Summer is over!!

Well my summer of driving boats in Chicago ended pretty uneventfully, but it was great to get back to Seadog for a couple of months. I flew home from Chicago to NC on a Friday and the very next day Rachel and I packed up the car to drive to Michigan to go see her parents for a week. Once we arrived in Michigan we spent the day hanging out with Rachel's parents. We all left the next day to head to Rock Island, Wisconsin. Rachel and her family have been camping on Rock Island since Rachel was a little girl so I felt lucky to have the chance to participate in such a long-standing tradition. It takes two ferry boats to get to Rock Island, one car ferry to Washington Island and then a person ferry to Rock Island. We camped there for about a week and left right before some big storms hit. Rachel and I drove all the way back to NC to get ready to move to Blacksburg, VA. We got one big break with our move, Rachel's new job had relocation benefits. So for the first time we didn't have do anything but sit back and relax as a moving company came and picked up all of our stuff. We met them a couple days later at our new home in Blacksburg. We have been in our new home for about 3 weeks now and I can finally say that everything is unpacked and cleaned up haha. Sheila has a big fenced in backyard, we have a finished basement for my "man cave" and Sheila's bed, we have a baby room for the little Riddell that's on his/her way and Rachel has the whole garage for her craft projects and gardening. I haven't forgotten about Cloye, she claims a little bit of everything so it's all hers. :) We are already loving Blacksburg and I have a feeling we haven't even scratched the surface on all the great things there are to do. We live right next to this great trail called Huckleberry trail where Rachel and I have been walking with the dogs already a handful of times. I also found out that this trail leads right to campus, so I may be able to ride my bike to class occasionally. Maybe, we'll see. I did buy a new car, well it's new to me. It's a black Jeep Cherokee and I LOVE it!! It's a good thing I bought an SUV because apparently we live in an area where we have to take our own trash to the dump. So vet school orientation starts tomorrow!! Which means that classes start in a week!! Wow I can't believe it's already here. I am a little nervous and definitely excited. This week will be filled with learning what's expected of us as graduate students in a professional program, a day of team building exercises with all of my classmates and we'll probably be given some tips on how to succeed in vet school. I will be taking between 18 and 20 credit hours this semester. The following is a list of all the required courses for the first semester.

Veterinary Anatomy I

Veterinary Physiology I

Medical Biochemistry

Veterinary Histology

Veterinary Immunology

Vet Large Animal Husbandry

Veterinary Ethology

Professional Foundations in Vet Med

And the following are both electives worth one credit each.

Animal Domestication/Genetic Resources

Descriptive Embryology

I enrolled in all of the above classes, and I have at least a week to drop either of the electives should I choose not to take them. That's all from me for now. Wish me luck!!!

Mid-Summer update

It's summertime!! Everything went well in the Czech Republic, Rachel is pregnant!! Click here for details!!! After returning from the Czech we had to wait 2 weeks to take a pregnancy test. This meant that I wouldn't be with Rachel when she took a pregnancy test, so we decided to test a couple of days early. Which was actually the day before I left for Chicago. As excited as I was to find out the good news I hated that I had to leave (my now pregnant wife) for 7 weeks so that I could go work in Chicago and make some money before school starts. For those of you who don't know, I drive speedboats in Chicago during the summer because the pay is good and I can get a lot of overtime. I have been in Chicago now for about 5 weeks. It has been tough not being with Rachel during so much of the first trimester. She did come visit me towards the end of June for a couple of days but it just wasn't long enough. As far as school goes, there aren't any major developments to report except that I decided to get an iPad for school instead of a laptop. I think it will be a better note taking tool for me opposed to a laptop and it saved me some money. Each of my classmates and I were all paired up with a second year student to act as our mentor. I have been in contact with my mentor via email so far, and the advice is already paying off (i.e. which textbooks I don't need to buy). I was supposed to get rabies vaccinated this summer, but I waited too long to start the series of shots and I won't be in one location for the 28 days it takes to complete the shots. Don't worry, the school offers the vaccination to students during the first semester. The only other thing I need to do, which I will hopefully take care of next week is have a TB test and my immunization form filled out by a doctor. That all has to be done by the end of July. I also need to buy some things like coveralls and rubber boots (for large animal work), a white lab coat, scrubs and a surgeon gowns. The only bad thing about the scrubs and surgeon's gowns is that they have to be the same color for the entire class. So we have to vote on it as class, and as a class there are a gross majority of women. So I have a feeling I'm not going to be too excited by the color choice we as a "class" come up with. Oh well, maybe I'll look good in purple haha. I only have about 11 days left in Chicago, and believe me I am READY to get home to my wife and my dogs and to move to Blacksburg!!! I still find it hard to believe that I am actually going to Vet school. The next month is going to be pretty busy so I should have plenty of fun stuff to update you with.

I GOT INTO VET SCHOOL!!!!

WOOHOOO!!!!  So I obviously got into Vet school in Virginia otherwise this blog wouldn't exist.  After completing the grueling task of applying to Vet school, which I will not bore you with the details of, I had to wait 6 months before I heard back from schools.  I applied to Virginia and NC State, and I was asked to come in for an interview at Virginia before I heard anything from NC State.  My interview was scheduled for the Friday before my spring break.  Rachel and I decided to make it a long weekend and go backpacking/camping in the mountains while we were up there.  On a tip from an administrator from the Vet school we went to a trail called Dragon's Tooth.  The 1100 ft increase in elevation over the course of 2.5 miles combined with the fact that we overpacked AND had our 100 lb Great Dane and 3.5 lb Yorkie with us made for a not so fun camping trip.  Oh yeah and it snowed.  So we camped one night to try to make the most of it, but spent the next night in a hotel.  The interview itself went very well.  It was an interesting process called MMI, or Muliple Mini Interviews.  There were 8 rooms with a single interviewer in each room and we were allowed about 6 minutes in each room.  Due to confidentiality I can't go into further details, but I thought it was a great way to conduct the interviews and I really enjoyed the experience.  I probably feel that way b/c I got in :).  We were then told that we would hear from them by email in exactly one week.  After heading home I had planned to spend the rest of my spring break in Miami with my boss/mentor, Dr. Dean, working on his newly purchased fishing boat.  Right before I left for Miami I got a letter from NC State that began with "We regret to inform you...".  So now everything was riding on my interview at Virginia. Exactly one week after the interview I was in Miami and I checked my email on my phone probably 500 times throughout the day, I just couldn't think about anything else.  After a long day working on the water Dr. Dean and I took a ride to South Beach to see the sights and sure enough they held to their word.  At 11:39 pm on Friday exactly on week from the interview I received an email with the subject heading "Offer Letter". If you haven't figured it out by now, I got in.  I was so excited I called my wife and parents and woke them up to tell them the good news.  I thought it was very strange that the school would wait so late in the day to email out acceptance letters.  Dr. Dean said it was to "let you know where you stand from the get go".  I sure hope he was kidding.  Not a lot has happened since then, I've registered for classes and submitted some info online.  The rest of the stuff I have to do is mostly administrative.  I also have to get rabies vaccinated some time this summer.  Rachel and I have already found a place to live in Blacksburg only about 4 miles from campus and very close to a hospital, for Rachel to hopefully work at.  We will be moving there the first week of August.  We leave for the Czech in less than 2 weeks, which you can read about here, and I will be spending most of this summer in Chicago driving the Seadog to earn a little extra money to help with all the costs associated with Vet school.  CAN'T WAIT!!!