I’ll see your blurf, and raise you a <yawn.> My little Ernie decided he needed to go out at 3:00 this morning. For about 20 minutes. He was sick the night before and pooped in the bathroom, so how could I refuse?
<yawn>
Oh, poor Ernie, Rebp; I hope he’s feeling better today and that you’re doing okay too, since your sleep got interrupted. And speaking of interrupted sleep, I hope that FCM got a good night’s rest last night. I have minor bouts with insomnia from time to time, and awakened last night around 3 am or so, but at least was able to get back to sleep.
Good morning all! Caffeination in progress and brekkies et. Well, not a good brekkie (pop tart and a soy joy bar …), but at least it’s something half-way good (the soy joy). I have a container of yogurt for mid-morning snack and some mandarin orange slices as well, so I should be good to go.
Happy hump day, all. 
Looks like she’s got the Official Doctor’s Sense of Entitlement down. :rolleyes:
Poor bird. Sorry, **Taters **kid.
Atomic Mama - that was very nice of your friend. Ugh, I can’t believe you lost that stuff to raw sewage.
I have printed the recipe for the Paula Deen Pumpkin Gooey Butter Cake to make for Thanksgiving. I am very much looking forward to it.
So I’ve been eating vegan for a while (not years and years or anything) and last weekend I had a craving flung upon me for steak and cheese. Now it’s not a moral thing for me - it’s a cleanliness thing. I don’t trust the level of cleaning on the killing floor, I think the feed is gross, and so on and so on because it’s really an OCD control type thing. But anyway, I wanted some steak and there was some in the fridge and I figure I’m a grown woman and can eat whatever I want so I made myself a steak and cheese sandwich. Later that evening I went to a party and had a few beers and a good time and started sweating and cramping like a bitch and Oh My God was it painful. I think that sandwich sat on my esophagus all night!!
But damn it tasted good.
It’s hump day? Maybe it should be Official Heffalump Day. It kind of rhymes.
Not doing so good today, that’s all I got.
Is there such a thing as a brainworm? Like an earworm but for ideas that keep buzzing around your brain.
Anyway, there is now, as I have one. In Spanish we sometimes say of someone who keeps having problems through no fault of his own “that dude starts a circus and the dwarves all get a growth spurt.” Are there similar lines in English? I’m drawing a blank and don’t want to start hitting my head against the desk to see if that activates the grey stuff.
[Personal Campaign Hat]Just gotta put out my alert here. Please be sure to inform the girls that Sago Palms are highly poisonous, particularly the Queen Sago which produces a head full of walnut-size seeds. Although the seeds are bitter, they take a toll of pets, killing four out of five that have ingested parts of seeds. The poison attacks the liver within a very short time. How do I know this? My chihuahua nearly bought the farm several years back. If I hadn’t taken her to the ER vet as soon as I figured out what she’d done, she wouldn’t be here. It really irritates the hell out of me that these trees have become such popular landscape plants and the nurseries never volunteer this information[/PCH]
taters, birds are so good at hiding illness that it’s often the case that you never know till it’s too late. 
nava, that saying is hysterical!
muppet, gotti and Cervaise, I am campaigning for a good Sudoku knife for Xmas. Your favorites??? I also want a good knife sharpener.
We are warm here for the rest of the week but then we’re supposed to get nailed on Sunday with a high in the 60s. Yes, I know all you nawtheners is snerkin, but to go from 80s one day down to 60s the next is a shock to a good southron girl’s sensibilities.
Happy Mumper Humper Day!
Tupug
I did 12 hours of precept time at the Betsytown hospital yesterday, and the experience was incredible. My day started out with the respiratory therapists, because ambulance crews deal with a lot of calls for COPD and asthma patients in distress.
My streak continues, because once again, the patient load was light. “Bob, we don’t have much going on right now. You want to watch a bronchoscope?” Hell yeah, even if I don’t get to do much of anything as far as my skills. The engineer geek in me was as much interested in the equipment as the EMT geek was interested in the patients.
The patient was a woman in her upper 60s, complaining of a chronic cough. The working diagnosis was esophageal reflux, and the scope was to rule out other potential causes. The doctor found some irritation in her trachea consistent with reflux aspiration, so that was confirmed pending pathology on the samples taken.
From there, I was passed off to cardiology, and watched 2 different heart catheterizations. One patient was rather young, and had already received one coronary bypass.
When I left the cath lab, I met up with one of the respiratory therapists I met that morning, and I got my required ventilation treatments done in about 20 minutes. She also listened to some lungs, then had me follow behind to listen and report what I heard. My descriptions were accurate.
One ventilation patient was problematic for me, and even she thought it was funny. She was an older lady, who was rather amply endowed. “Bob, will you check her lungs?”
“OK.” No problem, and I listened to the tops, near her collarbones. Then I backed up, and sort of froze.
“What’s the problem?” asked the patient.
“Uh, well, uh, your lady parts are in the way.” <snicker> <snerk> from the patient and therapist.
The therapist said, “Well, you could move them out of the way, or you could listen from her back.”
“Oh, yeah!” I went to her back simply to avoid the awkwardness of handling those boobs.
That was the end of the action for the respiratory crew. We ate lunch, and I left them to go to Labor and Delivery. I chose that precisely because I was terrified of pregnant women and little kids, having never done much with either. I cleaned up road rash on an older grade schooler once, and rode on a couple of calls for pregnant women that never gave birth in the unit. All the rest have been teenagers and adults.
The reception going in the door was underwhelming; a guy was in the inner sanctum! It was almost as though I had a t-shirt on the said “I’m with Stupid”, and the arrow was pointing up.
They had one patient in the ward at the time, who was recovering from a c-section. Nothing to do. Per previous instruction, I wandered over to the nursery to see if I could do a workup on an infant, because I need 5 pediatric assessments. The one baby there was about an hour old, and his workup was done. Time to cool my wheels.
I helped move the C-section to her regular room, and on the way back I heard another C-section was coming in for a 4 PM showtime.
A very pregnant, but not-yet-due, or even in labor showed up, sent by her doctor’s staff for monitoring. She’d been having headaches, and they were worried that preeclampsia might be developing. I got my patient assessment out of that, and helped the nurse out as much as I could.
The 4 PM c-section showed up, and I tried to set up an IV. I rolled the vein and missed, Grrr. She had some stovepipe veins in her other arm, too, but for the doctor’s convenience, they wanted it set up where I tried. Turns out she also was an EMT, so she was gracious enough to let me help.
More cooling heels. A very cute brunette came in, and she didn’t have a name tag visible, so I thought she was a nurse on the surgical team; turns out she was the OB. After she did a lot of paperwork, the turned around, pointed to me, and asked the nurses, “Who’s that?”
“That’s Bob, an EMT student.”
“Oh”, with a hint of excitement. “You want to watch?”
That was another hell yes in my head. “Really?”
“Go get dressed.”
When I got into the OR, the patient was getting her epidural. I melded into the corner to stay out of the way as much as possible. Ruth, the circulating nurse, had me help retrieve a few things for her.
“We’re going to lay you down quick…” the anesthetist said to the patient when he was done, and down she went. They finished draping her, and got started.
Ruth and I were standing together, and she answered my questions. “Are you doing OK?”, wondering if I was getting woozy from seeing the incision. I was fine.
“People think surgery is this big, gory mess. It used to be, but it’s not any more” she said.
“I’m fine. What I do is gory; this is not. I’ve had trauma patients that were far worse than this.” I could see her smile under the mask.
The elapsed time from first incision to new baby was about 10 minutes. The (not so) little girl came out purple, started screaming lustily after about 5 seconds, and turned the brightest shade of pink I’ve ever seen this side of terminal carbon monoxide poisoning pictures in my textbook. She pegged her Apgars without even really checking. Nine lbs even, I forgot her length, and everything in the proper places.
I followed the nurse and Dad to the nursery, helped wash her off, and did my first pede assessment. It wasn’t as bad as I thought, but I’ve forgotten how much normal vitals are for babies than adults.
When that was done, the nurses asked if I wanted to watch a circumcision. [Wile E. Coyote] Yipe! [/Wile E. Coyote]
“Well, mine was pretty traumatic. I didn’t walk for a year…”
“Ohmygosh!” <whoosh>
“That was a joke…”
Both thought for a second, then slumped when they got it. I even had a notepad thrown at me. 
The process was fascinating, but left me way uncomfortable. I think my wedding tackle retracted to about navel level in sympathy for the lil’ nipper. The doctor did use lidocaine on him, for those of you who think it’s cruel to circumcise. It took about 10 minutes to do.
It was getting close to go home time. I wandered back to the nurse’s station in L&D, and heard an ambulance crew was bringing a patient with a major (unspecified to me) problem. I tagged along once again, and there was a little more for me to do, because there was the EMT stuff I know well already, plus the new.
This patient, sadly, was having a 2nd trimester miscarriage, and the fetus was partially expelled. Oddly enough, she didn’t even realize she was pregnant until the miscarriage started.
The same doctor that did the c-section finished the delivery. The nurses cleaned her up while I discreetly didn’t watch. “Bob, get her vitals and do your stuff.” I did, was commended afterwards, and spent time holding her hand for comfort. She just about tore my fingers off. When I was in class this past weekend, the instructor ripped my on my paper description of my bedside manner, which does read to be less devoid of emotion than I actually practice. That’s why I let her try to break my hand.
So that was my day. I have 30 hours yet to do in the ER by Turkey Day, there should be more to come.
They make knives for doing those number puzzles? I guess I can see that because numbers make me a little stabby.
Someone on my LJ posted how she received a nice set of knives from her mother while she was visiting. After he mother left she spoke with her father on the phone who told her of the superstition that if gifted with knives you must give the giver a penny because a gift of knives means there is an intent to cause harm, by giving them something for it you make it a transaction instead of a gift. It was too late to give her mom a penny and later on that day she accidentally cut off the tip of her finger with one of her new knives.
I had planned to ask my bf for some nice steak knives for Christmas so if I get them I am definitely giving him a penny in exchange. Where sharp pointy things are concerned I am always superstitious.
Hi all. Tired. One day left before the weekend. yayyyyy! One month left 'til our holiday - roll on vacation!!!
Presuming you meant “santoku” and not “sudoku” (snerk), the recommendation really depends on what exactly you’re looking for in a knife. Do you want something really fine that you have to treat well and take excellent care of? Or something good that will tolerate rough and careless handling? For comparison, in the first category, I have a chef’s knife, handforged in Germany, with a rare-hardwood grip. The best knife I’ve ever used, but I periodically have to oil the handle, and it NEVER EVER goes in the dishwasher. In the second category, I have another chef’s knife, stamped blade, rubber handle, which I use for carving squash and chopping bones and other abusive tasks, which I toss in the dishwasher without a second thought.
Oh, and no, you don’t want a knife sharpener, actually. You want a honing steel to straighten out the edge of the blade, but you don’t want to be grinding metal. Unless you’re an experienced pro, you’ll just ruin your knives. Take good care of them and they won’t need to be sharpened, actually sharpened, nearly as often as you expect.
What’s the word for that guy around whom soup always gets spilled, but neither by him nor on him? That one’s a gafe in Spanish.
:smack: And you know, I even went to Google to make sure I had it right. Apparently I am not the only one who gets it wrong. :o
OK. I guess Yiddish doesn’t quite have a word for everything (or, equally likely, it does and I don’t know it…)
Too late for edit, darnit! Anyway, I guess I want a knife that’s somewheres in between. I take good care of my knives, but I want one that’s relatively utilitarian but stays sharp. Plus, I’m just your average cook looking for a knife that doesn’t require a second mortgage. I just hate dull knives. This honing steel, can you link to one?
I’m shocked the WF doesn’t have them, the one near me carries all the flavors! There’s another health food store I shop at occasionally that carries them, but mostly I buy them from my regular (Spartan brand) grocery store. I bet WF would order some for you if you asked.
Remind me to count knives when I get home. One of our bestest knives is a pre-war Henckels (as evidenced by the “Germany” on the blade). Razor-sharp, this dude has divots along the edge like a santoku, but it’s shaped more like a short ham knife. The handle is a hand-crafted piece of ironwood. And then, there’s the generic molded-plastic handled knives from the local “Cash & Carry” supply. If it can survive a restaurant dishwasher, it can survive mine.
I’ve got a santoku, but so far, I haven’t felt the love. Probably because I’m so accustomed to rocking a chef’s knife.
She may not be looking in the right place. My supermarket has a dairy section, an organic/vegetarian dairy section on the opposite side of the store and another section near the produce where they keep the tofu, tempeh and various other vegetarian foods.
Missed the edit window, meant to add: They’re good for slapping together a quick Tofurkey sandwich but if you have the time and want something tastier, check out the gooey grilled cheeze recipe in The Uncheese Cookbook.
This weekend is my Third Annual Vegan Thanksgiving (Bigger, Badder, Tofurkier!). On the menu: stuffed mushrooms, jalapeno poppers, cheeze dip and crackers. Grandma’s Carrots*, kale with carmelized onions, garlic taters, mac and cheeze, brocolli and rice casserole, pot pies, Grandma’s Cranberry Sauce* and stuffing. For dessert: vanilla cupcakes with chocolate buttercream frosting, pumpkin cheesecake and zucchini bread with cream cheese frosting. Oh, and chik*n nuggets and fries for the kidlets. That should fill those omnivores up! 
*My mom unearthed some of GMa’s bowls from her basement and gave them to me, so I’m going to serve these dishes in them