Done.

Holy crap, that's the fastest I've ever turned out a paper. I hope it doesn't suck.

Full night of sleep, here I come!

Weekend warrior.

I work for an urgent care clinic, which means that I work unusual hours. It's a pretty good gig for a student, because aside from doing patient registration and some miscellaneous paper-pushing (standard issue in the receptionist's world), I pretty much get paid to warm an office chair, smile, and study. I work a couple of evenings a week and every other weekend. The evenings are pretty uneventful, but the weekends are exhausting. I get off work on Friday night at 9:00, and I have to be in for an 11 hour shift the next morning at 8:30. (Sundays are a little better, weighting in lighter eight hours.) Weekends tend to be pretty busy. Usually by Saturday night, my brain is as useful to my schoolwork as a jar of peanut butter, so very little studying gets done after I get home.

I have a paper due tomorrow morning, which (naturally) means that I planned to write it this weekend. This weekend was a particularly busy one at work, both days were really crazy. I didn't get any of my paper done at work on Saturday, and I was too mentally exhausted last night to work on it. I figured I'd have time today to get most of it written at work. So naturally, we saw a record number of patients for a Sunday, and I didn't get any writing done today either.

So now I'm going to go, because I have a paper to write.
(More posting to come soon - I'm off clinical rotation for the next two beautiful weeks, so I have time for some blogging. Yay me.)

A love note.

Dear leisure time,

This weekend was wonderful. Thanks for letting me spend some time with my boyfriend, do a little knitting, and watch that great show about bonobos on PBS. I wish you wouldn't go so soon, but alas, I have thirty-eight meds to look up before clinicals tomorrow - and I think we both know that I can't get anything done with even the thought of you hanging around. At least I got the bathroom clean and the laundry done while we were together. I miss you already, and I'm hopeful that we'll meet again sometime.

Yours always,

Mandi

A breather.

This crazy week is finally drawing to a close. It's been exhausting, but good. I have one class this afternoon, work this evening, and an afternoon of clinicals tomorrow at the mental health facility. Then I'm completely free for two whole days! It will be lovely. I'll catch up on school reading and household chores, and Luis and I are planning to have dinner at our favorite restaurant.

Perioperative clinicals were really interesting. I got to watch four different surgeries, and I was fortunate enough to work with a surgeon and two anesthesiologists who were willing to explain things to me and really make it a great learning experience. I jokingly told my friend on the first day that I wanted to see a open abdominal surgery first, and I ended up doing just that. I figure if I can handle that, I can handle anything.

Yesterday I got my new tattoo. I really like it. She did a beautiful job with the colors, and it covered my old one really well. It's a lot more "me" than the other one was.

Exciting week:

This is my first week of med/surg clinicals, and I'll be spending tomorrow and Tuesday learning perioperative nursing. I'll get to provide some pre- and post-op care for surgical patients, but during the actual procedures my job is pretty much to stay out of the way. I feel like I'm sneaking in to a private party - like someone is going to discover me in the OR and tell me to get out.

On Thursday I have an appointment at a tattoo parlor. I got my first tattoo the ripe old age of nineteen, and for reasons that escape me now, I decided to get a Chinese symbol. It's supposed to mean 'happiness', but who knows what it really says (if anything at all.) I relied on a page out of a book at a tattoo shop to translate a difficult character-based language correctly? Anyhow, I've been wanting to redesign that tattoo for a few years, but I couldn't settle on what I wanted to put over it. I finally decided that the shape lent itself well to becoming a little oak tree. (My other tattoo is a sun - it's interesting that both of them will be images from the natural world. I think it's fitting.) I came up with some rough sketches, and I took them in to a tattoo artist last week. I like what she did with my idea, and I'm pretty excited. Sammy is coming with me, so I should have some pictures to post afterward.
Now that I think about it, I should have posted a photo and held a "redesign Mandi's tattoo" contest. I know there's some artistically inclined people reading my blog. Oh well. :)

LOST - UK Channel 4 Promo

This is a commercial that aired in the UK back when they first started showing LOST. It's creepily beautiful, with a great song by Portishead.

Welcome, little one...

My best friend's sister and brother-in-law welcomed a 7 pound, 4 ounce, healthy baby boy into the world this morning at 9:06am.

Congratulations to the new parents!

More miscellany.

Today I finished watching the past episodes of Lost - I'm ready for Wednesday night, when the new shows begin. I made good time getting through the previous seasons, considering I started at the beginning of season one on January 8th.

For my intro to psychiatric nursing course, I got to take a tour of the facilities at Missoula's Opportunity Resources. It seems like a great program - a non-profit, private organization that assists disabled individuals. They contract with different companies for in-house work, and in doing so are able to fund their program and at the same time teach valuable job skills to disabled individuals. Some of the workers, after training, are able to work in the community. The workers at Opportunity are able to set their own schedule, receive physical therapy and medial care right on site as needed, and interact with other people to form some social support networks. I really enjoyed the time we spent there, and I'm looking forward to our project - the nursing students will be teaching short health promotion classes for the workers. It's a great way to learn how to adapt nursing teaching to those with learning or physical disabilities.

As I watched the last episode of Lost season two Sunday, I started thinking about the fictional characters which I find most attractive. There seems to be a theme, and it's kind of interesting. I find that I'm really drawn to the male characters who are strong, protective, and a bit guarded, but I find them most appealing in their moments of vulnerability. Strange? Yeah, I thought so, too. Examples: Dr. Cox (from Scrubs), when he has his rare teary, sensitive moments. Jack (from Lost), when he's kneeling on the dock, bound at the wrists and held captive by the Others. My mom laughingly suggested that it's because I want to break them (them being men, I think) down, but I think it's probably more related to my desire to take care of people. I feel the overwhelming urge to protect them. I've always been an emotional person (for better and worse), so it's possible that the intense emotional situations being portrayed are also drawing me in. As I've gotten older, I've gotten better at using my head along with my feelings as I move through life. I'm still a work in progress, though. Luis is a wonderful balance to my emotional sensibilities, he's great at rationalizing and approaching things logically.

Wow, not sure where all that came from. Moving on...

This last weekend I attended the Montana Student Nurses Association state convention in Bozeman. It was fun to get away for a few days, and I got a lot of information about the profession of nursing here in Montana. I was elected (by default - I'm the only one who ran) to the the MSNA state board as the Newsletter Editor/Website Coordinator. I probably didn't really need any more work on my proverbial plate, but it sounded like fun. Plus, it's a great resume builder. I'm excited about getting involved in a student organization, and looking forward to the National Student Nurses Association convention in Anaheim this April.

I finally had a day off that was both warm enough and snow-free enough to calibrate the sensor on my ipod sport kit. On its default setting it thought I was running 6-7 minutes per mile, which is wishful thinking. I'm not a fast runner, but that's certainly not news to me. I got it reset, and it's reading out my standard 10-11 minutes/mile pace. I'm not fast, but at the pace I usually take I can run longer. I'm thinking of signing up for a race this summer, but more on that when I've got a plan...

My ipod shuffled me to Faure's Pavane this morning before class, and it's been in my head all day. It's haunting and beautiful, probably one of my top ten favorite pieces of music. Perhaps I'll listen to it once again before bed...