The week I've had

Looking back at Monday, I was pretty darn excited for this week and how easy and stress-free it was going to be.

Well, it rapidly turned into one of "those" weeks.

Tuesday started okay, with no class till 9 am, as is usual for Tuesdays. But the lectures were frankly pretty boring and long, and the day was made even longer by a lunch lecture. Pro: free lunch. Con: feeling obligated to stay and listen to the lecture, rather than eat-and-run. Other con: they didn't tell us beforehand what the lunch was going to be, and it was pre-made Qdoba burritos, which are great, if you like beans, rice, tomatoes, and lettuce in your burrito. But it was actually sort of an interesting lecture, about Bovine Viral Diarrhea, which a lot of people in the U.S. are working pretty hard to eradicate.

Tuesday classes ended with writing, which is never a good end to a school day. That class is so pointless. Did I mention, on one of my assignments I got docked a point for two sentences that "sounded awkward." The grader recommended that I combine those two sentences to make things flow better. Why yes, kind grader, if I were taking any other writing class or just writing in the real, grown-up world, I would have absolutely combined those sentences to create something resembling mature writing. However, in this class, any sentence over 25 words in length is forbidden, so apparently I was docked a point for not making a 31 word sentence. If I had combined the sentences, I bet I would have been docked a point for having a sentence that was too long. Just can't win.

So after class, I studied for awhile in the cubes. I had a whole list of things I wanted to get done, but it all took a lot longer than I expected.

I left at about 4:50 pm to head to our pet hospice meeting, which was a discussion and tour of a pet crematorium down in Loveland, scheduled to start at 5:30. I'd never been there before and didn't exactly know where it was, so I planned to get there a little early. However, I evidently neglected to take into account just how far Loveland is from CSU, and the fact that it was rush-hour traffic, and the fact that I would totally miss the desired street the first time around, so I didn't get there till 5:45.

The crematorium tour was sort of cool. I'd never been to a crematorium before so I was a little apprehensive, not sure exactly what to expect. Well, fortunately it didn't smell like dead animals or anything. We actually had a really good discussion with the owner about end-of-life issues and grief counseling. You hear a lot of horror stories about crematoriums and how they handle animals and people get their Great Dane cremated and end up with two teaspoons of ashes, so I think that you'd definitely want to get to know your crematorium owners and tour the facility if you were selecting a crematorium to use for your clinic.

So that was neat. But then I didn't end up leaving until 7:05 (meant to leave a little before 7, at the latest), so I sped over to Windsor and arrived at 7:29 for my 7:30 pm handbell rehearsal. (Keep in mind, I haven't been home since 8:00 am and I haven't had dinner yet. Also, it was that time of the month and the hormones were a little wild.)

Needless to say, I was a little hungry and crabby during the rehearsal, and we spent a lot of time on the song that is the hardest for me, and I just didn't have much patience or focus. Frustrating, because usually I love that handbell group and rehearsing with them.

Finally got home at 9:15 pm and really, all I wanted to eat was macaroni and cheese. Go figure. So I had my dinner at 9:45 and hurried to bed.

Wednesday looked like it would probably be better. Maybe it was, a little. Certainly not as busy.

Class from 8 am-3 pm straight. Our topic in neuro lecture was acupuncture, so one of the medical acupuncturists from the VTH came over and gave a talk. It was sort of interesting. The natural healing department at the VTH has done a lot of research to prove that acupuncture actually works, and to try to figure out how it works.

After neuro lecture, half of the class trooped into the gross lab for... not lab, but more lecture, of course! Let me tell you, sitting on a tipsy metal stool, hunched over, trying to write on your lap for an hour is an easy recipe for a backache. Plus, why are we having more lecture during lab time??

The second half of the lab time was used for an acupuncture demonstration on some of my classmates' "broken" dogs. That was pretty neat. The acupuncturist took a pretty hyper young lab mix who had had leg surgery about 6 weeks before, and by the time she pulled out the acupuncture needles about 20 minutes later, the dog was almost asleep.

But then, finance. Oh yes, finance. Not my favorite class. At all. To make things even better, the teacher started lecturing 7 minutes late, and let us go 7 minutes early. There go 14 minutes of the valuable total 50 minute period for which we are paying tuition dollars. Of the remaining 36 minutes that were actually used for lecture, we spent 12 of those doing clicker questions, which means 90% of the class answers the question in the first 30 seconds, and we all sit around for the next 3 minutes waiting for the last 10% of the class to get their act together and answer. Last but not least, we learned a new financial application that we were supposed to be able to do on our special financial calculators (which I refuse to buy on principle, unless I absolutely have to). To this point, I've simply been inserting numbers into the algebraic formula that the teacher has provided, and doing the calculations on my regular calculator (and frankly having a whole lot less trouble getting the right answer than the people who try to use financial calculators). But this time, the teacher didn't give us the algebraic formula, so without a financial calculator, I was sort of stuck. Seriously, why is it more valuable to know how to put numbers into a calculator, rather than being able to visualize the formula and see what variables go into it and how changing one of those variables will change the overall outcome?? I think I am too old.

Anyway, classes ended with Biology of Disease, then Parasitology. I studied for a little while then headed home with enough time left to feed the cats and wash the dishes --- fun --- before getting in the car, again, to drive to Greeley for church. I spent about 20 minutes practicing the handbell music I didn't do very well on the night before, plus a four-in-hand quartet I apparently volunteered for (though I have no recollection of offering).

Oh, one of the complicating factors in my bad mood was that CLH had had to stay overnight at work on Tuesday night, so while I was feeling mopey and hormonal and crabby, I was also alone for a couple days. I really just wanted to spend some time with CLH when we finally got home at 8 on Wednesday night, but he wanted to go on the treadmill so I just went to bed early.

Today, Thursday: another lengthy day but now at least it's over and I don't have enough energy to complain much more! I did end up doing plenty of driving, including 30 minutes to school this morning, 30 minutes home this afternoon, 65 minutes to Fort Morgan for CLH's middle school choir concert, and 65 minutes home. On the plus side, I thought CLH's choirs did really great, especially compared to his first concert last fall. Was the pitch great? Not so much. But they were trying, and paying attention, and the rhythms were really good. Good job, CLH!

(Here's another mini-rant: At CLH's middle school, choir classes are only one quarter long. So CLH has one group of kids for about 8 weeks, then they have a concert at the end of the 8 weeks, and then the following week he gets a whole NEW group of kids to work with. Repeat 4 times. So he never gets much time to work with them, and by the time they are finally starting to get good, they move on to another class. The really strange thing is that the band and orchestra courses go all year long, so as CLH pointed out, the band and orchestra keep getting better and better over the academic year, while he has to work basically four times as hard just to get groups of different kids up to an acceptable level of singing before they disappear. But anyway, stop whining and go to bed now, right?!)