SCUBA

Another event to add to life's list: SCUBA :-)

Creatures of the deep-Squid

While on the shore I didn't know if I was going to be able to follow through with diving because the gear was so awkward  but once in the water everyone is graceful!

It was Cramer's idea to get me in the water in the first place, he is currently working on getting certified

I definitely like diving, and hope to go again soon

Our fearless instructor, bless him; he puts up with Cramer on a daily basis 

Notice the difference in the tans, Cramer is a just a little of a beach bum!

Gotta love him!

Hash Harriers

Cramer waiting for the hash to start...he never sits still

Cramer and I are members of the Hash Harriers in St. Kitts.  A little introduction to Hashing follows thanks to Wikipedia (not a good source for school, just life :-)

The flag!  An orange flag indicates the correct trail

The Hash House Harriers is a decentralized organization with each chapter, sometimes called a kennel, individually managed with no uniting organizational hierarchy (although the locations of national and international gatherings are decided by a meeting involving representatives from a number of hashes). A chapter's management is typically known as the MisManagement and consists of individuals with various duties and titles. There are more than 1,700 chapters spanning all seven continents. Most major cities are home to at least one chapter. Chapters typically contain between 20-100 members, usually mixed-sex, with some metropolitan area Hashes drawing more than 1,000 hashers to an event.

One of the many hills that seemed to the theme for this particular hash

Most chapters gather on a weekly or monthly basis, though some events occur sporadically, e.g. February 29th, Friday the 13th, or a full moon.

At a Hash, one or more members (Hares) lay a trail, which is then followed by the remainder of the group (the Pack or Hounds). The trail often includes false trails, short cuts, dead ends, and splits. These features are designed to keep the pack together regardless of fitness level or running speed, as front-runners are forced to slow down to find the "true" trail, allowing stragglers to catch up.

Members often describe their group as "a drinking club with a running problem," indicating that the social element of an event is as important, if not more so, than any athleticism involved. Beer remains an integral part of a Hash, though the balance between running and drinking differs between chapters, with some groups placing more focus on socializing and others on running.

Bear just couldn't make it!  I seem to be flagging as well (pink shirt)

Generally, Hash events are open to the public and require no reservation or membership, but some may require a small fee, referred to as hashcash, to cover the costs incurred, such as food or drink.

The end of a trail is an opportunity to socialize, have a drink and observe any traditions of the individual chapter (see Traditions). When the Hash officially ends, many members may continue socializing at an On-After, On-Down, On-On-On, or Hash Bash, an event held at a nearby house, pub, or restaurant.

Julie and Bear finally at the top

Our particular Hash Harriers meet every 3 weeks plus special events and has two components: one running, and one walking (thank the lord!).  The courses are designed to take one hour of rigorous hiking and let me tell you, some of them are brutal such as the one the pictures are from.  After the hash is completed, a picnic (usually hotdogs, beer, soda for kids, and water if you    must) are available and it is at that time that initiations and  Down-Downs occur.  

Yet another straight up hill!

At initiation, the newbies to hashing (there are always a few) are welcomed to the group with a baptism of beer, and then they have to chug one.  Whatever you can't chug you have to pour on your head; this is a rule any time you have to chug a beer.

The views at the top made the hills almost worth it

A Down-Down is another tradition that occurs at the end of the hash at the picnic.  During the hash the Mismanagement (the leaders) watch and decide on random events to punish the hashers for.  Swearing, wearing purple sunglasses, being too hot and therefore distracting fellow runners/walkers, letting your dog use the restroom in an inappropriate place etc.  You never know what they are going to pick and if you are going to have to do a Down-Down until your name is called at the circle during the picnic and your offense is announced.  You then have to chug a beer while everyone sings in a lusty bar-room baritone;

"He/She's an asshole so we say, but we really wouldn't have 'em any other way, drink it down down down down down down down"
      

Initiation, two roomies this time

and the down downs continue until the drinker stops.  If they finished the beer we cheer, if they didn't they have to pour the rest on their head!  I haven't had to do a down down yet but no fear, I will finish the beer! 

Ashley is now a Hasher!

My absolute favorite part of the picnics occurs during the down downs and goes unnoticed by most people because they are focused on the person chugging.  I watch the kids that have come and hiked with us (mostly professor's children).  They love the down downs and stand on the outskirts of the circle clutching their sodas and chugging along with the punished!  These kids chug soda for every down down and there are normally 8-10.  By the end they are either rolling on the ground with distended bellies or, to their parents horror, belching at such octaves to empress a grown man :-).


There are also special events such as the red dress Valentine's Day Hash.  What was special?  Everyone, man or women, had to show up in a red dress or lingerie!  Cramer and I didn't make that one because I was in midterm mode and I doubt I would have gotten pictures of us anyway!

Maggie is now a Hasher!  Cramer's bud Dan was next

We really enjoy getting out and going to the hashes and I hope it is something we can continue wherever we end up.  If there isn't a local hashing chapter, perhaps I'll have to pioneer and start one, I've been known to do crazier things.  To the horse people of my life, how amazing would it be to have the first Horse Hash Harrier chapter?  Can you imagine; it would be similar to fox hunting but without the prey and formality, pure trail blazing!

P.S.  Welcome to the newest member of the house, Gidget!  Maggie just couldn't say no and adopted her from the kennel at Ross.  Ross's kennel dogs are strays that are brought in for us to practice procedures.  They serve two years and are them up for adoption to students and screened locals.  Gidget was lucky enough to look at Maggie the right way :-)

My Life = Academics

When I started this blog, I had in mind posting the little everyday things so you guys back home could get a look at what my life is like.  In truth, looking back over the posts, the only things that I've posted are the exciting happenings and few and far between excursions that I go on.  I don't think my posting style will change as what I post are the interesting bits of my life (who wants to hear about class, studying and yet more studying!), but for this post at least I wanted to share some of the more interesting bits from my classes.

My class schedule this semester is a bit more interesting than it has been in the past because we are moving in the curriculum from the realm of normal to abnormal!  We are finally studying disease and medicine versus anatomy and physiology :-).  My classes are Pathology I, Bacteriology, Virology, and Pharmacology.

I think just about everyone recognizes the symbol to the left as the pharmacological symbol that appears on all medications you have ever received for yourself and any other creature whether they be child or beast.  In fact, the symbol legally has to appear on all scripts tendered.  Despite the widespread usage of this symbol, I'll willing to bet most don't know what it stands for.  The "R" stands for the latin word Recipe meaning "to take."  The x does not stand for any word but instead is an ancient symbol and represents a prayer to the Gods that the medication will find the ill and destroy it.  I wonder how many people would pitch a fit and fall in it to know that the trusted symbol that is synonymous with pharmacies worldwide has such pagan backgrounds.  I personally reveal in it and the fact that the profession of medicine has so many funny little hidden traditions and quirks.

The next time your toddler/husband :-) pitches a fit about going to see the Doctor, think about this factoid:  There are more fatalities worldwide each year from prescription error than there are fatalities from vehicle accidents.  In other words, you are safer in an airplane than a car, and safer in a car than a doctor's office!

Most people know of Alexander Fleming and the fact that he accidentally discovered Penicillin from molds (1945), but most don't know that Fleming's Penicillin wasn't the first antibiotic to be discovered and used.  Gerhard Domagk of Germany was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1939 for proposing the first commercially available antibiotic "prontosil" (a sulfa drug).  His impetuous was treating his own daughter who had an infection in her arm that, without the antibiotic, would have been amputated.  It is amazing what can be accomplished with a strong enough motivation.

Did you know that viruses are technically not living?  They cannot replicate on their own and therefore by definition are not alive.  This fact is also the reason why virus infections are so hard to treat.  A virus is simply a coil of DNA or RNA that is surrounded by a capsid (shell).  Once a virus invades the body, it uses the host cell's structures and resources to replicate.  Therefore, drug processes that work for bacteria would never work for viruses because the drugs would be targeting and killing host cells (bad idea!).

There will be a quiz tomorrow worth 80% of your final grade (another vet school tradition, it seems :-), have a great day!

Grocery Shipment

Guess what came in on the ships and hit the grocery shelves this time!




I am one Happy Irish Lass :-)




Remember to enjoy the little things in life because there really isn't any other way to live.

The Changing of the Year

There were two bottles of Champagne chilling in the fridge and Cramer and I went out for Lobster last night so that we could celebrate a good year spent and bring in the next on a good note.  My resolution for last year was to keep track of the books I read (something I plan to keep up).  Despite all the reading that vet school requires I managed to get through:

The Whitechapel Horrors - Edward Hanna
Flying Changes - Sara Gruen
Pride and Prescience - Carrie Bebris
The Blackbirder - James Nelson
Nights in Rodanthe - Nicholas Sparks
My Sister's Keeper - Jodi Picoult
Darkfall - Dean Koontz
A Walk to Remember - Nicholas Sparks
Exodus - Leon Uris
A Countess Below Stairs - Eva Ibbotson
Cruel Justice - William Bernhardt
Burning Bright - Tracy Chevalier
*The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson
*The Art of Racing in the Rain - Garth Stein
March - Geraldine Brooks
*The Virgin's Lover - Philippa Gregory
Line of Vision - David Ellis
You Belong to Me - Mary Higgins Clark
HeyDay - Kurt Anderson
*A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
*Into the Wilderness - Sara Donati
*The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
A Company of Swans - Eva Ibbotson
A Song for the Summer - Eva Ibbotson
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith
Dawn on a Distant Shore - Sara Donati
*Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (first book I read on my new Kindle, Darcy)
The Girl who Played with Fire - Stieg Larsson
*Cat of the Century - Rita Mae Brown
*Lake in the Clouds - Sara Donati
Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
*Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen
*The Winter Rose - Jennifer Donnelly
Black Beauty - Anna Sewell
Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
The Canterville Ghost - Oscar Wilde
*These Is My Words - Nancy Turner
Beautiful Joe, An Autobiography of a Dog - Marshall Saunders
Fire Along the Sky - Sara Donati

* indicates the best reads of the year (40 total)

Next year, my resolution is to get to the beach more.  I live in the Caribbean and still only manage to get to the beach about once a month.  I let myself get too bogged down with studies and life and forget to take some time out.  With a little planning and effort, my studies can go to the beach with me, so I plan to go once a week, every week I'm on the island.

Happy New Years and the best of luck in all your endeavors for 2011!

Gong

It was such a beautiful day we decided to load up the mutts and head to the beach.  Gong is a shallower beach than Shipwreck (which is my favorite beach) and because there is no beach bar it is never crowded; these facts make it the perfect dog beach.  We took a cooler full of drinks and a picnic lunch.  Charlie, who is not a great fan of the beach, decided it was his duty to guard the basket and leave the playing to others.

The labs ran themselves until they were ready to fall over and Conner kept pace the entire time.  I really love Corgi's, no matter what you throw at them they are always ready to prove their worth!

I had a great swim as the current was strong and I really had to work for it while Cramer played just as hard as the dogs were.  After I got out of the water, we had lunch and then Conner and I settled on a beach towel with a good book while Cramer and the labs went right back to playing.

Cramer has always talked about getting a Great Dane or an English Mastiff when we finally settle in permanently somewhere, but since his time with the labs this week I think he has found his breed of dog.  The labs are so obedient and loving and Cramer enjoys them so much.  It is also funny to watch them play so hard together and then come in and crash, oblivious to the world, while Conner and I are curled up reading.  

That is all the news for now and don't forget, "Don't be content to follow someone else's path, but blaze your own trail!"

 

Break!

Well, thank the Lord finals are over and I made it through second semester!  I now have three weeks to relax a bit and regenerate for the next round of classes.  We decided a few months ago that we wouldn't be coming back to the states for this break as flying at Christmas is even more expensive than usual and we had to buy a car so funds were already short as it was.  Although we are missing family this Christmas season we are managing to thoroughly enjoy ourselves.

To celebrate Christmas we had a another couple over and the plan was to order Chinese food and watch A Christmas Story.  I had even called the Chinese restaurant on Christmas Eve to insure that they would be open, which they said they would, but in true St. Kitts fashion they were closed!  We drove around the city for a while looking to see if anything was open but no such luck so we can home and put together a Christmas from the cabinets.  We had:

A cheese plate
Spaghetti (of course since I always have this in the cabinet)
Homemade eggrolls
Steamed Shrimp
and
Wilted Spinach!

Despite the odd mixture, it worked out for the best as we laughed pretty hard while rummaging the cabinets and whipping up dinner in a flash.

Because most everyone went home for break, we have found ourselves taking care of a literal menagerie of pets.  At the moment we have 11 dogs, 5 cats, and 8 horses under our care and so find ourselves running from house to house (only two of the dogs are staying with us) and dealing with crazy mutts at every turn.  Most of the problems come with the Thoroughbreds and the Labradors, of course.  The Thoroughbreds have simply decided that these three weeks would be a great time to start fighting and to develop hoof abcesses.  The labs just eat everything in sight and never stop moving!  The best tales to date have to be the labs eating a D cell battery and one of the cats getting stuck in a fly trap ribbon (which resulted in an oil bath which in turn caused a vinegar bath).

Even Conner has caught the bug and one evening we came home to the following:

First the guilty face.....

Then we see the crime scene!

And there was no way he could have been hungry....

Because he had finished my yogurt for me earlier!

Merry Christmas to everyone back home and know you are all in our thoughts.