My life, it can haz bullet points?

[calime]

Oh hai, it's, um, been rather a long time, isn't it? I've been meaning to post (and I've even had some kind of ... fleeting ficc-y urges), but it seems as if I'm always away, working, or too tired. Or all three.


So, in the name of a) brevity and b) learning new stuff, I looked up the html for bulleted lists and present you my last couple of months in a list form. The highlights (which might or might not be expanded upon at some later date, depending on the availability of spoons. And beer.) include (in no particular order):

• A week-long trip to Italy, which included the SCIVAC conference in Rimini, a trip to Venice, a swim in the Adriatic sea, a rather satisfying amount of cheap red wine and A LOT of trains. Also, it was hot. Even when it rained.


• A four-day trip to Finland, to the summer days of the Finnish Bullterrier Club - with Nublu being the winning male in champion class, best male 2 overall and the best coloured male, Nosu being very pretty and starting her heat the first day we got there and Vants being brave above and beyond the call of duty and friendship (including driving for 2 x 550 km's, most of it abroad, while saying things like *I promised myself I'd never drive a car in Helsinki!* and *We'll go again next year, right?*).


• Going to the pretty fancy-schmancy new cinema in town (the building of which has resulted in the ticket prices being lowered to a reasonable level again), to see Star Trek:Reboot, and lately, Transformers. I might post about my reactions later. I might even rewatch ST. And I think I'm going to start going to the movies again (I had maybe a 2-year break, since dresta11 moved away to her island farm, and the ticket prices got freakier).


• Participating heavily in a citizen initiative *Preventing duck infanticide* a.k.a. trying to convince the momma duck that while hatching the ducklings in the city centre might be a good idea, evolutionarily (I doubt many predators dare to risk the place), it is pretty much negated by the attempt to lead them to the river by walking on the busy road. We tried bribery (food) and terror (shooing), but ultimately the duck got fed up with both and decided to alternate between ignoring us and attacking our legs, so we ended up scooping the whole lot up (thank you, duck, for having to wash your shit off my leather jacket's lining later in the cinema toilet, no really. I have already learned something of the life lessons - I turned the jacket inside out. My last leather jacket had to be retired after I forgot to take it off before trying to get a weak foal to suck. Colostrum and nubuk don't go well together.) and depositing them by the river bank. Ducks - still not the overwhelmingly brightest of the species.


• Starting to work for the local animal shelter, in addition to the clinic hours. Luckily, we share the duties with J., my employee and the clinic owner. I will very probably be posting some stuff about the shelter work in the future, but I promise to lj-cut for those who have no interest or are squicked or ... Shelter work is ... complicated. I strongly feel it is something that needs doing (and the people working there have been my good friends for a long time, and the last vets were my coursemates and...), yet, in this time and place, shelter work means 'a good day is when you don't have to euthanise anyone'. I don't expect to be able to do it for very long, maybe a couple of years max, but *shrugs* someone's gotta do it, and right now I just might have the strength to spend, so...


• Stomach flu. The less said about it, the better.


• Work, possibly partly insane amounts of. Clinic work, translation work (some of which has deadlines approaching on the sneaky speed of light, I swear) - for the amount of it, one'd think there'd be more money, right? Urk. And of course the volunteer stuff, like the freakishly huge backlog of unanswered 'ask a veterinarian' questions on a local doggy website. I swear, every time I think I've seen it all, someone tops the all-time-stoopidest-question again. I mean, a lot of these are very reasonable questions, but there are some that ... stand out. In a way that makes one want to troutslap them.

Anyway, I have two days off - it's jaanilaupäev (St. John's Eve), which is also the Victory Day here, and while I'm not planning to going to any fire-making (except perhaps the one in our own yard), I've managed to clean the flat (it no longer looks like a particluarly bloody dustbunny war zone), do a load of laundry and am relaxing with a red beer for company. I also wish a (belated) happy Solstice and the beginning of summer (or winter, if you're antipodeanly inclined) to my f-list/circle - may your luck be with you, and things go rather well than not, and stuff, like, you know *gg*?

Comments

[mackiedockie]

I think troutslap is my new favorite word. Would that be a rainbow, a brookie, or a brown trout?

Is it proper to wish a merry fire-making? It sounds like a proper holiday, unlike "Throwing Giant Flammable Explosives into the Sky during a Drought Day" around here.

I admire your hard work at the shelter above and beyond the clinic work. Hard work, and hard choices--I hope you pace yourself.

If you have any pointers for me to pass on to the local ducks, I will. The Canadian Geese seem to suffer from traffic blindness, too.