Well the week of awesomeness came to a pretty bleak end. We found out on Tuesday that two staff members (one of them being one of my best friends at work) were giving their two weeks notice. While they were leaving for pretty exciting personal reasons, new job/moving etc, it was still a depressing day for the Marine Mammal Dept. Unfortunately one of the staffers leaving is the head of fish house which means its back to 7am shifts for the interns! It kind of stinks going back to fish house two days a week, but we are going to get 'pulled up' from it throughout the day to do animal sessions, so it won't be too bad.
After a lousy start to the 7th week, things got better- I got to deliver my first solo sd (signal that asks for a behavior) w/ the whales, which was a 'dorsal layout', basically the whale lies flat on its stomach with its dorsal ridge within arms reach. This was really cool because I'm actually getting to do 'trainer stuff' now! I also got to be part of an encounter which was really really cool. Encounters are when people pay a bunch of money to come back and meet the whales. They usually consist of three trainers- two trainers with a whale and 2 guests each and a third trainer on the opposite end of the pool that the whales get sent to when the trainers want to give the whale a little break from the guests or take a minute to explain something to them. I got to be the third trainer for an encounter, and although it's nothing too difficult, it was awesome to actually feel like part of the team and know that the staff trusts me enough to let me do it!
Then the week got lousy again- there has been a flu going around the department for a couple of weeks, and I got it. I now realize that it really sucks being sick when you live alone, there is no one to get you ginger ale and make you soup and listen to you whine. Thankfully it's not the stomach flu, its the 'influenza' flu which is a lot easier to manage by yourself. But I still don't know how I made it through the last two days at work, I've basically been coughing up a lung/blowing my nose/shivering/dying from fever for three days straight. My weekend started yesterday at 3pm and I came home and slept for around 12 hours and finally just got up. I'm pretty sure the worst is over and I broke my fever- but last night was really awful. I had the fever and chills so bad that I had a fan pointed at me on high and a wet towel wrapped around my head, but I also had two comforters next to me to wrap up in for when I got freezing. So pretty much all I've done in the past 24 hours is sleep, watch old friends episodes, and eat crackers and a smoothie.
But I'm still hopeful the week will improve again!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment