What are your career goals for life?

Who knew that filling out a million and a half applications could lead to increased self-awareness? Forced to answer, I kinda dug up some reasonably focused ambition.

"I would like to work in sustainable agriculture in some capacity and hope to contribute to the pool of ideas that will bring us into a better relationship with our planet. I would like to spread my passion for healthy and ethical consumption to others and help to change the materialistic and damaging patterns of our culture. With farming and ranching I would like to find ways to make sustainable and humane production profitable, especially concerning animal welfare."

Cuddly Noodle

What the Hell?

First, I found this button in my breakfast cereal. I guess now I know what the "Plus" is in Fiber Plus!

And then I was looking for jobs in the Boulder Pet Directory and came across this ad (three times).

Thanks, but no thanks?

Magical Moleculars

I had a mad crazy last week. I had a job interview at a natural vet clinic in the mountains, got the job, and started at 7 the next day. I was really excited because it seemed like I was going to learn a lot and get quite a bit of responsibility as well (doing dentals, helping in surgery, etc). Also the lady who hired me told me she thought I was a "beautiful person" and was so excited to work with me, which was such a delightful contrast from my last piece of shit, condescending, completely incompetent boss. yippee i thought.

So I come in at 6:30 after my hour commute, bright and happy, well-caffeinated and energetic. I jumped in to help with the morning cleaning, and this is when I began to have misgivings. For starters, the place has four resident cats, one of which is severely handicapped - admittedly a very nice gesture of animal rescuing. On the other hand, four cats in a high stress and very busy clinic is a rather unsanitary scheme, involving, it turns out, a minimum of four kitty craps and three vomit piles distributed outside the litter boxes and around the clinic on a daily basis. I originally assumed the early morning fecal odor permeating the clinic was a unique occurrence, perhaps involving an ill patient, but was informed by a unfazed staff member that this charming smell was characteristic of the morning routine. Ack.

Furthermore, the place is covered in carpet. An animal HOSPITAL. CARPET. BAD. The carpet is vacuumed every morning. Which of course makes it sterile. Luckily the carpet is a nice dark color with a mottled pattern, so the many layers of blood, vomit, diarrhea, and death stains become indistinguishable from the brownish/greenish glory of the carpet itself.

Sinks. At least one in every exam room - that's gotta be in a health code somewhere, am I right? Aspen Park Vet Hospital has one sink. Three exam rooms, a surgery, two labs, a pharmacy, the lobby, and an office. One sink. It's small, it's skanky, and it has no surrounding counter space. Fill your cup-o-soup? Clean the blood off your rib spreader? Scrub out the ghiardia kitten's litter box? Uno. Seems inconvenient if nothing else, which perhaps explains why the vet and his staff never wash hands between patients, or ever for that matter (no gloves to be found either). To be fair, there is another sink in one of the bathrooms (the other bathroom is a toilet in the laundry closet, and with all that clean laundry around who needs a sink anyway?). Holy Jesus, thought I.

More later, I must go apply for a new job!!!

A New Hope

After Hope's sudden death, Darrel bore his grief with great resiliency and accepted Judy into his nest and, it seems, into his heart as well. She has become quite pretty in her larger and lower stress environment, has grown all her feathers back, and has even laid two eggs in her beautifully engineered double-decker nest.