Double Chocolate Pancakes with Mint Icing and Chocolate Syrup

Yeah. It was that kind of a night.

So on the commute home, my brain conjured dark, fluffy bittersweet chocolate cakes studded with chocolate chips. A knife edge smear of sweet peppermint frosting, and a completely redundant flourish of Hershey's Special Dark syrup. Espresso Love Stout and Hershey's Special Dark cocoa in the batter? Absolutely. My execution came almighty close to the fantasy *slumps contentedly into chair*.

You know, if given the choice between bellowing testosterone-fueled medical anger, or female fakey-sweet 'I'm a professional speaking to a three-year old or a monkey', I will prefer the testosterone every time. Hands down. No question. Last night in the middle of a screamingly busy two hours in the ER lab, I was subjected to the latter. I have no problem with her asking why her patient's labs aren't done yet (well, actually yes I do: she should have been informed by her crack staff out at the desk that we'd been given a microscopic amount of specimen with which to run a large profile...gosh, surprise, we didn't have enough--and we needed a redraw. A half hour ago). Just ask in a normal voice, without the saccharin sarcasm. Yes, as a matter of fact our chemistry analyzer IS working, bitch. Everything fixed. (Ha! For now) Perhaps you don't see the enormous pile of specimens running on it and printouts spewing from it right in front of you??

Now that I think about it, I have never known one female doctor in my life who hasn't caused me pain or humiliation of some sort. Except my childhood eye doctor. She was a saint. All the rest? Power-tripping bitches. The roughest, most painful pelvic exam in my entire life? A woman doctor. Being told I have scoliosis and paraded in front of premed students at the college infirmary AND completely missing a large ovarian mass? A woman doctor. Some of the nastiest encounters in my professional career and the most demanding of lab results whether they were appropriate or not? Female doctors. Reverse sexism or just bad luck, I don't know. But I do not like female doctors. I will never have one. Don't like them.

Anyway, while this is going on, we've just gone live with yet another new piece of computer equipment in the ER lab, and we're struggling to use that. I got a brief intro to it in California while learning about my baby (to which it is attached like an evil, electronic umbilicus), and I got a bit more time training on it back here, so therefore, since I am slightly ahead on this slippery learning curve, I now feel like I must fill the role of the resource person at night. Never mind that I'm still learning to use the damned thing myself. We had a Beckman person with us last night for a few hours to get us comfortable (ha!!) with it. I only hope I can retain all of that info, because today we go live in the main lab. Where I will be the Chemistry tech tonight, and will have to use it there, too. I have no idea if our Beckman person (she's a saint, too) will be there into the late hours to help my coworkers learn it, too. If she isn't, guess who's going to have to help them how to use it, in in addition to handling all of my own workload...

I have absolutely got to get more than 4 hours of sleep today.