This is a particularly pivotal blog. Not only is it my 200th blog entry (ignore 202 number, there are 2 private blogs that don’t count) but it is also one where I vow to self-educate and improve my lateral thinking. I was watching Stephen Fry on QI and later Friday Night with Jonathan Ross tonight, and found listening to him pontificate on the evolution of language like listening to an amazingly emotive piece of classical music. Although the man does seem to have a serious problem with taxonomy; tonight on QI he declared the definition of a species was a set of animals that can interbreed. Of course, we all know the qualifying statement he missed – a species is a group of organisms that can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. A horse can breed with a donkey; the result is a mule. Mules are sterile, the only way to get one is to breed a horse to a donkey. A tiger and lion produce a liger.

Anyway – Stephen Fry’s endless thirst for knowledge and non-intellectual-snobbishness is something I want to attain. I miss being in pre-GCSE school and having a wide range of subjects offered to me on a plate in handy 45 minute chunks. I didn’t appriciate it then – now I miss it. I don’t want to only know about veterinary medicine, I want to know about language, it’s structure and history, the history of the world in general, the world in general, geography, sociology, other sciences, politics, the rules of cricket, everything. I want to go to a pub quiz and know the answers.

As for Laurie, if you haven’t yet watched House you have one more episode of this season left. Luckily there is a season 2. Dr House is a diagnostician with a skill for lateral thinking and quick thinking. My second personal aim – my academic/career aim if you like.

So there we go. I’ve not got a particular plan for how to go about introducing a bit of Fry and Laurie into my life, but the idea is now firmly there.

I’m rather pleased with the title of this blog and it’s relevance to the subject. Soupy twist!

Spam has it’s plus points. I get many spam comments on this blog and many are quite complementary. They all also include many wise and life-changing thoughts. Such as:

It’s impossible to experience one’s death , Discontent makes rich men poor
Two thumbs up!!! although I am bringing a change of underwear:
I’m asking myself: How can it be that I’ve never ran through your site before? It’s a great one! I do not believe in an afterlife:
In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes: think in herds , Be at war with your vices
they go mad in herds: A good conscience is a continual Christmas
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions:
Most people are even incapable , I want to achieve it by not dying!

…do you not feel more at one with the world? Breathe in, pause, breathe out. Rinse and repeat.

Every visit to Tesco’s is the same. You shop. You obtain your vittles for the next week. You finally reach the reduced section, and like hundreds of students before you, you hopefully scan the shelves for the required 50% discount that makes it worthwhile. Some pork pies, reduced by 3p. Bah. Then, once in a blue moon, following a month of Sundays and after a piggy flypast, it happens. There is 50% off EVERYTHING on the shelves. You snatch 4 fillets of salmon, 2 fresh and 2 in a herby sauce, wondering vaguely why you need so much of it. The 4 rainbow trouts in rosemary dressing also make their way into your basket, even though you’ve never had trout and are not entirely sure you like it. You think it can’t get any better, but the large lump of honey roasted ham proves you wrong. The icing on the meaty cake though, is a duck crown, with salt and pepper dressing, 50% off…only £2.50…

The Tesco gods smile on kindly as you stagger from their temple with your treasure…

Forgot to tell you about Thursday night! I was making dinner for new housemate and offered the other two some. We ended up eating fahitas, drinking wine, listening to music and talking for about 5 hours. At one point we were listening to Kaiserchiefs, and they have a line in a song that says “pneumothorax is a word that is long, they’re just trying to put the punk back into punctured lung”. After the obligatory vety student arguement over the inaccuracies of the definition of pneumothorax as punctured lung, and after trying the “wcmloe to the hsuoe of mnsdeas” style of writing on the blackboard, we tried “poetramnohx” and then moved on to anagrams of the word pnemothorax…

Ram on pot u – this stimulated many pictures of rams, pot, pots and us
Ram u pot on – as above
The rum on OAP X – rum poured over an elderly person called X.
Axe hump, or not – a hamster (supposed to be a dog) humping an axe, with a forbidden sign…
And my favourite:
Oh romp, axe nut! – a happy little axe nut romping through the fields…

Feel free to add your own!

I watched QI this evening, a program who’s overtones of Oxbridge and relish of obsure knowledge give me a warm fuzzy feeling. The music alone is akin to a fix – an academia fix. I would almost rate it as high as warm socks on the “making the world feel sensible” scale. Like old polished lab benches, and absurdly steep lecture theatres. And college ties. Probably explains why the closer I get to graduating, the more I’m keen to stay at college…

Anyway, on tonight’s programme Stephen stated that marsupials are not mammals. I immediately exclaimed “they bloody are mammals!” rather loudly, no doubt to the concern of my housemates. There are five chordate classes – fish, birds, reptiles, amphibia and mammals. Of the mammals there are three subclasses; placental mammals, marsupials and monotremes. This glaring error distracted me for about 10 minutes. I may have to email and complain, but I do rather like Stephen Fry, so might let them get away with it. I’m sure there are many other anal retentives watching who will email in to correct the error.

Oh, and if you want the theme tune to make you feel warm and fuzzy too, it’s for download on the BBC QI page.

*hrump* Mozilla ate my blogging. So I have to re-write it.

I shant bore you with more complaints of being ignored. Still have no idea what I’ve done wrong, bar being an eternal optimist which I suppose must be irritating when you are frustrated. *shrugs* I don’t have to work with them any more though – so they can get on with chilling and speak to me when they have reached a suitable temperature in life.

Rabbit and me are getting on! Apart from when I tell her off for eating the carpet, we’re coping well with each other’s presence and having a few bonding sessions. About time really – it’s been almost 2 years of cohabiting now.

Not a lot is happening of note in my life at the moment. I’m currently enjoying my rotation (day one went well at least) and the onset of wintery weather (although it was a blazing day in parts today). I don’t really miss horses, and my interest in an anaesthesia internship has been reignited following a conversation with the anaesthesia resident who ironed out a few questions I had about the structure of the whole thing. I don’t know if they take new graduates or if they are looking for something in particular in an applicant – that’s my project for the next 4 weeks. There is a lack of gorgeous anaesthetist now – sadly.

*prods server* I love it – it’s as slow as an anaesthetised sloth (d’ya like the neat li’l link there?) and yet apparently the reason the site isn’t working is because of a bad file. Hmm – can anyone else smell a coinscidence there?

Week 28 of 48 is over, week 29 about to begin. Should be nicer re: shifts – only 5 this time, and only 2 weekend shifts versus 8 with 4 w/e shifts on equine surgery. Plus, being that I made the rota (or rather, I fed the rota-maker pasta, cookies and tea while she made the rota and I watched House) I haven’t been screwed this time. We didn’t give ourselves the superb shifts either – just fair ones. Although I demanded that my weekend shifts be night ones – yes, it means I may be woken up at 3am for a surgery but it means my day is free and thus I don’t lose my w/e. Plus both are Sats so if I am called in I definately get a day off to recover!

Enough about work. My new housemate is settling in well – we get on very well. She likes reading books, watching disney and comedy movies, cooking and cleaning. So far not one single thing she does irritates me. I actually need to step up my cleaning to avoid irritating her. The Rock-Chick housemate is still reclusive to a worrying degree – perhaps growing even more so, but Dolly gets on with new housemate well, so that’s all good.

I got really ratted off with Pansy and Filly on Friday. We were doing a practical and I had come to find them to let them know it was going on as they were working elsewhere. That was nice of me, considering the more people doing the practical the worse it was for the rest of us. I then had to go do something and missed part of the practical. When I returned, I asked them how to do something, and got totally ignored. I asked again – ignored. Ok, so they don’t know the answer, but some bloody recognition that I exist would be nice. Sod nice, they almost got a thump for their bloody behaviour. Wasn’t the first occasion of this ignoring or dismissing that had happened that day. I can’t stand it when people get fed up/stress and have a sense of humour failure (SOHF). I can’t see how being unable to cope with stress or boredom or frustration is a valuable quality in a vet. I’m looking forward to getting back to my old half where people weren’t selfish and where even if the day was the most shite in the world, they still had a smile at the end of it. I have heard that the other half of the group feels the same – so it’s probably that a large group is more selfish and 4 weeks of suffering male clinicians (very slow and sarcastic, but make up for it by being humerous too – unless you suffer a SOHF) results in the general increase of angst.

Bah – I said enough work. Today was a lovely classic Autumnal day – low yellow sun, cold, gusty. I mowed the lawn, hacked down a bush that was impinging on the path and managed to get my bike out of the falling-down shed with the aid of my car jack and a nearby tree (a suprisingly successful manouvre). I then reorganised and cleaned my kitchen cupboards and drawer and made a roast dinner. I have removed the 5 hours I spent at work from this explanation of today. Yesterday was a lie-in day (a genuine day off), followed by my parents visiting at 5pm to give me my scrubs (which I’d left at home and need for next week) and to measure the garage etc. They also brought some storage boxes and a hay rack for the rabbit so she’s now uber-organised (has more bloody belongings than me). Later on me and new housemate made pizza (she made the dough, we kneaded and topped our own) and watched Blues Brothers, which is utterly hilarious. Tonight we watched Ice Age.

Right, I need to go make a packed lunch for tomorrow and have a shower. TTFN!