for the birds

What an interesting week....last week I did my advanced avian elective, a one week course in advanced avian (bird) medicine. It was great! We did some hands on with live parrots from the school's employees, and then did '"surgery" on cadavers from the wildlife clinic, and had TONS of lectures on various subjects from great lecturers. We took a field trip one afternoon to Rhode Island to visit Foster Parrots, quite an amazing site with hundreds of abandoned birds in a sanctuary situation where they can live out the rest of their lives well. I loved it, and was overwhelmed by all the sad stories of birds with mental issues or birds being given up for adoption for sad reasons...people should not be allowed to have birds for pets if you ask me, but I could see myself with one if it was adopted since I would know what to do (the only birds I would want for pets are chickens and ducks though).

Poor Mark's apartment has been being renovated for over a week now, and he has been living with me for the week. It has been interesting. I enjoy the opportunity to cook dinner and do other domestic things on a regular basis, but I also have grown tired of running the laundry every 3rd day since he is allergic to my cat, and while he has not had any problems yet I think it is mainly because keeping a fresh pair of sheets and blankets on the bed every 3rd day keeps him healthy.

I went to Montreal this past weekend. A nice thing about being with Mark all week was that while I would of liked it if he had come, I was able to have a great time doing girly things without him as well. On Saturday Heather and I went dress shopping and I got a hot purple and black short, professional dress for Alicia's wedding. That evening we watched Star Wars, classic, it is so awesome that Heather and I are both such good fans. Even though I never watch except when with Heather and Denis, I strangely like formula one and watching some of the race on Sunday morning was fun. Tina reinforced that I do in fact love dogs and my resentment towards my roommate's dogs is not me being a bad person, but that they are not the best dogs. Tina, however, is the perfect dog, I wish I could of kidnapped her. It was a long drive home Sunday in the bad weather, but I was able to enjoy it by listening to the first book of the twilight series on cd.

This week I am in the conservation medicine elective. A lot of the grade is based on participation, and I was surprised how confident I was and really me and one other girl seemed to dominate most of the conversations. I wasn't trying to keep other people from talking, but the other 6 classmates in the course are shy, and I realized I have a great background in this area, (too bad international didn't think so and kicked me out of their program).