Can I Have A Drink Now??
1. CRAPPY morning at work. I was doing great until about 0530, then lost all momentum after receiving three useless phone calls in quick succession. The work was coming in faster than I could process it. The error message windows were popping up on the chemistry analyzer screens faster than I could acknowledge/deal with them. The critical/need to call the floor NOW results were popping up on the Data-Link faster than I could call them/enter the appropriate comment into the computer. And there was no time to put all that on hold to deal with a mysterious programming problem on the chemistry analyzer.
2. Said mysterious programming problem instigated a phone message from a lab supervisor, which was waiting for me when I got home. Always *love* those phone messages from work. Apparently it took us (me and the 1st shift tech working as fast as we could in this mess) 6 hours total to result a patient's chemistry profile. What kind of explanation should the supervisor give to the nurse manager? Well, hell if I know. I didn't say that, but it's the truth. That has become my primary operator's answer after months of working with these damn things. After multiple attempts to convince the instrument to run this particular patient, I had to bypass its pea-brain and manually program this profile to finally get results. Not so much a 'you're in big trouble' type of phone call, just fact-finding on her end, and more information to pass on to the experts from Beckman-Coulter who are in house investigating our complaints this week. Will this weird, frustrating problem be resolved? Lord only knows.
3. Is it better to step in cat puke with socks on, and have your foot somewhat be shielded from it but have a gross, icky sock--or just step in it barefoot??
4. That sourdough starter I was so proud of yesterday? Smells like vomit today. I noticed a lot of bubbling and frothing last night, and was so delighted with my little colony. The on-line article says it's supposed to have a beery, good smell. Well, it doesn't. I had to remove the jar from the kitchen and open the back door to air out the place.
posted by Sleepwalker @ 9:08 AM
2 Comments:
I'm sorry about all the things you mentioned, but the starter is something I might be able to actually help with. What kind of flour did you use? I've had sustainable results from starting with some organic rye flour, and then proceeding with wheat flour. Rye flour seems to foster the good yeast, and the vomit smell sounds like you got some undesirable beasties in there.
I used regular all-purpose flour. I figured we could add wheat and rye flours later when we baked the bread. What I should have done was take some of that in to work and culture it/make a gram stain and see what the hell was in there. But I won't be back for 3 days. No way was I leaving that to fester any longer.
Post a Comment
<< Home