Whew, half-way through the holidays (yes, only half way, we still have the New Years Eve stuffing our stomachs to do). Christmas came as usual, and nothing was finished as usual... But after having survived years of having exams either before or after christmas every year, and cramming all the Christmas preparations on the day before, still managing to have a peaceful time when the moment came, I no longer suffer from holiday stress.

This year I had a wonderful relaxing time, getting some of the home-made presents ready on time (the last one was packed 2 hours before dinner), the others bought without guilt. We had a wonderful meal of roast turkey w. all the trimmings, mother in-law came to enjoy dinner with us. The biggest thing at christmas for anyone who has children is experiencing their joy and excitement. My son was very well behaved as always, we even persuaded him to have dessert with us (this did not work the last couple of times, after he was old enough to associate the unpacking of presents with dinner being over). He was very surprised on the morning of dec. 24th (the evening of which is the main celebration here in Iceland, w. opening of presents after dinner) to find a huge package under the tree that had not been there the night before. This was the present from mom and dad, a sleigh w. a stearing wheel, the no 1 wish, even though we have not had snow this winter yet, not even in the north part of the country.

I got some nice presents, only one book though (The Hobbit, by Tolkien to complete my Tolkien collection in icelandic), a couple of sweaters, a mobile phone and some joint presents with hubby, including a soda stream drinks maker and a frying pan (I guess people see us as gourmets or something...) and a bottle of aromatic massage oil. Oh and from my little sister, a toothbrush holder and a couple of cute santa christmas ornaments. All in all a pretty good christmas.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Which Ultimate Beautiful Woman are You?
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In sickness...
I am sick as a dog today. Went out on the raz last night with Íris and Herdís, Stína was sick and Erna stood us up, shame on her! It was a lot of fun, and no I´m not sick ´cause I drank too much, I didn´t have a chance too. We were talking and having fun and after a couple of hours I started getting stomach cramps. I ignored them for a while, but at half past 12 I also felt nauseous and dizzy. I felt a strong urge to go to the bathroom, but to my horror they were all occupied! I hurried to say goodbye to the girls and got out of the smoke. Across the street there was a sleazy, half-empty bar. I hurried in and found the bathrooms vacant. After that I ran out and was fortunate enough to find a taxi right away to take me home, where I continued to expel vomit and diarrhea throughout the night. Today I feel horrible, and very sorry for myself. The vomiting has stopped, and I´m feeling a little bit better in the intestines, but still dizzy and nauseous, and very very tired as I hardly slept a wink all night. To top it off my little boy got sick too so we can feel bad together. He seems to be a little bit better off than me though, he hasn´t puked yet, at least.

The yuletide lads have brought him a Harry Potter outfit, piece by piece in his little shoe in the window. This morning he prodly wore the whole assemble, cape, glasses and magic wand. He looked so cute! Must be the most beautiful child in the whole wide world...

My wonderful computer
... just got back from the dealers and is now sporting the brand new mac os x system. I love it! I have no idea how to work it yet, but it only took me ten minutes to get hooked up to the internet, so how hard can it be? Macs are so cool, PC´s always look gray and dull. The new mac´s at the store looked so cool, like some fantasy space equipment from MIB V or something. Bill Gates eat my shorts! (he should be so lucky!) I have a PowerBook, but unfortunately an older version, not the titanium 1" thick cool new one my dad and my older brother have. Have to save money to buy me new cool computer..... I have never ever gotten a virus on my computer, I don´t think they make those for mac´s, hahahahahaha I laugh when I get virus warnings by mail from the PC suckers... Yupp, as you may have guessed by now I´m one of those mac fanatics, you will never convert me you hear!

""Which cocktail are you?""
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courtesy of Stína

Christmas

Christmas is around the corner, I am planning to make most of the presents myself this year, as I may have mentioned earlier. I have to send some of them overseas, so I better get sewing then. I finished the one for mum yesterday, making one for her hubby and my little sister tomorrow, must send them asap as they all live in Denmark. My aunt in California will hopefully get hers before christmas, am shipping it off tomorrow... After all the years of being a student and taking exams around christmas time, this year was supposed to be more relaxed, am so not getting there. I think I´m so used to the spirit of Christmas arriving on december 22nd that it will probably take a few years to unwind. Although after living in Denmark I got used to shopping presents in October because they had to be sent back to Iceland, and also because I had no time to think of them in November and December when exams were drawing nearer.

I had to go out at 10:30 last night to get something for the "santa" to put in his shoe in the window. Unlike my friend Stína I don´t have to worry about my son becoming a chocaholic as he doesn´t like chocolade. When I was a child I didn´t like it either, or coka cola! I have since grown up... Here in Iceland there is a tradition for children to put their shoes in the window and then the 13 yuletide lads take turns putting something nice in the shoe on their way to town. I don´t know where this tradition comes from, according to my resources it is only about 50 years old. The icelandic yuletide lads however are very old, they used to be trolls who would steal food and other neccessities from the homes and their mother ate the naughty children! The household cat was an enourmous beast who would eat any child that didn´t get a new piece of clothing for Christmas. The stories of Grýla (yuletide lad´s mom) and Leppalúði (her husband), along with the Christmas cat were told as horror stories to children to scare them so they wouldn´t misbehave. Apparantly the Danish king (this was back when Iceland was under Danish ruel) heard of this atrocity and issued a law to forbid scaring children with stories of Grýla and her kind.

I have been so busy lately, in fact I still can´t see rest ahead. I am now back to working every morning in my dad´s firm, and three times a week I soak in the blue lagoon after lunch with my fellow sufferers. This leaves two afternoons a week plus weekends to work on my paper, which is coming along slowly on account that I am always tyred when working on it. Since my husband usually works until 6 or 7 (sometimes longer) I have to pick up our son from school, shop for groceries, make dinner, make sure homework gets done, wash dishes and in the evening I work on the home-made christmas presents I´m giving this year. Presents are homemade mostly because I like home-made presents better, but also partly because they are cheaper and we have to save money since I only have half an income while still not finished with school. Finances should get a little better in january when I get paid for my stay in the country, however I do not seem to find time to write the 50 or so bills I have to send to the farmers myself. I keep telling my husband that when I start working as a vet and earn twice what he gets we can afford to have another child and he could stay home and look after the household . Strangely enough cooking and cleaning all day does not seem to appeal to him very much... In fact it´s not my dream either, so who´s gonna do it??

Counter blues

I put in a counter on my site today. OMG the zeros look big! I almost regret doing this. We´ll see if anything starts ticking if I get busy writing stuff here...

Some thoughts on today´s farming
There are drawbacks to old-fashioned farming though, the biggest one I think is that a lot of the farmers don´t see themselves as food-producers. They are in it for themselves and they think it is nobody elses business how they run their farm. Most farmers that I have seen here do a good job though, but there are some black sheep that don´t care for their animals well. However, they can´t really make a good living since they only have a few animals, and if these are not cared for properly they will not produce as much. The biggest problems with animal welfare lie in pig and poultry farming where large flocks of animals are kept indoors their whole lives and the indiviual animals do not make a difference for the general profit margin.

Talking about animal welfare there is a growing concern among consumers in Europe and the USA (here in Iceland I find that most people do not care/think about where their food comes from, they just assume that everything is honky-dory ok), this farm in Holland does alot to promote contact between consumers and farmers. I also find that on a lot of farms here people take less care of the animals that do not produce food (i.e. make money), such as cats and dogs.

Double district
As of friday I am now serving two districts as the vet in the district west of here, Kirkjubæjarklaustur, went abroad for the weekend when he heard I was coming... As fate would have it all the cows in his district fell ill just after he left, so I had to make a trip over there on friday to see some cows, a couple with ketosis and one w. mastitis. It was a beautiful day on friday, the sky was clear for the first time since I came here and I stopped for lunch at Skaftafell national park. I just pulled over by this incredibly beautiful glacier, parked with a wiew of the glacier and nearby mountains and felt in awe of their beauty as I munched away. It was late when I got back, the trip was about 500 km. I was so tired I slept for 10 hours. The problem with being a country vet in Iceland is all the driving, I love the work, but the driving is not my thing. I guess I´ll stay in Reykjavík then, if I can get any work there...

The weekend was spent driving from farm to farm, vaccinating lambs for paratuberculosis (also called John´s disease), and deworming the farm dogs, since I was there anyway. Oh, and saturday night after dinner I went to place uterine sponges in some thirty sheep at a local hobby-farmer´s. He had been pestering me since the night I got here, and there was some trouble getting the sponges sent over from the capital, seemed they forgot to put them on the plane thursday when they were supposed to come. Apparantly the trouble is "if you don´t order on time you can´t get semen from the really good rams and have to settle for borrowing some bastard from you neighbor and get crappy lambs in the spring". The purpose of the sponges is to make all the sheep ovulate on the same day, which is very practical if you have a small flock. The bigger ones just put a ram in with the flock and let nature take it´s course...

Tomorrow it´s back to the slaughter house, jibbi jei.

Playing vet...
An unexpected turn of events lately. I am now at Höfn in Hornafjörður, in south-east Iceland, serving as district veterinarian. A call came in a few days ago, from the ministry of agriculture. They were in desperate need of a releaf veterinarian here as the one who serves here had to have an operation on his back a couple of days ago. They were apparently desperate enough to be calling studenst such as myself. Since I have completed all of my exam and only have the stupid thesis left, I am almost a vet, and I really couldn´t let this opportunity to do some large animal practice pass me by, so I said yes. I will only be here for just over a week though, I can´t bear to be apart from my family for as long as last time (for the unenlightened I´m referring to my adventure in America for three months earlier this year).

Well, it takes about 6 hours to drive here from Reykjavík, so I set off rather early to try and get most of the way before dark. Darkness is rapidly descending upon us here, daylight hours are from about 10 am to 4:30 pm as I write this and about a month from now the shortest day of the year with no light at all. That´s around christmas and is the biggest reason Icelanders are crazy about christmas lights, they light up the neverending night. I always leave the outside christmas lights up until march when it finally gets noticably lighter (i.e. there is some light when I get up in the morning and some left when most people come home from work).

Anyway, by the time I got here someone had already called requesting the service of the veterinarian in charge, i.e. your´s truly. As it turned out the first job was to give a little poodle bitch her contraceptive shot (the use of wich is still very common in Iceland as it is cheap, but getting rarer because of the potential life-threatening side effects of the drug used). Then, after dinner I was off to see about a cow with ketosis. I had of course consulted with an older collegue, I am on the phone with the guy I´m releaving about every four hours... o.k. every two or so... When I got there the patient, Alma (in Iceland cows have not yet been reduced to mere numbers), was happily munching on her hay, but was not touching her "energy" feed (sorry, I have no idea how to describe this in english). I had of course put on my very professional-looking clinic outfit, complete with a stethoscope around the neck, and looked very much the part if I may say so myself. Pretended to know everything there is to know about cows (which I don´t as I grew up in 101 Reykjavík), and used all the right lingo I picked up from my earlier phone conversation with my collegue, proceded to check out the patient, did a ketone test on the milk (fortunately the farmer was busy holding the cow´s tail for me so he couldn´t see the fumbling to get milk in my test cup!). I decided there was indication for a pour-in (that´s how they describe it apparently, hella í ´ana) intravenous glucose treatment and some steroids. It´s probably been about a year since I last had to inject something intravenously into a cow, but it seems it´s like riding a bike, your hands remember, and it was successful. "let´s hope she get´s better now" I say calmly, not revealing my inner thoughts (please do not let the patient drop dead after my treatment!) "she´ll be all right after this treatment" the farmer replies and somehow I felt releaved, he has probably seen this a lot more than I have!

Today I went to the local slaughterhouse for an inspection, they had a couple of pigs, some horses, two lambs, two calves and a reindeer hanging in the cooler! I also went to treat a retained placenta in a young cow (I believe they´re called heifers in english) this afternoon (for the first time ever), for those of you that don´t know it this involves putting on some very long plastic gloves and sticking your arm in the cows uterus to manually loosen the placenta, lots of blood and goo coming out. The farmer told me he had to pull a dead calf from her yesterday, I felt sorry for the cow, all this trouble and no calf to show for it. Now I am planning to vaccinate some sheep this weekend, about a thousand or so, give or take... I never know what´s ahead, the calls usually come in the morning, but of course an acute case may come up any time, day or night, I am on 24/7 while I am here. I jump in my seat every time the phone rings, what if...

I have a theory as to why all the supermodels are so thin and this in turn sets the "standard" for how women in general are supposed to look to be conceved as beautiful. The designers that set these trends are most often gay men, and they want the models to look like boys (straight legs, no ass, no breasts)!? This idea is so ingraved in the mind of today´s women that most uf us don´t even stop to think where it comes from. I´m not sure that regular men really want women to be that thin. Am I crazy? I´m not saying that it´s o.k. to be really fat, because that can have serious effects on your health. We should be more concerned about our bodies in the context of looking after our health vs. just focusing on looks.

Which Peanuts Character Are You Quiz

When I sit by my computer I often look out the bedroom window behind the desk. In the house across from it there is an empty loft, sometimes I see people working there, probably wanting to add a room to their apartment downstairs. I wonder who are these people? What do they do in their apartment downstairs, what are their families like? Is there a black sheep in the family, maybe someone with a drinking problem or mental illness? I bet most families have one, I wonder if their situation is better or worse in todays society of looser family structure.

Sometimes my hubby and I play a game where we make up stories about people around us. For example, if we have gone camping and see someone driving a home made autocamper, my husband wants to explain how it was made. To make it sound more appealing to me he might say "he probably got the van for a good price and did all the work himself" (he´s very optimistic by nature). I would then say "yes, but he was going to buy a brand new one, and then his aunt died and she didn´t have any children or any money, so he had to spend his savings to pay for her funeral..."

a word on laziness...
My washing machine is leaking. Every time I do the laundry I am reminded of this fact by a small puddle of water in front of the machine. This has been going on for about 3 months. About once a week my husband and I remind each other that it really should be fixed, but somehow it never seems to get done. In my husband´s defence it must be said that at one time he opened the back of the machine and tried to figure out what was wrong. It now sports brand new shock absorbers, but alas still leaks. At least it now leaks after washing with much less vibration!

I read this recently, it´s a quote from The Heart of Boswell, the journals of writer James Boswell: "Johnson said that he always felt an inclination to nothing. I said it was strange to think that the most indolent man in Britain had written the most laborious work, The English Dictionary. He said it took ten years to do it, but that if he had applied properly, he might have done it in three..."

Laziness should not be underestimated. Every day it saves millions of people from having a stress-induced heart attack...

To boost the readings:

You Are A Romantic Kisser!

You'll only kiss if the mood is right and if you think you are falling in love.

Some may say you're old fashioned, but when you kiss, you see stars!

One kiss from you, and anyone will be hooked forever.



How Do *You* Kiss?

More Great Quizzes from Quiz Diva

What's *Your* Sex Sign?

More Great Quizzes from Quiz Diva

This morning was spent frantically searching for my swim-suit as I was going to go to the Blue Lagoon, as recommended by my dermatologist. Didn´t find it and ended up spending 2 hrs. searching for a new one for a reasonable price (to me, 50$+ for a swimsuit is not reasonable). Ended up paying almost 40$ for it since I ran out of patience. In the end I decided the Blue Lagoon can wait ´till tomorrow, and I need to spend more time at the library, since my paper has not been growing much in the past week or two.

After making a promise to myself to spend more time at the library my dad called and asked me to work for him tomorrow. I need work too, so the program for tomorrow is: Blue Lagoon, then Traust know-how.

What's Your Magic Power?
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I wish! Being a vet would be so much easier if they could just tell me what´s wrong! Or maybe maybe my day would be filled with "oh, no please don´t do it, I love my testicles!"?

In sickness...
My son is all better, it turned out to be a two day flu, and I got my appetite back by sunday evening, which was just as well, since my hubby decided to cook up one of his gorgeous meals. We invited Erna for dinner, my darling is helping her find her first car. We went for a test drive in one, then decided the price wasn´t right. I´m pretty sure my man will find one before the week is over, he´s good at this kind of stuff. Cars are his passion, so becoming a mechanic was the right choice for him, although I think he would have made an excellent car-dealer too. However he wouldn´t feel comfortable in a suit all day, anyway he kinda looks better in the overalls...

My first quiz...

A different quiz, what strange type of person are you?
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At first my reaction was, this is stupid, I´m not some dimwit, frivolous, irresponsible bubble, then I started thinking about it some more. Maybe it´s quite descriptive after all, I am a happy person and I do enjoy life, after all, you only get one (at least that´s what I think).

Yesterday was the day of the hangover from hell. We went out friday with my husband´s workmates. It was octoberfest (german beer festival) with food und alles, sauerkraut und schweineschanken. The food was surprisingly good, I have mixed feelings for german food. There were some stand-up comedians and a german band, complete with yodeling. There were not actually a lot of people there, but we were in good company and I enjoyed myself. I was actually rather drunk, which does not happen very often (tell them Stína). So yesterday I woke up with a splitting headache and asked myself the eternal question "why, oh, why did I do it?". Popped some painkillers and went back to bed, managed to sleep for a few hours more. The day was spent in front of the TV, I didn´t even feel like going to the farm animal zoo with Stína and the boys, to celebrate the 10th birthday of Guttormur the bull. Very unlike me...

In the afternoon my mother in law (who was babysitting) called to tell us our boy had a fever, so we went and picked him up. Sure enough, almost 40°C, but no cold or other sign of sickness. Gave him some pain-killer too, and he slept through most of the evening and until 9am this morning. Then he threw up, this must be some kind of stomach flue that´s passing through here, since Stína´s boys were sick a few days ago and Herdís was sick last week too. Do not feel so hot myself today, no appetite, which is also very unlike me... Hope I don´t get sick too, hate throwing up. Do not feel like joining my husband painting shelves in the garage, will concentrate on the laundry instead.

Movies
My absolute favorite movie of all time is "Unbearable lightness of being", made after the book by Milan Kundera of the same title. The worst movies I have ever seen are David Lynch´s Mulholland Drive (I wish I could sue him to get back the two hours of my life I wasted watching this crap!) and From Dusk till Dawn. I have to admit that as I get older I find myself liking the Hollywood machine-made films less and less, and enjoying european films more, they seem to reflect real life more, which I find appealing. Hollywood films all seem to be either about soppy romance or blowing up things. Or they are second rate remakes of great european films, like Nikita and Three men and a baby. Yeah, bet you didn´t know Three men and a baby was originally a french movie! I saw the original, it´s so much better, and NO they didn´t make a nr. 2 and 3! I also bet a lot of people don´t know that Insomnia is a remake of a norwegian film.

on the joys of studying...
My paper is now only 8 pages long (pure text, no graphs or pictures), however I stil haven´t started the statistical analysis of the data, so this is just the complementary bullshit, I can see that it can easily grow to 100. When I asked my instructor how many pages he wanted, he said the average is somewhere between 10 and 100, but he wants it closer to 10, otherwise he won´t have time/can´t be bothered to read it! I guess I see where he´s coming from, I bet he has to read all kinds of crap up to 100 pages long. I will have to constraint myself and go for quality instead of quantity.

For those that didn´t know already my paper is an epidemiologic research project to find out why people in Iceland have their cats and dogs euthanised. I have a sneaky suspicion that behavioral problems take a large toll of the dog population, this has proven to be the case in the few countries where it has been studied. After finishing this project I will graduate as a veterinarian from the Danish Veterinary- and Agricultural University.

Castrate the kitties
I have decided to castrate my cats a.s.a.p. since Sómi ran away for a day, that´ll teach ´em to stay at home! Sómi is named after a cat my in-laws had for years, and Fróði is named after our first cat. Incidentally their names are identical with the icelandic version of Sam and Frodo from Lord of the Rings, so they are sometimes called Sam Gambit and Frodo Baggins. Tolkien had a great interest in the old icelandic sagas, and supposedly spoke Icelandic, at least he could read it, and a lot of the names in his books come from the nordic sagas, like Frodo and Gimli.

Icelandic jeep safari
Last saturday we went on a jeep-tour organized Iceland´s biggest Nissan/Subaru dealer, Ingvar Helgason. I hope they´ll put pictures from the tour on their website soon. We have a ´96 model Nissan Patrol (I believe they call it Pathfinder in the US of A), that my husband has been altering for tours on the highlands. We still need to save some money to buy the 35" tires we want.

There were about 50 jeeps on this tour, most of them altered in some way, Icelanders sure love their big tires. When I look at a regular jeep now, it looks more like a slighly overgrown station wagon (my dad´s Ford Explorer is a perfect example, needless to say it is much more luxurious in it´s interior than our´s, our´s feels like it was used for sheep transfer before we got it this summer).

Well, the trip was a success, the nature was spectacular, we around a couple of glaciers, and across a lot of rivers (no bridges, of course!). I got to drive half the way in the outback, crossing rivers is the most fun, it gives you a thrill to drive into a river (sometimes brown with the melting water from the glaciers) and see and hear the water ripping at the side of the car, sometimes levelling up half the door, even though the car has been raised... Needless to say my husband got to drive the whole way back on highway 1, since I only like driving through the rough bit, otherwise I think driving is a dreadfully boring thing to do, so unproductive. I like public transport, where someone else does the driving, while I can do something else, and not worry about the traffic.

playing vet
On sunday I got to play vet, when I went out on a call with a veterinarian who is friend of the family. The patient was a pomeranian, that was hit by a car, actually a jeep! We were expecting horror, but the dog was miraculously almost unharmed, only a slight skin scraping on the forehead, and a slight concussion (actually it lost conciousness for a few minutes and the owners were sure it was dead and then it got up and started running!). We gave it some anti-inflammatories, in case there would be swelling in the brain and sent the dog home with it´s happy owners.

The cat is found! My son found him wondering on the other side of the road, he is unharmed. The door is now closed with two kitties safely inside. I will have to neuter them soon, maybe he was chasing after a girl, or he heard rumors of the impending surgery...

Well. must. make. dinner. stop

I have now called the major vet clinics in town and the cat rescue, no news yet, sure hope no news is good news.

One of our kittens (we have two) has been lost since yesterday. We are still hopeful that it will show up sometime soon, but also worry that something terrible might have happened. I try to be brave, it has a collar with a name tag on, so if it were run over by a car or something, people would call me, right? Unfortunately there is no way of knowing what people will do. This afternoon I will arrange a search party with the kids in the neighbourhood, they know all the hiding places around.

Well, Stína was a big help, and I am on my way to becoming a real blogger. This sucks up a lot of time and energy though, I feel guilty every minute, since I am supposed to be studying. Oh, well, just a few more minutes of trying to figure out colour codes, borders and the like, before I head to the library to study.

Am back in Iceland. Actually I left USA in june, I was just too lazy to blog.

I have decided to broaden my world of blogging and have made my friend Stína promise to help me set it up.

This summer was mostly spent studying for an exam I had to take in Denmark in august and spending some quality time with my husband and son who missed me terribly while I was away for 3 whole months. The guilt is slowly subsiding... I am trying to be very busy writing my final paper, which is all I have left of vet school. If my plans work out I will finish by new year.

Went to San Fran last sunday to return Max the poodle to his rightful owners, then went shopping with my aunt, was going to find a nice professional suit, every professional woman must have one I think. Anyway couldn't find excactly what I wanted, funny how the stores never seem to have that excact thing I have in my head... I hate shopping for clothes... Ended up in the GAP for kids buyng clothes for my son, much easier! Clothes shopping is more tolerable with girlfriends, like last may in Copenhagen when my friends came over from Iceland to attend my "fabulous" Eurovision party and shop 'till we dropped!

On friday I was in Davis yet again, this time to attend the UC Davis vet school graduation. It was very nice seeing everyone again, kinda sad though, knowing I probably will never see most of those people again. The service itself was very nice, everyone marched in with those silly hats and capes, but it was a celebration, wish my vet school had something like that, the royal veterinary and agricultural university of Denmark just sends the certificates by mail! Talk about an anti-climax to 5 1/2 years of hard work!! Am definately going to have my own party with family and friends when I finally turn in my final paper this fall.

The last four weeks here have been great, cannot believe how fast time has flown. I have been doing spays and neuters on cats and dogs, so I feel much more confident doing surgery than I ever did after clinics at vet school. Have also learned a lot of other practical stuff, for example how to splint a broken leg on a bird with masking tape and a toothpick! Today I had a wolf as a patient, was tame, very nice animal, friendlier than some of the dog patients I have seen! Am going back to Copenhagen on sunday, will start packing tonight, as I am invited to visit a vet friend tomorrow and going out for shopping (this time I know what I'm getting, have done research on websited, no more spending hours looking for what I want!) and dinner at "the" italian restaurant in town.

I share my bed with a handsome, black, one-eyed male called George. George is one of my aunt´s three cats, seems to have taken a liking to me, or maybe I´m just sleeping in his bed... Another temporary member of this household is Max the poodle. He is a strange dog, does not respond to any commands, apparently his owners did not deem it neccessary to train him at all and carry him everywhere. Poor dog. Max will be going home to his real parents next weekend. He seems to like me more now, at first he would avoid me and jump off the couch when I sat down, now he seems not to mind too much. The other two cats, Cosmo and Lucky are very friendly too, but not attention seeking. While I´m writing this, all the cats are sleeping on my aunt´s bed, Cosmo and George are bundled up together in a big black ball, sometimes moving to groom one another, very cute.

Well, my first post in weeks. Survived 4 weeks of internal medicine at UC Davis vet school. Most days spent frantically running around trying to finish everything in time, 12-16 hours every day. Managed to get most weekends off though, amazingly. The whole stay was very educational, no regrets.

The weekend after I finished was memorial day weekend, and I went to San Fransisco. I stayed with Nick and Mias son and daughter in law, and had a very nice time. San Fran is such a wonderful city, I definately like it better than Sacramento, which is the only other major american city I have seen. I used the opportunity to finally meet my penpal of 13 years, Petar from Yugoslavia, who was in SF for the weekend meeting with some friends from Yugoslavia that live in New York. He turned out to be very nice and we were friends right away, was kinda nervous to meet him after the german disaster about 10 years ago that some of you may remember.

Last weekend I went back to Davis to attend the annual "smoker", a pretty wild party held by the senior veterinary students at UC Davis, for all students and faculty of the vet school. It was a lot of fun, definately worth spending the 3 1/2 hours on that Greyhound bus each way. Came back on Sunday and my aunt took me to a quilting show in Santa Rosa, very nice, Stina would have loved to see that...

Now I am staying with my aunt Herdis in Cloverdale, a small town about 2 hours drive north of San Fransisco. I am spending my weekdays at the local veterinary clinic, with two very nice vets. This is the real world of veterinary medicine, more rutine, but for me also more interesting than the specialized work at the vet school. Not every animal that walks in the door has a serious and rare disease...

My first week of medicine is going well so far. Monday I was cautious and only took one case. It was a kidney patient and I got to do cystocentesis! For those not fluent in the language of medicine, this involves poking a needle in the dogs abdomen to obtain a sterile urine sample... and I got it in first try! Vaguely remember trying to do this with Anna on an obese little dog back in Denmark and not having any luck.

Yesterday I decided to be more adventurous and see two patients, this ended in disaster, running around the corridors in a mad frenzy trying to submit all my urine and blood samples, as well as having both patients ultrasounded. This resulted in lunch being eaten at 3:30 in the afternoon, no dinner, finally came home at 11:15, exhausted. One patient, a diabetic cat was admitted, and put on IV fluids for the night, with corresponding paperwork and total confusion for me, trying to figure out how the bl..*&%. IV machine works, had to make several trips downstairs to the supply store to get more supplies, tubing and such. Fortunately everyone has been very helpful and I can ask anyone for help. I ask millions of questions every day....

Then I had to be here at 7 am this morning to submit more blood samples and administer insulin to my patient before 8. Today has been better though, did not have to see more patients, concentrate on my diabetic cat. A rare event: got to have lunch at actual luch time! Lots of coce as I am very sleepy from busy day yesterday, as well as only 6 hours of sleep. This morning at 8 I attended "grand rounds" where lots of students and doctors from all the medicine groups gather to talk about interesting cases, very nice, although I hope I will not be made to do a presentation in front of all these people, apparently the lucky student who had the interesting case gets the privilege of presenting it! After that we had our regular rounds with my group: 6 students and 3 teachers. In the morning we discuss the progress of our hospitalized patients and in the afternoon we discuss any patients that came in for treatment and went home the same day. Then we may have discussions and questions from the doctors on various topics. Which reminds me that afternoon rounds are eminent...

Sunnudagsmorgunn og litli sjuklingurinn minn er farin heim med pobbunum sinum (hun a tvo). Frjals! eda thannig, nu verd eg ad fara heim og lesa fyrir morgundaginn. Gisli hringir i mig i dag, vid tolum alltaf saman i simann a sunnudogum. Verd ad vera komin heim fyrir hadegi. Er ad stelast til ad lesa skaldsogu med naminu, skamm, skamm. Bokin heitir "Corellis mandolin", man ekki nafn hofundar, thad er vist buid ad gera biomynd med Nicholas Cage i adalhlutverki, hef ekki sed hana. Bokin er god so far, bara buin ad lesa ca. 50 sidur.

Well, it's saturday night and I still have my little volenteer patient in the hospital. doh. She is very sweet though, a little wire haired fox terrier, I think I would like to have a dog like that sometime. Later when I have my own house and can start collecting animals again.

Had some fun yesterday, went out to dinner with a couple of girls from school. Sushi - again! This time I was wise and had shrimp tempura (deep fried shrimp & vegetables w. rice) as a main course, and just a few pieces of sushi. I like sushi though, wonder why Icelanders didn't come up with eating raw fish like that, guess it's not so hot with potatoes, no rice in Iceland until about 30 years ago... One of the girls also had (see how I said had, tonight my patient is the only one in surgery wards!) a dog in the hospital and so offered to take mine for a walk this morning so I could sleep late, I her up on her offer of course, so I only had to come in tonight to feed & walk. Today was spent reading and then I went downtown, had some spagetti and went for an afternoon movie at 4. Saw "Life or something like it" w. Angelinga Jolie, was ok, but not great. Still waiting to see a great movie. Saw a good movie with her and Antonio Banderas a couple of weeks ago on video when Kat was here visiting her parents. Don't remember the name, but it was very raunchy!! Naked Antonio, uha! Last weekend I saw "Mulholland Drive" on video, bad, bad movie. Don't waste your time seeing it, trust me.

So this is my life in a nutshell. Will discharge my patient tomorrow morning and then go home to read for my medicine rotation which starts monday.

Hi guys, as you can see my blogspot is not filled with words of wisdom every day, very little time for life outside of school... Have seen a lot of cases since my last post, but will not bore you with nasty surgical details. This week has actually been kinda slow as I have not had patients admitted to the hospital to feed, walk etc. However I was clever enough to participate in someone elses surgeries yesterday, and then leave them to do all the work after surgery! he, he. Tomorrow I am taking over a patient from a classmate who has too many, why did I volenteer for this? As previously mentioned I have no life outside of school and came here to learn anyway, the others laughed at my enthousiasm, but I'll show them!!

Last weekend was kinda fun, picnic day here at school. This is like an open house for students parents and alumni to come visit the school. My cousin Maria came to visit me and I got to show her the school, there was even a parade in the morning and in the afternoon we saw "battle of the bands" which is an annual event where brass bands from several colleges compete in a marathon of music. It was a lot of fun, they take turns playing and in one song all the groups joined together and marched through the crowds while they played. They would even do all kinds of stunts with the instruments, like play lying down or standing on one foot. I the evening we went out to dinner, had sushi. I liked it, but have decided that sushi is not well suited for a whole meal, better as appetizer, was kinda bloated after eating all this cold rice... Then we saw a movie "murder by numbers" with Sandra Bullock, it was ok. We tryed to go dancing, but soon discovered that Davis is not very "happening" The only place to dance in town closed at 12:30. We were told that usually they stay open until 2 am, but we were not entirely convinced... More to follow later.

p.s. Sorry Stina og Herdis og Erna, cannot figure out this link business and am too busy to try very hard, will discover some other day the wonderful world of html..

Back in school. This monday I saw a dog who's owner is a Hollywood stuntwoman. My patients today are a 11 month old golden retriever puppy with elbow dysplasia in both elbows. Poor thing. We did an arthroscopy today, that's where you make two small holes in the joint capsule and stick a mini camera in there and remove the offending fragment of bone through another hole with foreceps, like microsurgery. It was very cool to see, the dog only has a couple of sutures insted of cutting open his forearm. He is waking up now, and will probably be able to go for a walk this afternoon. My other patient is a giant 70 kg mastiff (and she's a female, the males are even bigger!). She is a sweet and gentle dog in spite of her size, only not very well trained, so she drags me around when we go for a walk, or when she takes me for a walk! She is having the same procedure done as the other dog.

I cannot believe how cold it is here in California! My mom will be pleased to read that I use the wool scarf she made me take every day! I have heard rumors that the temperature goes to 25-30C during the day, but I don't go out during the day... I go to school between 7 and 8 in the morning, and then I go home around 8 at night. Just in time to eat a little, read my surgery book and then go to sleep... Have to go check on my dog now...

jibbi. Now I have my very own blogspot, I wonder if anyone will read this? I also wonder why I am writing this in english?! Probably for the best as my international fans will want to get a piece of my mind too. They will probably make a movie "inside Sif Traustadottir" ha,ha,ha... Today is the first day at school since I got here to UC Davis vet school that I have some time to myself. Opened a bank account and plan to go to the movies (by myself) this afternoon. Decided to play with the computer for a few minutes and got this great idea to see if I could figure this blog thing out, am very jealous at my friends who have great blogs.