Naked puppy!

I went out and bought a new harness for Mia today.  She had been using an extra-small size, but it seemed awfully tight under her front legs, even at its largest.  So I picked up a small... and it looked huge!  But it seems to work well, so I guess she's bigger than I thought.

I decided that it was kind of goofy to have her wearing a collar and a harness, especially since her collar doesn't have any tags on it, so I took the collar off.  She wore the harness around the house all evening, so it was easy to take her outside as necessary.  It's bedtime now, so I took it off, and I've got a naked puppy running around!  It's so strange to see her without any sort of collar on... I'm considering putting it back on, just so she doesn't look so bare.  I'd hate to feel the need to knit her a sweater!  And I'm sure she'd hate to wear one!

Cinco de Mayo

**Notice:  This story is based on true events.  Names have been changed to disguise the stupid.

Ella sighed as silently as she could, watching the doctor at work.  It had already been a long day of surgery, but now she was being forced to listen to the man drone on and on about nothing in particular.  Dr. Morris was certainly a skilled surgeon - his patients always left looking better than when they had arrived - but he was a particularly boring man.

Today's stories seemed to center on birthdays for some reason.  Dr. Morris had recounted the tale of his son's first birthday... again.  The boy had been given a ridiculously over-priced cake in the shape of a race car, and, like all one-year-olds, had dived in with both hands, covering himself in cake.  If Ella hadn't seen several dozen other children do exactly the same thing, she might have been mildly amused by the story.  Of course, it didn't help that the adorable one-year-old in the story was now a surly, foul-mouthed sixteen-year-old who seemed to think that the world revolved around him because his father was a surgeon.

"When's your birthday again, Ella?" Dr. Morris asked as he began the painstaking work of sewing up the incision beneath the patient's left breast.

"May fifth," Ella said, reaching over to blot the blood that oozed from the incision.  "Yesterday."

"Ah!  On Cinco de Mayo!  That must have been fun.  Say, is Cinco de Mayo always on May fifth?" he asked.

Ella blinked.  Was he serious?  "Yes."

"You must have great birthday celebrations!  Say, did I ever tell you about Roger's fifth birthday?"

As the doctor began to recount another story, Ella stared at him.  Did he really just ask that question? she wondered.  That was like asking if the Fourth of July always fell on July fourth...  For a brilliant man, Dr. Morris could be awfully stupid.

It's not Monday?

Because it sure felt like a Monday...

Today sucked.  On multiple levels.  A friend was in a wreck on the way to work, but seems to be fine, thankfully.  Work was, well, work, but much delayed because of that wreck - a lot of our coworkers come from the same direction, and all got stuck.

However, today is almost done.

I am off to write a bit more - on Friday, I'm meeting with my beta-readers for lunch to get their comments on the first act of my play, and I really want to have the second act done to give to them.  If the blogs suck for the rest of the week, it's because I'm concentrating my efforts elsewhere.  Hope you don't mind!

I'm certified!

NOT certifiable... there is a difference!

Today I passed my exam, and I am now a Certified Ophthalmic Assistant.  So what does that mean?  Well, it means I get an extra letter on my name tag - COA instead of OA after my name.  Um... it means I still do the same thing that I did last week... and it means that in a year, I can take the Certified Ophthalmic Technician exam... which will give me COT after my name instead of COA.

Okay, so it doesn't have a big impact on my day-to-day job.  But it should get me a little raise, which would be nice!

And better yet, I'm done studying, so I can do more writing!  Well, when I'm not at the theatre. 

Yawn, stretch, blargh

I wanted to do more with my day.  I had great intentions.  

Instead, I watched TV with some friends, then spent the evening trying to study for tomorrow's COA exam.  It's really hard to study for something that doesn't really interest you at all.  But the office pays for it, and I should (theoretically) get a raise once I'm certified.  So I did a whole book of practice tests, and I scored between 69 and 91%, without actually studying... so tomorrow morning, before the test, I'm going to review instrument maintenance, Schiotz tonometry, and how to examine kids... and I should be okay.

I think.

We'll see.

At least the main floor of my apartment is clean!

Look what I made!

It's a birthday cake for Shane!

I don't really understand the frog thing...  I had froggy wrapping paper, and then I found these froggy dohickies to stick on the card that I made for him, so it seemed right that his cake should have a frog, too.

Another night of neglect

I ended up staying up until midnight last night, writing.  I managed to write 8 pages!  I'm pretty impressed with myself.  And I'm still in that frame of mind, so I'll be writing more tonight!  At this rate, I should have at least one first draft done by the end of next week!  (I'm taking into account that I'm losing some time this weekend to study for an exam on Monday.)

Go writing!

And again, go visit my friends if you're looking for something to read!