It's been a no-focus kind of morning.

I was distracted by 60s Spider-Man memes in path lecture this morning. My favorite?

THIS ONE.

Then we had immunology lecture and I saw this figure on a slide:

My brain immediately went here...

...so I wrote this:

Spider-Antibody, Spider-Antibody

Does whatever a spider-Antibody can
Forms a complex of only five
Catches epitopes just like flies
Look out
Here comes the Spider-Antibody

Thank all that is holy that it is Friday.

EEEEEEW.

I have created the most unpleasant and unappetizing cupcakes on the planet. I was intrigued by the thought of chocolate and avocado, and there were plenty of comments below raving about how wonderful these cupcakes turned out.

Well, I bite my thumb at you, random food blog commenters. I have created a list.

Why These Cupcakes are Nasty and Shall be Tossed

1. LOOK AT THEM.

+

=

2. Even after beating the ever lovin' snot out of the avocados, I still ended up with lumps in the batter and icing. I left the avocados in a paper bag with a banana for a day and they felt ripe, so what the hell, recipe. I even put those suckers in a food processer after mashing them up with a fork. Then I beat them with a hand mixer. WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME AVOCADOS?!

3.  The batter tasted okay, but the texture of the baked cupcake is odd. It is very dense, but at the same time strangely dry. And somehow lumpy. It's possible that I overmixed the batter, but I have overmixed cupcakes before and they've NEVER turned out like this.

They look deceptively normal. Do not be fooled.

 
4. The frosting as made per recipe instructions was incredibly sweet. After the sweetness hit, THEN you got an aftertaste of avocado. It was not a pleasant melding of flavors.

Mmmm. Lumpy green shit.

Moral of the story: chocolate avocado cupcakes are gross. RUN AWAY.

Another blog post from work.

This is the second blog post I've written at work. Still not sure if it's kosher, but "shrug" is still my response.

I was recently asked to keep blogging because someone wanted to see the change from reasonable human being to raging egomaniac. The person who put in this request has not had a very good track record with vets; they tend not to give her the credit she's due for being an authority in her field or just think that they know all there is to know.

I am entirely confident that I am NEVER going to know everything there is to know about veterinary medicine, and I goof up on a regular basis.

For example, last week I handled a case involving an anticoagulant rodenticide. It wasn't really a significant dose, but the owner was pretty worked up and the vet I was speaking with said that it wouldn't hurt the dog if it went in and got some K1. I thought I did okay with this call and I sent it off to be closed. Nope! Turns out what I said to the owner was a K1 shot, not oral K1. There's an increased risk of anaphylaxis with the injected K1 that you don't have with the oral K1.

Who had no idea about that? This girl.

The situation ended up being not a big deal since the regular vet gave us a call to talk about which method of K1 we wanted, but I still messed up and had to discuss the situation with one of the senior staff.

The point of this little anecdote is that "comfort" and "ego" do not equal "skill" and "knowledge." I feel comfortable with my current job but there are situations that come up on a regular basis that I frankly have no idea how to handle. Even the things I think I'm handling might not be quite right. I think that there is some amount of ego necessary in any medical profession; you have to be confident enough in your knowledge and skills to be able to walk into a room and handle whatever the patient/client throws at you. That being said, there are limits to your knowledge and expertise. Acknowledge that others know things that you don't.

Moral of the story: you will never know everything and there is always someone better, so stop being a dick about it, cheese whiz. If I ever claim to know all the things, you, dear readers, have my full permission to give me a swift kick in the rear. I can't even get mad at you since I put it in writing.

All-text blog posts are boring, so I put in a clip of Amy getting a tiara.

I'm writing this while at work. Is it kosher use of my work computer? I figure I haven't gotten in trouble for being on Facebook or for doing online crosswords, so my response is a shrug.

"Shrug" is one of those words that just looks and sounds wrong. It only gets worse the more you look at it/think about it, so I'm going to move on.

Y'know, I pride myself on my self-confidence and being sure in my decisions, whether they be large or small. Most of the time if my choice turned out to maybe not be the best one, I don't spend time worrying about it; instead I deal with whatever consequences there may be and move on with my life. It's pretty rare that I stew over something. For example, since making my decision to go to vet school and NOT reapply for nutrition graduate programs I've felt perfectly fine with my choice. I had come to the conclusion that I would not be as happy doing research as I would be in clinical practice.

Then I went to Omaha this weekend.

For those of you who don't know, I spent three summers interning in the nutrition department at the Omaha zoo. I loved it; the people I worked with were fabulous and I felt like the projects I worked on had practical applications. THAT was the reason I was so disappointed when I didn't get in to U of I's animal nutrition program. As I stated above, I have come to terms with that and moved on with my life. This weekend, a rumor I had heard was confirmed.

Insert three-little-pigs-huff-and-puff-blow-your-house-down sigh here.

Long story short, someone at the zoo is going to be teaching at Iowa State and doing some REALLY COOL SHIT in the animal sciences program AND had some ridiculously interesting ideas for research projects. This makes me almost wish that I wasn't committed to another three years of school because I would dearly love to work on some of the things that were mentioned. I'm hoping that I can maybe do at least some of the preliminary stuff at the zoo the next summer, provided that A) the zoo/nutrition department is okay with the study/studies and B) they let me come back... again.

In my head I know that I have plenty of time to do with my life what I will and that I would rather keep learning throughout my life than be stagnant and bored, but there's still a little niggle in the back of my brain saying, "you're going to be so OLD when you're done with school if you keep going" and "what happens when you get tired of this?"

Someone get me a tiara, stat.

The Guy's Guide to Dating Katy: Special Internet Dating Edition

So I've tried online dating since I moved to CU. These are some of my unofficial rules. It keeps the number of schmucks at minimum.

1. If you call me "hot," especially on first contact, you are done.
I do not think of myself as "hot." "Hot" to me has negative connotations which include "stupid" and "airhead." Regardless of what your intentions are when you use that word, to me it means that you care not one whit for the person I am and are just looking at the physical.

Go. Find a thesaurus. Use it.

2. If you use "LOL" in your profile, you are probably done.
Chatspeak drives me nuts even when used in IM or text settings. I will totally judge you on your use of "LOL." I will judge you even more if you use it multiple times.

3. Spell things correctly.
You are writing something and have time to proofread. If you don't care about spelling or punctuation, we might not really get along anyway.

4. If you tell me that you don't get along with your family, that's a no.
My family is awesome (love you guys). If you are gloom and doom about your own, I sure as hell am not going to want to introduce that into my own life.

5. If I am carrying the conversation on the first date, that's not a good sign.
If I am doing all of the talking, the date is not going well regardless of what you think. I don't like awkward silence and will talk constantly to fill it. Bottom line: if I wanted to talk to myself, I'd stay home. Keep up your end of the conversation, pal.

6. Do not try to one-up me in the "classes are hard" department.
Are you trying to annoy me? If you are, ignore this one.

An open letter to all who care to read it.

Dear everyone in the universe,

Remember that when you call a customer service number, you are talking to another person on the other end. It behooves you as a thinking, feeling person to be decent to them.

If you get frustrated, don't take it out on them.

Realize that they have to handle things in a certain way and it will be taken care of, even if it is not as handled as quickly as you would like.

Do not swear at them. Do not yell at them. It does not help, and will probably fluster the person on the other end so that they are not as efficient as they normally would be. And you will be flagged as an asshole (using a more professional term, of course).

If they apologize, CALM THE FUCK DOWN.

This is their job. You probably wouldn't like it if someone came into your place of business and screamed at you. Remember the golden rule.

Thank you, and by remembering this you will be making the customer service rep's day not suck, keeping your blood pressure low, and will prove yourself a better person than a lot of your fellow callers.

Thanks in advance for not being a douchenozzle!

Katy

Phone calls are scary.

I had my first real half day of work today. I say "half day" because the morning was filled with my training group doing two things: 1) completing our phone training, and 2) frantically asking questions and taking notes.

It was moderately terrifying.

For those of you who don't know, I was hired as summer help at the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center. It's an animal poison control call-in center for the entire U.S. and Canada. My job will eventually be to answer the hotline and take histories before passing the call on to someone else. This means that, after the last nine months of spending eight hours a day, five days a week staring at a computer screen while sitting in a semi-dark room, I will be spending eight hours a day, five days a week staring at a computer screen while sitting in a semi-dark room. The difference, you ask? I GET PAID.

Last week was my first week of work, which was pretty much all training. Let me sum up what we learned by the day:

MONDAY: This is a phone. This is how you answer the phone. This is a computer. This is how you sign into the computer.

TUESDAY: This is how we look things up on the computer.

WEDNESDAY: This is how we ask people on the phone what they're calling about.

THURSDAY: HOLY MOTHER OF GOD LEARN ALL THE THINGS! ENTER ALL OF THE THINGS! HAVE YOU GOTTEN DOWN ALL THE THINGS? WHY HAVEN'T YOU WRITTEN DOWN ALL OF THE THINGS?! TYPE FASTER, PEON!

FRIDAY: These are the things you'll be doing on your own on Monday, but there's no one available to actually tell you how to do those things right now.

The no-trainer situation is what caused the group panic this morning; we were basically calling people back to ask if their pets were doing OK, if they took their animal into the vet, if they did something completely nonsensical like feed their dog rice and yogurt for the last five days, etc. After lunch, they showed us to some open stations and turned us loose.

As I said before, it was terrifying.

I'm pretty sure the person on the other end of my first call could hear my heart beating. I sure as hell could feel it in my throat (bounding pulse - check). I stammered a lot, said a whole bunch of "ums" and fucked up saying ASPCA about three times, but I got through it! After about the third call, I stopped being semi-paralyzed whenever someone picked up at the other end of the line. It occurred to me that the staff goes through the newbie vet student hires being complete morons every summer. They're USED to having to clean up our messes and wipe our noses for the first week.

I apologize to whoever has to waste a few hours fixing what I did today.

In other news, I have things! In pots!

Parsley!

Lettuce!

Wussy-looking chives!

I also have a small patch in the ground, with some other growing things. I did this over the weekend because SOMEONE keeps putting her fat feet where she shouldn't:

Her Stompy-ness is mourning the loss of her ability to play Godzilla in the peas.

And this, but that's because I want to make my own compost. The dirt in my garden is pretty clay-y (how are you supposed to spell that word?), so I want something to mix into in this fall/next spring to make it not suck quite as much.

I realize that my chicken wire fence is incredibly ugly and slapdash. Stop laughing. It was hot and I was cranky.