An Ill-Fated Accordion

This was going to be a video of me playing Spanish Ladies on my lovely accordion Benvolio. (Yes. It's Italian, he was Italian . . . close enough)

I've spent a few weeks practicing and figuring out good basal chords from the melody, and it was actually sounding decent. Until I tried recording the video.

You see, accordions work by forcing air over metal or wooden reeds when the bellows are moved. Pushing the buttons changes which reeds are open to create the chords. Loose reeds = open all of the time = horrible noises.

Benvolio has a loose reed. Benvolio chose to reveal this to me while I was recording.

This means that my accordion does not sound like this. (start at 0:50)

Not that I can play like this, but you get the idea

My accordion sounds like the noises you'd expect from an injured cat determined to kill as many as possible while raging against the dying of the light. That may be closer to my actual skill level than the lovely music above - but it makes for difficult practicing. At this point, the soonest I can get him fixed is mid-September. If I can get him on the plane back to Idaho.

Now I'll never get to be Lawrence Welk.

(In other news, I am destroying this infectious disease rotation and don't have to take the final. Muahahaha.)

I'm not sure if I'll ever eat again

I had my finger inside a patient's foot today.

Yes. INSIDE. In a gaping wound that was oozing pus. I stuck my finger inside a patient's foot AND HIT BONE. My preceptor kept telling me to stop being such a weenie and squeeze it harder. *hork*

I was going to come home and make some delicious food, like fresh rolls and egg salad for sammiches, or lime meltaway cookies. Problem is, every time I head for the kitchen, the only image that pops into my head is the oozing hole. This is not conducive to cooking. Or eating.

A few days ago, though, I made steamed pork dumplings. And had to face one of my weaknesses. If I were a cookery-themed super hero, this would be my greatest nemesis - secondary only to that bastard lemon.


Oh, don't laugh at me. You know those murderous tubes of dough strike fear into the hearts of the strongest men. Beowulf would hesitate before opening one of these monsters. I followed the instructions on the tube exactly - unpeel paper. Press on seam with spoon. Nothing happened.

AND THEN IT EXPLODED OFF THE COUNTER AT MY FACE.

Look. Look into the doughy face of EVIL.

If it had teeth, they would have latched into my jugular.




Anyway, I flattened out the individual rolls, filled them with a mixture of ground pork, water chestnuts, spring onions, and spices, then stuck them in a cobbled together steamer. I should probably invest in a real steamer, because while my tin foil on a pot worked, the dumplings ended up stuck together.

I can't eat the leftovers tonight, though. because my brain has been forever scarred by the fact that I had my FINGER IN A FOOT TODAY.

And here I went to pharmacy school because I didn't want to touch people.

June. And bread.

And here I thought I'd post more during rotations because I'd have more time.

While I didn't have much in the way of at-home work on that first rotation, the ten hour+ days were sort of killer. And then I got sick, which has carried through to now.

I finished my hospital rotation with massive increases in both knowledge and self-doubt. There's no way I know enough to be a pharmacist at this point. My God, I'm going to be in charge of sick people and making clinical decisions without anyone to point out when I've done something stupid. Luckily I have almost a year left to cram in as much information and experience as I can.

The hospital rotation ended up being fairly awesome - I got to see an open heart surgery, make new IVs, was allowed to evaluate patients and make decisions (thankfully nothing I proposed doing would have directly led to anyone dying!). I'm now a week into infectious disease, which is shaping up to be a lot more work. It's great, though. This is the kind of work I want to be doing as a pharmacist.

The preceptor has me going on rounds right now though, which is utterly terrifying and makes me feel completely stupid on a daily basis. I'm taking the stance that this is good for me. Because this is only the first week, I still don't really know what I'm doing. So when the ID specialist turns to me and asks a question, pretty much all I can do is make fish faces while my brain short circuits. I'm hoping this will improve.

Not much else has been happening. I go to the hospital, run around all day, come back, study whatever it is I'm doing the next day, and then pass out. This weekend is another glorious three dayer, thanks to the 4th. I had hoped to make it up to Tahoe, but the traffic was pretty crazy and I didn't have anyone to go with. No, parents, I'm not going hiking alone, so I won't be eaten by bears/mountain lions/crazy mountain men. I listen to you sometimes.

This weekend has been more eventful than most, though. I went on a library adventure and ended up with a slightly ridiculous amount of books. I also went to the most awkward baseball game ever last night. Details another day, I'm still recovering from the social doom.

I also made bread today. I love everything about making bread - the smell, the feel of the dough, punching the crap out of it after the first rise . . . The only problem is with the crust. For some reason, every time I make bread in this oven, the crust is incredibly hard. I have no idea how to fix this. All of my ideas for making it softer were shot down by Cody, the more experienced bread maker, because they apparently would only backfire in the worst way possible. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I know I've said this many, many times before, but I really am going to try harder to post more. And maybe there will be an accordion post soon, as my roommate is on her off rotation and thus not around to be driven to insanity by my playing.