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.

Continuing my assault on your senses, good taste, and conception of humour, I present to you this horrible contrivance.

Just a small status update to say that, yes, I am Still Alive.

My folks have been out of town since Aug. 27, and are coming back this Sunday (the 21st). Thus far, the food has held out fairly well (I’ve become adept at dealing with leftovers several days running). I’ve had a BBQ with a ludicrous amount of meat, a secondary party to get rid of the remaining meat, and worked the leftovers of that party into other meals still: one being a kind of leftover hamburger & pasta salad (good to get rid of leftover meats, but I probably wouldn’t repeat it), another being choucroute garnie (from leftover sausages, and even older leftover pork chops), which actually turned out remarkably well. To top it all off, I didn’t poison myself! Which for me is a rousing success. I also made French onion soup with Guinness, which was tasty. This weekend, it’s chicken paprikás.

That leaves today. I had a can of chickpeas and another can of pitted black olives lying around. I wanted to get rid of these. I figured a salad would do. Turns out, just throwing these things together (with some grated carrots, lemon juice, and olive oil) wasn’t the culinary masterpiece I was hoping for. Not bad, certainly, but like the burger salad, perhaps I’ll pass on repeating the experience. Anyone know of a better way to get rid of chickpeas and olives?

I also had a bunch of vegetables that were on their way to not looking so fresh. As per some suggestions from friends, I decided to try my hand at a vegetable broth. So into the water goes three potatoes (diced), three carrots (chopped coarsely), several stalks of celery (chopped coarsely), two onions (diced), some fractions of bay leaf, a green pepper, and a handful of peppercorns. Right now it smells great, though I may have put too much water.

Yes, it’s nothing but BLAZING BLOG EXCITEMENT!

Seriously though, wtf do I do with four tubs of frozen vegetable broth?

On another note (see title), I finished reading Iliad today. Review up there in “ego->newton64″. Read it, and despair.

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();

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.