Ready, steady, go!

Well classes officially started today. I woke up at 7, ate some blueberry muffin tops (thanks for introducing me to such a delicious cereal Jarid =D), packed the backpack, and started walking to campus. I've taken care of all the first day bullshit, all of that syllabus and rules discussion chit chat and such. Found where my classes, so far, are. I even spent 135 bucks on a parking permit for the year. Not bad if you ask me, considering I had to pay 300 something for a permit in the school lot last year.
Started off the day with Mammalogy, the study of mammals and not to be confused with mammology, the study of breasts. I like the professor for this class, had him for Ecology last year. I also share the class with my friend Rick, who although almost more nerdy then I can stand, I'm glad I got a class with him again. After Mammalogy I trecked the vast distance down a flight of stairs and down the hall to my next class, Organic Chemistry. This class I'm a touch worried about. Chem is rather complicated as I'm sure everyone knows, and last year I kind of had to fight to not get a rather low grade. Maybe I'll be fine, we'll see. After that I went off to Biometrics, which is an offshoot of statistics aimed at life. Aka Stats for the Biologist. This is a small class, I mean TINY. There were maybe 8 people in class today. Otherwise I'm not really looking forward to it, math is icky.
After those classes, each about an hour long, I got to walk home, empty the dishwasher and get the sink clear for the first time in probably about a month (only about 3 days that I've had to deal with) and made myself some mac n cheese. Now I'm blogging, watching Wayne's World (sort of) and listening to Passion Pit's "Little Secrets".
I'm in love with this song. I don't actually have it so I've been youtube-ing it and listening to it that way. And I've listened to it a lot. I listened to it probably 4 times before bed last night and I've been listening to it since about 3 or 4 renditions before I started writing this blog. I need to get it so I can throw it on my itunes "favorites" list and mix it in with some other good songs.

And that's my day so far. I still need to go to my night class at 5, which will last to a disgusting 7:45. Hopefully I'll show up there and it'll be cancelled or something. Then I can be a nerd and draft mtg with John at his place! High hopes. I guess I don't mind if I do have to go to class though, I don't really want to pay for a draft.. Well, that's all I got to speak of for now. Until later.

Snakes Stargaze?

So today I went on my first solo vet trip. I took Zaid in to stop him from dying! Yay! Heh, despite that comment, I don't think he was in any immediate danger, though I loathe to make him sit through any pain he was in (if any.. I didn't notice anything that looked like pain). I was checking up on him last night and I noticed he was foaming at the mouth a bit. My first thought, naturally, was rabies. Which kind of frightened me. So I did some research online and found out, much to my relief, that Pythons (or any reptile for that matter) can't contract rabies. I then checked online to see what the foaming might mean. Much to my dismay, it's a symptom of a respiratory infection. Some other symptoms include a popping sound coming from their nose, along with bubbles from said nostrils, general lethargy, and "Stargazing". Now despite the incredibly horror stricken response from the general internet public ("ZOMG STARGAZING! VET! NOW!") I find this term really intriguing. Basically it means that the snake lifts it's head off the ground a bit and points upward, as if it were staring at the ceiling. In other words "stargazing". I feel like this sounds too cool to be a symptom of a potentially fatal disease however.. silly me.

Back to the story. I woke up this morning and noticed that he was indeed stargazing, which made me have a mini panic attack of sorts. So I talked to my parents, we found a vet that works with pythons, and set an appointment.. for 4pm today. Turns out the Vet was in St Paul. So I mowed 3/4ths of the lawn, took a shower, packed Zaid up, and set off on a journey. Traffic was bad in places and I spent the entire trip on what looked like an empty tank of gas, but I made it there just in time and without my car dying! The vet checked him out, confirmed that it is a respiratory infection and prescribed a series of antibiotics. His technician came in and showed me how to administer the injections.. yes injections. Turns out snakes have a low success rate with oral antibiotics because they usually break it down in their stomach before they can absorb it. The whole ordeal took 215 bucks out of my pocket, and the vet, although a nice guy, was kind of annoying. I don't like medical specialists that talk like they're talking to a child, even if it's to an animal. Children being the only exception, you can talk to a child like it's a child. I dunno, it's like "why are you talking like that? He's not going to understand you any better then he already doesn't.." Don't get me wrong, I liked the guy, very professional and confident and whatnot, just not that specific detail. Anyways, now I get to pierce my snake with a needle every day until Wednesday and every other day after that until the medication runs out.

I'm just glad Zaid will be ok