moving

Moving is such a hassle! Not sure I want to do it in another year....next time im just going to pay people as well. Moving in the rain all that junk was a ton of work. Took up an afternoon and evening. Unpacking is nearly just as unpleasant....

On a lighter note, having a new place has opened up a few things, getting new furniture, kitchen/bathroom stuff and bedroom storage :)

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/40157485 for the kitchen, we have only a little countertop by the sink so this would replace the folding card table the currently our counter.

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S49839498 for a new living room couch, comes in a lot of colors, we liked the brown one.

limited storage in the bathroom so thinking about something like this http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?order_num=-1&SKU=16150223&RN=370& or with a cabinet on top


so these are the things we need to get, first thing is kitchen, then bathroom, then couch....



well time to go put more things away. would have been done sooner but with friends visiting and helping therese's friend move, its slow going

New place pictures

bedroom






This is the living room





Living room

Well as you all probably know I'm not a big blog person and updater. Far more likely to be on facebook. Anywho though, here is the new place. Need to clean the floors and tub but pretty much everything else is clean and in good shape. The old residents took some weird stuff, toilet seat, switch plates, even the smoke detector! I'm pretty sure there is a thing in my lease about there having to be one so i'll have to call them on that when I look over my paperwork again.

Anyway, here are some pics....Hard to tell the size but those who have seen my current bedroom, living room is about the same size and a little bigger, kitchen area is about the same size. Bedroom is maybe 70% teh size of current? This place does have two HUGE closets which is a big upgrade over current place which passes off a hole in the wall as a closet.

Need to buy a couple things, a countertop type thing with some storage, maybe buy a small book shelf to serve as a pantry thing. Also gotta buy some blinds, shower curtain, AC's.

Here are the pictures...

Vacation is over

I had a great nearly two week vacation but now its coming to a close. I have to go back into work tonight and I'm not looking forward to it. I cant wait until the next one in the start of August. With a trip back home and general procrastination under my belt I can say its been a satisfying vacation. The next two months will be busy. Just found out that I will be moving into a new place by August. More details to that coming next week. Also the back end of my June has a lot of nights on the schedule...I like to have a good spacing with at least 2-3 days off between sets of 2-3 nights on.

I can't say I work for the weekend because frankly I have no weekends, just random days off. I work every friday night in June which shows I did something to offend the schedule gods. I can say I work for vacations and thats about it. Oh and that nice deposit into my checking account every two weeks :)

ramblings (probably the title of many posts)

Its been a while since I had a post, time for an update or some ramblings.

A while back was the Boston Marathon took place, what impressed me the most was this group...

These army guys are impressive, not only did they finish in a respectable time, they did it in boots and full packs. Just goes to show you how well the army can physically train you. Now despite being ok shape, I would get owned in army basic training and could not even get close to finishing a marathon. I get really bored exercising on cardio machines and running. Like I don't really feel out of breath and physically unable to go on, I'm just so bored that I just stop. Any way I was just impressed with the ability of these guys, beating out many of the other racers. If you put boots and packs on the men and women who finished in the top 10, I'd be very interested in how long they would take to finish.

Onto other news, we are finally getting new staff. We have been short after a few of the young night nurses flew the coup and moved onto various ICU's in the hospital. Its sad to see these coworkers go. They were fun, around my age and were a great help when I was new and just starting on the floor. What you plan to do has now become the hot button issue among people on the floor. The answer I give is, I don't know. I know I won't be on a floor for the rest of my life. I think I will go back to school for my masters. I would like to get my NP then get into a doctors office and work there. NP's in the hospital take a lot of crap, they do a lot of the busy work from what I've heard and seen limitedly (not a lot of NP on the cardiac service, many more PA's). I do have some time being 22, many of the people in school on the floor are in their mid to late 20's so I don't have to come to a decision on things for a little bit yet. I would like to get much of my student loans paid off before I continue on my schooling.

In a totally random direction, I saw the new Star Trek, and I must say, excellent movie. I encourage people to go see it and I hope for the sequal that I'm sure is in the works is just as good. I am also excited for terminator thats opening this coming weekend. It looks very promising.

I finally get to go home again this weekend during my week off. I need a vacation from work. Only bad part is, after my vacation I'm working friday night for the next 4 weeks, talk about screwed over when everybody else in your life works 9-5 m-f.....so much for get togethers. I must say I would rather work friday night than saturday nights. Our unit is now home to pretty sick and many complete care/non ambulatory patients on the weekends who couldn't go home during the week or are awaiting more advanced procedures/surgeries. Combine that with a decrease in staffing in nurses and techs makes saturday and sundays quite busy for us.

Things of late

I went to Peter Lugers (famous NYC steak place) and I'll say it didn't disappoint. Make sure you bring your cash because they do not take credit cards, also some singles to tip the *mandatory* valet parking guys. We got a steak for 4 (170 bucks) and 3 sides to split amongst us plus dessert. The steak we had was amazing, very good. Was very tender with great flavor, not something you could do yourself.
If you read reviews you will notice the comments on the wait staff. Words such as cantankerous come to my mind when thinking on it. Our waiter was an older gentlemen (like every other waiter there) and was quite short and direct with everything. He was getting annoyed that one of our party was late getting in. Didn't matter much for him, it was slow and we had a reservation that was towards the end of the night so its not like he was missing out on business because he was late. Then we got our bill, the total was 264 bucks, not bad, I was anticipating more. We all had 20's of course and paid our share, 80 each. So we were expecting change back. We were a little surprised haha. He took the 320 dollars and said "thank you very much" with a finality that accompanies a waiter/waitress who takes the bill and money after you have said "You're all set." He didn't not return with change. Haha most of us there were not of the cheap persuasion so we weren't really miffed. Guess he just helped himself to a very nice tip.
This made me think, if he averages 250 dollars per table. Gets say a 40 dollar tip, does 10 tables a night, thats 400 bucks a night under the table. Thats pretty good, I also think my numbers may be conservative.

Overall I would go back again, great steak and good for a once in a blue moon type place.

oh the crazy people

For anybody reading, I work in a major hospital in NYC. Understandably in the health care field you see a wide range of characters. Many are normal, average people who end up in the hospital and on any given assignment I have neutral feelings towards. Some are fun to have on your assignment and you are glad they are yours. They make the night. Others try your patience and test your will. Some are downright funny, for reasons they may not even know. On the whole though the average night is pretty balanced between what you could say is an normal pt. and the occasional interactions with one who is "out there".

One such incident happened the other night. A fellow staff member had a spanish speaking only pt. In the middle of the night said coworker went to check on the patient after his monitor leads came off. Two minutes later they were off again and off again was their nurse to put them back on leaving the nursing station with an audible sigh (provoking a laugh from me. If you can't laugh at quirky people who take of monitors, are rambunctious and otherwise are "trouble makers" you'll go crazy and get frustrated).

With a quickened stride comes back my coworker asking for help, I ask what's up and says "i've never seen so much blood" which got me into that room a little quicker. Our patient had pulled out or lost his IV access and started to bleed everywhere. They got up outta bed and walked to the bathroom and walked all the way back to his bed by the window. Never calling for help, never making any noise.

I had never seen blood like that either, you couldn't walk into the room with out stepping in blood unless you were a ballerina. The bathroom looked like a murder scene, toilet, sink and floor had blood all over. Even the walls were blood streaked. I;m not sure what the hell this guy was doing. After making sure the patient had stopped bleeding and was ok I just had to laugh. What a crazy guy! And with my coworker trying to figure out what happened in spanish only made me laugh harder. The patient wasn't confused, oriented to person, place and time but didn't grasp the concept of the IV and why he needed to be hooked up to his fluids. He had blood all over himself so after helping to get him cleaned up I could go back to my charting.

I like to keep things light at work, very rarely do I get truly frustrated and stressed at work. I think I was truly aggravated at work maybe 2-3 months ago. Its incidents like these that define how you approach and react to situations at work. People can flip out and be super annoyed with the pt. for the whole night and let it dampen the whole shift. Or you can have your moment to be upset and annoyed with the creation of excess work and move on. Do what you need to do and get things done.