Month: October 2006

Bunnies in space

[No, this post is not dealing with the astronautical talents of Hugh and his associates]

This evening I watched Wallace and Grommit: The curse of the were-Rabbit.

Upon seeing the BunVac 6000 in action I was immediately taken by how cool the rabbits looked floating around in the vacuum chamber, and though that rabbits would really be damn cool in outer space.

Should I ever find myself in a position of owning a space station (make that when I own a space station) I think I shall have to test it out.

I also saw a brief thing on TV this evening about a family that was raising an orphaned baby rock Wallaby, who was also very very cute, and I think they’d go quite well up there too…

Oh, it’s that time of year again

I’m always amused at how quick my brain is to forget why I hate living in Queensland so much, but once again I’ve been reminded: For 6 months a year it’s inhumanly hot here.

It’s just reached the start of those 6 months, and already I’m once again trying to figure how I modify the house so that I can sleep in the fridge.

(And next year we’re moving to Cairns. Sometimes I wonder if I do this to myself on purpose as some sort of punishment for unspecified sins)

Best laid plans

This is basically a public service anouncement to all those people who we have been misleading by telling them we will be going to Townsville next year.

Turns out we’re not. It now seems more likely that we will be going to Cairns instead (although this is still not 100% certain).

Now Cairns is still on the great barrier reef, so the offer still stands to come stay in our spare room and do some snorkling or scuba diving.
I won’t go into the details of how this all happened, basically because they’re long, complicated, political, and most importantly, boring.
Suffice it to say the College of Surgeons can be pretty disorganised and incommunicative (but then again I suppose what beurocracy isn’t).

Jack-larm clock

As it approaches summer it has been getting light earlier and earlier around here, and Jack’s time keeping system seems to be photonic rather than chronographic (and afer we bough him that nice watch for his birthday and all…). He seems to think that 8am is plenty late enough to be sleeping in and not paying him any attention, and so he has taken it upon himself to be a mobile furry alarm clock.

He jumps onto the bed in a heavy way intended to make it shake, walks over you making sure to press his paws into your side/back/stomach (which ever is uppermost), and then stops on the bed just next to your head and stares at you.

Now I don’t know if this is a universal thing (I suspect it is), but I can’t sleep when I feel that someone is staring at me, so having Jack just sitting staring at me is more effective than prying my eyes open with a crow bar. And as soon as I open my eyes he delivers the coup detat, going “Mrow” and rolling onto his back for a belly scratch.

And if you try to ignor him he gently but intentionally scratches you on the back/arm/foot/other exposed surface.

It is a most effective strategy but has gotten him shut out of the bedroom a couple of times, because dammit, I like having a sleep in now and again.

Skink’s nest

Lately Jack has taken up the time honoured and reputable cat sport of Skink hunting.

All our cats when I was growing up would do it, and now Jack’s got in on the game.

The only difference is that the Skinks around here are the largest I’ve ever seen. They’re HUGE.

The first one I saw Jack drag in and bat around the floor was big, but I thought that perhaps it was just a one off abnormally large specimen. After the third one I began to wonder if perhaps skinks lived communinally in nests, and perhaps Jack had stumbled upon the Skink King’s nest.

Whatever the story, Jack hasn’t dragged any in for a few day so perhaps they’ve learned to hide better, or Jack has lost interest in hunting skinks for the time being.

Surely that’s a little early

A few weeks back (ie mid september) Simone and I were out shopping in what is a fairly major department store, and were frankly bewildered to walk through one section of the store and see shop assistants scurrying about unpacking boxes of christmas decorations, merchandise and associated paraphenalia.

Christmas isn’t for 3 months!!! Surely people don’t need that much time to get their stuff together?

It just reinforces my cynicism (there I go using that word again) about the commercial nature of yet another holiday. And it seems to be getting earlier and more pervasive each year.

Viva le grand finale

In a reminder that synicism is so easy when working in the health system, this weekend was grand final weekend, with the AFL final on saturday, and the NRL final on sunday, and I was working both days.

Now the bit which inspired cynicism is that normally saturdays and sundays in ED, particularly the afternoons, are hectic with millions of people presenting, usually with pretty mundane complaints (I’ve had a cough for 5 weeks, my little toe hurts, and the like).

Both days this weekend however basically from half an hour before kickoff to half an hour after the full time whistle there were maybe 2 or 3 people in the waiting room at a time. The masses may have been sick, but not sick enough to miss out on watching the beloved footy.

Meanwhile two dozen doctors and nurses sat around getting paid to twiddle their thumbs for a couple of hours.

Then as soon as the game was over they started to show up again. In droves. Admitting that they had had their ailments while the game was on, but that they felt it could wait.

You feel like giving them a good piece of your mind (ie. a slap around the head) and pointing out that if it was that unimportant that it came second to football, then it was probably the kind of thing that was better being seen by their GP the next day, and that they were just wasting our time and the taxpayers’ money be being in ED with such trivialities.
The quiet irony which does the hint of a smile back into my heart is that the masses who showed up after the game finished probably ended up waiting 2-6 hours to be seen, due to their large numbers and minor conditions (people in ambulances automatically take higher priority when they arrive), whereas if they had showed up while the game was on they would probably have been seen almost instantly.

Junkies of the world lament

Today we had a number of very sick people come through ED.

As such we had been breaking out a fair amount of the good drugs which, in other times and other places, people would pay good money to get their hands on.

One guy was having a heart attack and we were giving him large quantities of morphine to control his pain.

Another lady was having intractible seizures, and again we were using fairly decent amounts of sedatives to stop her from fitting for long enough to stabilise her airway and CT scan her head.

And when all the excitement wore off, and things had settled down, I got to take all the unused morphine and valium and squirt it down the sink.

In my mind I could almost hear the cries of anguish from all the junkies of the world, and it amused me.