How to Save a Life

This is Argus.

Argus is a 16 year old Thoroughbred who spent all of his life in a tiny pen, until December of 2007, when he was rescued.

Now Argus is living in horse paradise, at Watermark Farm.

His story is located here, and it is heartrending.

I wanted to post this today so that those of you who followed me here from the old blog could read about Argus and think about a few things...

Think about your own pets, and think about the times that you could have done something but didn't.

Argus's story so far is amazing. He is an incredibly intelligent, perceptive being, and he deserves a forever home where he will be cherished.

Excitement!

I met with my Faculty Mentor today regarding my research.... It looks like things are finally almost ready to get started! I met the graduate student who is going to teach me to run the development assay that I'll be doing this semester, and it looks like my field component is being arranged. My first task in that respect is to do a search and find out which types of anurans live in the Bosque watershed. I already know that Woodhouse's Toads (Bufo woodhousei) are native, as I had a colony of them living under my house last spring when we got over 30" of rain in a month. Other than that, I'll have to go and look them up.

These are the guys I'll be working with, African Clawed Frogs (Xenopus spp.). I've always thought they were super neat -- especially the albino ones. I'm hoping to be able to get a couple to keep at home, just so i can watch them and learn more about them besides how toxicants affect their development.

I also found out that I'll be presenting my research at a huge national conference in november. I'm especially excited about this, because my mentor says that there are always people there who work with invasive species, so it will be a great place for me to make contacts for my graduate work.

I'm really excited about all of this. My mentor also said that he figures I can get at least two papers out of this research, which is wonderful. I'm hoping everything goes as planned so that I am able to get as much out of my research as possible.

An Update

Hi.

You're probably wondering where I've been for the last several months. (And even if you're not, i'm going to tell you anyway, so shut up and listen! *wink*)


Last semester was horrible for me as far as business.... I was in school and/or working all the time -- Yes, i COULD have blogged from the work computer, but unfortunately i'm a tutor, and they expect me to ...well... WORK when I'm at work -- Who Knew?? (we're not really busy until the second half of the semester, but then we're SLAMMED) Then I found out that I was the recipient of a humungous major scholarship which will allow me do to intensive undergraduate research in preparation for a PhD program, so all the signing up and paperwork from that took up a lot of my time. And keep in mind that during all of this, I had no internet at home, so I couldn't do any computer stuff away from school. And then it was finals, and then christmas break, and now it's the beginning of the semester, and so I am going to make yet another attempt at keeping a consistent blog.

THEN ... i had to get a new computer. And we finally have super fast home internet (thank you, Verizon!!) Which is a good thing -- a VERY good thing, since I finally got my mac! So here I am, back and blogging, at least for the moment. I will attempt to think of pithy and witty things to say, but I can't guarantee that I will be even marginally successful at this venture.

So hopefully Apoptosis will work a bit better now. I missed my blog!

New Blog Home

Hello and welcome to the new home of my blog! Some of you have probably been reading me since I was on livejournal, or when I was hosted at a friend's domain. You may have even followed me here from MySpace, which is greatly appreciated.

The blog itself won't change that much, I promise, but I will definitely attempt to keep it updated more often. This may or may not happen, but I will do my best.

I will continue with the "Your Monday Reptile" and "Your Biology Definition of the Week" segments as I am able, as well as posting the random content which you have come to know and love. :)

I also intend to post about my other weird hobbies, my research, etc.

Hopefully I haven't bored you all to death and nobody has followed me here to blogspot....

More Later!
J