Self sufficient

my stitches have been removed and I can once again use my right hand/finger....Finally.....life has been good lately beautiful weather means i am starting to get a little tan - without the help of a spring break - so that's pretty cool - work has been the same ol shit different day - I'm looking forward to trips starting up this summer so I can get out and see new places - as always I am starting to get a little stir crazy - still much better than what it was when i was stuck in good ol EC - but just looking to get out and do some cool stuff....Speaking of cool stuff today, as my food supply is running low - i decided I would try my hand at catching my own dinner - as luck would have it I was able to catch two pretty good size trout in the lake we have up here and fried'm up for a pretty damn good meal if i do say so myself - I haven't cleaned a fish in ages so that pretty much consisted of cutting the head off and ripping the meat of the skin with my bare hands, so that was a little awkward, but it worked, so that felt pretty good....Josh flies in on Thursday, so i am looking forward to that - however there may be one hick-up my boss despite knowing that josh was going to be here- signed me and dave up for a bunch of trainings in April and as luck would have it - one of the lifeguard trainings lands on the day that his flight leaves - I'm going to have to tell Mitch tomorrow that I cannot do that training - i'm guessing that is not going to go over too well....ahh well what can ya do...

A week later...

and a week later this is the damage.....first the splint....now i just have some minor blue stretchy wrap and gauze... stitches come out on monday!

it's all in the family

Here is some advice... when splitting wood on a wood splitter....do not try to adjust the wood while it is bring split, lest you end up splitting your finger, passing out, getting eight stitches, a brace, 2 shots of novacaine, 3 x-rays, 16 pills of vicodin, and a nice trip to the ER.....Thank god for workmans comp...

The aftermath

Another 125 dollars and two more bottles of pills later and Boomer is on the mend - They only kept him for a day or so and then sent me home with him with strict instructions to squeeze out the puss from the wound - that was 3 days ago and three days have passed with no puss, swelling, or pain. They put him on two kinds of antibiotics which are supposedly the strongest ones out there, and they seem to be doing the trick.

In the meantime Boomer thinks he is healed and is getting extremely restless and tired of wearing the e-collar and not being able to run free - every time I let him out of the kennel now he is just a ball of energy waiting to burst - understandable but it is frustrating when i have been given instructions to keep him calm. I think I am going to call the vet on Monday and see what they think. I am sure he needs to keep it on til the stitches come off, and I am thinking this coming Friday would be the best bet for that, so that means a few more days of frustration for both him and I.

Infected...

Woke up this morning and Boomer had Puss all over his back leg and dripping from his stitches....great - I took him to the vet and they said that He needed to stay for 2-3 days because if the infection travels up to the abdominal cavity (where they took his teste from) then things could turn ugly real quick. Thankfully I caught it quickly and took him in when i did - his temperature was still normal (apparently with these infections high fevers are extremely common and signal bad news), he still had a good demeanor, i.e, wagging tail, licking faces etc, and he still had his appetite.

I got an update from the vet at around 2pm - apparently they flushed the wound to get the rest of the puss out, gave him a couple strong antibiotics to hit it hard, and were planning on using hot packs tonight to get any excess puss out of there...sounds like he is going to be alright, and may even be able to come home tomorrow.

Thankfully i talked to the doc and he said that they are going to work with me on the price and try to make it so that I don't pay much at all if anything. I assume I will be paying for the antibiotics, but hopefully not much more than that...we'll see though the doc seemed sincere about wanted to not charge me and just wanted to get Boomer back on his feet...

316 dollars later....

I took Boomer into the Vet this friday to get neutered. Normally the surgery and everything should be taken care of by that evening and I should be able to take him home, but that Friday I got a message about 20 minutes after I had gotten back to work stating that "everything was fine but that I should call the vet as soon as possible..." Of course it was Boomers testicle - it still had not dropped and they just wanted to tell me that before they proceeded. Apparently even in undecended testicles they normally can still feel where they are at in the process, but not in Boomers case - they couldn't feel a thing, so they braced me for a 200-300 dollar vet bill that normally should be about 100-150.

I get a call back from the vet around 2:30 that afternoon, once again stating that everything was fine but that they had to go all the way up into the abdomen to find it and that they wanted to keep him overnight for observation...Long story short when all was said and done, I owed 316 dollars and Boomer was walking with quite the sore limp. Now it's 10-14 days before he can run freely, play with Fenway, and jump up and down - then he gets the stitches back and hopefully he will be all better.

So after spending 300+ dollars on Boomer I thought I might as well go all out and spend a bunch more money this weekend, so I went in to CO Springs and met up with Miguel and Ali for lunch and then went to re-up my verizon contract, bought some groceries, and some new Crocs for camp, all in all an expensive weekend, but what are ya gonna do...Oh yeah I think Boomer's stay at the vet (or maybe before hand) may have given him worms(roundworm), i researched up on it and puppies usually have them when they are born, but before i got him he was checked and he was fine, so maybe Fenway has them and he picked it up or one of the other dogs that he has played with in the past - it says online that there are Over the Counter drugs that can take care of it, but i may have to take him to the vet again...

Melt out

Well, as the days go by, it gets warmer and the snow continues to melt. Now it leaves camp a pretty muddy place - I am looking forward to the snow completely melting out and things drying up a bit.

Last week was a very good week - I was chosen to help promote camp in Fort Collins, Greeley, and Boulder. It was great to get out of camp and to get to know the program director Toby a little more. We were able to talk a little bit more about what I thought about my future with camp - and at the time I had told him that I would possibly be interested in committing to the Trips Director Position regardless of what I hear about my graduate assistantship - my thought being that if I got the asisstantship I would be ok with money and not need to get a high paying job, and if I didn't get the assisstantship then I would just stay in Colorado anyway - more on this later.

I was also able to meet up with my good friends Sarah and Nicole from camp in 2004 - I had never really hung out with just them before - it had always been more of a group, but I had a great time and it was good to catch up. I also was able to meet up with Ali - who just moved out hear 2 Saturdays ago and we made plans to meet up over the weekend. On Friday I went to Ali's new place in Denver with Boomer. We were able to go out for drinks a couple of times - one of them to a bar called "Sing Sing" that had two dueling Jazz pianists who would play up to the crowd, make fun of people, and play whatever song you could think of. It was a very energetic place full of people and was actually a lot of fun, despite the fact that we got there a little late and were not able to get a table. I was also able to take boomer to Washington Park that was full of people everywhere walking their dogs. It was great to get Boomer out in an environment like that and to see how he would react. In the beginning he wanted to pull us all over the place, but after about a quarter of the way into it he settled down and walked right next to us.

Now is the time that I am beginning to feel the pressure of deciding what to with my life, but it is very hard because I feel like so much of my life is up in the air right now. As i said above I was and still am definitely interested in becoming the Trips Director here at camp, but that has some serious drawbacks to it - I wouldn't have boomer for 3 months of an important time in his life as far as training goes - I wouldn't get paid much - and if i go to grad school, I wouldn't have much time to find a place before the job ended. Another option is to force the action and say forget about grad school and go straight into the hardcore search for full time employment out here. That is a great option because it would allow me to know what and where I am going and I could put all my energy into that, but it is bad because it then does not allow me to go to grad school, forces me out of the trips job, and forces me to "grow up" another option is to say no to the trips job - move back to Wisconsin find a job to make quick money and then go to grad school regardless of the assistantship. The final option is to do what I have been doing up til now and that is to play the waiting game as far as grad school goes and then make decisions from there - this is the ideal scenario however I fear/know that if i wait that long I am going to miss out on a lot of other opportunities for summer/full time employment (including camp) depending on the outcome of the assistantship.

I think I have made up my mind that I will only go back to Wisconsin if I get my assistantship - so that leaves the decision to whether or not I want to work at camp or not. and that brings up the issue of Boomer which is a difficult one for me - I feel like I should not pawn off responsibility of him despite numerous offers, because I am the one who adopted him and I knew the responsibilities going into it, I also have grown very attached to him and do not want to leave him for three months for that reason, and I also feel like this is an important time for training to happen for him and for him to be brought up behaving how I want him to and responding to my voice/demeanor's.

Lot of choices (as always) the great thing is that I am in the perfect place to sit down, weight my options and make the right choice for me - and as I always say, all of these choices/problems that I speak of are definitely "Good Problems" to have - not a lot of people get the opportunity to have these "problems."