Tuesday, July 28, 2009

What's Up?

Okay, so it's been a while since I've posted. That means I've been busy! So busy in fact that I forget what's been keeping me so busy!

Well, we know that every other week I'm at work, and that pretty much dominates my life for seven days. I'm sure that everyone thinks that working 7 days in a row, then having 7 days off it great... well, it's "good," but I don't know about great. For those 7 days, I don't have time to really do anything BUT work. I wake up, head in to the hospital, put my nose to the grindstone for 11-13hrs (sometimes more), then come home, have dinner and crash shortly thereafter. Occasionally I'll get out for a ride or run, but usually not, and if I do, it's short. That type of all encompassing work schedule for 7 days translates to me "catching up" during my time off--paying bills, returning phone calls, etc, etc. Yeah, I'm not complaining, just stating the facts. This past week at work was ROUGH as Jean was away so I had extra dog duty. If it wasn't for our exceptional neighbor Chrissy, I wouldn't have been able to do it. THANKS!

The week prior to that was dominated primarily with me making sure that my BLS and ACLS certifications were up to date. I couldn't find any live classes so I did online recertifications (although I still have to make arrangements to meet someone face to face to push on the chest on a rescue manikin). The live classes can be boring but the online classes brought the word tedious to a new level. I *understand* that the classes have to take a certain amount of time to be validated and that I'm earning a certain number of hours of CME (continuing medical education) credits, but my God, the online versions were rough to go through. As an example, I'd be faced with a clinical scenario and asked what I'd want to do next (such as, a 60yr old man in the ER with chest pain and palpitations). My reply might be, "check vital signs," and then I'd be forced to watch a video of a nurse putting on a blood pressure cuff and pumping it up to get the blood pressure... just tell me the vital signs! That might sound petty, but imagine sitting through six hours of this. Enough said, I did my time and that's set until next year. As a side note, the image above appears to be of a guy choking another guy, and I didn't see that in the BLS or ACLS protocol anywhere...

Last week I also purchased some more lumber for the giant planter box project I've been working on as an extension off of my back deck. It's coming along well and I can't wait for it to be done and full of decorative shrubbery.

Of course, not time off would be complete without as much riding as possible. Jean and I hit the trails a few times and I took G-Pap on a trail that was WAY too technical, but it was a good opportunity to take a bike for a walk in the woods while feeding some hungry mosquitos.

Jean and I also went to the new Harry Potter movie--yes on opening day (but no, not at midnight). In the interest of full disclosure, I have never read any of the books, but I've seen the movies with Jean. I don't really know the characters, and I'm opposed to movies with snotty Brittish kids as the protagonists, but the effects are good and it's mindless entertainment. This most recent movie fit the bill and it's funny to see how the movie producers are going to keep these actors (who are probably in the 30's by now) looking like young teens. The guy that plays Harry Potter has the longest neck too. Anyway, as I was watching this movie, I was struck with an epiphany:

Harry Potter = Mr. Frodo



Dumbledore = Gandalf


Okay, maybe not an epiphany in the true sense of the word (defiinition: "a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience"), but maybe just an observation, and certainly not an important one.

I guess that's enough of a post for now. I'm going to let me external hard drive heat up while I back up my nearly 10,000 photos (Lightroom 2 is an awesome photo management program) while I go work on bikes for a bit. More ramblings later!

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