Cooper, Thanksgiving, Grad School, Cooper, Stuff

As usual, another month has passed and so much has happened without a single update! My time flies! Well November flew by for us because Cooper is now keeping us very busy. It turns out that we got not only a crazy puppy, but a bit of a sick puppy. We noticed he was having digestive trouble, and had to take him to a vet only 7 days after we brought him home. Turns out he had campylobacter, a bacteria that not only made him pretty sick, but could make humans pretty sick too. It was pretty serious, but once he got put onto antibiotic he got better quickly, and neither Tim nor I got sick from him. In addition, he also had a yeast infection in both ears, and he probably has some kind of allergies that makes his eyes red! Our poor puppy. However none of this has seemed to phase him, as he has continued to run around, play with his toys, steal Tim's socks from his laundry basket, and steal our shoes to chew on the shoelaces. Cooper has also been discovering snow, and the joys of bounding through deep drifts!

Tim has been keeping incredibly busy too. He has been work at Dick's Sporting Goods quite frequently now that the Christmas shopping season is completely upon us. Instead of opening at 9am, they have been opening at 8am, and next week at 7am. This means that Tim, who is NOT NOT NOT DEFINITELY NOT a morning person, has been forced to get out of bed at hours he wasn't actually aware existed! This unfortunately kept him in Wisconsin over Thanksgiving, as he had the joy of working Black Friday. Luckily his parents and his brother, Dan, were able to come to Madison to spend Thanksgiving with him and Cooper. I was able to go home to Connecticut for the first time in 11 months (it really had been that long!). I got to see my parents, a couple high school friends, and spent a good amount of time relaxing. I also spent a lot of time working on graduate school applications. I completed most of them, and finished the last one once I came back to Wisconsin. I am all finishd applying, and now I get to wait. If all goes wel, I will be invited to interview at several schools, and then hopefully will be accepted to a few as well. The final list of schools is:

- University of Wisconsin
- Univeristy of Michigan
- University of Washington - Seattle
- Oregon Health and Science Univeristy
- Yale University
- University of Virginia

I applied to microbiology programs with the intent to study virology and immunology, possibly sticking with HIV research, returning to influenza research, or finding a new pathogen to study all together! Hopefully some of the schools like me; keep your fingers crossed! As of right now I do not know where I want to go. Wisconsin would be convenient, and it is a great school, but I'm going to see where I am accepted and decide from there.

And again, more Cooper stories! We have had him for over a month now, and he keeps us entertained every day! He has finally started to gain wait again now that he isn't sick, and last time weighed in close to 12lbs (he should be ~25-30lbs when full grown). In addition to bounding through snow, he has been working on his jumping skills. He can finally get on to the couch almost every time (he used to biff it 2 out of 3 times!), but has not yet mastered jumping on to our bed (it is fairly high in his defense). He has been teething like crazy, and therefore biting our hands in lieu of his toys (not our favorite game). We have started to teach him to sit, which he already did on his own most of the time, and to lie down, which he seems to have mastered in a day! Shake is in the near future! Cooper enjoys staring out the window of our apartment and contemplating life, or wondering what that squirrel is doing and how he is going to get it!

I promise to upload pictures sometime to keep these posts interesting, so if you stuck with me down to here, thanks for your commitment and dedication! Stay tuned for more!