The promise of beer

I've had a pretty full-on week on necropsy, and have seen some interesting diseases and spectacular lesions (and maybe getting a reputation for being a bit tin-arse at finding cool brain lesions). A tip for people who think their dog might be rabid and want it tested: if you euthanase it by shooting it in the head with a high calibre pistol, most of the brain goes bye-byes. Not ideal.

We finally have a TV.... Our neighbours were getting rid of their 27" TV and cabinet, and thought of us. They even helped move it in. I think that was about the third TV we've been offered - people here really like to give stuff away.


Some of the beer packaging here really cracks us up - you'll probably need to click on these to enlarge them to readable sizes:



I've yet to find a beer that truly whitens as it cleans, so it's refreshing to finally find an example of honest labelling...



We decided to have "ethnic" food the other night.... And what can beat "Irish O'Garlic" for a sausage flavour?



Mort spent all day today helping set up for the Septembeerfest tomorrow, I think there will be 63 different beers, and at least one keg of Hoegaarden.... Check out this amazing keg-bar:



With bottle-hub-caps - totally awesome.

More acquisitions

We picked up a dryer for $40 last week - this was a necessary evil since when the weather turns we will be unable to dry our clothes on racks inside without violating the "don't promote mildew" part of our tenancy agreement. We have a nook hidden away in the hallway which contains hookups for a washer and dryer (no sink, alas). Once we got the dryer home, however, we learned that having hookups doesn't mean the power plug from the dryer will fit in the socket available. The dryers here all run on 240V (shock, horror!) and high current, so they have funky plugs kind of like electric ovens do. There doesn't really appear to be a standard plug for dryers here, so when you get a new one there's a good chance you'll have to wire a new power cord onto the beast.




The top left plug is a NZ plug (lying on its side), top right is a normal US plug - these are for a size comparison. Bottom left is the plug that came with the dryer (2 phase, 1 neutral, 1 earth) - I think this is the newer kind, and is probably safer than the bottom right plug, which is what we needed for the dryer to go in our place (2 phase, 1 combined earth-neutral). As to the wiring itself: thankyou to the internets for providing dryer installation instructions.

Mort made a start on some garden this week - we're going to grab some herbs etc. from some friends who are rearranging their garden. The soil doesn't seem too bad, but it's all incredibly dry since noone was watering it over the summer. There's some drainage gravel or something under there, so hopefully our plants won't drown in winter.



After some days of threats, the other pathology resident hauled me out to buy shoes. I tried on several styles of shoe that I've never tried before, in the interest of experimentation, of course, and was reminded that I have deceptively short, wide feet. I settled on these Dr. Martins:



Don't mock the shoes - they meet my "could I walk all day in them?" criteria. Secretly though, I suspect I only got that colour & pattern because the shop was out of my size in black. Johanna, on the other hand, has scored quite a bit of cred about the lab for converting me from shoes to shoes, at least a little bit.

In technical news, it looks like some more genotyping will be done on the DNA from dwarf Texel sheep I left in Ames in 2006. Next year someone is interested in running some snp-chips, which could generate more information about where the mutation causing the disease may lie.

I shall go and continue coughing now, which I have been doing all week to the amusement, disgust, and infection of the entire building.

Somewhat batty

This week we had an awesome little batty visitor - which apparently isn't too common in this area:



We stayed up and watched the rugby last night (kickoff at 2.45am) - it was totally worth it. I think I was only able to make it due to sleeping away half of the previous day (I had lurgy/fever resulting in a lot of weird dreams about lymphocytes).

In the last week or so I finished off a vest I've been working on for a while - the object was to get my knit & purl stitches the same tension, since my purls were a lot looser than my knits. It worked out pretty well, I think I'll make another like this since I have the yarn.




I've also become a little carried away making these little "yarn cake keepers", which stabilise a centre-pull yarn cake that you can make with a ball winder (which I now have) or a Nøstepinde (a.k.a. Stick!!!!)



In pharmaceutical news: I guess someone took that saying "A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down" a little too seriously...





Still, it's been useful stuff over the last couple of days.

I see snakes

It's kind of hard to write much at the moment, I'm having a great time but it's all quite absorbing and it's so easy to come home and zone out until 6.30 the next morning...

Mort & I made use of the long weekend the other week (Labour weekend) to visit the wetlands that are about 2km from us:




They are very different from the wetlands we're used to. Entering the reserve, we were surrounded by wild roses, apples and pear trees. And blackberries, of course. The bullrushes (cattails) were quite a sight.




The little loop track through the wetlands is on a boardwalk, and even though it's pretty dry at the moment, I'm really glad - I'm pretty sure this is poison oak:




Leaves of three - let them be; leaves of four - eat some more, right?

The highlight of the day had to be the snakes. We managed to spot three or four garter snakes, but they were a bit too quick for us to get a picture, unfortunately.

In food-travesty this week: Bunny-Luv brand carrots:


This concept of "Luv" confuses and infuriates us

Who doesn't like being sold carrots by a skanky anthropomorphic rabbit holding said vegetable in such a provocative manner?



We also got patriotic and tried the official Oregon State University ice-cream:



Chocolate coated footballs collide with a thick band of chocolate fudge in a mild peanut butter flavoured ice cream. GO BEAVS TM.

Beer here

It has been a busy, fun, tiring week. I presented my first gross case at Necro rounds (that's gross, not gross), so I've passed through at least one initiation....

Mort had fun building his computer:



Last weekend we went to happy-hour (or five), starting at Squirrels, where we found a bona-fide Lord of the Rings pin-ball machine. We lost a lot of "cool" points by taking photos of it:



Unfortunately I didn't check to see if the ball was the Eye of Sauron.

Oh, and remember how many beers you can normally get on tap in NZ? About four? The Fox & Firkin knows how to do beer on tap. I think there are 38:




After Squirrels and the Fox & Firkin, we headed over to Enoteca, a really stunning wine bar (at least, by my standards). You can tell a place has a special level of class when they include a Doggie Bar:



After a certain hour at night, electric car recharging sites are particularly funny, although I can't remember exactly why.



On Sunday, we went to a BBQ out near Independence. We learned that people here take kegerators to a whole new level:


Yep, that's four beers on tap just outside the back door. Awesome.

Of course, in a town of engineers you get some pretty spectacular home-brewing setups. This one provided the afternoon's entertainment:



Also, people here have a highly developed sense of morality that I can totally relate to:


At the BBQ I was given some sourdough starter that originally came from Germany. It's awesome stuff, tastes very yoghurty and makes very tasty bread.

During the week we finally got downstairs neighbours. We gave them a bit of help moving in, and they gave us pizza. A pretty fair trade, and we got to try traditional US-student-grade pizza instead of the flash stuff we tried some weeks ago. Cheese-some to the max.

One month in

One month in, and we finally have enough food in the house that we can't eat it all in a single meal. Also, we have a bed of our very own:



It's much, much higher than it looks. After sleeping on the floor for a couple of weeks, it felt quite odd to be lying so close to the ceiling.

To celebrate the bed, we tried Jiffy Pop.


We're starting to get a bit of a social life - so far (apart from Knit Nights) it consists of transporting dessert across town in the bike trailer. People thought it must be a kid in there ("Trifle? That's an odd thing to call a kid, but I 'spose it makes sense...."). We'd be miserable beggars to put a kid in that thing anyway - there are no windows or place for a seat. During the evening we had great fun explaining that "Kiwi" is not in fact a derogatory term (unlike "Beaner" or "Coconut"), and that we are not actually calling ourselves hairy fruit.

In the world of shopping, things just get stranger and more perverse. I mean, if this Jolly Green Giant guy is a plant, then what are these?




Possibly they're related to this tool (which looks like it should be put to use in ram fitness testing)




And this is just wrong. Do people really think about what they're calling their products?




And for the children.... Here's a tasty treat that is actually designed to look like one of our favourite childhood choking hazards:

No bats for me

Due to the "supply limitation situation" concerning rabies pre-exposure prophylaxis vaccination for humans (it's not a shortage though - see here), I'm not getting vaccinated for another month or two. This means no bats for me, and I have to avoid anything else that might be even a little rabid.

In other news, we have a power-squid:

This creative device has a niche in everyday households due to the shape of the power outlets here. Some kind of power-board/multi-board is needed because many appliances do not require an earth pin, so the plugs support themselves in the wall-socket by two pins only. Because in US plugs these pins go into vertical slots, a problem occurs when the wall-sockets become worn:

Hence even though there are some 50,000 power-points per room, plugging into some kind of power-board is a good idea since it has the handy earth pin to keep it in the wall. The reason for a squid vs. a board is bizarre: The sockets on the power-boards here are so close together only about half of the points are usable at one time.

Oh well, at least the power-squid matches our new lamp:

I think it's supposed to look like a cluster of pink flowers, but it mostly reminds me of giant tubeworms. This makes me happy.

There's an excessive heat warning on at the moment - it was 38ºC outside a while ago (only 36ºC inside, which was relatively refreshing). So we're mostly just sitting around eating ice-cubes dipped in rum & coke. Interestingly, the use of high-fructose corn syrup (instead of sugar) in soft-drinks here seems to make the coke foam far less when combined with rum.

Another weird thing: all the supermarkets sell dry ice. How awesome is that? Especially in this weather.... I mean, when we got plates out of the cupboard for dinner, they were already hot. That's just wrong.