My Little Slovakian Hero

Purple Dusk (view from front porch)

The title of this blog post is dedicated to my histology professor because even though I find histology very boring is a very sweet man with a great sense of humor (although I think most of what I find funny has to do with this heavy Slovakian accent more than his sense of humor). Regardless as a classmate of mine put it today, "He is my little Slovakian Hero". Today in class we started a new topic which is actually embryology and not histology, but technically the course is entitled, "MicoAnatomy and Embryology" so it's all part of the course objectives. So today we started gametogenesis which is the generation of the gametes or sex cells (i.e. spermatozoa (sperm) and ova (eggs). In our discussion of these cells my professor started talking about his block back in what I assume is Slovakia and he said, "All girls live there because all the mens die". He was explaining that while the rate sex in fertilization favors males, there are more females around because males die easier than females. Well maybe that's not funny if you weren't there, but I got a good laugh from it so I had to share it with you all. I finally lost him when he was talking about the "waffle cloud" that surrounds the oocyte (egg before it's an egg), but I later learned while I was studying the notes that this is actually called the Cumulus oophorus which sounds nothing like waffles when I pronounce it so I don't know where he got that from. So that was my exciting news from histology today.

In even more exciting news today in anatomy we finally removed the thoracic limb on our cadaver dog. I was a little afraid to cut it off and I completely mangled the rhomboidius and the deep pectoral muscle, but that's okay. So our little dog is now three-legged and has a very well examined left forelimb. Even though I kind of made a fool of myself when the professor came over, in the end I learned something. He kept asking what the different muscles were and of course for some reason my first answer for each one was "latissimus dorsi" which, by the way, was always the wrong answer. I surprised him though because when he pointed to the superficial pectoral muscles I eventually told him (after I said latissimus dorsi) that they were the superficial pectoral muscles and I correctly identified both the descending superficial pectoral muscle and the transverse superficial pectoral muscle. I was also really proud of myself for remembering the omotransvarsarius which for the life of me I could not remember yesterday!

Okay, I'm sure you are all sick of listening to me talk about muscles so I will move on to something else. So here is a disgusting, but interesting fact that I bet you haven't thought about before. Brought from me to you by my nutrition professor, if you think you are a vegetarian/vegan you are sorely mistaken if you eat things like pizza and bread (or anything with flour in it). Well let me explain, we all know that flour (or most of it) is made from wheat, right? Well that wheat must be processed and unfortunately insects like to lay eggs in the wheat plants and there is no way to remove them during processing. The FDA allows a certain level of insect chitin (the structural polysaccharide or carbohydrate that makes up the exoskeleton of the insect) in flour. So even if you don't mean to eat insects you are everyday! Sorry to all of the vegetarians and vegans out there, I know you are trying hard, but there is nothing you can really do about this one.

In other interesting news I broke my third water bottle in the past week, but don't worry because only the cap broke and I used my torch liter to melt the plastic back together and now it's good as new (well maybe not new, but it works). Other than that I've been doing a lot of studying and I must need more sleep because Ru and I were in hysterics over the fact that I've been particularly clumsy lately and today I looked straight into a light bulb as I turned the light on and walked right into the corner of bed and scraped myself as I exclaimed, "I hope I'm not breathing". HAHA still makes me laugh. Obviously I meant bleeding, but we both were crying by the end of our laugh fest. Also, did you know a person needs 12 hugs a day to grow? Bet you didn't! Ru needs a lot because she's short, lol (totally just stole her joke that I didn't even get at first)! Oh well, such is life!