Ridiculous Ramblings, Really

Having just been foiled in my attempts to celebrate our national holiday in a different way than usual, because they've closed off most of the Tiergarten because of overcrowding (at least according to the announcements on the S-Bahn) , I've decided to fall back on my usual behaviour: Lazing around at home.

Of course this will result in the usual temporal disorientation that tends to follow holidays in the middle of the week. But as I have to work the weekend this shouldn't matter too much in the end.

And only part of the work on the weekend will be the shift of emergency vet (sorry, I don't think I'll get tired of calling myself that anytime soon, we get little enough of respect from the bosses and the clients, I sometimes need to use big words to describe my job at least here), the other part will be helping out with the organization of the next continuing education module (big words again. We're required to help with the refreshments and the cleaning. But we get to sit in on the lectures as well). On dermatology of all things. I foresee a lot of psychosomatic scratching in my future.

Berlin is not known for its tropical climate. Actually, the whole country isn't.
If the thunderstorm looming up there would finally break, temperatures below 20°C might be achieved during the night.

My lack of updating in the last weeks was only partly due to not having the time - though working 50+ hours a week, not counting the weekends, does tend to limit your free time. More on that once I get around to babbling about the job - but also on not being sure if I were allowed to continue to do so. Probation was supposed to be for three months, but since Prof Blub told me he and I would need to have a talk soon about a month ago, I was scared ever since.

I'm not so much a natural pessimist, as that I try to be prepared for every worst case scenario. No matter if I expect to be told that I'm allowed to stay, being prepared to be told the opposite makes it easier to deal with any outcome.

A popular question for online quizzes is whether one makes wishes/dreams or plans. I'm all for plans. You can add a level of realism to plans that dreams can't afford. What to do if you fail. How to pick yourself up and go on.
But I hate to talk about these plans before they are fact. Because if you tell people before that, you have to deal with people asking you about them and telling you how they feel bad for you if they didn't turn out as hoped. It's easier to say "I thought about that, but it didn't work out and now I'm doing that". Less emotional declarations and stuff for one thing.
Because if you've trained yourself/just naturally don't take things serious enough to mind very much, these can be awkward.

This is all a very convoluted way of saying that he told me I was allowed to stay. And since the person who would be my main adviser/supervisor for the dissertation in the area I asked about, is on vacation for another two weeks he told me that he had another topic I could do if I were interested.
I'm still not sure saying that I wouldn't mind waiting for two more weeks - especially since he is known for being busy and not good with appointments - to work out the actual topic and get started was a good idea. While I like anaesthesia, my main reason for selecting it as the general topic for the dissertation attempt was that it's relatively easy to get enough cases for a study. My main objective is getting these two letters in front of my name while gaining lots of experience that has good chances as counting as an internship for most of the colleges of the EBVS after all. But it's also a dissertation and I'd like it to be more than the glorified literature research some others a doing. And a clinical dissertation will looked down onto anyway by some people.

In less navel-gazing news, J. bought a washing machine. Yay, for being able to do the laundry at home and not having to drag everything to the laundromat far, far away.

Finally, if people could just stop their pets from jumping out of windows, my whole life would be so much easier. (Really, there are at least 15 cats every week coming in which have been injured this way. Though the few dogs that do amaze everyone. How can an Akita even survive a 5 floor fall? We'll never know).

Words cannot describe how pissed off I am right now.

I really don't mind failing exams all that much. I can accept bad grades if they are justified.
All of course, because I know that it's my own fault for not studying enough or simply having bad luck when drawing the questions.

It annoys me to know that I answered the questions really well, not just by luck, but because I really *know* the stuff, and still not getting a good grade for some reason (mutual hate between the examiner and me; my seemingly confuse behaviour convincing the examiner that I might have answered the questions, but don't actually know what I'm talking about). It's unfair, but that's just life.

What pisses me of beyond measure, is getting grades that don't seem to be justified, and having someone else, whose answers were definitely worse - even by their own judgement - getting the same grade without any explanation.
Yeah, I could just say "That's life" in this case as well, but for some reason this is one of the things that triggers my temper.

Have I mentioned how much I hate oral exams this month yet?

Yes, I passed the exam. No it's not a really bad grade.
I'm still going to practice some kicks and hits for a while to calm down.
*seethes*

First of all, thanks so much for all the birthday wishes. They made my day - even if it took me a week to get these thanks out.

Since my family decided for some reason to send me presents this year (and ignore my "I don't need anything" attitude) I don't need to drool over The Art of Discworld in every bookstore I enter any more. I'm also in possession of The Wee Free Men on CD, a shirt telling the world that I hurt people who mock me, and - for reasons only known to my mother - a brush.
Add to that a black turtle-neck shirt and socks and you can see that my family knows me very well.

And after all that I got, even more presents from my friends. I think there's something wrong with the world.

Apart from being amazed at how nice people are, I spent a lot of time at kriski's, waiting for her kitchen to arrive, read all the Sandman comics, caught up with House and Numb3rs, continued on the usual busywork and even tentatively started on the milk hygiene readings. This involved searching the EUR-Lex for stuff like Council Regulation (EC) No 2597/97 of 18 December 1997 laying down additional rules on the common organization of the market in milk and milk products for drinking milk, which includes important information like "2. For the purposes of this Regulation: (a) 'milk` shall mean the produce of the milking of one or more cows;".

Do I really have to take these exams?

And that's more or less all I'm doing right now. Boring doesn't even begin to describe it. But I spice it up with occasionally angsting about my future (cue wails of "I don't want to be a grown-up")

So, business as usual, all in all. (I sound really enthusiastic, don't I? I also have taken a liking to Despair. If I start going all emo, shoot me please.)

Most useless bit of information of the day:
Causative agents of scrotal tumours in British chimney sweepers in the 18th century.

Can I go to bed now?

ETA: Though I have to say, the fact that white angora goats in South Africa are predisposed towards squamous cell tumours of the perineum comes a close second.

What else should I be? It's bad enough that we're only told in which clinic our surgery exam is going to be three days before said exam, but the least they could do is cater to my wishes in this case. Sounds absolutely reasonable to me.
But no, they have to be nice to my exam-partner who wished for an exam in large animal surgery.
I think I might have mentioned how much I hate horses once or twice here.
Bah!

This has been the bi-weekly "I'm alive, just taking exams" entry. We now return you to your scheduled silence. (Please ignore the shouts of "I hate horses" in the background. The management is working on the problem.)

*starts to write panicky entry about exam tomorrow*
*checks email while writing*
*realizes that with a 25% chance of getting a six legged calf for the practical part, she's doomed anyway life certainly won't be boring*
*takes deep breaths, steps away from keyboard and get out the books on teratology.*

You know, no matter how much I sometimes resent having to maintain the website for my year. Getting this kind of information makes it worth it.
Because if this calf had been sprung on me in the exam without warning, my brain would probably simply have refused to work.

After three weekends of the intern telling me "We've got two cats and two dogs in. We don't need you. Go out and have some fun and don't come back before 4" of course the weekend I actually plan on going out is the one that goes pear shaped at about 10pm on Saturday evening.

I probably should have expected the two spinals coming in one after the other right now. And the surgeon asking me to scrubb in.

So I won't get to meet the impressively articulate yonmei after all.
Sorry about that. I should know better than to tempt fate.

ETA (at 4pm): Ok, WTF is happening here? While spinal no 1 was being prepped spinal no 2 showed up. Severely hypothermic. While it was being stabilized, a dog with breathing problems showed up and was put into ICU as well while the intern was busy getting blood for the ruptured tumor from last night.
When we got out of the theatre (2 1/2 hours later) another dog had turned up.

It's Bedlam in ICU at the moment. Five dogs, as many vets (the intern, the second on call resident, the third on call from surgery as well as internal medicine and the anaesthesiologist) two nurses, an animal care assistant and two students. Add to that two million drip pumps that beep at random intervals and throw failure messages at you, the whining of the dogs that are in pain and put in an darkened room with many strange apparatuses.
I think Bedlam really describes it quite well.

Very few words describe the feeling of being told "Could you put your hand here and keep his heart out of the way" accurately.
I'll settle for cool. But nerve-wrecking comes a close second.