The Poet Know It

Robert Louis Stevenson on Edinburgh: "But Edinburgh pays cruelly for her high seat in one of the vilest climates under heaven. She is liable to be beaten upon by all the winds that blow, to be drenched with rain, to be buried in cold sea fogs out of the east, and powdered with the snow as it comes flying southward from the Highland hills. The weather is raw and boisterous in winter, shifty and ungenial in summer, and a downright meteorological purgatory in the spring. The delicate die early, and I, as a survivor, among bleak winds and plumping rain, have been sometimes tempted to envy them their fate. For all who love shelter and the blessings of the sun, who hate dark weather and perpetual tilting against squalls, there could scarcely be found a more unhomely and harassing place of residence.


Nuff said.  This describes Edinburgh to an absolute Tee!!!!  A schoolmate sent this to me after I whined about the weather.  I at least now know I am not imagining things and am not alone in my distaste for the dark, dreary, misty, rainy, overcast winter.  Blehhh.


In other news, exams are rapidly approaching and everyone is buckling down.  It has been study, study, study around here.  We have exactly 2 weeks until we begin our 4 days of hell.  They have stopped our lectures and all we have this week are a few practicals. Wed and Fri we are off and the other days we have one dissection, one clinical anatomy lab, a trip to a boarding facility, an ultrasound practical and two review sessions - one for cell bio and one for anatomy.  


Last week was great fun. We had another sheep practical in which we got to trim their hooves.  The ewes are pretty preggers now and quite heavy, at around 70 kgs.  It was not nearly as easy to cast them (get them from standing on all fours, to resting on their backside with full body weight against you), but my partner and I devised a two-man casting system that worked like a charm!  We managed to trim up 8 ewes while some 3-4 person groups did half that amount.  It was fun stuff.  This is what it looks like after you cast a sheep while your partner trims the hooves:

I will not be posting much between now and the end of finals, but am definitely thinking of everyone.  I do have a few fun things to look forward to in the next couple of weeks.  The first is this Friday - it is the Vet School talent show.  It is supposed to be a riot and one of the funniest nights of the year.  Then, on Sunday, a classmate is hosting a Superbowl Party!!  Yay, NFL football....Yay.  The following Friday, a few friends are going to cheap movie night. Gotta love student discounts.


Ok, it will be a slow month for posts until after exams, but I'll update as much as possible. 


Over-N-Out 

Egads!

Oh my....it's been pretty darn busy since starting up the semester a week and a half ago.  Last week was absolutely brutal.  Talk about being forced into getting back on track with a schedule...sheeesh!  I could simply not get enough sleep.  I had 3 dissections and volunteered out at the farm last week, making for some very loooong days. I went out Friday night to celebrate a friend's birthday and it all came to a head this weekend.  I slept and slept and slept and slept.  And slept some more.  Me and the Bingos were professional couch potatoes and I felt no shame. The weather was perfect for it though...typical Scotland with overcast skies and periods of rain (really drizzle here).  Sooo sleepy.

Last week was good, just super long days.  We started our dog, cat and equine lectures..yay.  Like I said, we also did 3 dissections - two of the thorax and began the abdomen.  They went very well.  A classmate and I volunteered to help out at the sheep farm one afternoon scanning ewes.  It was open to all years and about 12 of us showed up.  They were scanning (ultra sounding) for pregnancy.  We had to go through about 400 ewes (female sheeps).  Our job, as students, was to move the sheep from pen to pen, get them up the chute and into the crush for the technician, put a dot of paint on their wool according to how many babes they were carrying and to do anything else that was needed. The norm for an ewe is twins, as she has two teats to milk her babes.  We did not mark these.  We marked for singles, triplets, quads (had one) and empty (not pregnant).  There were very, very few empties.  These gals are fertile!  You mark them for how many lambs they are carrying so they can feed them appropriately.  Also, at lambing time, you would want to take a lamb from the mother of triplets and put it with a single, so everyone gets milk.  Ewes will kill lambs that are not theirs, so you have to disguise it in bodily fluid from the mother or one of her lambs.  A little disguise, if you will.

In addition to getting more handling skills under our belts, we also got to observe the screen showing the ultrasound.  It was a challenge for me in the beginning to even have a clue what any of the blobs of grey meant. Or even what blob I was supposed to be looking at. Eventually, I had convinced myself that I could see something, but honestly was not sure at all.  Occasionally, he would point them out and show us where the head was, followed by a body and where the other lambs were hiding in that black hole of a uterus.  That is when I KNEW I was getting it!!  I could actually pick them out before he told us sometimes...amazing.  We learned that he scans about 120,000 ewes a season at about 50-55 pence (cents in USD) per scan.  Wow.  Lambing season here for the most part right around Easter.  We get a month off at Easter time to go lambing on farms as part of our requirement for our extramural studies. That should be great fun and everyone looks forward to it.

This week has been just as busy through today. Another dissection on Monday, followed by a Pig practical today. We had to go almost an hour out of town to an agricultural college since we do not have pigs at our school.  And, I think I know why.....whew......do they stinkola.  There were only 15 of us in our group and then we got split into two smaller ones.  My group went to see the sows and piglets first.  The welfare regulations here are actually better than in the US for the piggies.  Once the sows are ready to farrow (give birth), they are moved to small stalls that only allow the sow to stand up and lie down. There is extra space on either side of her, but this if for the piglets and she is cannot really move around. This is because it is common for the sows to inadvertently crush piglets.  There is also a box in the front of the pen the piggies can go into that has heat lamps and is kept very, very warm. We saw a sow in labor and she had just delivered her first baby. It is not uncommon for them to have 8-13 piglets.  They are kept in these stalls until the piggies are weaned at 28 days.  We got to vaccinate several groups of piglets, which was fun. Oh, did they ever squeal like babies as you held them for whoever was injecting......SQUEEEEEE....right in the ole ear.

We also got to play with older pigs who were being 'finished off'.  This means they fatten em up for slaughter. This is where the stench factor was thousandfold compared to the sows and piglets.  They are all housed indoor and it's warm, humid and unbelievably odorous.  We were taught how to move the pigs around with a board that is about 3' x 3'. We had to shuffle them from their pen on to a scale.  They are crafty big things and will run you over if you are in the way and they decide to go somewhere.  The 'Baconers' are over 90kg and ready to become bacon.  We had a couple of them in our group.

All in all, a very good start back.  Exams are looming in on us and we are all feeling the pressure. I can't talk about it without getting the shakes.

Tomorrow is a short day, thank goodness.  I'm finished at 11am and will love it.

Both of the Bingos are snoring, which I absolutely adore.  It means they are happy campers and sound asleep. Time to wake em up and head to sleep myself.

Over-N-Out

The Fun is Over

Break is finally over and reality hits tomorrow early.  I've not been on the best of schedules and am forcing myself to go to bed early tonight.  Like, 4 hours earlier than normal.  Surprisingly, I am tired.  It was a good break, but honestly a bit long for not going anywhere.  I'm happy to be going back and cranking up the ole brain again.  Tomorrow promises to be a nice, long Monday.  Two anatomy lectures on the thorax, followed by an afternoon dry lab on the thorax.  Yipppeeee.  I should be up to my eyeballs in thorax tomorrow...wait, is that anatomically possible?

Keeping with my new schedule, I'm...

Over-N-Out

Hogmany

My sleeping schedule is getting nice and out of whack.  I am going to bed later and later, which of course means I'm waking up later and later.  The dogs have actually bought on to the new schedule and are letting me sleep.  Unbelievable.  I wake up at 7am during the term and we are consistently past 9am these days.  Sometimes, I will even take them out and go back to bed. I ended up finally getting my sorry self moving around 11 today! Now, to be fair, I've been staying up quite late...1,2..3am sometimes.  I need to make an effort to get back on track asap. So, I will go to bed at 1am and get up at 9am tomorrow and not go back to sleep. Then tomorrow night, I need to be in bed by midnight and up by 830am.  It IS still my break, so I do not see any need to stress myself by getting up at 7am between now and the new term, but I will start going to bed at a decent hour.

Hogmany, or New Year's Eve, is a ginormous celebration here.  Of which, I took no part.  I was in South Beach FL last year for the big party and had zero chance of topping that wonderful experience, so I decided to stay in.  They did fireworks, of course, but I had no idea they would basically be in my front yard.  They did some at the castle and apparently more down at my park, The Meadows. I heard them going off and looked out my flat to see amazing stuff.  I took a picture to show how close they were.  If I had thought more of it, I would have turned my lights off, as there is a glare...but, you get the idea.

The streets were full of people that night.  There was also a big celebration in city centre.  They do a procession of torches the night before, which looks incredible.

And, here is what it looks like from above:

Finally, a picture of the fireworks at the castle:

2011 it is.  Officially.  Hoping this year brings us all good health and happiness.

I have now officially hit the wall and am calling it a night. Tomorrow is Monday and my goal is to finish up all of my projects for school that are due this month and need the finishing touches put on them.

Hope everyone is doing well.

Over-N-Out