Thrift Store Heaven: I'm A Used Bargain Hunter

There is a thrift store around the corner from Dr Cool's place that I stopped in one day after a run and found to be a treasure trove of bargains. It is the nicest thrift store that I have ever been in with the nicest staff.

Today and tomorrow they are having a 50% off sale which I have long anticipated. I got lots of kids' clothes for the many kids in my life thanks to my friends and family suddenly all deciding to reproduce at once. It's nice. I enjoy buying kids' clothes immensely but have none of the other responsibilities associated with child rearing.

When I walked into the store at ten minutes to opening this morning (hey, the door was wide open and the sign said open so what if I was a few minutes early?) there was this beautiful suit on the to-be-re-hung-after-trying-on rack. 6 petite. My size exactly. Jones New York (brand name). Black with pink stripes. Brand spanking new. Tags still on. $300 at Macy's. $50 at the thrift store, but wait, with the half price sale make that $25. I tried it on and it fit perfectly. This might be the best deal yet that I have gotten at a thrift store. Heaven.

My mom is a born bargain hunter. The day after Thanksgiving shopping was as sacred growing up as a religious holiday. We began early and went all day. While my mom always shops on sale, and does a darn good job of it, I am a whole new generation of bargain hunter. I am a used bargain hunter. I restrict my shopping solely to thrift stores. And thrift store sales are the pinnacle of bargain hunting achievement for me.

In fact, now that this day's shopping is over, the next big event on my horizon is the half price sale coming up in mid-December at my favorite thrift store in Menlo Park. Luckily, that's not too far off.

Food, Food, Food: More Farmers' Market Goodies and Veggie Stew Take 2

Top to bottom:

1. third pot of veggie stew with beans (kidney, black and pinto, the only stuff in it from a can)
   
2. no, not a salad but stuff for the third pot of veggie stew (I use everything-- the stalks from the Swiss chard, etc, plus all the red stuff is hot peppers, I like it spicy!)
3. the potatoes and carrots have to cook extra long, second pot veggie stew
4. all three pots of veggie stew combined in a gigantic bowl (the first pot was cauliflower and onion)
5. last week the artichoke farmer offered me a 12 pound butternut squash for $5-- mmmm! and the week before that I treated myself to a trip to the Mountain View farmers' market, where I got a rare yellow cauliflower (apparently worth its weight in gold as it cost $4 for 2 pounds!). I already ate the cauliflower (cooked in the oven till tender) but I am planning not to bake all the butternut squash but instead try my hand at butternut squash soup, which I hear is quite forgiving and so doesn't sound too difficult
   

All Work And No Play Makes For A Long Day

Well, not exactly though it rhymes.

Yesterday I came home from school, took a nap, did some research, then went to Dr. Cool's party until midnight.

From midnight till 9 am I was at work doing my first solo graveyard shift.

Then I finished up my research (it couldn't wait as the project is a collaboration and my teammates need my part of it now, as in yesterday).

Now I think it is time for another nap.

More details and pictures soon.

My Anonymous Quiz And Other Tidbits From The Peanut Gallery

So today in genetics we got back our quizzes. The one on top of the pile was mine. It had my handwriting, my paper, but no name. Date-- yes. Quiz number and title-- yes. But no name, just a bunch of question marks in the professor's red ink where the name should have been. Oh yeah, and a perfect score.

I brought it up to the instructor and told her it was mine. She recognized the handwriting and believed me. She said she and her husband had been laughing at breakfast about how someone could get a perfect score and then forget their name. Yes, that's me. Space cadet.

In other news from school, FYI, shark kidneys are not retroperitoneal. They also don't look a think like mammalian kidneys. Oh yeah, and on that same shark dissection, I confused the ileum with the rectal gland. Oops again. Note to self-- shark intestines do not look like mammalian intestines either. Oh well.

How Do You Know When Something Interesting Is Going On Outside Your Window?

The cats are glued to the window! (Lindy on left with marbled coat, Simon on right with spots).

Ouch

My genetics exam this morning was not pretty. Not as bad as the notorious quantum exam of oh so many years ago whose questions I could not even decipher, but not pretty nonetheless (so glad you remember that exam too, Poc Poc). Lots of nit picky details, like 5-bromouracil is a base analog for thyamine, what base does it incorrectly pair to (not adenine, but is it guanine or cytosine?). There are too many mechanisms for mutations for me to memorize them all, and it is not a high priority since it is not clinically relevant information, like physiology.

I had been up since 5 am this morning, so when I got back from my exam I ran some errands and then took a nap since I knew I would be at work till late tonight. In fact, if I hadn't slept I would have gone 22 hours without sleeping at this point. Which has never been a problem for me in the past, but I'm trying to be more careful with that lately. Kind of crimps my style, but healthy is worth it.

Then it was off to zoology (thank goodness for that class, makes me feel smart), from there straight to work.

Work was strange. I was the most experienced technician on the shift, and the only licensed one (maybe not the most experienced in everything, but in anesthesia and lab yes). I'm still not used to that. It kind of freaks me out to have no one above me to go to except the doctors, and often they don't know nursing stuff like how to get the suction in surgery to work or how to get the capnograph to display readings... I think I like being a small fish in a big pond way better than being a big fish in a small pond. In fact, I'm sure of it.

And now, to see if I can somehow get myself to sleep all wired from this shift when I finished the fantastic lesbian romance novel I was reading at a snail's pace of one chapter a night. I don't think genetics reading will put me to sleep, it'll only get my brain going more. It's genetics or finances. Time to make a trip to the library!

My Holiday Wish List

EB and some of my other faraway friends have posted their holiday wish lists online. And I got my first query about holiday presents today. So here is mine:

What I'd Really, Really Like

• A quiet place to live
• A full-time job in veterinary emergency medicine, critical care or internal medicine
• An acceptance to one of my first choice schools (Cornell, Davis, Maryland or Wisconsin)

And if my family sends me money I will spend it on:

• Running shoes (another pair or two would be nice, new ones help prevent injuries)
• A two month pass to a local, outdoor saltwater pool

Anything else would be extraneous, superfluous and unnecessary-- I look really simple on paper, huh? Too bad my personality isn't as simple as my needs and wants or I'd really be a winner.

Birthday Girl

This is the Birthday Girl. She definitely seemed to be enjoying herself. She reminds me an awful lot of me as a kid. She is so precocious, so verbal and so very, very active. Below she is standing on the fence in her yard, which she just climbed over.
Birthday Girl was quite insistent on everyone gathering around to watch The Amazing Trick, which consisted of hanging upside down and then dropping off of her jungle gym. I had many similar amazing tricks as a kid (including bracing against the doorway until I was perched at the top of the doorway, where I would stay as long as possible, liking being high up). Good thinking whoever's decision it was for Birthday Girl to wear shorts underneath her dress!


Finally, here is Birthday Girl bouncing on her trampoline:

And I can't help but show off the gifts I got her: a plush white vest with silver tinsel woven into it (Birthday Girl loves sparkles and soft things) and also a purple dress whose upper half is made of velvet. I think she liked the vest a lot, judging by the fact that she put it on immediately.


The vest was a bit expensive at $3, but the dress was only $1. I felt free to announce this fact as Birthday Girl's mom, Self-Sustainable Nurse, is one of the most thrifty people I have ever met. She considers $1 a lot for a piece of clothing, and like me, only shops at thrift stores. In fact, prior to the party I stopped by San Martin's community store to check out Self-Sustainable Nurse's all-time favorite thrift store (how could one pass up something so highly recommended?):

Downtown San Martin, like San Juan Bautista and the other towns around Gilroy and Monterey, makes me feel like I've stepped onto the set of a film from the Wild West.

All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon. Thanks for the invitation, Birthday Girl!

Good News For Lindy

Update on Lindy. Her blood pressure was in the normal range at the internist's. Thank goodness. Also her retina looks normal-- no blood pooling, no signs of it being detached. Please, please let me catch hypertension in her if it develops before she goes blind, suffers brain damage or further kidney damage. Please. I would feel terrible if I didn't. But I might never have to worry about it, only about 20% of cats in renal failure develop hypertension-- a compensatory mechanism gone awry due to changes in pressure in the glomerulus having to do with vasoconstriction of the afferent/efferent arteriole (I still don't totally get this mechanism even after bugging the internist about it-- how does that stimulate renin production and activate the renin-angiotensin pathway if the carotid sinus and baroreceptor in the aortic arch aren't sensing low BP????)

She had a slight heart murmur at the internists (graded I out of IV) but this was probably due to her HR of 240! (Think she was releasing some norepinephrine that caused the alpha 1 adrenergic receptors on the sinoatrial nodal cells to increase her HR? See what stress can do to an animal?) Ohm's law of hydrodynamics no longer holds above a certain threshold and then instead of laminar flow you get turbulence (thank you Osborne Reynolds for determining this threshold, may I never need to calculate it). Hence the murmur. At least my best guess.

Of most concern, her packed cell volume dropped 5% in the past three months. This may indicate her kidneys are decreasing their production of erythropoietin, which may mean that I need to put her on synthetic EPO at some point. This is not without any risk, as it can sometimes stimulate antibody production in cats and then they lose the capability to produce RBCs entirely, the kiss of death (unless you are crazy enough to do continual blood transfusions). But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

For now it is good news for my girl and for that I am very, very grateful.

Friday: The Good and The Bad

The best thing about it being Friday: I get to see my Friday night crew at work, though admittedly dwindling-- now just me, Muscles and Self-Sustainable Nurse. Thank goodness for them, they keep me sane by making me laugh the entire shift.

The other good thing about Friday: Only two days till the farmers' market, which is the other highlight of my weekend.

The bad thing about this Friday: I have a genetics exam Monday that I am fairly unprepared for and I don't plan to spend much time inside on a beautiful weekend like this. Grades, shmrades. I'm aching for some sunshine and long runs. Plus I've got Self-Sustainable Nurse Jr's birthday party to attend tomorrow. Apparently I will be manning the hot glue gun to prevent the kids from burning themselves. There will be six 4 year olds. I don't know any other details. Like what they will be doing with the hot glue gun????? Hey, in my book any excuse to spend time on a South county ranch is a good one...

Maybe getting outside will make me feel less blah. I was feeling so happy earlier in the week thanks to an awesome experience at work. Now that feeling is gone. Hence the lack of recent blog posts.

The question of the moment-- what to eat for lunch? I have an artichoke steaming, Swiss chard sauteeing, and I just munched on some fresh greens with lots of arugla (yay spicy greens). I think I will make my special yellow cauliflower later after my run. And there is also a yam to finish off, as well as my winter squash from earlier. Love those farmers' markets. Yum. And I'll top it off with a bit of sturgeon or goat's cheese. (Hmm... I wonder what goodies Self-Sustainable Nurse will bring in to work tonight-- I can't wait till spring so I can have fresh goat's milk again and goat milk tapioca pudding... in the meantime I think it is mainly eggs...)

A Trip To The Vet's

Saturday I took my cats to work to re-check Lindy's bloodwork before her appointment with the internist on Tuesday morning. Simon was just keeping her company-- as you will see below they provide each other with a lot of comfort in stressful situations. Below I am checking Lindy's blood pressure. I was quite distraught to find she has become hypertensive, but I am smiling because of something funny Dr. Cool was saying as he snapped the shot.



They like to huddle together in the cage. Pretty darn cute. Between Lindy's high blood pressure and their obvious stress at being in the hospital, I jumped at the chance to go home early when we were slow, and so I got them out of there as fast as possible.

Who Needs Supermarkets When You Have Farmers' Markets Like This?

Collecting My Thoughts On Prop 8's Passing

I feel like I ought to write something thoughtful and deep, or at least attempt to, but it has been hard to wrap words around my emotions, let alone wrap my head around the outcome of the election. It is the first time since prohibition that existing legal rights have been taken away and the first time ever that Americans have amended a state constitution to take away rights from a minority group that previously enjoyed those same rights, which makes for a scary day for this country, this state, civil rights, and me and all my LBGT friends. To quote Lorri L. Jean:

That is because Proposition 8 is the very first time in our nation's history that one group of people has succeeded in putting a measure on the ballot that seeks to eliminate the fundamental marriage rights of another group.

And that's one of the worst things about Proposition 8. It's an effort to start something very dangerous in our country -- something that flies in the face of the very bedrock of our democratic society and of the reasons why we have a Constitution and a Bill of Rights. One group of people is not supposed to be able to vote to take away the fundamental rights of a smaller group of people. To do so is not only wrong, it's un-American.

Before I go any furher, I want to express my thanks to all the kind folks on the East coast who expressed their regret, either in private email or in their comments on this blog. I appreciate your support immensely, and your acknowledgment that this is a difficult piece of news for me as well as your recognition of the disturbing larger implications of the proposition's passage. This especially includes my parents, who wrote to me almost immediately expressing their sadness and outrage.

I was very disappointed last night when the election returns on proposition 8 came in, but not shocked. I had a feeling it would pass. After all, the Yes signs vastly outnumbered the No signs in my part of town, as did the Yes protesters. My signs kept getting stolen. Many of my acquaintances and friends had told me they were voting yes. And many of my friends who would have voted no chose not to participate at all, not even bothering to cast a vote. So in my small world it didn't look good from the outset.

On a personal level, prop 8 has been a wake-up call to me about the environment I live in and the rampant homophobia and religious fundamentalism that dominate in my neighborhood/area of town as well as the apathy of way too many people when it comes to voting. The first thing Dr. Cool said to me when he saw me today was that it must be a difficult day for me. And then he added that it says a lot about our state, and our neighborhood in particular.

On a more political level, I think that a lot of the reason that prop 8 passed was the conflation of religious values and legal rights. There is supposed to be separation of church and state in this country, but many people seem to have missed that point in making their decisions on how to vote on this one. Many people seemed to want to impose their religious values on others. This wasn't about a spiritual definition of marriage or G-d's will (and notice here that I always hyphenate G-d's name, as do all religious Jews or people who were raised in that tradition, out of respect lest the full name be written and then desecrated, so it is not like I am without any understanding of religious tradition or spirituality myself). This was about taxpayers being denied equal rights. And yes, as the gay rights attorneys astutely argued in the Supreme court case, it was also about semantics. That domestic partnership may convey many of the same legal benefits as marriage but it does not have the same meaning to people and that this can have important consequences besides the obvious emotional component, such as in medical emergencies.

To quote Veronique de Turenne, who put my first point above much more succintly, "Behind the dollars and sentiments the question remains -- is marriage a state of the soul, or sole discretion of the state?"

Despite feeling disappointed last night and this morning, overall I remain optimistic that I will see gay marriage prevail in my lifetime. That I will live to see acceptance and not just tolerance and thinly veiled homophobia. The exit polls showed that people under 30 overwhelmingly voted no, meaning they supported gay marriage. The tides are turning. It was too soon this time, but just by a hair. I think it is inevitable that change will come, with time. As a rabbi I heard speak on this issue said, "Change does not come overnight. It is a gradual and frustrating process. Sometimes it is one step forward and two steps backward." But once set in motion, change like this does come. And so even in the face of defeat I embrace hope.

Writing My Planaria Paper-- Does This Sound Surreal To Anyone Else Or Am I Just Overtired?

"When exposed to light planarians display a distinctive light avoidance behavior known as negative phototaxis. Such behavior is temporarily suppressed when animals are decapitated, and it is restored once the animals regenerate their heads."

I dunno, I just find reading that kind of disturbing. Then again, I haven't been sleeping much lately so it could just be me...

(Here's the full article if you are are interested).

Also, for the record, no planarians were harmed in my experiment. I actually have a reputation for being the humane student of the group because I refused to cut my planarians' heads in half to try to get them to demonstrate regeneration. Granted, their nervous system is much, much simpler than ours, but they do seem to react to having their heads cut in half so why do it? I mean, I don't know what it feels like to them and there is no way I ever will and to do that just for a few points extra credit does not seem like an ethical decision to me.

One Week Later

It seemed like this night would never come. Time passed so slowly all week, especially today. And yet, as predicted, here I sit typing my Planaria lab report.

What I care about most at the moment is the outcome of the election on Prop 8. The initial results at this early stage show a resounding victory for the Yes on 8 folks. It saddens me but doesn't surprise me.

Saddens me deeply. I can't reasonably account for my ability to focus on my Planaria report, which is not in the least bit intriguing, other than to say I have always found solace in my schoolwork. Even when it is not all that interesting, work is a distraction for me, and so I am grateful to have loads of it at the moment.

My exams did not go so well. I hate walking out of an exam and later remembering nit picky points that I missed. Like how on my diagram of the hemoglobin dissociation curve, I labeled the x-axis PO2 but did not give units (which should have been mm Hg). Sigh. Yes my mind really works like that. I try hard not to think about my exams once they are over, but of course it pops into my head and then my classmates want to talk about their answers and will even call me up to discuss questions!

Luckily I did not write anything utterly ridiculous on my exam, like my friend who wrote an essay on how the sympathetic nervous system works to increase the heart rate via fluffy hamster cells. OK, well in all fairness we both realized what is involved is release of norepinephrine which binds to beta-1 adrenergic receptors in a G-protein coupled cascade involving adenlyl cyclase and increased cAMP. But there was also a question about which cells specifically do the neurons releasing the neurotransmitter synapse onto-- I wasn't sure which is why I wrote about the unusual length v. tension diagram of cardiac sarcomeres instead. I suspected the neurons synapse onto sinoatrial nodal cells, possibly atrioventricular nodal cells as well. My friend put down that they synapse onto fluffy hamster cells. Really truly. Because she couldn't think of anything better. I had to laugh. She's a goofball sometimes. At least she got me to laugh on an otherwise rather dreary night.

So what else have I been up to? I spent the afternoon at the polls campaigning for No on 8. After my exam I returned to the polls for the final hour of voting. Then I got in a quick swim. Alone at night in the crisp cold air and dark water, trying to clear my head and decompress a bit.

I have to admit, I have been pretty blue lately and today hasn't helped. I am utilizing my usual limited coping mechanisms-- run and swim more, pick up more shifts at work, give away more of my possessions (books and clothing), study harder. It's not necessarily the healthiest way to cope, old habits are hard to break. Dr. Cool has noticed and teases me that it is my own special version of triathlon-- swim, study, run. Substituting studying for the bike ride. Hey, it works for me so don't knock it.

Perspective: Waking Up To Bushtits Calling, Sunshine And I Can't Help But Smile

As anyone who knows me well or reads this blog regularly knows, these tiny birds are some of my favorites. I love their tinkly, melodious call and sock-shaped, unusual nests (that for some reason jump out at me everywhere I go but not to anyone else I know-- some kind of strange pattern recognition I possess and attunement to the natural world, as one of my more pereceptive dates-- we'll simply call her TheLawyer-- said, "That's an interesting brain you've got in there"-- she was one of the few who actually noticed what I was paying attention to while we were out walking around, and saw that my focus was on the animals around me and not the people even though we were in a crowd).

So I woke up this morning to a flock of them outside my window. I knew they were there before I raised the blinds by their lovely calls. It made me smile in my half-sleep and my heart warm as I slowly woke up, in no rush to leap out of bed for once. (And when I did get up, I immediately reached for my camera to document the happy moment for you, my readers).

I have to remind myself as I stress over my upcoming exams tomorrow and the next day and worry about the outcome of this election and its possible ramifications that these things will not cease to exist no matter what happens in the next few days. There will be bushtits calling, sunshine, and gigantic carrots and yams from the farmer's market to look forward to, thank goodness.

This Morning I Woke Up Thinking About...

PAH (p-aminohippurate) and inulin. How PAH is completely cleared from the plasma and thus a good indicator of renal plasma flow (RPF). PAH is a meausre of whether you have good blood flow to the kidney since the renal clearance equals the arterial renal plasma flow.
And inulin is a measure of whether the filter is working since it is unprocessed, i.e. the amount filtered= the amount excreted. So inulin can be used to estimate glomerular filtration rate (GFR) since the amount of inulin that appears in the urine per unit time is the same as the amount of inulin that the glomerulus filters per unit time.

And I opened my eyes to Lindy, who while I lay there with my eyes shut had been head-butting and nuzzling my face, insistent on getting some attention. Lindy with her failing kidneys. I wonder what would happen if I injected her with PAH-- hopefully she has good blood flow to her kidneys. And inulin? The filter is working, but it has too many holes, not enough reabsorption and secretion. Would inulin demonstrate that in her? I don't know.

It was grey and raining, I rolled out of bed, slipped on my sandals and went for an hour and a half swim. The incredible hulk had to choose to get in my lane, and soon I was the only female in a lane of really fast male swimmers. I held my own, but I was eating water the whole time. Why do they seem to choose to get in with me? I can't pace off of someone who is twice as fast as me. A normal guy, maybe, but not these athletes. I wish they'd pick someone else to get in with for a change...