Where is Mandi?

Buried. Buried alive, kicking and screaming, beneath a heaping helping of clinicals, projects, papers, and other craziness deemed by my esteemed professors to be important to my education. This, our final semester before we are turned loose on the "real world," appears to have been designed to kill us. If you live, then you get to be a nurse.

The bulk of the work this semester is "self directed" learning, meaning that we set our schedules directly with our preceptors. This is a test - a test of organizational wits. Nursing students are organized by nature - we have to be. Clinicals at all hours of the day, labs, papers, class, clinical prepwork, it all eats up monster amounts of time. Ask any of my classmates to see their organizer, and you'll be handed a full size dayplanner, complete with neurotic, color-coded highlighting and dozens of mini post-its clinging to every page. But this semester is the ultimate time challenge. We have three separate clinicals; nursing management, community/population based, and home visits. We are assigned three separate nurses within the community, and we have to coordinate our schedules with each of them. And somehow we have to make it to class, and for most of us, work as well. Egads.

The saving grace for me this semester is that my assignments should be fun. For my management clinicals, I will be working with the nurse supervisor at the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge. It will be interesting to look at health care within a government system. For my population project I will be setting up protocols for and coordinating hearing and vision screenings for a small school district that has been without a school nurse for the past few years. My home care client is a high risk pregnant woman who I will be working with before and after her delivery, providing resources, education, and whatever she needs as she transitions into her new role.

So where won't Mandi be much this semester? On Blogger. Blogging is my favorite way to decompress after a long or stressful day (and god love the handful of you who show up to read the thing), but unfortunately it's also time consuming. I hope that my blog won't go the way of my kitchen, my eyebrows, and all the other things that have been neglected as of late, but at the moment I just don't know. But -- thanks for coming by, and I'll be around whenever I can.
:)

In my life

Luis and I chose this song (the original Beatles version) for our first dance as husband and wife.



I just came across this video today and I got a kick out of hearing it performed by Dave, although I still prefer the original.

Don't let Luis hear it - it'll probably ruin the song for him :)
(I know, can you believe I married someone who doesn't like Dave Matthews?)

One more.

This Slate article says exactly what I've been thinking about Mrs. Palin. I'm working this evening, but I'll be listening.

The economy.

Do yourself a favor, listen to This American Life #355; The giant pool of money.

You probably aren't nearly as angry about the national financial crisis as you should be.

I haven't heard this week's show, #365; Another frightening show about the economy, but it explains in more detail what went wrong and how it could have been avoided.

Maybe if everyone gets angry, we can finally get people involved.

Woe is me: the complaining post.

It's not fair that I caught a monster cold just a couple of days before my weekend off. (I know life isn't fair - but dammit, I need a break.) I spent the weekend simultaneously trying to enjoy myself a little (we had tickets to the Griz football game), study for a test on Monday, and recuperate from this nasty bug. Trouble is, I don't think I did very well at any of the three. It's Sunday night, and I have to finish up the research component for our test tomorrow, I'm more behind on sleep than I was Friday, and I feel icky.

And my next day off isn't until October 11th. I'm worn out.


(Sorry for being a whiny butt. I'm sure it'll pass soon...)

Autumn first, or something...

The first official day of fall in Missoula was a chilly, windy, rainy one. I normally might gripe about such weather, but after the past couple weeks of unseasonably warm temperatures (it was in the 80's for several days!), I am ready for it to feel like autumn. I've been celebrating in my own little ways all day. This morning I donned a navy cableknit sweater (yay, yay and yay), and made a mug of my favorite chai to take to class. When I got home this evening I put on my Peter and the Wolf CD (holycow if you haven't heard the recording with Patrick Stewart narrating, you're missing out. Particularly if you're female. That man can narrate me right into a frenzy...), lit a pumpkin spice candle, and opened the balcony door so the smell of cool rain would blow in. After blogging - off to bake banana nut bread. I might even mull a little wine.

Happy autumn!

Sad shopper.

I love Missoula, but one drawback of living in a town this size is the shopping. Really, lack of shopping would be a better way to describe our retail situation, at least for those of us in the 25-45 year old range.
About a month ago our Express closed with little warning. I was sad to see it go – it was one of the few mall shops in Missoula where I enjoyed shopping. Last week posters went up for the tragedy which will soon moving in to our former Express – a Hollister. Seriously... We already have a plethora of these types of stores in our little mall - PacSun, Zumiez, Abercrombie, American Eagle. Apparently everyone in Missoula under the age of 45 is supposed to be dressing either like 1.) scantily clad nonchalant teenage surfers or 2.) scantily clad pouty teenage skateboarders. The selection of merchants jumps from teenage angst to Coldwater Creek, with little in between. Downtown Missoula has the market cornered on funky little shops with unique clothing and jewelry pieces, but woman cannot survive on specialty shops alone. I needs me a Limited.

A note so I don't ruffle too many feathers - there is nothing magical (or old) about 45, nor do I have anything against Coldwater Creek. I just pulled those out of the air. Actually, Coldwater Creek has fabulous dresses.

Yet another reason to love Tina Fey.

Smart, funny, sassy, beautiful, and smart. Did I already say smart?

She rocks.

I love Montana.

Bear vs. bike: Teacher riding to school runs into bruin above Miller Creek

(follow link for full story on the Missoulian website)


And a flashback: the year we moved to Missoula, we watched this on the local news...

Confused sleepy bear.

So it's been a busy evening. First, Elle solved a big murder case and snagged the cute lawyer boy. At the same time, Carrie was falling hard for Big, but he was dating lots of other women. Bad man. The overweight girl got her belly and arms taken in and bigger boobs added by the tiny Dr. Li. Carrie and Samantha talked about threesomes with Charlotte, but Miranda felt left out. Then Jenna woke up and she was thirty and flirty and thriving, and her geeky best friend was super hot. Now she has an adorable dress on, and she's doing the Thriller dance.
The only person missing is Mr. Darcy.

(I'm going to bed now.)