My Niece and Nephews

I just came back from a night at my sister's house in Atlanta. Gabriel and I got to hang out with her and her boyfriend Raffay, as well as my sister's three babies: Delilah, Mr. Nichols, and Cha Cha. While there, I got to dote on them (the animals) since, despite being a vet student, I have no pets of my own. It's a decision that's responsible, but Gabriel and I hate every day that we come home to a kittiless house:(. Anyway, there were people involved in this weekend, but I only came home with pictures of animals (which I am proudly displaying below).
-Shirin

Delilah

Mr. Nichols (snuggling Gabriel)

Cha Cha

The Cool Thing About Vet School

Hello all! I have just emerged from my underground hole since I just finished taking my last exam for a few weeks! YAY! I think they all went well. I got A's in Bacteriology and Biochem, and I'm still waiting on the Anatomy and Histology grades to be returned (I'm not sure I'll do as well on those).
Anyway, the cool thing about vet school is the fact that I can walk outside of my building at any time of day and never know what I'm going to find. I've seen horses, dogs, and llamas in the parking lot, and we even housed "Ralphie the Buffalo," the mascot for Colorado State, when they came here to play us in football.
However, the best so far was last week. On my way to the anatomy lab for my exam, I walked outside of the Large Animal Teaching Hospital and saw....TIGERS!! They were sitting outside in trailers, waiting to be seen by the doctors at our hospital. From the limited info I got, they were from a local sanctuary and one of them needed his/her leg x-rayed. The funniest thing was that there was a big crowd gathered around to look at them and one of my classmates got sprayed in the head by one of the female tigers in heat about 10 feet away from her (ie THE TIGER PEED ON HER HEAD!) Ha ha ha.
Well, they were beautiful creatures, and I think they decided not to do surgery on the injured one, afterall. These photos are from my phone, so they may be a little fuzzy!
-Shirin

We Won!!!

I'm happy to report that we beat the senior vet med girls 7-0. A shut-out game for the freshman girls! YAY!!!
-Shirin

Flag football practice

Let me start off by saying I'm a big fan of women (this is Gabriel, by the way). Most of the nice people I know in the world are women. My best bosses in my life have all been women. I think it's fair to say that I'm by no means sexist. However, watching Shirin's vet school flag football team was one of the funniest things I've seen in a while. They had practice last night in preparation for tonight's inaugural game (it's an intramural flag football tournament). It is an all-girl team. The skill levels and football-familiarity levels ranged quite a bit in the group, but most have very little football knowledge or experience. I've been trying to think of an adequate analogy to describe their practice and the best I can come up with is that it was like watching a bunch of burly men learn how to throw a baby shower. They just don't have the foundation.

The humor comes in mainly because something as fundamental as a running back hand off play must be explained in meticulous detail to the football-uninitiated. Also, a lot of the girls seemed to have the most fun when coming up with names for their plays. They had all just taken an big anatomy test, so there were a lot of "ventral" and "deltoid tuberocity" type suggestions. I can't make fun of them too much because they learned fast and all tried very hard. They picked up quite a bit in the hour I was there. They have a decent quarterback and running back. They also have an extremely talented player at the center position (see picture).

During practice they had me play some on defense because they didn't have enough people. But when I batted down a pass they chided me and said "No girls will be as tall as you are." Talk about ungrateful. :)

I'll be going to their first game tonight and taking some photos and video so I'll be sure to have the results up soon.

-Gabriel

The Big Reveal

Hi. I'm taking a break from a harrowing 5 day studying-frenzy for a Biochem exam this Mon. morning, a Histo quiz Tues., and a huge Anatomy exam on Wed. I'm really just procrastinating...my tired brain be. Ha ha.
Anyway, a few weeks ago, I put a challenge to all of you readers to figure out this histology image with a reward of up to $1.50 (see "A Vet Student's Diatribe" 8/29), but none of you succeeded, sorry to say. So, you are probably dying to know, what was that funny tubular structure with the darkish debris in the lumen? See answer below...

That's right! It's an epididymal duct! (For all you bio majors, it's technically a duct lined by simple columnar epithelium with stereocilia on the apical surface). So, for all you men out there, it's where you make and store your future babies (which are those little purple thingys in the middle!) Can you believe it?
If this is something none of you wanted to see, I apologize. It's what I am steeped in all day and night, now, so it seems like a topic of conversation to me! If nothing else, it was educational.
OK, back to work.
-Shirin

New Rules

Just to let everyone know, I had to change the settings for the way people post comments. Somehow a spammer found his way onto this blog and posted a few advertisements. So I've I changed the settings so that I get to approve the comments before they appear on the blog. This means there will be a short delay between when you post your comments and when they show up. I promise you can still post whatever you want, I won't delete it. :)

The innovation of frat boys

I intended to watch yesterday's game (UGA vs UAB) on television. Much to my surprise, I realized that my cable (which is provided by UGA) wasn't showing the Georgia game on any channel. After getting over the shock, I decided to ride my bike over to the field and see if I could see anything. There is a road on campus that passes just over the edge of the stadium. I peddled over there and found that I could almost see the field but not quite. After a few minutes a girl came up to me and tapped me on the shoulder and asked me if I wanted a free ticket. I racked my brain quickly to figure out what kind of scam this girl was running. I decided it was safe and told the very nice girl that I would love a free ticket. By the way, poor Shirin is stuck in the library studying this whole time, preparing for two upcoming tests. This is what she looks like when she studies:

So, I got into the game to enjoy it from the stadium seats. The section I found myself in was dominated by frat boys and sorority girls. For the most part this was okay because their enthusiasm for the game is unparalleled and infectious. It was slightly annoying that two guys next to me kept almost getting into a fight (mostly just macho posturing fueled by intoxication).

The most incredible thing about it was their innovation in bringing liquor into the stadium. One of the frat guys had an IV-type clear bag taped to his leg. To dispense the liquor in it he would unzip his pants and slide the nozzle out through his zipper hole. The guys wanting their drinks spiked would stand under him and he would "pee" the alcohol into their cups. It was very weird. I couldn't help but marvel at the whole operation. We ended up winning the football game 34-0 (despite the frat boys yelling obscenities and slurs at the refs the entire game).



In other news I went to some more garage sales this weekend because we need another chair for our apartment. I was able to find a nice stool for me to sit on when I work at my SunTrust laptop in the living room. I also picked up the nice flat screen LCD monitor you see in the picture. It was an incredible $10. The monitor is in like new condition. I didn't even try to bargain like I normally do. I'm torn between keeping it (it helps for video editing like I'm doing in the picture) and selling it (buying it at so low a price ensures a hefty profit).

Finally, the members of the game company had a long conference call last night and made some good progress on adding graphics to our Pitz! game. Also, we were brainstorming names to replace New Fangled Gadget (we don't think it has the right feel) and came up with SquareHead Games. No decisions have been made yet, but I think it has the right kind of playful/nerdy feel to it. What do you think? (Casey is going to have a field day with this)

A package from my younger brother

Yesterday I received a package in the mail from Brendan. He told me that he was sending me something but he didn't say what it was. I actually still don't know know why he sent it. I think he just sent it for fun. The contents of the package were:

1: A set of CDs of the BBC radio broadcast of the Foundation trilogy (the Asimov book that Shirin was reading in one of our first blog posts). Note to Bren-No, I haven't already heard this, I'm going to load it up on my ipod and start listening today.

2: A Star Wars Revenge of the Sith watch from McDonalds. Here's a pic of me sporting the watch. My hair doesn't normally look like that, but it really gets Shirin's goat when I mess it up. :)



3: A picture of Brendan playing video games:



In the note Brendan enclosed, he claims to be playing Zelda 3. But, after close examination of this picture, I have to assume that he: (1) Is playing an audio only version, (2) Staged the shot, or (3) has transcended the need to have the screen on while he plays video games. In the note he says he sent me this shot to show Shirin that I'm not the only one playing games (see the "What Gabriel does when I study" blog post). :) Thanks, bro.

Okay, so who saw this last night? If you don't watch it, the latest Survivor divided the cast into teams based on race. The teams are white, black, latino, and asian. Shirin and I watched it last night and it was interesting. I don't know if it will be a big deal or not. I agreed with some of the things the cast members said about how the game can still only be won by one person, so normal survivor tactics will still be in place. I think probably the people will just TALK about race more in this season. You never know though what the producers will do to ratchet up the tension. Anyway, I'm excited to watch this season, it's only the second season I've ever watched in real time (I normally watch the seasons all at once on tape at my uncle Sam's house).

-Gabriel

My newest endeavor

A few friends and I have started a game design company. We just finished the first version of our very first game (ver. 0.1). We've been talking about designing games for quite some time now but recently I got us organized and we actually started working on something. For our first project we decided to do something ridiculously simple. It's a 10 x 10 grid with randomly placed pits. You must maneuver your character through the grid from one corner to the other. If you fall in a pit you lose. The game is named Pitz!. It's not very fun but we love it. We started so simple because we wanted to get the development and coding process down before tackling a more ambitious game.

Now, when I say "I started a game design company" I don't mean to exaggerate. We haven't quit our jobs or anything; we're just doing this in our spare time. Nevertheless, we have good ideas and most of the technical know-how, at least for the kinds of games we'd like to make. We're also planning on distributing some of our games on the internet. Considering where we're starting, our 4th or 5th game will probably be of high enough quality for the public.

We haven't added graphics yet to the game, that's for version 0.2 of Pitz!. When we finish that I'll post the game on the blog so everyone can download it and enjoy it. Well, maybe you won't "enjoy" it, but it does qualify as a game, so you'll get in trouble if you play it at work. Oh, our company is tentatively named New Fangled Gadget. What do you think?

Finally, here is a picture of the first part of the game code. Don't steal it.

-Gabriel

For Your Entertainment

Here are two links to short videos that Gabriel and I really like. One's a cool "dance" of sorts; the other is my future worst patient!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-442776717304453258

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2228796688476060493









-Shirin

Celebrating, Japan Style

Hey! Lest my last post seemed too negative, I just wanted to post something good from last Thurs. night. Gabriel and I took my cousin Tannaz and her husband Masih out for dinner (paid for by SunTrust--Gabriel's employer) since they recently became potential customers of Gabriel's and are possibly getting a loan for their house through him. Anyway, we had a great time and invited my sister along just for fun! We ate soup, sushi, spring rolls, and even had a little round of sake shots. Those were pretty gross! Just something good to follow my last post:)
-Shirin