Celebrating the beginning of change.

President Barack Obama dancing at the Inaugural Ball.

Photo by Jason Reed, Reuter's. As seen at news.yahoo.com

Yes he can... dance. :) Glad to see he's as excited as we are!

Moving fun!

A week ago today an army of friends showed up at our apartment and proceeded to swiftly and artfully load our U-Haul, plus Creighton's pickup truck and Steve's flatbead trailer. Two hours later we were sitting amongst a sea of boxes in our new house, eating Pringles and gabbing. It was, without a doubt, the fastest move I've ever made. Thanks so much to Ashlee, Kate, another Kate, Steve, Creighton, James, and Tommy for the fantastic help!

This past week has been war - me against the boxes. I don't like living out of boxes, and I pride myself on being quick to settle in to new places. And since I am currently without gainful employment, I have dedicated myself full time to the task of organizing our life. I've done fairly well so far - living room and kitchen are done, and our bedroom, both bathrooms, computer room, and the family room are in various states of unpacking.

(Living room, box free!)


I took a day to do some major drywall patching and then paint in the laundry room. I love being able to put color on my walls!

(I've been saving those overalls for seven years for this very purpose! Wee!)



Okay, back to the boxes!

Hello, internets!

After a week without, our new home is finally wired to the internet, phone, and cable.

...aaaaaand there goes my drive to unpack boxes. :)

Home, sweet home!

We closed on our first house today!

Poor, sad iPod.

It's a fantastic sunny day outside, but my poor iPod insists on being pensive.
The past few songs, in reverse order:

Fire Walk With Me - Angelo Badalamenti
Something to Believe In - Poison [...don't judge me]
You Never Know - Dave Matthews Band
In Your Eyes - Jeffrey Gaines
Return to Innocence - Enigma
Nothing Better - The Postal Service
Naughty Girl - Beyonce [this one definitely varies from the pattern]
Crash Into Me - Dave Matthews Band
I Miss You - Blink 182
The Weight - The Band
Glory Box - Portishead

I'm revoking its shuffling privileges for the day - I needs me some upbeat-sun-shiny-day packing music!

Must have experience to get experience.

It's difficult trying to find work as a new graduate nurse. Granted, I've only been looking for 2.5 business days, but still. Most places want experienced nurses, but I can't become an experienced nurse without a nursing job. And round and round the cycle goes...

Honestly, I understand the hesitancy in hiring new graduates. A new employee for any company is a huge investment, and a new nurse even more so - it takes a loooooong time to orient a brand new nurse. After four difficult years in a highly respected baccalaureate program, the typical graduate nurse is perfectly prepared - to learn how to be a nurse. We have a great base of knowledge, but there is still much to learn. It makes sense that facilities will have to integrate new nurses in over time, and I'm sure I'll find work fairly soon.

It's strange being without a daily occupation. I've been both an employee and a full time student for the past four and a half years, and now suddenly my world is devoid of any real obligation, save for making student loan payments and exchanging carbon dioxide for oxygen. It's sort of surreal.
"Enjoy it," people keep telling me. Yeah - it was enjoyable for about four days. After that I started getting this nagging "do something" feeling, though the nagging didn't translate into any real accomplishment. I should be working out at the gym, studying for the NCLEX, and packing all of my worldly belongings, but instead I just watch mass quantities of HGTV and dream of buying furniture.

Clearly, I'm in some sort of post-degree freefall.

Online job search - now with faster rejection.

I don't like this era of internet-aided job applications. Job hunting has never been high on my list of things I enjoy, but I definitely liked the old way better. Get all dressed up, have resumés and cover letters printed on fancy paper, then go use your people skills to secure an interview. Now you roll out of bed, step into your fluffy house slippers, grab a Clif bar and a cup of coffee, and sit down to the computer. You fill out an extensive application online, then copy the text of your carefully formatted resumé and paste it into a text only window. I feel like I represent myself fairly well in print, but I miss the humanness of the old way.

As a new graduate nurse, I am on the hunt for a nursing position (the snag in this plan will be elaborated on in my next post). I like the idea of starting in a hospital, and being in Missoula this gives me two options for employment. I spent Friday morning rewriting my resumé (to reflect the fact that I now want to be a nurse as opposed to a receptionist, the only thing for which my old resumé clearly qualified me). I then signed up for Jobline accounts with each of the local hospitals and proceeded to fill out an online application for each facility. This morning, while reviewing the positions available at one of them, I came across a position in the cardiac cath lab. It said experience preferred, but it also said that it was a training bid, which my brain translated into "maybe they'll take a new grad." I logged in and applied my application to that position this morning at about 10:30. I got home from running errands about 2:45, and already waiting for me was an emailed response, letting me know that I don't have the experience they are looking for, but thanks anyway.
Applied at brunch, shot down before teatime.

Thanks, internets.

Caught with my hand in the cookie jar.

Okay, so we close on our new house next Friday, which means that we don't technically own it yet. (Just a minor detail...) I've been driving by every so often (okay, fairly often), trying to get a feel for it during different times of day, observe the neighborhood, check out the nearby traffic, that sort of thing. The other day as I was driving by, I noticed that the snow had melted enough for me to easily access the backyard. I wanted measure the height of the retaining wall in the back (the one major fixer-upper feature of the property). The house is empty, so I decided it would be okay to slip into the back yard to measure and take a few pictures. As I was leaving, who should drive by but... the owner. He slowed down, an incredulous look on his face, undoubtedly wondering who the hell was in the backyard of his empty house.

So embarrassing.

I waved as soon as I saw him, trying to pretend that I wasn't totally trespassing. He stopped and got out of the car to chat (thank god we've met before, so he knows that I'm the woman about to give him a large sum of money for the place, and am not just a crazy house stalker). Turns out he was coming to try and clear the obstacle course of ice and snow obscuring the driveway. He actually didn't seem all that surprised to see me, and he offered to let me in to the house. He's a realtor, so maybe this is normal first time homebuyer behavior. Either way, I felt like a total creeper.
I politely declined the offer to go inside and made a quick getaway, feeling a bit like a peeping Tom caught red-handed.

Hopefully he won't notice the faceprints on the windows.

Review and resolve anew.

I didn't publicly post resolutions last year, but I had them. (My 2007 resolutions included some of the same things I focused on in 2008...) The coming of a new year has always given me a fresh, hopeful feeling - the sense good things can be even better, and that less good things can be remedied. I find January an opportunity to reflect inward and think about who I am and where I want my life to go - and although I try to do this year round, the beginning of a new year just seems a particularly good time to start fresh.

Listening, reflecting, patience, understanding. These are my hopes for 2009.