Adventures in NC: Part 1

Oh yes.  You read that right:  "Part 1."  As in, "Part 1 of many."  Why so many?  Because it's been about 20 days since my last blog post.  Which means that I must have been busy!  I just got to take a fabulous trip back home to good 'ol NC.  Remember how excited I was to go home?  Well North Cakalacky (is that even how you spell it???? Probably not.  Oh well.) totally lived up to the hype!  I had so much fun, got to see so many people that I love, and got to eat an incredible quantity of delicious southern food (there will be an entire post dedicated to that later.  Caroline, get hyped for a ton of food pictures!).

My trip was broken down into 3 main phases:

1.  Raleigh/Wake Forest time
2.  Beach family time
3.  Tamara and Josh wedding time.

Consequently, there will be three blog posts, mainly with pictures, because let's face it..... y'all don't read what I write on here anyway ;)

However, before leaving for a 10-day vacation, I had a lot to take care of.  I have a small zoo that needs a-watchin', and a house that needs a-tendin' to, and lots of broke college students to help me out.  How do you get broke college students to watch your critters?  Tell them they can have access to your cable, your washer and dryer, and make them a TON of food to eat all week.  This is what my kitchen looked like the day before I left:

Before you judge me, let me explain that before this picture was taken the following was baked/prepared/frozen for student eating: lasagna, corn bread, biscuits, brownie cookie things, 3 chicken casseroles, 2 giant things of mac 'n cheese, a tri-tip (giant and delicious cut of beef for those folks who don't live on the west coast and have never experienced it), a pie, cookies, and pulled pork (seriously.... who wouldn't want to house-sit for me??? ;) ).

So after securing my peace of mine, I boarded a red-eye for the east coast.  I was promptly greeted in the morning with a giant hug from my mom, pops, and Ryan, and then, as any loving family would, we immediately drove to Bojangle's.  Hellooooooooo fillet biscuit combo!  Where have you been all my life???? er.... the past year.....

The next two days were spent in a whirl-wind of friend time!  Got to see my mingos for a lovely dinner in North Hill before they traversed around the wild west

Then I got to have a sleepover with Hales (and let me just say, this girl has the MOST COMFORTABLE bed in the world y'all) and we went to breakfast.  Somehow I didn't get any pictures with her on my camera, but I'm confident someone else did.  I did snap a pic of some deliciousness that was my grits and biscuits tho!

The next day brought visits with more friends in the Forest and R-town and a LOT of catching up, smiles, and laughs about old times

Saturday night brought a whole new class of fun, with a bachelorette party for the bride-to-be and some AWESOME down town adventures!  Because this was a bachelorette party, there are quite a few pictures that I can't let float around the internet machine, but here are a few teasers to prove that a grand time was had by all!  Let's just say that mustaches, a hilarious "find-a-man" card game, firefighters, and an embarrassing song or two were involved ;)

There were so many people that I didn't get to see (it's so hard to fit in everyone you love in a two day time span!), but I know that I'll get you see you all soon!  Next up:  family time!

ttfn,
ap

Food for thought:
Giiiiiiiiiirl....this is our JAM!
This dog is going places

I now work for the Sheik.

I tell ya what folks, anyone who has ever thought that people who teach actually get a summer break is crazy.

These past two weeks at the Cal Poly Equine Center have been absolutely insane.  Like 80 hour work week insane.  No exaggeration, I swear. 

Which makes me all the more excited to TAKE A VACATION.  People, I have never been so excited in my life to go on a vacay (hey, look at me Hales…. I’m abbreviating!).

Where am I going, you ask?

To quote one of my favorite songs, I’m headed down south to the land of the pines, thumbin’ my way into North Caroline J

Why am I going, you ask?

Because one of my very best friends, miss Tamara, is gettin’ hitched to one heck of a guy!  And I haven’t been home in about year, so I am making this my “annual NC trip.” 

Why am I so excited, you ask?

1. I haven’t seen my dad or brothers for almost a year.
2. I haven’t seen my momma for half a year.
3. I get to hang out with some of my besties and catch up with so many people I love.
4. I get to spend a whole week at the beach.  Which means that I can get in the water without a wetsuit.  And go to all my fave places in ATLB and Beaufort.
5. Tamara is getting married and I get to spend all week with her!!!!
6. I get to go see Beamer (my show horse I left behind in the very capable hands of miss Jackie while I am out west).
7. I get to see Dakota (my family dog).
8. I DON’T HAVE TO WORK.

Beamer

Dakota

Beamer

Don’t get me wrong….I sincerely love my job.  A LOT.  I am so blessed to do something that I enjoy so much.  However, the past two weeks have been terribly busy. 

Why am I so busy, you ask? (p.s. I really have no idea why I’m doing the annoying blogger question thing, but I find it semi-quirky, so I shall continue.  Y’all are probably ignoring them anyway)

Because I now work for a sheik.  Two sheiks to be exact.  And a few very wealthy people in Saudi Arabia who are independent filmmakers.  Or are oil tycoons.  Or are drug lords.  I'm not really sure.  All I know is they have a BOATLOAD of money.  And they spend it on horses (see Landon.... I could be worse!)

Let me elaborate.  Here at Cal Poly, we are one of only three places in the entire world who offer a certain kind of embryo transfer technology for horses.  You non-horse people are laughing right now, thinking why in the world would someone do this???  The answer:  money. This is commonly used in valuable horses as a way to make them have multiple foals each year (common in Polo horses and high dollar show horses).  For example, each of the babies we make in these Arabian horses sell for about $250k-$500k at FOUR MONTHS OLD.

*nerd alert*
Y’all, I’m not a repro animal scientist at all.  I really have no interest in it at all.  All of my personal interest is in nutrition.  But let me tell you a little about what Dr. Campos in our lab can do with this stuff and it will blow you away (unless you are not an ag or science person, in which you probably won’t care at all, so keep scrolling down to the next paragraph).  Outside of standard embryo transfer techniques (we inseminate a mare, wait a few days, then flush the embryo out of her uterus and put it in a surrogate mother), we do intra-cystoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI).   Meaning we take out multiple eggs from a horse (can be alive, can be from a mare who died and they sent us her ovaries….yes….this is my job….dead horse ovaries) and one sperm from a stallion (from either fresh or frozen semen, or from the epididymis of a dead or castrated stallion….again…. this is my job…. dead horse repro parts….) and put them together in a lab environment, grow a little two cell embryo, and surgically transfer it into a surrogate mare (by incision in her flank and inject it into her fallopian tube). 

The cool thing is that when that embryo is just TWO CELLS big, we can tell if it will be male or female (in most breeds we work with, females are much more valuable, so we won't transfer the embryo if it is male), if it carries genetic diseases that are common in some horse breeds, and we can make about 7 embryos per oocyte collection.  We can also do sexed semen (meaning we can make a male or female embryo at our discretion) and a whole mess of other crazy stuff.

Ok, nerdy part over.  Time for the cool part.  The horses we work with right now are Arabian horses.  Specifically, super fancy schmancy EXPENSIVE Egyptian bred halter horses owned by the sheik of Qatar and the sheik of Dubai.  We just made a Khemosabi++++// foal (horse people understand that this is a HUGE deal) and have another on the way.  Basically, I have about 60 million dollars in the shape of less than 10 mares in my barn right now, so the pressure is on.  I actually have nightmares about them dying sometimes.  True story.

  

But here is a good chuckle for you to end this story on: the most valuable mare was shipped to us directly from Saudi Arabia.  On the website of her home farm, her description reads (and I quote): “She is our most valued treasure, and her foals are like pink diamonds” (seriously people??!  It’s a freakin’ horse!).  The best part?  Her name is Ass Windi.  

Anyway, that is what has been going on in my life.  Spermies and oocytes.  But I'm going to peace out for now and go enjoy my time with my friends and family!!

-ap

Food for thought:

It's good to love your pets, but this is a little overboard

This goat should be in the olympics, I'm thinking hurdles.

Ryan Lochte. Make your own judgements, but this is how I feel exactly.

Hi, my name is Alaina, and I'm an Olympic-aholic.

I know, I know.... its been almost 3 weeks since my last post.  My sincerest apologies.  Well, actually, that's not totally accurate... I'm not sincerely sorry;  just a little sorry..... because its an OLYMPIC YEAR BABY!!!!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!  USA!!! USA!!! USA!!! USA!!!

Yep.  I'm "that girl."  That girl who is totally and 100% hooked on 99% of the Olympic broadcast (water polo, I could live without it...).  I get so incredibly sucked into the games that its a little ridiculous.  On pacific time, the prime time broadcast starts at 8pm and ends at like 1:30am.  Here is what every evening has been like for me since the Olympics started:

All day:  Ignore all social media and don't even check CNN/NY Times/Wall Street Journal per my norm because I'm scared that I will have a spoiler about who won an event (this is a great time to note that I am completely unaware of anything going on in the world because of this;  my lack of knowledge of current events not surrounding the Olympics is actually quite shocking).

8:00 pm:  Immediately drop whatever I am doing and settle down excitedly to watch the games

8:10 pm:  Catch up on the events I missed during the day via the broadcast and get excited when we beat the Chinese.

8:11 pm - 8:30 pm: Watch an obscure sport that I'm not really interested in (like men's indoor volleyball).

8:30 pm - 1:30 am: Become hopelessly sucked into the games and highly emotionally invested in all events, hold my breath a lot, only pee during commercials when I simply can't hold it any longer, and cry when people are victorious in sports that I don't care about for the other 3.95 years that the Olympics are not going on.

1:30-2:00 am: Try to calm myself down after all the excitement.

2:30 am:  Fall asleep.

5:30 am:  Wake up.  Feel the need to hit the gym super hard because I feel like a lazy American failure who has minimal athletic talent.  Repeat.

Needless to say, the Olympics are bad for my health. Haha.

Anywho, the point of this story is to explain my absence of blog posts.  So here is a quick recap of my life, because the Olympics start in 20 minutes:

My friend Laura's parents came into town and they let me tag along with them on a trip up to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium.  We spent some time on good ol Cannery Row and the aquarium was awesome!!  I LOVE aquariums.  Honestly, I never really cared about them before, but when I was in college I had an internship with the North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores and came to absolutely love them.  The Monterrey Bay Aquarium had some very cool and well designed exhibits, including a really stellar jelly exhibit, more seahorses than I have ever seen in my life, and PENGUINS!!!

Crazy lookin' sea dragon

CHECK this dude out!  Sea dragon.  To the extreme!

Leopard shark in the kelp forest

This says "Please don't flash the octopus".... he he he he

Sand dollars!

Then we took a drive down the world famous 17-mile scenic drive, which had some absolutely BEAUTIFUL coastline.  We saw seals, sea lions, otters, and WHALES!!!!!!!!  FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!  Yall, I have been trying to see a freakin' whale since I moved out here.  I even went whale watching (which was an epic fail due to the raging sea-sickness).  But, FINALLY!  There was a pod of pacific whales just off the coast, so we got to see them spouting and saw some flukes.  It.  Was.  Awesome.

I would tell yall more about my life, but the Olympics are now on, and I have to go.  To be continued :)

Love,
Alaina "I-have-a-problem" Parsons