*duh* moment

Yesterday morning I noticed that the cats water fountain pump was dead. I think it's been over a year since the last one died, so I wasn't annoyed at having to plunk down money for another one.

What's annoying is that Target stopped carrying the fountain. That leaves Wal-Mart and Petsmart as options. And I despise going to Wal-Mart in the worst way, but hate how Petsmart charges more for the same items.

So I bit the bullet, and go to Wal-Mart. It was raining, so the crowds were at a minimum. Go and get a new fountain, and a couple kids and their mother start a conversation about kitty cats. Wow, nice people at Wal-Mart that speak English - I might die of shock.

Run back out in less than ten minutes. A new record.

Take the fountain out of the box, clean all the plastic parts with soap and water. I assemble and fill the fountain. Plug it in, and a noise from the pump sounds.

I go to bed later that night, and after a couple hours, the noise was so terrible that I give up. It's so noisy the cats are probably afraid to use it. Unplug the device, and set out a water bowl.

This morning, I grab the fountain. I am draining the fountain so I can return it for an exchange. After I drain it, the *duh* moment comes. The top plastic part with the filter isn't quite seated right and just a little misaligned.

I wonder.......

I reseat the filter part, fill the fountain, and plug it in.

Silence.

Part of me is relieved I don't have to exchange it. But as I put the fountain in its rightful place, I wonder why I didn't notice it last night.

That's my *duh* moment. It could have been worse.

Speaking of lessons

I had to give boyfriend a lesson.

I had a bad day yesterday. Work was fine, but it was all medical bad news.

I was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis almost a year ago. Did some research, and decided I wasn't bad enough to seek treatment. But after I threw my back out three weeks ago, it still isn't 100%. So I'm looking for a rheumatologist, and bascially getting chided for waiting so long. And then I got busy with work, and didn't get an appointment set.

Then I got a call from the dermatologist. The "freckle" on my back came back abnormal. So I need further excision of the area to determine the extent of spread. More than likely they got it early enough and will be able to get clean excision sites. But I hadn't even gone to the dermatologist for that freckle, so I was knocked off my feet with surprise.

Boyfriend asked how I was doing.

Said I wasn't in a good mood, and I was upset.

Then he wanted to leave and go relax.

I had to explain to him that I wanted a friendly voice to listen to me.

I heard back that he doesn't have much experience in these matters, and he was very sorry.

By the time we ended our conversation, I said how my fury could have been easily defused with a simple call.

He said he'll try and keep that in mind the next time.

At least he's housebroken ;-)

Lesson learned?

Some of these so called "adults" have some learning to do in sharing equipment.

Because of a disaster in one of two autoclaves, we're stuck with one autoclave for the department for the long term future. There's a sign in sheet that you're supposed to fill out when you use it.

THIS IS IMPORTANT!!!

Why? For some stupid reason, if you are running a liquid cycle you need to purge the machine first by running a 5 minute wrapped cycle. However, if someone has run a wrapped cycle within the last two hours, you don't need to purge the machine.

Besides, if you signed in, we'll help you out. It's an unwritten rule of cooperation. If I need to use the autoclave and it's finished its cycle, but there's something in it, I'll go to the room on the sign in sheet and ask them if it's okay for me to take out their stuff so I can use them. Others have done that for our lab as well.

Yesterday, a student came to me and asked what to do. She needed to use the autoclave, and had checked at 11:45 and it was in use. Came back after lunch, and the cycle was done, but there was still something in it. But the last time someone signed in was 9:00 AM, and she was sure that the 9:00 person had already gotten their stuff out.

I told her it's tough love time. You're doing everything in your power to be cooperative, but they didn't sign in. Their loss. Take out their stuff, and use it.

She put her stuff in, signed in, and ran her cycle.

When she came to get her stuff, she saw that the person that had used it before signed in AFTER she signed in and used the eariler time. Better late then never, hun?

Maybe that person learned a lesson. Probably not, but I'll try and be optimistic.

Serial paranoia

I don't get it.

Finally when last weekend's shooting in the Phoenix area was linked to a serial shooter did it start to make national headlines.

An early morning arrest and search seems to have captured the two responsible. So far, 24 cases have been linked to the same two resulting in 18 wounded and 6 dead. It seems to have started last May, but increased in frequency the last few weeks.

The last few weeks it's been difficult to avoid local media coverage of this serial shooter. Mostly they focused on how scared residents were, and how the Guardian Angels were on patrol.

The problem with this case is that there's a 20 mile range of confrimed victims. Living in that area are thousands of people. The odds that you'd be the next victim are very small.

Another article in today's paper talks about how since last May 8 children have died when they were run over by their parent driving a SUV. Do the math, and that means that more people have died in the same amount of time.

So why aren't the Guardian Angles camped out on the driveways that have an SUV to make sure innocent children aren't run over by a driver that can't see them.

I've seen lots of stories on serial killers. It seems that everyone in the area of the killings are afraid that they're the next victim. Perhaps it's also because the nice stranger they bumped into on the street could actually be the serial killer.

I don't get it. It seems very irrational to me. I can't wait to ask my coworker about this today. She had asked if my parents are scared of the serial shooter. (Don't worry, they live another 20 miles away from the trail of carnage.) I think we should be more worried about children getting run over by SUVs in reverse than a serial killer.

Someone care to enlighten me?