Lacking. Sleep that is.

So a while back I actively decided to post more pictures, wrote just that, and then twice in the last week I was given grief for not having enough. How much can one person do people? Honestly. I decided that the answer to that question was to post a picture with every edition. I can't think of a word better than "edition" right now to take the place of post, which I already used in that sentence. I may be deliriously tired right now. Anyway, this is a picture of Seal and Heidi Klum, because who doesn't think of them every once in a while? Some time ago a friend at work called my extension specifically to ask me if I ever found myself thinking about them, and I realized that every once in a while, I totally do. Of course, not by choice. But I do love trashy magazines every once in a while. I generally don't know half of the people in them since I rarely listen to music on the radio and I don't watch that much tv lately, but I love looking at people that other people have deemed important enough to devote their lives to watching--very fascinating. My little sis calls them my Rags. I also think about Abraham Lincoln.

I haven't so much slept in the last few nights. I was studying the night before last, and then working late Monday because it was my last work day on. Last night I went home, fell asleep reading, and woke up late because my phone (which doubles as my alarm) decided that it lacked the battery power it found to be sufficient. I got to school late, making that 2 of 3 guest speakers I've been late to. My talent at showing up late and having legitimate reasons for doing so grows with every passing day. I found that our guest speaker today was actually a girl I used to play frisbee with. She is a few years older than I, but it was still strange to realize that my peers are now mostly all grown up with real jobs, and here I still am at school. She, like myself, has not been to play Ultimate in quite some time, though her excuse stemmed from having a legitimate life whereas I currently only have a pseudo one. I chatted with her a little after class, mainly because we were waiting for Steven and Steven seems to be drawn towards the front of the class like a bug to the light. He has all of these questions, and motivation that Devin and I will never have. For instance, we have a parasite packet, a research paper, and 2 tests right after Thanksgiving; did we work on any of these endeavors today? Of course not. Did Steven? I'm not sure, but the way he openly worried about them at school today implies a yes to me.

One day this summer--after Devin and I ditched out on our Stats class--we ate dinner at his sister Hoover's house. We then watched AFI's(?) 100 greatest movies of all times. It's amazing how many we hadn't seen, but felt we should. To enhance our knowledge of pop culture. So we made a list, a list which has only grown as time has elapsed, and now we have this ever growing never shrinking list of movies to watch. Today we decided to sacrifice our time towards accomplishing this noble goal we've set, by watching some of these movies in leu of our homework. Actually as it happens, our Micro lab, which was our last class of the day, was canceled. I was so happy. My plan upon ariving home (before my class was canceled) was to take a nap, because I was tired enough today that I actually fell asleep during Micro lecture, and was in an awkward enough position to be snoring ever so slightly. This is usually Devin's role. This probably looked especially bad because Devin and I had been drinking Henry Weinhard's rootbeer and my teacher actually stopped midsentence during our lecture when she noticed the bottles to ask "is that beer?" Just taking the edge off really, is that a crime? Of course I did not go home and sleep after the glorious revelation that I would not have to listen to a guest lecturer for 2 hours and take notes that I would then be required to turn in. As a child I remember waking up one morning and having the most intense desire I've ever had to not want to go to school. I was exhausted, and so I found myself trudging into my parents' room and passing out on the bottom portion of their bed--my older sister was sitting on their bed already in her pajamas, and they with her were watching the news. That was the first snow day I remember having, I was in the third grade I believe, and the moment the news anouncer voiced that I wouldn't have to go to school that day, I was wide awake with joy and excitement. I spent the day with the rest of the neighborhood kids being pulled around in tubes tied with ropes to the back of a neighbor's 4 wheel drive vehicle. That was followed by sledding in my across the street neighbor's yard, for their dad had plowed all of the neighborhood's snow into massive piles on their lawn. We had forts and snow caves everywhere in those mountains of snow. Today was much like that day, only really not at all like that day, minus the no school part. I went home and read by the large window in my living room, enjoying the day light and my very comfortable couch. Then much later Devin and I watched Citizen Kane with crazy bread and soda, whilst my roommates and the like made copius amounts of noise in the background.

If I had as much money as Heidi Klum and Seal, I would definitely have more time to sleep.

Time not spent studying.

So I'm looking at this packet of silica gel that came in the shoes I just bought (you know, to keep them fresh), and it says, "do not eat," (as all silica gel packets do) and I'm thinking to myself, "would anyone capable of reading this actually eat it?" Well, I for one feel lucky that I now won't make that mistake.

I bought a lot of stuff yesterday. i only really kept track of the money I spent in the first store, and the rest is kind of a blur. I only go shopping maybe twice a year for clothes, so I feel it's justifiable, but I'm pretty sure I went overboard. Not enough to regret it, as they're all things I need, but enough that towards the end of the endeavor I felt that grumpy feeling I get when I spend too much time in any store. I really do hate shopping, and the mall, but some things are necessary. I mostly did my own shopping too, even though I had my personal shoppers there. They're the main reason I don't feel the grumpy feeling sooner any more. That was a somewhat awkwardly phrased statement. I finally bought a p coat, something I've wanted since working at Disney. It got surprisingly cold there in the winter--especially at night--and they had these massive black p coats that were the warmest things ever. I so would have stolen it if it wasn't checked out by bar code under my name. The Fantasyland coat I wore my one night working at the pretzel wagon was also very warm, but definitely looked fantasy-ee enough that it wasn't steal-worthy. Anyway, back to the present of yesterday (I realize how redundant that sounds)...

Later that night I went to William James' house and played Guitar Hero for my very first time. We didn't stay long because I'm pretty sure all involved in the shopping felt a little nautious after Victoria Secret. Too many smells in one place for too long of a time. But it was nice to see old friends from high school. I actually still hang out with a lot of my friends from high school, only I don't really consider them as high school friends any longer, on account of us hanging out so much since high school ended 5 years ago. What's weird is running into people from high school that I don't see on a frequent basis. I liked the people then, but that doesn't mean I want to mindlessly chit chat with them. I hate that. If there's something I legitimately want to find out about someone I haven't seen in a while, or vice versa, that's cool, but if it's just about appearing nice and friendly and making conversation where it normally wouldn't be...I have no patience for that. I was never good at it and I hate being forced into it. But that didn't happen, so there you go. I was pretty okay at Guitar Hero, so I can see why people get adicted, but I was no scion by any measure, and I'm pretty sure it gave me carpal tunnel. By the way, speaking of my medical maladies...for anyone who's interested, I do not have leukemia. Kind of dissapointing. I expected my blood smear to show at least something interesting. All I found out is that I have pencil cells in there which means I'm anemic. I pretty much knew that. But it was cool to look around at all my nicely developed red and white blood cells and be proud of myself for that. A little worried that I've had cold like symptems for months and yet I have no extra white blood cells, thus implying my immune system may be crap, but proud nonetheless. The human body really is quite amazing. Such little machinery going on beneath our skin. I pocketed my smears, although I have no idea what I'll do with them now.

If you get through all the nonsense at the first of this post, you'll get to hear about me drawing blood.

I used to have a test tomorrow, but then it was pushed to friday. Ultimately it doesn't make much of a difference because I'm working tomorrow, but it is a bit of a relief...enough of one that I'm writing on here instead of studying...and that I went to dinner tonight with friends instead of studying. Man I love the meatloaf at that pub. I did study before though, and that's something. I really enjoy Microbiology actually, and I don't mind studying for it because it's interesting. But it does tend to make me paranoid. When you spend a year learning about all the different diseases you can get, and what organisms cause them, and all of the everday places you can pick them up... Well, there you go. Right now I'm learning about moulds, which is kind of nice because we do allergen testing at my work for most of them, so I already know the names of the species and genus's for many. And our lab for that class this week consisted of us making slides of molds we obtained from sandwiches, cheese, and random things people brought in. My favorite by far was the Alternaria growing on a pumpkin someone brought it. It looked like little caveman clubs growing off of wood. There's probably a better way I could have described that to do it justice, but I'm not willing to take the effort of making that into sense.

Today was actually a pretty enjoyable day at school, if you take out most of the anxiety ridden moments that preceded the Hematology test I had last. It was my final, I didn't feel ready for it, and I'm really bad at knowing what it is she'll put on there. There's so much to remember, and she has a lot of non multiple choice stuff on there. A lot of diagnosing people and listing the etiology and mechanisms of diseases, and further testing to confirm the diagnosis, and symptoms and treatments and stuff. It's a face full. But that's over with and I'm fine. What I really want to write about is my Intro to Lab lab today.

We finally got to do some phlebotomy today. Very basic stuff, but still pretty cool. Earlier on they broke everyone else in the program up into two groups, so it would be more managable to handle all of us and give us the support and encouragement we needed but could not get with there being so many of us. Not that 32 is a paricularly massive number, but it's more than 2. Anyway, Worm ended up in the group that had that rotation last week and the week before, and Steven and I didn't have it until today. There are three of us in our little posse, which consists of we who work at ACME in the Immunology lab. It took quite the lengthy interview process--wherein I had to commendate my skills and capabilities--before I convinced him to let me stick a needle into his arm. Apparently he has a problem with people drawing his blood, the big baby. I had to point out my steady hands during pipette calibrations, and also my extremely visible veins, which made it easy on both of us where drawing blood was concerned. Not to toot my own horn, but I'm pretty awesome at tying a tourniquet. I actually wasn't so much the first day we did it weeks ago, and we haven't done it since, but for some reason I could today. Maybe it's because someone up there knew Steven would freak out if I showed any signs of weakness today, as to my drawing abilities. But yeah, things went off without a hitch. We both practiced on the fake arm and our techniques were fine the first time, so we moved right onto actual arms. Two of our friends, who are in the other ACME posse, Jacob and Noel, did not fare so well. They both had to practice on the arm one more time, which to be fair was probably because they tried before us, and we got the benefit of learning from their mistakes. But it was awesome watching them draw blood after we were done drawing each others--I don't think I've laughed that hard for a while. I drew first of all of our bay, and it went pretty well. It wasn't perfect, but thanks to Steven's massive veins so close to the surface, I would have had to poke his arm with my eyes closed to miss the mark. Actually, because we were encouraged to not look at the veins, but to instead "feel" them with our "feely" finger (a.k.a. the pointer finger due to it's delicate nerve endings), I bet I could have still got it with my eyes closed. Steven was so worried about hurting me though, and thus his hands were shaking like crazy before and whilst the needle was in my arm. I kept telling him I could care less, but it didn't seem to make a difference; I mean, it was such a small needle, and with that needles don't bother me, and that I donate blood frequently enough and with a much larger needle in my arm--the fact of the matter is that he would have had to stick the needle straight into my median nerve for me to have felt it. Noel drew Jacob's blood after Steven, and it was farely awesome. She had the needle in his arm before she warned him that he was about to "feel a little stick" (we're supposed to warn the person by telling them that before we actually do anything). He was like, "okay..." She didn't so much get his vein as she did not get his vein, but she did leave the tourniquet on his arm for far too long. I have to give him props for being really calm while these events unfolded. So he mentioned that his arm was starting to hurt and the tourniquet came off after the needle came out (a big don't), and Noel quickly grabbed what she thought was a swab, but was actually an alcohol wipe. I think each of them noted in their heads that it was wet before the realization came that something was not quite right, and at that point Noel got the real swab and switched it. But not before exacting it's tole. I don't think it hurt a lot, but I would imagine it stinging at least a little. Jacob's needle went through Noel's vein, spurted a little in the tube as he pulled it out a bit, and stopped when he pulled it out too much only to reconvene it's exit through the skin of her arm. Again, full marks for professionalism. He's the guy that would draw your blood and could completely mutilate your arm with a needle while doing so, and the only thing you'd think afterwards is, "wow, what a nice guy that was that drew my blood." All in all it was a wonderful learning experience for all of us.

This is Noel trying very hard to evade Jacob's swinging fist, which I don't think he realized was so wildly out of control while trying to tie that tourniquet. And of course Steven and Jacob smiling in anticipation.
This is me and Steven with the tube of my blood after I got got. And there's Jacob and Noel again, with him wafting the alcohol wiped area dry--very important stuff. If you see a blond lady in the background, that's Donna, one of our lab teaching assistants. She likes us the best.