Hermann

Ron and I just got back from a fun-filled weekend with friends in Hermann, MO. It's a small historic German town on the river.  Our friends Bryan & Sue are from there, so we go every year and tour the wineries.  It was loads of fun, with WAYYYYY too much wine!

This year we went to three different wineries, and a brewery.

The first winery we went to is my favorite, Adam Puchta.

http://www.adampuchtawine.com/

It's one of the smaller wineries, but I love their wine!! Their tastings are the best as well, in my opinion. They take more time to explain the different wines to you, and give you things like chocolate and wafers to eat with each wine.  The guy serving us was actually an old friend of Bryan's from grade school, so that was fun. In case anyone is interested, our favorite wines from there are:

Adam's Choice- A semi-sweet white, similar to a reisling

Vignoles- Another semi-sweet white. Lots of wineries in Hermann have this type, but Puchta's always seems to be the best!

Hunter's Red- A semi-dry red, this is our FAVORITE! Ron loves this one. 

Dry Rose- (it's supposed to be rose-ay, but I don't have one of those fancy asterick marker things on here!).  It's a unique rose, because it's dry, not sweet. One of my favorites!

After emptying our wallets there....we proceeded on to the next winery, probably Missouri's most famous winery, Stone Hill. 

http://www.stonehillwinery.com/

This one is a lot more commercialized, and they  have decent wine as well. 

We took a few pictures here just because there's some pretty scenery.

Here's a few of our favorite wines from here:

Chambourcin- Semi-dry red, one of our favorites! 

Steinberg Red- a red and white wine mix, very tasty!

Golden Rhine- a semi-sweet White, sad thing is, we bought one of these and opened it on Saturday and I don't even really remember drinking it!

The last winery we visited was Hermannhoff winery. It's located right downtown on the main strip. I like this one a lot, but we got there close to closing time and all of the servers were a bit frazzled about a wedding reception happening that evening, so our tasting was not as informativeas usual. Oh well, at least we still got to taste!

http://www.hermannhof.com/

Here's a few of our favorites from here:

White Lady- a semi-dry white. I love this one! We can actually get this one at a lot of grocery and liquor stores in Missouri. Usually Stone Hill wines are the only ones you find regularly, so we drink this one fairly often at home.

Chambourcin- I can't decide if I like this one, or Stone Hill's better. They're both quite tasty!

Vidal Blanc- Dry white, similar to a Pinot Grigio. 

Then we finally made a stop at Hermann's Brewery, Tin Mill. 

http://www.tinmillbrewing.com/

My favorite beer there was the Seasonal, Oktoberfest. Ron really liked their Doppelbock, a dark beer (pictured below in the growler in Ron's hands). It was good too, all the boys seemed to really like that (exept Bryan, who hates beer, so that was no surprise!). 

After leaving the brewery, we all went back to Sue's parents house and made brats on the grill. We traditionally all donate one bottle of wine to the "pot", and just start drinking.  The nice thing is we all crash there, so no one has to drive. It always ends up being a crazy night.  We definitely played drunken Mouse Trap, and drunken Wiffleball, always a fun time. There are some  much more incriminating photos from later that night, but I will spare you all. =)

The rest of the evening was pretty uneventful for me, besides getting attacked by a rose bush (which was actually more like a rose twig....very tiny, but it got me good!). I'm now getting ready to go to bed early, some much needed sleep is awaiting! 

A Big Milestone!!

I went grocery shopping the other day, and bought some food (ya know, cuz that's what you buy at the grocery store). Anyway, I got home, and was putting away my food and realized that there are now items besides Twinkies that expire AFTER I'm done with school!!!  I was very excited!

I haven't quite reached the moment when the milk expiration date is after 12/2/08, but it's coming! I'll be sure to take a picture to document the moment. 

Ok, that' s all for now, you may resume your regularly scheduled net surfing.

-Christina

One More Thing...

To continue adding to my list of things I've learned on Equine...



6. If a horse wants to get out of the stall, don't attempt to put your arm between them and the stall door, it doesn't turn out well. When you have 1200lbs of muscle operated by a brain the size of a lemon, you usually don't come out with the most intelligent decisions. I'm lucky the horse stopped, or I would be at the emergency room with a broken arm. For now, I just have a very sore, big lump that will likely turn into a nasty bruise. Awesome!

The Circus is in Town!!

Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus was here in Columbia today!!

Now, if you look at their schedule, you will see that they're actually having shows in Kansas City right now, but a few selected individuals paid the University of Missouri Vet School a visit today!

We had 2 performing horses and 2 performing dogs here at the hospital today. I got to work with Arthos, a Fresian Stallion. I wasn't able to get any pictures (as I didn't know that they were coming), but he kinda looked like this:

He was GORGEOUS! And very well behaved (at least for a stallion).  It was pretty neat, we did a lot of tests on him (turns out he has a condition that prevents him from sweating, so his body temperature increases a lot when it's hot out or he exercises a lot).   But we had to finish early because he had to be back in KC by tonight to perform! Apparantly he does the "liberty" routine, which basically means he doesn't have anyone riding him, and does all sorts of tricks with 3 other horses like waltzing, and walking on their back legs, weaving in and out with eachother, etc.

Since he practices in the air conditioning, and perfoms in the air conditioning, he can still perform his show with his condition. They just need to be careful where they keep him when they're not performing, and make sure he doesn't overheat from that or too much practice.  They said that the animals all still travel by train, but the cars they travel in are specially made for each species, and the horses have it made...it's also air conditioned in there too! What a life! 

I also got to speak with the traveling vet who came with them. She is a 2004 graduate of Missouri!! How cool would that job be?!?!? She likes it a lot, but like me, started out as a small animal vet wannabe, so she had to learn a lot about some new species!! (they have elephants, llamas, tigers, dogs, horses, goats, etc, etc).  I guess you really never know where life will take you! 

So it was a pretty neat day. The other horse was in because he was lame (limping), so the surgery service saw him.  They also had 2 dogs, one was seeing our Orthopedic surgeons (the dog does handsprings in the show...geee, I wonder what could be wrong!!), and one has cataracts, so they saw our ophthalmology service.  The cataract dog is having surgery tomorrow and will hopefully be able to see again! (The surgery for dogs is very similar to what we do in humans).  

There's been some talk of some free tickets to see the show when they come back to St. Louis in November...we'll have to wait and see!! =)

The things I have learned...

So today marked a whole 2 weeks that I have been on Equine (horse) medicine.  And for someone who knew NOTHING about horses going in, I'm pretty impressed with myself! I haven't managed to get myself killed yet, which is pretty impressive seeing that I'm working with a 1200lb bundle of muscle operated by a brain the size of my fist.

So I thought I would enlighten you with some of my new knowledge so far:

1. When a client says they "mainlined" a drug...that means they gave in intravenously. Not really where that term came up, but I giggle everytime I hear it.

2. A "shod" horse means it has shoes. Before vet school I assumed that all horses wore shoes, but I'm very wrong on that. And not only is there just "shoes", it's like women...there's a whole damn closet to choose from!! This type of shoe does this, and this type does that, etc, etc. 

3. I've now become an expert in the art of cleaning penile sheaths...yes, you read that correctly. I won't go into detail, let's just say it's not the most fun experience, but makes for a LOT of fun jokes on the way home in the truck!

4. I still have no FREAKING clue how to tell the difference between a Quarter horse, an Arabian, a Tennesee Walking Horse, etc.  I'm doing good if I can get "horse".  And don't even get me started on the colors. If the horse is brown, why can't we just say it's BROWN? No, no, it's "Chestnut". God forbid!!

5. Horse teeth are gross. Nuff said. 

Okay, that is the extent of my knowledge for the day...I have 6 more weeks on equine so I'm sure I will have many more fun stories to share with you all!

A Weekend At The Lake...

Every year, our friend Peggy get's access to her dad's lake house at the Lake of the Ozarks for the weekend after Labor Day.  It's great because the lake isn't busy, and we always have a fun time.  Well we spent this weekend there.....

oh wait...no WE didn't.  Ron did.

I was stuck here in Columbia, on call, taking care of horses.  Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Although sucks for them, they are missing their token bartender for the weekend, haha! (Altough, somehow, I have a feeling that they still had NO problem getting drunk). =)

We also usually take one weekend in September/October and go to Hermann, MO. A small town just off the  Missouri river, about 45 minutes from Columbia.  Two of our good friends (Bryan & Sue) are from there, and it's a big Wine town. They have several wineries, and we usually spend the day going around tasting and buying lots of wine.  Once we're done, we all take our wine back to Sue's parent's house and drink the night away! It's always a fun time. 

I was supposed to be on call the day we're going to Hermann this year, but some kind soul was nice enough to switch with me! I'm eternally grateful! =) At least I'll get to do ONE fun thing this block!