Do you think if I wrote the bio department and said I was vegan, they wouldn't make me attend Mammalian Physiology lab?
The thought of stabbing blindly around the peritoneal cavity with a 20 gauge needle in order to withdraw 5ccs of blood, while our oddly albino rat seizes to death, leaking urine all over the table, has me ready to start an animal-product-free diet. Fine print in the university catalogue: physiology deals with live organisms.... anatomy is dead ones. Oops.
I'm in the wrong major.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Monday, September 7, 2009
Trust me, you should read this. It's funny!
Yesterday I had a little incident with my no longer trusty Pyrex pan and since fighting with Canon the last eight months, I have no energy to even write a letter. However, I will warn you. Yesterday night, I was cooking a kebab in the oven in my glass Pyrex baking dish. I took it out of the oven, took out the kebab, and held the dish over the sink. Now I'm not sure what the next sequence of events was, as I was standing there in shock. Somehow I went to turn on the water and the dish literally exploded with a loud pop and where the dish used to be, about 100,000 tiny shards sat in the sink.... along with pooling red blood. I was holding a red hot-pot holder and thought how weird it was that after having it so long, it still bled in water. It was then that I realized the red color was from me, my entire hand was gushing blood. I always forget how bright red fresh blood is. I didn't even know where the cuts were so I didn't know how to contain them. I dripped blood all over the kitchen floor and in the bathroom where I wrapped toilette paper around and around my hand, too afraid to look.
I went to check out the damage and realized that pieces had been shot nearly ten feet from the sink. I'm glad none of the shards got into my eyes or torso. I think I was still in shock as I picked pieces out of the sink (one handed) and disposed of them. Somehow tiny shards had cut me all over my hand, so blood would seep from places where I couldn't even see a puncture mark. I have one big gash between fingers and a huge one on my thumb. I didn't want to go to the hospital, even though my fingers bled through the night (and through at least half a roll of toilette paper).
Ok so I promised you would laugh. Reading about my hand being made into minced meat isn't that funny. But this is. I googled exploding Pyrex because my mom swears that it has happened to her too years and years ago. After receiving no less than 700 complaints of the exact same thing happening, a consumer reports site wrote an article. Oddly, the people who wrote in said the same things, "explosion," "shards," and "loud pop" and this was a result of many different conditions. Some had the dishes in the fridge, microwave, range, oven, never used and still in the box, hot water, cold water- all situations, they blew up.
World Kitchen purchased Pyrex and Corning Ware, and there is a rumor that they changed the chemical makeup of the glass to something cheaper. Douglas S. Arnold, a vice president of World Kitchen responded to the article by saying-
"We want to assure you that neither Pyrex glass bakeware nor other glass bakeware 'explodes.' Glass does not explode but it can break. As glass bonds break, people may hear a noise and be surprised. When glass breaks, it may appear instantaneous, and may be described with violent words such as 'exploded' or 'disintegrated.' Instead of disintegrating, however, a glass failure generates from one or more fractures, each of which begins at a particular site and grows from there."
Isn't this like describing an airliner crash as an "inadvertent impact with terrain?" Is this guy a politician? If it shatters like an explosion and sounds like an explosion, it's an explosion. Don't try to shmooze your way out of this by arguing semantics, I've taken chemistry too you know! I have a few "violent words" for you too Mr. Arnold.
The writer of the article responded:
Now you should be laughing... maybe it's only me. I've dealt with my fair share of shady business people over the years and that is exactly what they say. Never their fault. Today I was thinking that I should be thankful, it could have been worse. I'm glad it was not. I will not be writing to Pyrex to get a coupon for another dish which may explode- oh excuse me break- in my face. What is going on here? I should not have to enter the kitchen prepped for battle. I have to do it, I have to write a short letter.
Dear Pyrex,
I hate you. You ruined my Saturday night and my kebab/asparagus meal. Thanks to you, I will not be able to make brownies in my favorite brownie pan because it blew up. Now my brownies will be shaped like pound cake, or to thin from the 13x9. I was going to ask for your eight piece set with plastic lids from Target for Christmas, but now I will not! I will switch to stoneware. So there.
Your no longer loyal customer,
Briana
I went to check out the damage and realized that pieces had been shot nearly ten feet from the sink. I'm glad none of the shards got into my eyes or torso. I think I was still in shock as I picked pieces out of the sink (one handed) and disposed of them. Somehow tiny shards had cut me all over my hand, so blood would seep from places where I couldn't even see a puncture mark. I have one big gash between fingers and a huge one on my thumb. I didn't want to go to the hospital, even though my fingers bled through the night (and through at least half a roll of toilette paper).
Ok so I promised you would laugh. Reading about my hand being made into minced meat isn't that funny. But this is. I googled exploding Pyrex because my mom swears that it has happened to her too years and years ago. After receiving no less than 700 complaints of the exact same thing happening, a consumer reports site wrote an article. Oddly, the people who wrote in said the same things, "explosion," "shards," and "loud pop" and this was a result of many different conditions. Some had the dishes in the fridge, microwave, range, oven, never used and still in the box, hot water, cold water- all situations, they blew up.
World Kitchen purchased Pyrex and Corning Ware, and there is a rumor that they changed the chemical makeup of the glass to something cheaper. Douglas S. Arnold, a vice president of World Kitchen responded to the article by saying-
"We want to assure you that neither Pyrex glass bakeware nor other glass bakeware 'explodes.' Glass does not explode but it can break. As glass bonds break, people may hear a noise and be surprised. When glass breaks, it may appear instantaneous, and may be described with violent words such as 'exploded' or 'disintegrated.' Instead of disintegrating, however, a glass failure generates from one or more fractures, each of which begins at a particular site and grows from there."
Isn't this like describing an airliner crash as an "inadvertent impact with terrain?" Is this guy a politician? If it shatters like an explosion and sounds like an explosion, it's an explosion. Don't try to shmooze your way out of this by arguing semantics, I've taken chemistry too you know! I have a few "violent words" for you too Mr. Arnold.
The writer of the article responded:
When, let's say, numerous consumers who do not know each other, who live in different parts of the country and who have no apparent reason to engage in an elaborate conspiracy to bring down Pyrex report something, there is good reason to believe that it probably happened pretty much as they described it, no?
How to explain Vice President Arnold's head-in-the-sand approach to exploding cookware? For public consumption, he represents the standard corporate point of view, which goes something like this: There are no known defects in our products. If we knew of defects in our products and did not fix them, we would be liable for damages or injuries resulting from their use. Therefore, we don't know of any such defects.
The second verse of the standard corporate litany always goes something like this: If our products are exploding, catching fire, melting down or irradiating bystanders, it is obviously due to operator error since there are no known defects in our products. If there were known defects, we would have ... etc.
Now you should be laughing... maybe it's only me. I've dealt with my fair share of shady business people over the years and that is exactly what they say. Never their fault. Today I was thinking that I should be thankful, it could have been worse. I'm glad it was not. I will not be writing to Pyrex to get a coupon for another dish which may explode- oh excuse me break- in my face. What is going on here? I should not have to enter the kitchen prepped for battle. I have to do it, I have to write a short letter.
Dear Pyrex,
I hate you. You ruined my Saturday night and my kebab/asparagus meal. Thanks to you, I will not be able to make brownies in my favorite brownie pan because it blew up. Now my brownies will be shaped like pound cake, or to thin from the 13x9. I was going to ask for your eight piece set with plastic lids from Target for Christmas, but now I will not! I will switch to stoneware. So there.
Your no longer loyal customer,
Briana
Thursday, September 3, 2009
My new address at school is:
375 S. 9th St. #2019
San Jose, CA 95112
My GRE is scheduled for October 3rd. Until then, I'm just keeping up with my five classes (surprise! I'm only taking 15 credits this semester), working at my old on-campus job, trying to figure out some kind of volunteer position that fits in with my schedule, doing a ton of paperwork for graduation, GRE practice, and starting my graduate school applications which is no joke.
The list changes daily of the PhD programs I'm applying to. There are so many options! I finally decided that I'm going to focus on programs on the west coast. I don't think I can commit to living that far away from my family for 5-7 years.
375 S. 9th St. #2019
San Jose, CA 95112
My GRE is scheduled for October 3rd. Until then, I'm just keeping up with my five classes (surprise! I'm only taking 15 credits this semester), working at my old on-campus job, trying to figure out some kind of volunteer position that fits in with my schedule, doing a ton of paperwork for graduation, GRE practice, and starting my graduate school applications which is no joke.
The list changes daily of the PhD programs I'm applying to. There are so many options! I finally decided that I'm going to focus on programs on the west coast. I don't think I can commit to living that far away from my family for 5-7 years.
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