Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Week 20 - More Dissections?! RoadTrip Plans and Movies!

I kinda forgot to take photos this week... Saying that I didn't do anything really exciting :P


Monday February 16th

So today is President's Day and we have no classes. YAY! But thanks to the very kind individual that lives in the apartment upstairs, I was woken up at 8.30 am by banging drawers and their extremely loud stomping around their apartment. So I got up and showered and whatnot and then basically sat at my laptop for the majority of the day doing my assignments for this week. I have to read 4 papers this week and summarize three of them. As well as decide on my Ornithology proposal and submit my first part of that assignment this Friday. And for Thursday I also have a 2 page paper for my recreation behaviour class that gets us started on the paper we will be writing throughout the whole semester.
And I actually was really pleased with myself, I got them all done today as well as watching some more Bones so yay!


Tuesday February 17th

It's pancake Tuesday!! Fiona and I had pancakes for breakfast this morning before heading off to our first class at 11am. During the hour and a bit I had off before recreation behaviour, I typed up my Ornithology assignment so that is also out of the way with plenty of time so happy days! This is the most organized I think I have ever actually been :P This evening we had some more pancakes and also the Wildlife Society meeting where we had an Alaskan Biologist talk to us all about his work which features primarily bats.. But still, pretty cool stuff! I really regret not joining the society last semester, everyone is so nice and welcoming.
Then this evening we got to meet Austin, (Sarah's boyfriend) Dad and he wanted to formally invite us up to his house some weekend so we could go shooting and play with their St Bernard's :O How cool!
Pancakes with Cadbury's melted chocolate <3

Supernatural and Pretty Little Liars ended this evening then. And in only FOUR EPISODES we finally get to find out who A is! And I really do hope I'm not disappointed seeing as I've been watching from the start.. No spoilers here don't worry!!


Wednesday February 18th

I'm really getting sick of these 8 am starts.. So we had genetics and evolution. We met up with Siobhan then for our hour off so that was nice to catch up! She had been away all weekend on a field trip at the Rocky Mountain front so that's kinda cool hearing about that! In ornithology today we learned about bird respiration, thankfully I had learned everything in last semesters Vertebrate Design and Evolution class with Bret and Kris. This stuff is a little lighter and doesn't involve too much thank god!
We then had our genetics recitation (lab) from 11-12. We basically just went over last weeks homework and then he answered some of the questions we wanted answering. Got home then after this and had some lunch before FaceTiming Mom for a while.
Gorgeous blue skies here in Missoula <3

Fiona proof read my assignments today during the hour off that we had so I then corrected them and then started to try and research into my rangeland ecology proposal that's due for next Thursday. I'm trying to get it done early because next week I have three exams, weds, thurs and fri. And as well as them, I have genetics homework, my range proposal, rangeland summaries and a recreation behaviour paper to read too. I could spend all weekend at them  but I'd rather spend it studying (how sad). Genetics and recreation behaviour are going to be tough exams..
Friday night Fi and I are going to Big Hero 6 and Mockingjay in the UC theatre and then Saturday night I'm FINALLY going to a Griz basketball game. And it's the very last one too. So even if I have to go by myself, I'm going :P
Had another Facebook study session with Jamie tonight on this weeks birds. They're shorebirds, and I actually feel more confident doing this weeks ones as opposed to the falcons, hawks and eagles for last week. They all looked pretty similar to me :/


Thursday February 19th

8 am ornithology lab today and we had our usual 10 point quiz. The birds for today were owls, swifts and grouse. A lot birds that look very similar. After we did this, we moved onto our bird dissections. Fiona, Jamie, Jesse and I worked on our pigeon. We had to pluck him and expose his muscle. Then once we did this, we essentially ripped our bird apart and looked at the organs and then ripped those out. The conversation went as follows: "Aw look at his heart it's so cute!" *Jamie rips his heart out* "Aw that's his intestines" *Jamie cuts out intestines* ... "What's that jelly stuff?" "Oh that's the crop don't burst that it'll smell really bad!" And no, this time we did not rip the crop out hahaha.
An example of a live rock pigeon that we dissected :D

 Finished off the lab and then had a while off before our rangeland class. Thursdays are dedicated to presentations of the papers that required reading during that week. Recreation behavior was in a computer lab. We were thought about how to properly find sources on the web which I thought was just going to be a run through of all the things we already knew how to do. Nope. This was unreal! The computer lab guy thought us how to use different programs and these programs can actually MAKE our reference list! Which is class! This will literally save hours of tedious work, so as you can imagine, I'm very happy! This will make doing all my future assignments soooo easy! I just hope that the program works when I go back home so my fourth year will be a breeze :D

This evening around 8pm, Kate, Bridget and Aoife called over and we discussed a little trip to Seattle that will be happening in a few weeks time. YAY! Seattle is one of those cities on my bucket list so I'm way too excited to be finally going there!
Desiree called over after this and we booked her spring break tickets YAY! It's way too exciting :D


Friday February 20th

We learned about linkage in genetics today. Which was pretty cool. Complicated, but cool! In ornithology we moved onto talking about feathers in birds. Also quite cool!
Finished up classes at 11am and headed home to have lunch (it's weird having lunch at 11am). Then I went to sleep for an hour. Every Friday I'm always so exhausted I always end up sleeping :P I got up and tried to start my genetics homework and then Dave called over for a while, I haven't seen him in ages so twas nice to catch up.
This evening Fiona, Bridget and I went to the UC theatre because Big Hero 6 and Mockingjay Part 1 were on. For a double feature the price is only $4 which is class! So I also got popcorn and a drink. The whole evening cost me $8 and that included two movies! It's so cool :D
One of the best movies!!

I would seriously recommend EVERYONE watch this! It's hilarious (fa la la la la la la).
 Went to bed once I got home cause tomorrow has to be spent reading scientific papers to get them out of the way for the week ahead.
Today was also the very first family wedding back home and I'm literally so gutted I couldn't go. I was seeing loads of snapchats from all my cousins that were at the wedding which was nice but I really wanted to be there..
So welcome to the family Laura and congratulations to both you and Sean! Even though Laura has been a part of the family for years, it's now official :D


Saturday February 21st

Today was spent doing homework I could start any study.. Reading rangelands papers and summarizing them, reading my parks and recreation paper and also doing genetics homework.. I got all my papers read and summarized. Got my genetics kind of done, finished off my rangeland ecology proposal.. Nothing too exciting :) Fiona, Sarah and I watched Mulan tonight and then I watched two more episodes of Bones S10 before going to bed.



Sunday February 22nd

The first day all week I didn't set an alarm!! I woke up about 10am but stayed in bed until after 12pm. I was searching the internet for a while looking for possibilities of summer jobs in new york that revolved around animals instead of waitressing cause I hate it so much. Found a couple of things but because I'm only in New York for 6 weeks this summer it's hard to find something that would only keep me for that amount of time..
Got my Ornithology lab slideshow all set up and ready to go. This week we have to learn owls, pheasants/grouse, hummingbirds, swifts and other random birds. Yay.
Kate, Siobhan, Fiona and I went to Walmart to do some food shopping and then stopped off at Dairy Queen on our way home, of course! :P
Me playing with the teddies in Walmart.








*UPDATE*

I may change my upload day to Wednesdays depending on whether I bring my laptop to college with me on Tuesdays or not.
Also, anyone got any ideas on what I could do for my 25th blog post? I'm going to be on my 25th post before I know it and I was hoping to do something a little different. Not entirely sure what though.. I'll probably not end up doing anything differently though :P


Nothing all that exciting this week, just the usual! Up the walls with work so far this semester :( But soon enough we'll have a proper road trip to SEATTLE! Thank you again for reading my blog :) Sorry the posting schedules keep changing, I'm trying to get into some kind of a routine going but I end up falling asleep in the afternoon which screws things up a little :P

 Thanks for reading!

- Shannen