross. While I am not saying it is a barrel of laughs, it really isn't that bad.
But then I always have been kinda weird like that.
And so tomorrow brings another day of filtering fecal sludge, but really if this is the price I pay for the coolest summer job in the world, complete with government issue trailer, cows, a quad and when I am really lucky a truck, I say which way to the sludge!
Monday, February 16, 2009
HELLO WORLD!!!
1 year, 291 days and who knows how many minutes....
Wow it really has been forever....I mean I know that Holly was harassing me about it last time I saw her but wow, when I do the math it is really bad.
So what have I been up to in the last 656 days?
So last thing I wrote about I was in PG that summer was awesome, met new people, did new things, did some of the same old things which were also good. Applied for a job in Vernon, didn’t get the job in Vernon, got offered a temporary position in Smithers, didn’t take that so I could go back to school, went back to school in Saskatoon at the end of the summer and really never left.
That second (first and a half?) year in Saskatoon was really good. I took all kinds of practical classes about things that really interested me. I was all together too busy most of the time since I was on our student association council. I am sure that all of you that know me are so surprised that I am super involved in clubs. I went on a Society for Range Management tour my second summer with Ag and Lands, and I found that really interesting, so I enrolled in the range management class and joined the range team. The range team went to Louisville, KY that year and we competed in the Undergraduate Range Management Exam competition. The team placed 4th out of 23 teams from all over North America (I pulled off an 8th out of 153 in the individual, I may not have got a plaque but I was stoked). We toured around all kinds of cool places, including a native seed breeding operation, the Louisville Slugger factory and my personal favourite Churchill Downs.
I moved into my Government Issue trailer at the Elbow Community Pasture in early May 2008. I had all the luxuries of life: power that came from an extension cord, water from a garden hose, a PVC camp shower and and true Saskatchewan biffy. Most people cringe when they hear me describe it, but it wasn't that bad actually. I spent the summer working with my 42 heifers, bombing around on my quad, building fences and taking vegetation and fecal samples. I know it sounds oh so glamorous, but it was probably the best summer job I have ever had. I had a blast ever though it was work. I met a lot of people that live in the area, went to a couple brandings and helped move cow with them. They even convinced me to try Prairie Oysters (really not THAT bad if they are shake’n’baked and you don’t think about what they are). They are really a great group of people that live down there. I went to some rodeos, went down to a friend’s families place in the south east, rode some, learned to rope (still working on it, no rodeos in my future).
Range team just got back from the meetings in Albuquerque, NM. We had real Mexican food, danced with the Mexican team at the dance, hung out with students from Texas, Montana and Nebraska.. We went to meetings and sessions, did a bit of shopping and toured the historic plaza and the church that was over three hundred years old. We also went and looked at the petroglyphs carved by the Pueblo people and topped it all off with a trip to the Aquarium and Botanical gardens. The rest of the group also went up to Santa Fe for a day, but I had a meeting so had to skip out.
Wow it really has been forever....I mean I know that Holly was harassing me about it last time I saw her but wow, when I do the math it is really bad.
So what have I been up to in the last 656 days?
So last thing I wrote about I was in PG that summer was awesome, met new people, did new things, did some of the same old things which were also good. Applied for a job in Vernon, didn’t get the job in Vernon, got offered a temporary position in Smithers, didn’t take that so I could go back to school, went back to school in Saskatoon at the end of the summer and really never left.
That second (first and a half?) year in Saskatoon was really good. I took all kinds of practical classes about things that really interested me. I was all together too busy most of the time since I was on our student association council. I am sure that all of you that know me are so surprised that I am super involved in clubs. I went on a Society for Range Management tour my second summer with Ag and Lands, and I found that really interesting, so I enrolled in the range management class and joined the range team. The range team went to Louisville, KY that year and we competed in the Undergraduate Range Management Exam competition. The team placed 4th out of 23 teams from all over North America (I pulled off an 8th out of 153 in the individual, I may not have got a plaque but I was stoked). We toured around all kinds of cool places, including a native seed breeding operation, the Louisville Slugger factory and my personal favourite Churchill Downs.
I moved into my Government Issue trailer at the Elbow Community Pasture in early May 2008. I had all the luxuries of life: power that came from an extension cord, water from a garden hose, a PVC camp shower and and true Saskatchewan biffy. Most people cringe when they hear me describe it, but it wasn't that bad actually. I spent the summer working with my 42 heifers, bombing around on my quad, building fences and taking vegetation and fecal samples. I know it sounds oh so glamorous, but it was probably the best summer job I have ever had. I had a blast ever though it was work. I met a lot of people that live in the area, went to a couple brandings and helped move cow with them. They even convinced me to try Prairie Oysters (really not THAT bad if they are shake’n’baked and you don’t think about what they are). They are really a great group of people that live down there. I went to some rodeos, went down to a friend’s families place in the south east, rode some, learned to rope (still working on it, no rodeos in my future).
. 
. 
I was home a couple of times in all this, bought a car at the beginning of the summer. I was back again at the end of May for Shannon’s wedding. At the end of the summer I came home for a week before classes started up again. Since then it has been mostly school and lab work. I am again too busy for my own good: involved with coaching range team, on council for our Stockman’s club, campus rec sports, homework, labwork, proposals to write...and yet I still do find time for a social life so I don’t turn into a complete hermit. There has been some stressful moments, the biggest being my supervisor leaving in December to work for the BC Ministry of Forest and Range. I say he copied me, since he knew that was one of the places where I was thinking of ending up. He told me as soon as he applied for the job, but it was quite the role reversal when I was a reference for my supervisor.
Range team just got back from the meetings in Albuquerque, NM. We had real Mexican food, danced with the Mexican team at the dance, hung out with students from Texas, Montana and Nebraska.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
