Yay Gnomes

Gnomes are tricky, you never know what they're up to

Applied Sciences

We did throat swabs of our throats and grew it on petri ish plates.  We were looking for bacteria in our throat…all I can say is ewww! I guess I have alpha and gamma hemolytic bacteria, a possibility for it would be S. pyrogenes, the causative agent for strep throat.  Oh joy.  The plates were put in jars with candles so that they could grow in a air-less environment.  But the candles they put in there were scented, and when we got our plates out, one of my lab partners started smelling the plate…I didn’t realize at first that the candles put in the jar were scented so I just thought my lab partner was just a little loopy, smelling bacteria!?  Well I guess it smelt like chocolate, which puts me off of chocolate for a while.

Scary Bacteria

For Microbiology, every week, we research a specific bacteria/virus that my teacher assigns us.  We’ve done AIDS, Y. pestis (the plague), E. coli, and the latest one S. pyogenes.  Even though it doesn’t sound immediately familiar, with researching i found out that it is the causative agent for strep, scarlet fever.  But the scary thing is that it is what’s called a normal flora of the body.  Which is basically bacteria that live in/on the human body normally.  Then when the body’s defenses break down or are weakened, then bacteria like S. pyogenes can cause illnesses. That’s my scary thought of the day.

Even though I’m learning about all the things that could go wrong, I’m strangley not becoming a germaphobic or anything, AIDS is the only thing I would do anything to avoid since it’s death rate is 100%…

Veiwer Discretion is Advised

I had a little bump in my day, or more like my grandma did.  She tripped going down the stairs and some how clipped her arm where it peeled the skin on her forearm back about six inches.  I heard the bump and at first thought it was my little brother Bryce taking little falls like he usually does, but when I went to go check it out…I found my dad on the phone to 911 and my grandma lying at the bottom of the step with a towel over her arm.  And blood, there was definitely blood.  An ambulance came to check her out and ended up putting her on one of those boards they put people on when they’re unsure of neck/back injury.  I rode shotgun in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.  No flashing lights or anything, and the guys were really nice, even offered to stop off and get my grandma a beer, haha.

The hospital was a blur though, we were there for about two hours, which is pretty darn good for an ER.  She had a CT and X-Ray to make sure that there wasn’t any damage to her back, neck or ankle.  There were way too many nurses back and forth, and the thing I was the most surprised at was that we had about two girl nurses and six guy nurses.  Each one of them asked how she got the gash or medical term laceration on her arm, and I think we shocked most of them because of how exposed her arm was.  You could see the tendons, arteries, adipose and even muscle when the skin was peeled back.  THANKFULLY, nothing was broken, just had a sprained ankle, and a bunch of stitches on her arm.

Click on the MORE link for two pictures of her arm.  I didn’t take them because I’m a ghoul or unfeeling or anything.  It was just really interesting to see it up close in personal.  Most of that stuff I’ve just seen in textbooks or dead cats with no flowing blood.

Motherhood, Is It In You?

I just finished a grueling day, starting with a shift for work beginning at 9pm ending with a babysitting job that I finished around 4:30pm.  I’d say work was the same ol’ same ol’, just chilling most of the night on the couch listening if my client needed me.  The fun part was that the Olympics helped keep me awake; water polo, volleyball, polo, diving, track.  I’d have to say that my two favorites to watch were the diving and water polo competitions, even though I haven’t seen the final matches between the two.

But the new twist to this day was that I agreed to babysit for a lady from church after I got off of work…minus sleep.  So I showed up around 8:15am and didn’t get relieve till after 4:30.  But even with no sleep, my lovely period keeping me company and two more kids than I thought I’d be in charge of, it was an OK day.  And it just felt like I could be ready for motherhood, not saying I’m going out to have kids in the next couple of seconds but I was groovin’ it with strange kids and not at the top of my game.

We also went to a park where I wanted to roll down a really big hill, but didn’t because I was too tired to climb back up the hill. Though did get my fill of swings and jungle gyms

To Just Burry Your Head Under the Covers, Five Minutes More

K, weird dream.  Robots trying to take over the world. But it was funny because people from some of the shows that I watch popped up in my dream, along with pretty much everyone that I know.  I was in charge of keeping the kids happy, whether it was singing or changing diapers.  It’s weird to try to put a dream into coherent thoughts… First of all what happened was that all the power, in Washington that I know of was turned off, though we still had a few lights, so wherever we were must’ve had a generator.  And that’s why people were coming from all over.  But I had flashes of NCIS people doing stuff with airplanes and a shoot ‘em up scene with robots.  And then Hodgins and Angela showed up from Bones at the front of the house.  Then when I went upstairs to find my friends I found Paul, Jessica, Hannah and Breezie making hamburgers and hotdogs over a grill.  And the moral of the story is… I have absolutely no clue.  I didn’t die, so I was happy bout that.  Hopefully we win and I get to eat a hamburger!

Hey Now, You’re an All Star…

I don’t know why, but I started to watch the All Star game while channel surfing.  I usually think that baseball is pretty boring, at least to watch.  “He winds up, and a pitch…ball.  And he winds up, another pitch…foul.” I mean seriously, half the game you’re watching them do nothing.  Compared to like football-they’re always running at each other, something to cheer on or yell about.  Then with basketball they’re always running unless there’s a foul. Soccer…you get my point.  But back to the All Star game and why I stopped on it.  It was prolly the longest baseball game that I’d seen or heard of, at the time it was at the top of the 13th inning the National and American Leagues both tied at 3.  After continual channel surfing and checking up on the game between Sienfield and Fraiser the game ended at the bottom of the 15.  Just one more inning and it would’ve broken the record for an All Star game.  I was curious enough to call Breezie and see if she knew the record.  Unfortunately, for me not for her, all she had to say was that she had broken some levels on Guitar Hero that she and evidentaly Jessica had been having trouble one.  Anyway, I looked it up, and the longest game was set in 1967.  Seriously, why would you want to play that long!?  The game at the Yankee stadium (this year) ended around 1:30am with most of the fans gone and the players looking like they just wanted to go to bed.  AND, my final note is that I only recognized two people. A-rod, who I think is still cute, and the old manager for the Mariners, Lou Pinella…though he wasn’t yelling at anyone at the time.

Surprises at Work…

I had two work shifts- one an early morning fill in with a client that’s a POW from WWII. He’s confined to a wheel chair after having a stroke, which seems hard for him to adjust to, surliness, though it might just be his personality. However, he’s missing a thumb, which I don’t know is from his time as a POW or just a consequence of his life…I’ve never had a POW as a client before, and just started to wonder about the effect of being held prisoner on the rest of your life.

Then at my second client of the day, his mother, whose in her 80’s I think, found out that she has lung cancer. But because of her age and lack of energy, she’s not going to do anything major about it. That was a bit of a surprise, not that she’s going to do anything, but just that she found out that she has terminal cancer and that she could speak so nonchalant about it. Pretty intense day…And then I had to cram in starting and finishing my display project…not so lovely pictures really go along with bed sores.

Alternate Reality Where You’re Never Dead For Long

I had a weird dream last night.  The funny thing was, that I wasn’t the center part of the dream.  In fact I don’t even know if I was in the dream, it was more like watching a movie but from right above so I could see all that was going on.  It had vampires in it trying to bite people (what else do they do anyway) and then a power struggle between two groups of people, spies, assassins and all that fun stuff.

I wonder where do our dreams come from?  Can we dream of stuff we’ve never heard of or seen, or do we just take our life-what we’ve seen ove it so far-and mesh it all together in random ways?  I know that as a kid our dreams could be more of the boogeyman under the bed or in the closet, more the fear of the unknown.  But I think it would be really interesting if I started dreaming of things unknown to me.  Thing is, even right after I wake up, it’s hard for me to pull all the parts of the dream together into a coherent thought.  The more I try to recall them and put them together, the fuzzier they become.

Rock Paper Scissors

Just ridiculous enough to be funny…