Friday!

            So Friday was a relatively calm day at the vet, which was a nice way to end off the week. Although I spend most of my days observing appointments, I also help around the office in any way they may need; today was one of those days where mostly I help around the office.

            I spent part of my morning organizing X-rays that were taken during the past few weeks. During this, I looked up the patient ID numbers on their computers and wrote them down on the envelopes holding the X-rays. This was probably the most difficult part because I had to decipher the handwritings of all the people working at the vet hospital. Then I had to put color-coded stickers on the envelopes depending upon the type of animal that was X-rayed (the categories were: reptile, avian, dog, cat, pocket pet). Next, I had to learn their numerical organization system and put the X-rays in the correct order. This actually was not as bad as it sounded and did not take that long.

            Also, on Friday I saw a ferret get an ultrasound and a cat get laser eye treatment. The ferret had come in as an emergency to the emergency vet hospital the night before and they were still trying to find out what was wrong with it and allowed me to watch the ultrasound. The cat had the issue that its eyelid rolls inwards and its eyelashes rub against its eye causing eye problems. The laser then causes scar tissue to pull the eyelid downward and away from the eye creating a normal eyelid.  Experiences such as these have taught me so much about veterinary medicine and it is so interesting and I am excited to learn more in the next three days.

Wednesday is Surgery Day!

So at the vets office, Wednesday’s are surgery days; basically, one of the coolest days to shadow on.  On Wednesday’s, there are no appointments scheduled at the Barberton office and only Dr. Riggs is there doing surgery with some of the vet techs.

The first operation was on a bird that had been boarding at the vets office for a couple of days. The bird had a mass on his wing that had the possibility of being cancerous and was affecting his mobility thus needing removed. For the surgery, the bird had to be put under anesthesia, which is actually pretty cool to watch and then Dr. Riggs cut off the part of the wing that had the mass on it and then, stitched and bandaged the wing up. Next the bird had to be woken up and the tracheal tube had to be pulled. They also had to send the mass, which seemed to be a cyst, in for testing to see if it was cancer.

Then they had to prep for the second and last surgery of the day (they usually have more surgeries but Wednesday was a slow day), neutering a bunny.  Putting an animal to sleep is the same under anesthesia just with different kinds of tubes but for a bunny, to put the tracheal tube in for anesthesia, you have to use an endoscope. This bunny kept fighting the anesthesia and waking up while they were putting the tube in and coughing which was adorable. Then Dr. Riggs neutered the bunny and I won’t get into the gory details but it was very interesting to watch.

I am so excited that my last day at the vets office is a Wednesday because I get a second day of surgeries to watch!

Putting the Rafters Up

Putting the rafters up was a day that I was very exited for but also a bit worried.  They are extremely difficult to lift up and can be difficult to level when on the roof.  Fortunately, we found a system that allowed us to finish the rafters in a 3 hour span.  Zach and I cut out the birds mouth on the rafters and gave the rafters to Wyatt and Henry, who were on ladders.  They then proceeded to screw the rafters onto the shed.  Unfortunately we ran out of brackets about halfway through the brackets.  We were forced to go to Lowes and buy more.  This took a bit longer than it should have because we struggles to select brackets to use for the rafters.  After returning to Wyatts, we grinded out a few more rafters before we were greeted by Zach's mom with pizza.  This provided a much needed break, because lifting the rafters is difficult and can be both tiring and also frustrating.  After a quick lunch, we proceeded to finishing the rafters.  Afterwords, we decided to start putting plywood on the roof.  This was a great deal of fun but also petrifying.  Screwing them in was a bit scary, but also a lot of fun.  After a long days work, we are looking forward to finishing the roof up early next week!

The Screens

After finishing the rafters on Wednesday, I went into Thursday thinking that we would spend the day putting them up.  To my surprise, we postponed putting the rafters up until Friday and used Thursday to buy the trim and put up the screens.  While today was supposed to be a relaxing and easy day, it turned out to be the most frustrating day of project. After spending too much time at Lowes buying paint for the trim, an asparagus green, wood for the screens, and trim, we found ourselves at Wyatts with a couple hours to work.  Thinking that this would be more than enough, we were surprised at the difficulty of putting the screens in.  After struggling to find a level surface to cut the wood for the screens, we found that the garage would be the best location to do the measuring and screwing. While we were optimistic that this was the solution to the issue of levelness, we still struggled to create screens with the dimensions that were needed.  We got the first screen in comfortably, but spent over an hour trying to get a second and third screen in.  This task was supposed to be simple and somehow it took up all afternoon.  We weren't even able to finish the screens before we had to go to our after school commitments.  Fortunately, Wyatt was able to find time Thursday night to work on the screens himself.  This is a great example of things being more difficult than they appear to be.  With limited working experience in building, simple tasks such as these can turn out to take a great deal of time for our group.   The precision that is required for construction has given me a much greater appreciation for people in the industry. 

Buttercream Pro

        Today when I walked into the kitchen the board was completely full of tasks that all had to be done today.  If I said I was overwhelmed it would be an understatement.  I started off with a completely new task today: cream cheese frosting.  The cream cheese frosting is the second most important frosting made at Luna.  It is used mostly for red velvet and carrot cupcakes.  The buttercream frosting is used for the majority of cupcakes and cakes.  Cream cheese frosting only has 4 ingredients, obviously there is cream cheese but also butter, vanilla and powdered sugar.  The only difficult part is sifting the powdered sugar.  I sifted a total of 12 pounds of powdered sugar and made a pretty big mess to say the least.  Once I finished this the rest of the recipe was very easy.  Basically all of the ingredients mixed in the mixer for a while.  Usually at the end of making the frosting it has to be sifted again.  Thankfully I was told that I didn't have to sift again.
        Once I finished this I was told by Lindsay (one of the cake makers) that she needed a lot of buttercream for this weekend.  So I started on my first batch and ended up getting a total of three done today.  Because I know the recipe by heart, I've pretty much got it down and can time out each batch pretty well.  Meaning that once I put in my last round of butter in the batch in the mixing bowl I can put my next batch on the double boiler so that it sits and is ready once I'm done with the batch in the mixing bowl.  The cafe was insanely busy today.  The funny thing was that it was very slow and then all of a sudden so many people walked in.  So it took a while to get lunch.  I ordered a barbeque pulled pork and coleslaw panini with a side of quinoa (in the picture below).  It was very yummy and I highly recommend it.

The Walls and the Roof

These last few days have been much more productive than we ever could have imagined. We decided to work Monday since we thought we were behind schedule, so on Monday and Tuesday Eric and I stained the 12 boards which we are using for the wall. While this does not seem too difficult, it proved to be much harder, dirtier, and longer than anticipated. We spent hours in the humid and hot garage making sure every spot was stained, and in the process got some stain on our clothing and skin (some of which still hasn't come off completely on my feet no matter how hard I try to scrub it off). While Eric and I were doing this staining, Wyatt and Zach were cleaning up around the shed, cutting off some extra wood pieces, and created an overhang on the shed. The rest of Tuesday and beginning of today consisted of placing the 12 sheets of siding up on the shed, which is much harder than it sounds because we had to cut out the windows and doors in the exact spots. After finally getting them all up, we then started to make the roof. The day ended in us finishing all 12 rafters for the roof, and tomorrow we will begin to put them up. The picture below shows the shed with the siding on the back of the shed, and shows the overhangs which we created. The black panels on the ground is the siding.

Frosting Cookies

        I started off the day by finishing my last job from yesterday.  Now that Hannah (the intern who helped me with almost all of my baking tasks) is gone, I'm kind of on my own. So once I got there I checked the "board". The "board" is the dry erase board on the door of the cooler in the kitchen that has a list of things to do for the day.  So I finished my last task from yesterday, scooping the peanut butter cookie dough.  I did a total of 4 trays of peanut butter cookie dough and it took me a lot longer than I thought. Once I finished that I started to make buttercream because the board said that we needed 4 batches.  I only had the time to make one batch today, so tomorrow I will hopefully finish the rest.  It takes me a while to do the buttercream because before I even start mixing ingredients I have to scale out all of the ingredients on the scale.  Thankfully the eggs had already been separated so I didn't have to waste 2 hours separating eggs.  There were also a lot of people working in the kitchen today so it was difficult to find a place to scale out my ingredients.  Once I finished scaling out for 2 batches I mixed the sugar and the egg whites and whisked them until they were smooth.  Unfortunately there is only one big mixer and one big bowl and whisk at Luna.  This was in use when I finished whisking so I had to wait a while until the mixer was done.
        While I waited for the mixed I made colored frosting for cookies.  The frosting for the cookies is made with white frosting that is already made and food coloring.  I'm not sure who makes the white frosting but it is always magically around.  I made yellow, blue, purple and green frosting for cookies in the shapes of one piece bathing suits and bikinis.  Then I had to multitask and make buttercream at the same time as frosting my cookies.  This was not easy in any way and I actually screwed up the buttercream a little.  When the egg whites and the sugar mixed over the boiling water you have to watch it every once in a while to make sure that the sugar is mixed in.  I was so busy frosting my cookies that I totally forgot to check the buttercream so when I poured it into the mixer I noticed some sugar at the bottom of the bowl.  It wasn't that much so I figured it was okay.  Then I took my lunch break and after that I started decorating the bikini shaped cookies.  While I was doing this and Kasey was working on another task in the back Mr. Harris came to visit us.  It was nice to see a friendly face and talk about our project.  After we talked for a while about how our project is going I finished decorating the cookies and didn't even realize that it was way past 3 o'clock; but I feel bad leaving a task unfinished because the other employees have so much to do.  Below is a picture of the bikini cookies I decorated today.