Many moons ago, I had some blood work done as part of the process of donating my blood to the researchers where I work.

Yesterday, we had a repeat performance, during which it was ascertained that my blood is frakking awesome. Peruse the data for yourself, and tremble before my high-density lipoproteins.

Yes, this update is pointless. No, I don’t particularly care.

At work, I recently found out that our massive Canon photocopier can scan approximately ten billion pages per picosecond, and export them to handy .pdf files for easy perusal.

Since I have class notes going back to some time in high school just laying around gathering dust, I figured I might as well scan them for…well, no very good reason. Possibly just because I can. Watch this space for the future announcements—I do intend to post them all online, in case one day you desperately need to solve “x + 2 = 7″ and just can’t figure out how.

Until then, I just have to add that it’s a frightful prospect, coming face to face with one’s horrible, psychologically-buried past. Some boxes full of pedantic school notes were never meant to be opened…

(Dramatisation)

As a follow-up to my previous comic, allow me to post another hastily-scribbled and yet deeply philosophical look at the life of a grad student. This week: just exactly how do I manage to tread financial waters while working on a Master’s degree?

THIS IS AN INTERNET COMIC

I am tired. Thread.sleep();

Well, the results of my tests are in: I’m not at risk of anything except being awesome.

So, the fasting was easier than I thought (of course, I slept through about 6 hours of it), and the procedure was fairly quick; maybe not painless, given that I was a bit dizzy and nauseous, but I can blame that on all those psychotropic hallucinogens I’ve been taking. I got the results back within a few hours and they seem apparently encouraging: high total cholesterol, but it’s predominantly the good stuff (HDL), and my liver is supposedly doing very well (I’m as shocked as you are).

For your consideration. [edited 8 June 2010 for updated info.]

I’ll find out about the results in more detail on Friday, I just didn’t want to keep you all in suspense regarding my APO B-to-APO A1 ratio.

Science is cool.

One of the benefits of working at a hospital (even part-time) is that you can abuse the health care system.

Since I’m working with a number of geneticists and cardiologists, and since said geneticists and cardiologists require precious, delicious blood on which to run their analyses, I’ve volunteered to provide some of my own vintage for their diabolical and godless needs; using their insidious connections, they’ll be able to send it direct to the labs and get the results post-haste. So not only am I helping science in some incredibly small capacity, but I’m also symbolically punching out cripples and heart patients to get to the head of the blood-analysis line. Sweet! And I get to discover all sorts of fun information about my blood, for which most people would pay a hefty sum, all for absolutely free dollars!!

The only downside is that I have to avoid ingesting anything but water for the preceding 12 hours. The appointment is at 9am tomorrow morning; I am therefore now 15 minutes into my fast. I think I’m at my breaking point.

I’d imagine that the turducken was invented by some other poor fasting idiot, because frankly right now, at the prospect of not eating for a whole half day, I’m considering taking every kind of meat and shoving it inside every other kind of meat, and deep frying my troubles away. With a salad on the side. Gotta stay healthy, mind.

Oh god I’m hungry.

What? Oh…homogoblins.