It's kind of amazing how much a person can change without realizing it, both in their personality and in their views. You would think that a person would notice them selves changing, but maybe the change is too gradual.

In the last few months, I've realized that a lot of things about me have changed, even some things that I would consider pretty major, things that I kind of considered to be the core of my personality.

Up until these last few months, I honestly didn't think that those parts of my self had really changed in the last 10 years. For example, I considered my self a pretty shy person, quiet and not at -all- outgoing. As far as I was concerned, I was the proverbial wall flower at parties, and everything that goes along with that.

But I've come to realize that's not so true any more. First of all, I'm not quiet. I think that was the first thing I realized *chuckles* I talk, a lot, and it doesn't matter if you're a complete stranger, I will (if in the right mood) quite happily strike up a conversation right out of the blue. This also plays into the shy factor. I'm really not that, either. I'm not a complete extrovert, ready to jump into any situation without a moment's hesitation (and I never will be) But it doesn't take me nearly as long to get comfortable in a new situation, maybe an hour before I'm happily chatting away with the person I deem most approachable, and by the end of the night, I'll be talking to everyone. This compared to the person who would find a quiet corner and stay there unless dragged out.

And one of the weirdest things I think was the realization that I make people laugh. That they find me entertaining. That continues to blow my mind. I thoroughly enjoy it, mind, but it surprises me. I love making people smile and laugh. It gives me a lot of joy.

Other things too. Views that I've long held. Some of it has changed through education. Like my view on animal testing. While I still want them to find other models to work with, I now understand the necessity, and find my self quite passionately defending it when people talk about how horrible it is, because really, it's not as bad as groups like PETA make it out to be. There are -tones- of controls and regulations in place, and humane treatment of the test subjects is of the utmost importance.

And hunting. I used to be completely against that too. I really saw no redeeming things about it. I don't really know why my opinion on that has changed, but it has. I still (obviously) don't approve of trophy hunters, but if you're using it for food, then I see nothing wrong with it. It even plays an important part in disease control, which I never knew.

And Marriage. That institution that (almost) every little girl dreams about. A lot of friends and people I know are getting married. I guess I'm just at that age where my friends are going to start getting married and having kids. Me, not ready for it yet. Don't rightly know when I will be. Guess I'll see. But marriage it self doesn't mean that much to me. Maybe it has something to do with my parents splitting up, something that, as a child growing up, I never thought would happen. But the more I thought about getting married, the more I realized that it just didn't matter that much to me. The only thing I truly was looking forward to about it, upon close examination of my feelings, was the pretty dress. That's it. Now, I just want to find a partner to spend my life with. As long as we love each other, that's all that matters to me.. I suppose there would be practical benefits to being married, in regards to taxes and health benefits from work and what not, but *shrugs* If I wind up with someone who's big on getting married, all well and good, and if not, that's fine too. It just doesn't matter as much as I thought it would..

Odd how a person can change..

Just got back from a reasonably long walk in the woods by my house, along the frozen creek. It was just what I needed, and I plan to go out again tomorrow, and walk along the creek in the opposite direction from the bridge that I went today. The woods aren't a very wide strip and could hardly be called wilderness, but most of the time I couldn't see any houses to either side or hear traffic noise, and was able to just enjoy the crunch of my boots in the snow, and the sounds of the various birds that were around enjoying the relatively warm day. I got some half decent shots of a bunch of chickadees, a couple of a red squirrel, and some of a small woodpecker, but I'm not sure which type. The chickadees are so much fun to watch.

AND, today was the first test drive, so to speak, of my new Columbia(TM) winter boots, which are rated to -32 celcius. I'm happy to report that not only did they keep my feet nice and toasty, they also did not cause me anything resembling pain. I love Columbia footwear. They're the only brand I've ever found that require absolutely no breaking in for me, and I have notoriously rotten luck with footwear in general. -Everything- gives me blisters. I've never been disappointed with a single Columbia product I've purchased (they made my winter jacket too)

Overall, I'm feeling much better than I was before I went out. Now I'm going to have a hot chocolate and Baileys, and get down to some school work while my but and thighs thaw *chuckles*

I think it's reached the point in the year where it's been winter for too long. I'm not getting enough sun light in a day, let alone a week, and I'm feeling it. I get to school while it's still mostly dark out and it's getting dark by the time I get home. Combine that with the fact that I spend most of my school day in dimly lit classrooms trying to concentrate on powerpoint presentations, and it's no wonder I'm feeling a bit on the blue side lately. Thank Gods the solstice has passed and the days are once again getting longer. I just have to be patient.

Well, here it is, the first day of 2008. And you know, I think this is going to be a very interesting year for me. For starters, and perhaps the biggest thing, is that for the first time in 7 years, I really have very little clue what the year holds in store for me. 

I mean, it's not that past years have been totally predictable, trust me, plenty of un-expected things have happened, some good, some bad. But there was still a great deal that -could- be predicted. 

This year, everything kinda hangs in the air after June 20th, when I write my certification exam. I'll be done school, and really have nothing tying me down for the first time.. perhaps in my life. 

I was thinking last night about the fact that I have no idea where I will be a year from now, physically, as much as anything else. Will I move back to Calgary after my practicum? Stay in Kelowna? Move to the west coast like I want to? Will I even stay in Canada? I really don't know. 

It's both exciting and a little bit frightening, but I think more exciting than not. 2008 seems like a year of almost endless possibility and potential for me. I'm interested to see where life will take me in the next 364 days (January first being almost over, and all that.. *chuckles*)

And I hope that the year will be as good to all the people I care about as they could possibly imagine. I wish you all the best in 2008. Happy New Years.

I'm kinda disappointed.. ok, more than kinda. I had plans with some of the girls from the program for New years, so I arranged to be back in Edmonton for that. And now, they've all canceled. So, that means Angi gets to spend yet another New Years home alone. And since I'm going to be back in Edmonton, I wont even have the cat for company. This -sucks-

Yay! All done exams. I'm happy to report that at this point, my lowest final average in any of my classes is 79%! Quite frankly, I'm amazed at that my self.. Still have the mark from one more class to come in, but I'm feeling quite confident in it as well. I came out with an 81% on my Pharmacology final, which is the one I think I was most worried about, and I'll be honest when I say I have -no- idea how I managed that.. I was shocked when I saw the mark.

So yay! All finished! Finished the last of my Christmas shopping on the way home from school too, so now all I have to do is pack my suitcase and catch a cab to the Greyhound depot, and GO HOME!

I'm in such an utterly fantastic mood right now, I literally cant seem to stop smiling. It's fantastic. Hehe.

Love you all to bits, Merry Christmas!

I'm sick of studying.. I want to go home now please..

My legs hurt from sitting at this desk studying all day. I don't think I've done this intense a day of studying so far this semester. I suppose it would hurt less if I didn't sit cross legged, but, as little sense as it makes, that's the most comfortable position. If I stretch my legs out, I invariably seem to curl them up again within 10 minutes.

The pristine snow outside my window is calling for me to go make snow angels in it.. and I'm wondering if I could set my camera up in the window on timer and capture my self in the act.. hehe.

One of the nicest things about this last week before finals is that I hardly have to be in class at all. The most hours I have to spend at school at one time this week is tomorrow, when I have to be there for my Surgical Assistant practical exam. Other than that, I have to be there and in class for 1 hour or less a day. Which is good, because I have a hell of a lot of studying to do..

Playing with cameras with timers, tripods, and lingerie, can apparently be quite a mood lifter.. Imagine that.

These are two of my favorite songs right now. Listening to them is helping me relax, particularly the one by the Counting Crows. The one by David Grey is a bit of a pick me up, more the beat than the lyrics, which are kind of on the sad side..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0s7ycdUcHk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gyiaZsrTWA

I feel so lonely tonight, for some reason..

Today was one of those days that, if it could go wrong, it did. Part of it was my fault, part of it was just shit poor luck.

Everything started out well enough. Woke up, well rested, showered, found out that there's a present in the mail for me from a certain Australian (quite excited about that)Had my shower, and so on. Pretty average. Only thing particularly special about today to start with was the fact that I had my cow practical exam at 9:30. No big deal, I was ready, and unconcerned. Even better, we had no classes scheduled for the afternoon. I was sitting at my desk thinking how nice it was that I didnt have to lug my backpack and a change of clothes and all that extra stuff to the dairy barn with me, only my boots, coveralls and... That's when it hits me. My kit, which contains -everything- I need to pass this practical, is at school in my locker, pretty much on the other side of the city. 

Panic. Instantly Angi is running around cursing and trying to figure out what to do. Ok, no problem, it's still early enough, I can make it to school and back by bus in time to do the test. I can do it. So I grab what I think is everything I need, and run out the door, after asking my room mate if she will bring my boots and coveralls for me.

Disaster #2 strikes as I'm running across the condo parking lot to catch the bus. My phone jumps out of the pocket I had it in, hits the ground. Battery pops out, and immediately goes right down the only storm drain in the fricking parking lot, which of course, I was standing over.

So I still have to get to school and get my kit, but now I have no way to call my room mate to get her to pick me up at the bus station closest to the dairy barn once I get back up south, because no busses go to the barn it self. Still panicing. I cant even call from a pay phone because I dont know her number, it was in my phone.

Finally I decide that when I get to school, I'll use a pay phone to call a cab. No worries, it'll be expensive, but it'll get me there. Next realization.. I left my black book with my drug doses -and- my calculator back at the condo. Fuck. How to fix that one? 

Finally get to school at 20 after 8, run into the book store to grab a calculator, run up to my locker to grab the kit and, thank what ever gods may have been listening, one of my friends was sitting there. So I was able to borrow her black book, and she even gave me a ride back to the dairy barn.

Things went well for my practical exam. I got everything pretty much, except for mixing up the pin bone and the hook bone on the anatomy portion. My cow did kick me in the shoulder while I was listening to her heart, because my partner didnt close the side gate enough when we were catching her, and she got her foot through the bars. She didnt have much force behind it though, thankfully, so my shoulder only aches a little. And I got tossed around a fair bit when I was doing the stomach tubing, so I'm probably going to hurt tomorrow, but I held on and got it. I even got my calculations right (Yay Angi! I'm usually totally math impaired)

So after that was all done, Ann and I go out for lunch, talk and laugh and generally have a lovely time. Then she drops me off at the mall so I can pick up a replacement battery. 

This is where things go back down hill. My phone has been discontinued, so they dont have any batteries in stock, and they have them on order, but they may or may not ever come... So I went to all the other cell phone retailers in the mall, and none of them had the battery I needed either.

So, what am I going to do? I Need my phone. Eventually I ended up calling mom for advice and she told me to just go buy a new phone, and it would be part of my Christmas present from her. *sigh* Gotta love mom's eh?

So I go back to the mall and pick up a new phone. So far I dont like it as much as my old one, but I imagine I'll get used to it. My biggest peeve is that it feels like it was designed for a lefty in regards to texting. The space button is on the right, instead of the left, so I have to contort my hand funny all the time when I'm texting. We'll see how things go. At least I have a working phone again. And I'm going to be much more careful about what pocket I put it in now. Live and learn, I guess.

So yes, that was my day. Thank goodness tomorrow is friday. I need a weekend.

Having today off has been so nice.. I wish I could take the rest of the week off.. *sigh* Almost there. 16 days to go.

Well, at least that's over with. I did my practical exam as Anesthetist this morning... I dont think it went very well.

 I passed (I hope) and we got further than any group has gotten so far, but I messed up on a lot of things. Luckily I caught the one that would have made me fail, just like that. I did something wrong with my drug calculations and drew up double the dose needed of our induction agent. Thank gods I did the surgery log as well as the tattoo log, because if I hadn't been comparing my amounts to those used for the cat for the group before us, I would never have caught. The AceHydro was just like, 0.1ml different from the previous cat, but the propofol was almost 4ml to their 2ml. Shauna or Dr Reid would have stopped me before I gave it, but yeah, I could totally have OD'd our cat. Then, I had total sterility issues (which is a really big deal for surgery, if that wasn't obvious). I forgot to take off my lab coat and put on my cap and mask before I scrubbed the incision site, -and- I even moved the patient into surgery without realizing my error. *head in hands* Then I proceeded to contaminate the drape by leaning over it several times as I was doing my anesthetic monitoring, and I -also- forgot to tie the patient down. *sigh* 

I dont know what else I forgot, but I'm sure there were a few things. So I'm pretty much brain dead from stress at this point and am skipping all my afternoon classes and going to sit in the computer commons and make up microbiology study notes instead, because that requires no brain power. Thank goodness surgical assistant next week will be a million times easier and less stressful than today was.

Tomorrow is my practical exam for small animal clinics in the position of Anesthetist. I wasn't nervous till today, now I am. Today's first group never even got their patient into surgery. The second group did, but didnt manage to finish. It shouldn't really be that much different than a normal day in clinics, really.... Right? Except that the staff will be acting like they know nothing, and it's all going to be on me and Ann till we get into surgery and Dr.Reid starts doing the surgery. We're determined to get completely finished and at least be waking our patient up before our time limit expires. We have an hour and 45 minutes. It sounds like a lot, but time just seems to slip away.. Well, keep your fingers crossed for me. Ann and I tent to work really well together, so I'm not super crazy worried, but still, I'm nervous. I hate that feeling, I'm -never- nervous about tests.. or hardly ever at least.. And we got home way later than I expected to today, so I didnt eat for too long a stretch and my stomach was killing me the whole way home. It's going to be fucked up for the rest of the week now. I really should study for the pharm quiz but with that, plus staying up later than I should last night and getting woken up early this morning.. I dont know if I have enough brain power at this point in my day to study drugs. One quiz isnt going to kill me, at this point. Gah..  Need school to be done for the semester. Could go for some cuddles too..

I bought my Mom a digital camera for Christmas today, and I'm almost tempted to keep it for my self *chuckles* It seems like a good little camera. I was playing around with it, getting the initial date and what not set-up done so she didn't have to (and figuring out how things worked enough that when she asks for help, I can give it!) I hope she likes it... She's going to be super mad at me though *grins* I really should not have spent so much on her, considering I have no income currently, but I know she's going to be thrilled, so it's worth it, completely. *nods* Now I can't wait till Christmas to see the expression on her face when she opens it! Hopefully she will have gotten some money from her parents for Christmas though, because I couldn't afford to get her rechargeable batteries or a decent memory card either..

I had a dream, last night, that I was baking cookies with my Dad (which I will actually be doing today, but not with Dad) There were at least a half dozen eggs already cracked into the bowl, and the last one I cracked was rotten, and I had to throw it all away and start over.. Odd things, dreams.. The bowl was much to small to be making a recipe that required that many eggs any how..

It's -so- the coffee... Damn it all..