Our little hospital doesn't have a plethora of gustatory choices. You have the galley, with its arbitrary hours of operation and Subway. Well, there are also the vending machines, but after the last snowstorm where the power was out and the generator didn't kick on for half a day (and yet, I can't determine that those food items were ever exchanged)I consider those machines of ptomaine a fallback position at best. The galley is never open on Sundays, Subway is only open until two and on Easter, not at all. So we were faced with the prospect of no readily available food and a pack of corpsmen with no compunction against begging like beaten puppies. Saturday was a rough day, but they all batted their little lashes and suckered me into bringing food. Their request was Shot and a Beer Pork Stew. So delicious it will make you weep. Unfortunately, it takes 3 hours to cook, and that's after all the prep work, including going to the store to purchase the needed ingredients, because it's not like I had them sitting around. Well, except for the beer and tequila. So, after a busy 12 hour shift, I finally put this sucker in the oven at 2130. Ye gads. I set my alarm for 0030 so I could take the damn thing out of the oven and shove it in the fridge for when I got up at 0430 for work. Except that I smacked the snooze until 5, but that's another story. So, my alarm ranng, I stumbled downstairs and pulled the dutch oven (heh. heh heh.)out and noticed a bit of spillage on the bottom of the oven. "Aha!" thinks I in my sleep deprived state, "I will just press ye olde self cleaning button and be productive while I fitfully while away the remaining hours." Did I mention that I made a double batch? And that it didn't quite fit in the dutch oven? There was a leeeeetle overflow when I put the lid on, and that was before I stuck in in the oven at 350 for 3 hours. Apparently, there was a tad more spillage than I originally noticed, because about 30 minutes later I was blasted out of bed by the ear piercing shriek of a dozen harpies, aka the smoke alarm. I scurried downstairs, flipped on the light and blearily looked for the source. Wasn't hard to spot as a veritable forest fire's worth of smoke was pouring from my oven. I turned off the oven, whapped a dishcloth at the closest smoke alarm and opened the back door, praying that this cloud bank of smoke would dissipate soon, Because I need sleep and I can't let the back door stand open all night long (insert appropriate Lionel Ritchie here). 40 minutes later I'm out on the deck in my jammies, eyes stinging and marveling at how clear the sky is at 2 am. Especially since I can't visualize my kitchen ceiling at this point. As the smoke coming from my oven was now white instead of black (did my oven just choose a pope?), I said screw it, closed the back door, opened a window and turned on the stove fan. And up to bed I went. That's what I get for trying to be efficient; sleep deprived and smelling like I've been camping for 6 months. Not to mention sending Crackhead into a neurotic fit that he didn't come down from for about a week.


Crackhead and Knucklehead McSpazatron have been shedding like mad, which is shocking as it it still usually 35-40 degrees around here and Crystal Mt has extending the ski season to June 21st. What the deuce? I, being extremely busy, not to mention excruciatingly lazy, have been taking them to the local Petco to get the grooming done. It is so worth it to me to pay 70 bucks to get these yahoos washed, fluffed and folded than to do it my self and have to spend the next weeks finding yet more hair in the boys' bathroom. They also trim nails which is a big deal in Crackhead's case because a) he's a Lab with thick, tough, black nails and you can't see the vein and b) he's a crackhead and I have not the barbiturates it would take for me to trim his nails. I got them back from the last outing and didn't notice anything amiss until I got them out of the Planet Killer and noticed the pool of blood Crackhead was sitting in. (Thank the good Lord once again, that I sprung for leather seats. w00t!) I couldn't figure out where this had come from; he wasn't bleeding when we left the groomers and it's only about 3 blocks back to the house. I employed my super nursing critical thinking skills and applied direct pressure (yeah, That was a lot of fun) and had FB dial up Senior Chief's Wife, she of the large menagerie and suspicion of all things medical/veterinarian. She should know how to stop this mess without aid of a styptic pencil, cuz, let's face it folks, how many people have one of those lying around? She actually answered (shocker!) but didn't know, so she employed the almighty Google. So thankful she was home, because my next recourse would have been to have FB Google and that would have just caused a shit storm of frustration. As it turns out, dipping the affected claw into cornstarch will help with bleeding. Great! That I have. So I direct FB to the pantry, top shelf, in the middle, and ask him to bring me the cornstarch and a spoon. I then ask him to get some on a spoon and hand it to me. This is the vision I see coming over my shoulder as I continue to try out for the WWE while I try to hold pressure on this dog's freaking claw:

Really? Did he think I was going to stick Dude's head in it? I mean, while being a crappy drawing, it is a fair representation of the scale of cornstarch to dog claw we're talking about here (not to mention my artistic skills. ENGLISH DEGREE, DAMMIT!). I have no idea why I made his foot look like the crone's hand in Snow White, but if you think it looks like he has hammertoe, that's because he does look like he has hammertoe.

He's a weird little duck.