Padeaux Died Today

For those who didn’t know, Padeaux has been fighting a losing battle with cancer for the past year, with weight loss more obvious over the past six months. I had expected him to last until August or December, but unfortunately that was not possible.

I had assumed due to several of his symptoms, that he had either a less aggressive lymphoma or a tumor that had started in the cranial mediastinal region, closer to the thoracic inlet because he was ataxic in his front left and had been suffering form incontinence. I had theorized that an enlarged mediastinal lymph node could press both on the brachial plexus causing the ataxia and the vagosympathetic trunk possibly causing the incontinence as the vagus innervates the gut.

Radiographs taken two weeks ago revealed that there was an osteoscarcoma originating on the left humoral head and traveling proximally. This had metastasized to form several mets in his lungs, with an especially large one in the caudal lobe. Two others were in the cranial mediastinal region and could possibly be causing some of his symptoms, but could not be determined with the radiograph. Padeaux also had several other mets in his abdomen that were able to be palpated but did not show up on the radiograph.

The hardest part was the unexpected and sudden decline in his weight, which meant the end was near. He went from 130lbs last June (his last rabies) to 120lbs in Jan to 115 when I left to 90.6 lbs 2 weeks ago. Not quite ready to let him go, especially since he always seemed perky on webcam, he was on 2 meds to ease his pain and then an additional appetite stimulant. This worked very well for a while, but nothing lasts forever. Padeaux is buried under the big tree next to the duck pen in the back yard.

Everyone knew Padeaux, especially strangers! He kept people away from the house by jumping up on the glass next to my front door and looking quite scary. He almost ate the idiot that tried to break into my house, but he was gentle enough to take care of the baby ducks, kittens, or the miscellaneous lamb I brought home. He even ate treats daintily off a fork. I have a great picture of my nephew trying to ride Padeaux like a horse! He was always excited when I talked to him on the phone in Jan/Feb or webcam in May/June, which was how we were able to entice him to eat as Arnie hand fed him cooked chicken. I think he hung on so long because he expected me to come back, but flights jumped to $950 even if I missed 2 days of school.

At 10 years, he was an old Rottweiler and we were lucky he didn’t also suffer from hip dysplasia. Padeaux was an excellent example of his breed and was definitely a wonderful companion over the years. I know many of you that knew him as 'the sleepy old bear' that he was, will miss him as much as I do.

The marks of another month

Walking to campus today I saw the familiar signs of another month passing: the barge from Japan bringing new cars! Some novelties of St. Kitts have started to wear off, but others still remain a fascination. It's poured the past few days, but only when I'm in class. I'm not talking little showers, I'm talking hurricane or tropical storm winds, darkened sky, thunder claps. What's so striking is that before and after class during these, the sky is crisp, clean, and shows no sign of storm. Amazing weather.

The past two Fridays we've been forced to participated in so called 'leadership exercises.' Here were some of our challenges:

What if your space ship crashed on a new planet. The surface of the planet is covered in a liquidy substance that makes you automatically sink if you touch it. Our space ship is over on a rock not sinking, while we are on a pair of 4x4 posts 8 feet long that miraculously won't sink. Our task is to make it the 20 feet back to our space ship with out falling off the posts thereby sinking into oblivion.

How much do you trust someone? Your sight is gone (completely blindfolded) and you must navigate a maze with a partner by only asking yes or no questions. I liked this one; girls and vets communicate well.

We have a magical floating PVC stick (it really floated) and we must lower it to the ground. We can only touch it with the dorsal surface of our pointer fingers and have to start over if we lose contact with the stick. It's a game of mind over matter. (It floated because we kept lifting our hands to keep it from rolling off and there were 10 of us.)

Blow up a balloon as large as you can make it. Get in a line with this balloon separating each person. We had to navigate a course without dropping our balloon or touching each other our our balloon. There was a lot of push and pull as we squished together.

In other news, the Chicken Lady's (Valarie) nephew's (Bobby) cousin's (house directly behind me in shanty town with the barking dog) friend (Greggory) is the caretaker of the horses. My grey was loose Monday, so my neighbors knocked on my door (because he's really my horse right?). I went down and caught him and was petting him. While I was trying to figure out where to put him while I went to find someone legitimately responsible for him, Greggory ran up. We talked for a while and he told me all about the horses. My pony's name is 'Imperial 2' (but I can call him Jake still) after his father 'Imperial' and 'Imperial Stables.' I asked how he got the scars on his back leg. He told me that a Rasta got mad at the owner or horses or something and took a machete to them! Jake's dam (mother) and his sister's (Mona Lisa) foal was killed during this and the guy went to jail! This was about 3-4 years ago when Jake was a yearling. Jake's father died by jumping a fence into oncoming traffic. Very sad.

Anyway, Greggory let me hop on and ride Jake (halter and lead rope). He said I could come on the tourist rain forest tour for free sometime because the horse 'seemed to like me so much.' Jake is so funny, he stretches his neck out to lick the sugar out of my hands and whinnies now when he sees me (because he knows I give him treats). He doesn't like carrots or pepermints (like Zaldi) but does like mangos and watermellon rine.

A Small Scam Concocted at the On-Campus Beach!

The number one reason to come to Ross over a state school has got to be the on-campus beach. I’ve started bringing my bikini to campus. Change and head down the path cut in the mountain toward the gazebo next to the surf. How cool is that!? Most parts are full of river rocks, which is strange because it’s the ocean. Each one is a perfect pumice stone ranging from rough to fine. Three currently reside in my shower to alleviate the newly formed calluses on my black-bottomed feet. I thought about selling the stones on ebay as ‘all natural’ or ‘organic’ pumice stones, lol, the things idiots buy. I figured I’d get arrested and sent to prison for 3 years like the guy that broke in next door when we registered for classes.

The other BEST part of the beach thing, though, is the BLACK SAND!!! It doesn’t look real. It just sparkles and like black diamonds… or stars in the night’s sky. It’s truly incredible. I scooped up a whole bunch and brought it back to my apt. I will be sending that to the states so if you want some, make sure I have your mailing address!!! There are an exurbanite amount of conch shells, which I have also labourously hauled up the mountain cut path, up the mountain that is campus, down the narrow highway back to my house, and all the way up the stairs to my 3rd story apt. Sufficed to say, I will not be mailing out those heavy things.

The past two weeks my life has been relatively dedicated to exams, but I have concocted at least one scam that my parents will surely dread. I will share!!!

The first of which begins as such: I was walking to school one day and out of the corner of my eye I saw something in the bushes move. I stopped and was looking when I saw a pair of horses tethered to a tree. One brown and one a dapply-apply grey. I kept walkimg. Running late for school (my definition of being late is not getting there an hour before my first class). So a week goes by and no horse. Sunday was so hot and I just could not study at the apt. (This is where his owners screwed up) I’m walking to campus, and at the corner of my street, I see him. The grey was tangled up in his rope, so I started to untangle him. He’s such a love bug and very smart. He went under the rope when I lifted it and over the rope when I lowered it. Then he nickered at me and followed me as I left until his rope would let him follow no more. Thus develops my crush. Monday as I headed to campus I brought peppermints, because Zaldi (the love of my life)loves peppermints. He recognized me but didn’t eat the peppermints so I was crushed. That afternoon I brought him mangos from the world's best mango tree, but he was gone!

I looked and looked but the grey was no where to be found. I started walking down the street, further and further. The other students watched me, horrified, as a disappeared into a field with grass that exceeded the tree’s height be at least two feet. I heard noise and went that direction only to be disappointed be a rather friendly bay. I gave him one of my three mangos. I heard another sound and ventured deeper into the brush to find a one-eyed horse. He too got a mango, which made me start to panic fore I only had one mango left. I kept walking then saw the grey. He stood up straight and nickered to me. As I fed him my last mango I noticed there must have been 5 other horses tethered about. Soon I started to feel guilty for not bring more mangos, especially since the horses seemed to like them so much and even knew to spit out the giant oval seed.

My scam is thus: find the owner and convince him to let me feed the grey (whom I named Jake) treats, groom him, bathe him on weekends, get him a nose thing so the halter doesn’t cut into his nose as much, vet wrap him if he gets hurt, and let me ride him on occasion. He’s a rainforest pony, so they guy that owns this sting of horses charges tourists $50-75US to ride per day. I miss my ponies back home so much I think I’m going thru pony withdrawal… or pet withdrawal. This not having pets thing is so weird; it just doesn’t feel right.

What major historical event happened in July 1969?

Star Trek Version: Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the star ship Enterprise. It's continuing mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before! (gosh I loved Star Trek!)

My NASA Version: Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the space shuttle Atlantis. It's continuing mission to explore strange space stations, to seek out aliens and repair satellites, to boldly go 215 miles into space!

For entertainment (since I don't believe I'll ever have cable) I've been watching NASA TV!!! (You will still have to click the “Launch NASA TV Viewer” button.) Parts have been very interesting. The mission specialist on the Atlantis is Patrick Forrester who spoke at A&M’s Dec 2006 graduation. The Atlantis flew into the air Friday afternoon, but I missed it flying over head. Saturday you could see it slowly zooming around the Earth. Sunday it seems that the poor astronauts ran out of sippy straws for their hi-tech juice boxes, so the NASA guys were like “check in this compartment, and if it's not there, it might be in this other compartment,” so in other words, they had no clue. Also Sunday, the space ship attached to the International space station (apparently different from MIR)... and there's a Russian sounding guy that lives in it! The space station is 214 miles up... if I understood them right (which is good cuz wiki gave them a range between 199-215 miles up). That doesn't seem too far; it's 3 hrs by car from College Station to Dallas in 200 miles.

Today, they've been grappling with a thermal blanket required for safe re-entry to Earth. I thought to myself, why on Earth (or space) were they outside the space ship?! While looking up the latest gossip on hedonistic Paris Hilton’s jail status, I ran across a little article about their current troubles in space and the first of three 6.5 hr space walks they were undertaking. I think that’s why I wouldn’t want to go into space—“troubles” and being outside the craft. That, and there’s a perfectly good Earth right where I’m at. I don’t even think I’d go if it were free, and we all know how economically prudent I can be! Sure is neat to watch though. I only wish that our taxes could be diverted from welfare to NASA and other science fields (like Vet Med).

To answer the question: What major historical event happened in July 1969? Man walked on the moon. So important, yet surprisingly often forgotten. Now back to studying...

The Return of the Passport

I have my passport back! I'm now able to flee this country if I want to. (ie I can ISLAND HOP!!!) Unfortunately my limited financial resources and moral guide prohibit me from doing so. For those of you who didn't know, Ross collected our passports and $100US when we arrived to keep us from escaping! So, it's so cool, I'm OFFICALLY an 'international student.' That seems so wierd. I have a real 'student visa' just like... all my international friends back home must have. I still feel like I'm in the states though... just in a friendlier, more tropical version with cheap boo's and conch soup.

So that's the good part of my day; the bad part was I missed 5 questions (of 40) on my Nutrition test. I'm so pissed, I want the key. I so did not just make a B. Rumors circulating says that he posted the key and it says that one of the Q's pertaining to Vit A is 'green & yellow' and I put 'green & orange' because beta-carotine is found in alfalfa and carrots. (Other choices were 'green & red' and 'red & yellow.') B-carotine / 2 => retinol ~ Vit A. What's worse is that he specifically said "green to yellow-orange" and gave us examples of each: green= clover/alfalfa, yellow= fat/flowers, orange= carrots, red= tomatoes. So what does that mean?! Carotenoids are found in almost everything and can even be blue. I could just be going nuts due to rumors, and didn't miss the Q.

I have a WEB-CAM too. It's only take me a week or two to figure it out, but it works. It so reminds me of Star Trek when they could see each other and talk at the same time. It's so much better that a telephone!!!

Arnie's otters are hiding this week too. Due to the construction (the habitat destruction) in College Station with new roads, a new center, and a new golf course going in, the neighborhood otters moved into my pond. How cool!? Arnie said it looked like a big one and a little one… but HUGE. The small one is probably ~35 lbs and the big one twice that. I haven't seen the male otter in a while, but he was a monster and bigger than my 80 lb dog! This is not normal for an American River Otter (20-30 lbs), but they are not beavers, badgers, coyotes, wolves, dogs, cats, bears, nutria, hares, Mexican jaguars, bobcat, ocelot, raccoons, chupracabra, or what ever else in North America I can think of. There were beavers at one point several years ago, that ate 4 trees then moved to a better pond. Wish I had picts, but at least now I have several eyewitnesses (which means I'm not crazy).

Raining Mangos

Outside our cafeteria is a huge mango tree. It's had green mangos on it for the past month or two with a few becoming ripe at a time. Now it still looks the same with the green mangos on the tree, but every morning the tables, benches, and cement of the exterior cafeteria eating area is pelted with bright yellow mangos like it magically rained red and yellow.

The tangy aroma of mango flavoring permeates the air so that half the school smells of mango. There are enough mangos that every student and staff can take handfuls home every day. Some students have taken to feeding the island tortoises, who happen to love mangos.

For me, I intend to take my clutch of mangos home and either make some type of ethanol added slurry drink or eat them cooked or raw with a meal of chicken. I have not decided as of yet.

Ate some mangos... WOW. These are THE best mangos I've ever had in my life! I had 3 last night and 4 this morning. Let's hope they don't bring the funky jungle rash back.