June 4

 

 

I've had a few things going on recently, which I will highlight for you. I should be studying Chapter 6, Bones, in my anatomy textbook, but I've had like 132 cups of coffee so I'm a little jumpy and having a little trouble sitting still. Last week was my first A&P test, which I am not entirely sure I passed because I had only a week to study 5 chapters and not that I'm making excuses for my potentially shoddy performance, but for the love of god, I've been out of school since 1993 and haven't taken a test since...well, you all know, since I went over my pitiful college experience ad nauseam a couple of weeks ago. I anticipated (erroneously) that A&P would be a breeze for me, since I already have a fairly good grasp on what goes on within, and having worked for a cardiologist for the past eon or so, know a lot about the workings of our cardiovascular system, so when I tell you that I was unprepared for the two chapters on the chemistry of the body and the molecular makings of atoms and cells, I mean I was WOEFULLY unprepared. I'm not really trying to shift the blame of my (potential) failure on the teacher of the class or at anyone but myself, but for me, when someone says "I am teaching a class on WHATEVER" I anticipate something a little beyond an hour and a half of being shown and read powerpoint slides with almost no explanation. Buddy, I have the book. I can read that shit on my own. TEACH something. I am also a little ticked off about the sheer HISOLOGY of the whole thing. I mean, I find it difficult to believe that the time will ever come, when/if I make it through all of these classes and find myself an actual NURSE in a NURSE TYPE situation in say, an ER or something where someone shrieks out "oh my god, we need someone to look into this microscope IMMEDIATELY and point out the basement membrane!! Okay, now can you tell us--is this a SQUAMOUS cell?!?! Hurry! The patient will die if you don't know!!" So, the long and short of my school stuff is that it's sort of kicking my ass. And I can't even imagine how hellatious chemistry is going to be, IF I EVER MAKE IT THAT FAR. On my test, it was fifty questions based on the lectures (such as they were) and 50 lab identification questions. The lecture part MIGHT be ok--I mean, I have a one out of 4 chance of getting SOME of them right, but in my test taking experience, I never manage to choose the correct one, and I did know a few of them (ipsilateral? contralateral? Check and check!) the lab test was probably an unmitigated disaster due to my own inability to memorize and identify the layers of the skin under a microscope. A MICROSCOPE, people! I haven't looked into one of those since the 8th grade, and let me tell you, I was PISSED about the whole thing. Everyone else in the class seemed to be able to zip right through ("adipose! compact bone! pseudostratified!"), whereas I scowled a lot and stomped my feet like a 4 year old. I'm sure the teacher is DELIGHTED by me.

My dogs are BOTH sick, and Nick and I have spent a great deal of time at the animal hospital. Let me give some advice to my younger readers, still struggling to choose your path in life: GO TO VETERINARY SCHOOL. Since most people do not opt to purchase pet health insurance, and people DO opt to have pets which they love stupidly, they will pay any amount of money to make sure their pets remain healthy, which translates into GIANT BANK for you and a weeping wallet for us. Grayson has a scratched cornea which hasn't healed. Jessie came down with a little something called IDIOPATHIC VESTIBULAR DISEASE (aka "old dog disease"). It's been a little over a week since he was diagnosed and one overnight stay in the hospital and countless weepy fits for me, he's still staggering around like he's drunk, head tilted to the side (for photographic representation, please see here) not really eating or moving any more than he has to. It's sad. He's a 15 year old dog, and I know in the smart part of my brain that 15 year old dogs are already pretty damn old, but neither Nick nor I care, and we're at the point that we're happy to carry him up and down the stairs and shove treats into his mouth and pet him gently. He's lost a lot of weight and he looks PITIFUL, but he's hanging in and apparently IVD takes at least three weeks to clear. Good times.

The other day, we drove down to Philly to see my all time, hands down favorite band, Radiohead (and if you all didn't know that Radiohead were my favorite band, you have NOT BEEN PAYING ATTENTION, so start again and review the first 5 chapters. Kidding). Favorite band. Philly is cool, we rented a hotel room by the airport (because I love planes! and watching them take off! and land! And only sometimes do I scream "JUST CRASH ALREADY" when I see them hovering in the air), and went to the Mutter Museum (which is nowhere near the airport, I'm just throwing that in there). So--the trip summarized all of my favorite things in life: Radiohead, planes and deformed babies in jars. How could anyone improve on that? The trip was sort of a week-late anniversary trip for us, since May 25th was our ten year wedding anniversary. Our anniversary DINNER on the 26th (not the 25th--I was supposed to have class but didn't--long story) was cancelled by our staggering dog, so this was really a nice night away. The best part of the Radiohead show was the fact that they sang my FAVORITE EVER RADIOHEAD SONG which I've never heard them sing live and I cried like a little sissy almost throughout the whole thing (the song is "Let Down", but you should REALLY already know that), and no shit, if I was never able to hear another song in my life, having heard Let Down live would be a great way to go. Awesome show. Apparently, the tickets sold out for ALL the east coast shows in about 40 seconds, but I was ON that shit starting 15 minutes before they went on sale, frantically hitting refresh on the Ticketmaster page. If I was a better fan, or was perhaps a touch more pretentious, I could have gotten them through the WASTE site, but whatever. Such a great show (setlist here). They sang a few things off their unreleased upcoming CD, which were very different from the Amnesiac/Kid A but also familiar because there is nothing better than Radiohead, and I know that that made no sense at all, so I apologize. I'm trying to hurry through this entry, because bones are calling me and I have a cup of coffee getting cold downstairs.

Ooh, the funniest thing we saw in Philly (other than the 25 drawers of stuff removed from people's noses, throats and stomachs--BY ONE DOCTOR. Did that make sense? A doctor donated his collection of crap he'd removed from inside people, and there were way more needles and safety pins than there ought to have been. Yowch.) was as we were driving from the hotel to the concert in Upper Darby. We were behind a minivan with a Jersey license plate that said "CLAY FAN". Upon closer inspection, we saw that the entire back end of the thing was festooned with bumper stickers professing the driver's love for all things Clay Aiken (sp?). "CLAY HAS OUR HEARTS, WE HAVE HIS BACK" "I LOVE YOU CLAY AIKEN" "MEMBER OF THE CLAYMATES" "CLAY IS SEXY". I mean, seriously, there were like 40 stickers. I GUNNED it to see what type of person could possibly be that proud of their Clay love, and it was filled with middle-aged moms. Clay is unthreatening and just untalented enough to provoke obsessive love, I suppose. It was wonderful.

 

And there you go, that's what is going on here. Back to BONE.

 

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