Week 1: Cardiovascular and Week 2: Fluid balance

It's been a thrilling day today!

Got off to a great start when we discovered that our secret cat had pooped on the floor. We discovered this when we noticed poopy footprints all over the house after we'd walked through it. Better yet, we discovered it when we were on the way out the front door, already running late. So after a long and sometimes trying day at uni, we were able to come home and relax by chiselling dried excrement off the floor and cleaning the house. As usual.

If you own shares in Unilever, sell them, because they're going downtown. How do I know this? Because I love green apples. And after using a green-apple-scented cleaning product to help chisel excrement off my floor, and inhaling the heady scent of green apples and poop, I never want to eat a green apple ever again. Pretty soon the apple growers of the world are going to sue the cleaning product producers of the world for everything they own. I guarantee it.

Uni was okay. Highlight was an eccentric professor who answered all of the questions we asked him with long and tangential answers that would end with, "but we really don't know why". It's all very well for him, but I've got exams next week and that sort of thing really won't cut the mustard. (Where on earth is that phrase from, and what does it mean??? Who cuts mustard? And why?)

Tonight I went back to square one. I've made good progress though, knocking over the first two weeks of the year. Admittedly there wasn't a huge amount to do, but I felt it was important to do it thoroughly as a kind of morale boost for myself. Now I feel like I am really on my way from misery to happiness. Unfortunately that road passes through weeks 6 and 7 which concern the metabolism, and that will be ugly indeed. But I'll club that seal when I get to it.

The fluid balance stuff is actually quite interesting because it is convoluted in its complexity. For example, if your blood pressure falls, your heart tells your brain, which tells your kidney to produce renin, which converts angiotensinogen from the liver into angiotensin 1, which goes to the lungs and gets converted by angiotensin converting enzyme into angiotensin 2, which makes your adrenal glands produce aldosterone and also makes your pituitary release vasopressin, which together make your kidneys stop making so much pee so your blood pressure doesn't fall any further! Just as you always suspected, right? I just love it that all these random parts of your body chip in with their own opinions. If I don't get asked a question about this next week I'm going to be very very angry.

I'm off to bed now to dream sweet dreams of renin.