Idaho Trip 2007 Episode 1

It was February 18, 2007. I embarked on the longest (with regard to the fourth dimension) solo trip of my life thereto.

It was a journey to Caldwell, Idaho, to the famous Caine Veterinary Teaching Center. But before proceeding far I desired to attend a concert by the Russian group Con Anima. (See a picture of the people here.) My brother, my Goertzen friends, and my friend JB were all in attendance. There was only one other young person in the audience. I think I "decided" that he must be the interim pastor's son -- I think also that is not true.

The singers in Con Anima all graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory. They sang religious and folk music, and did it very well. The love song(s) were particularly amusing. I was certainly happy to have gone.
On I travelled, heading east along the gorge, heading east toward the darkness. I stopped once in Boardman to refuel, but otherwise pressed onward without ceasing. I met with snow between La Grande and Baker City, dry snow that blew across the road in the great darkness. There was no need to chain up -- good thing, since I have new chains which I have never used.

I arrived in Caldwell around 11 pm Mountain Time, give or take. I found the Veterinary Center, no problem, and found the hidden house key, no problem. Fine and dandy. However, I returned to the intersection where I expected to find the student house, and the situation was more confusing than I had expected. There were TWO houses on the south-western corner, and the house parallel to 10th Street, the orientation I expected the house to be in, appeared uninhabited, complete with screen door ajar. I mustered the courage to try my key in the lock, and it didn't work. The other house, well, it was logically clear that it was the one. But I didn't know for sure, and there were vehicles there, and I didn't want to be waking people up or scaring them unnecessarily. And at 11-12 pm, I wasn't thinking my clearest or running at my peak of confidence. So I zipped around the neighborhood, trying to decide if there was some other probable house. And then I drove down to a nearby gas station/mini mart and looked in a map and asked the sleepy-eyed gas station attendant what he thought. He didn't pay much attention at first, but eventually understood what I was getting at and tried to help me. A tall, moderately overweight bearded customer was very considerate and attempted to help... he even called back after leaving the establishment to see if I knew the address of the place... which, er, I did not.
I left with no positive answer, and have never set foot in the building since (no need for them to see the crazy Mennonite lady again).
I pondered my plight, and pondered the pros and cons of my various sleeping options. I.e., sleeping in a motel (pretty much bottom on the list), sleeping in my car in a store parking lot, sleeping in the house on the corner, sleeping in my car in the gravel lot on the corner. I settled for the latter -- it involved the least money/confrontation with others. I was a little worried about being seen in my car from the road, or about some policeman stopping by to ask me what in the world I was doing there... and around 2 am I heard voices out in the parking lot and worried my time had come. The voices went away, and all was well.
It was a bit frigid, sleeping there in an unheated car. I left before 6 am to decrease the chances of being seen by the house occupants, and headed to Boise. I washed up in an Albertson's, reminding myself of the time when Dad was on a trip and tried to wash his hair in a gas station bathroom. He ended up being driven out with suds remaining.
Of all things, I had left my stethoscope at the vet school before heading to Idaho... so I needed to buy another, and I wanted a battery charger for my digital camera, and a couple office items for clinics. I bought a cheepo but kinda snazzy black Omron Sprague-Rappaport stethoscope. You see, my other stethoscope is a single-tube, single head scope and I had thought it would be fun to have the double headed type. The double tube makes it extra unique, and it works amazingly well for the price I paid.
I dinked around Boise, buying the charger and office stuff at OfficeMax, some yarn and needles at Michael's, and wandering around in the REI looking at snowshoes, etc. I was tempted to enter the Cabela's, but restrained myself.

Goat Cheese

Milk goats and the making of cheese has long fascinated me. (Reference this large and wordy document I wrote years ago -- some of the text is apparently missing. I do not take responsibility for any food poisoning resulting from following those directions.) It is something I plan to involve myself in more in the future. However...

I find that eating an assortment of goat cheese did not sit well with persons today. We visited a goat dairy, and they would that we should sample of their viands. We therefore partook with varying degrees of delight (the moldy, rind-y cheeses with a squishy intermediate layer are downright disgusting) and did not appreciate the after-effect which involves a sense of nausea and continual taste of goaty cheesy flavour. Blech.

I am "certain" it was the mold effect. I used to make goat cheese and never felt ill as a general rule after the consumption thereof.

Sad Knee, Sawed Horn

My knee began aching something aweful today -- the only thing I can trace it back to is torquing on it as I spent a lengthy time pulling off my rubber boot on Monday. My boots are too small and I didn't have socks to wear them with. Not a good combo.

Today in SGMS we sawed off goat horns using obstetrical wire. It was a lot easier than and not nearly as scary as I thought it would be. I also got to use a disbudding iron on a goat kid... sadly, I didn't get the bud to pop off appropriately... and I was doing it in front of the whole class. Brilliant. (Not that I really care tremendously, though it feels nicer to be perfect.)

Erp! Gulp!

I learned last night that it pays, literally, to open every envelope from Oregon State University.
I was almost ready to hit the sack around 9 pm, waiting for the wash to finish drying so I could put the last load in the drier and go to bed. I began sorting through a pile of envelopes, and happened to note some envelopes addressed to the Draft Horse Club, c/o Claire Varney. I get a lot of those, and usually they are a sort of account statement saying how much money we own as a club. That is uninteresting, and I rarely open the statements. Hmmm... well, there were a couple envelopes looking deceptively like those "account statement" envelopes, but, alas, they were from Student Debt Management (er, the Collections Office) and Student Financial Services (or some such places). I opened the former, and, lo, a charge of ~$1000 to the Draft Horse Club for some medical expenses for our draft horse. Gulp. I knew of a $16 expense, but not this grand-large bill. What's more, the first envelope bearing the news of this expense was sent over a month ago, and more recently the charge had been submitted to the Collections Department and I wouldn't be allowed to register for my spring classes until the money was paid in full and they might deduct money from my Oregon Tax Refund (Erp! Gulp!) and they might even get outside help or something to wrest the money from my grasp. Help my bones, and all along my club has a goodly stash of money laid aside to pay for such and I didn't know it needed to be paid. Clearly, it wasn't really OSU's fault... but why can't they just deduct the money from the Draft Horse Club account?
I dealt with the situation at lunch break.

Why is it that the unimportant envelopes like credit card offers I don't need, and cell phone deals I don't want -- why is it that they bear sayings like "Dated Material," "Open Now," bla, bla bla? And the actually important envelopes like bills that need to be paid, and charges made to my club, and other things that start accruing interest if they are not dealt with -- and those important envelopes appear innocently white, suggesting no hint of the doom awaiting inside, or the even greater doom if they are not opened for weeks?
I will never trust an innocent-looking envelope again!

SGMS

Last Wednesday I broke in my new pair of green scrubs by doing a ceasarean section on a sheep. When I was done there was a puddle of blood on the floor, blood dripped on my right shoe and a massive amount of blood down the clothing on my right leg. This was not really excessive, I promise you. C-sections just involve a lot of blood and even more amniotic fluid.
It was the sheep and goat medicine and surgery class at OSU. I had been looking forward to this C-section lab for three years, and finally, amazingly, it came. We chose sheep on Monday out at a sheep establishment, checking their udders to ensure they were far enough along. Four of the sheep lambed before the lab started Wednesday morning, so they had to bring in back-ups. It was a grand time. My lambs did well and went home Friday.

***
Today I got to pull a dead, decomposing, brown and nasty twin lamb from an ewe. My friend Jen had pulled the first of the twins, which were dead since perhaps last Tuesday. I had the pleasure (it really was, I'm not kidding) of lavaging the uterus with water and a disinfectant. I had my hand in with the tube, and my arm was largely blocking the exit to the uterus. As water was pumped through the tube, it built up pressure behind my arm until such a time at which it burst forth, drenching one of my shoes and part of my modified overalls in nasty, decomposed uterus-contents-water. After that I stood to the side of the ewe. And was I ever glad for a second pair of overalls!