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.

Ah, Kansas...

This morning I woke to high humidity and temperatures in the upper 50's. By midday it was 65, with roughly the same level of humidity as the bottom of a swimming pool. Tonight, I retired to my room late after an evening chat with my sister, and I flipped on the weather channel as I got ready for bed. I noticed a severe weather alert - turns out we're under a tornado watch until 5:00 in the morning! Severe thunderstorms with heavy lightning and hail are almost upon us - a quick step out onto the porch revealed bright white lightning to the northwest, illuminating the low hanging clouds barreling across the sky. Winds are suddenly rattling the windows on the house, and the distant rumble of thunder promises that we'll see some weather soon.

I shall now return to my attic bedroom and try to sleep...

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

From the New York Sun, 1897:

Dear Editor—

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O’Hanlon

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Merry Christmas to you and yours. :)

Since we last met...

...I finished the requirements for my degree and bought a house.
It's been a busy past few weeks. :)

Tomorrow is my pinning ceremony. I've had so many mixed emotions lately - it's been a lot to sort through. More on this later.

I leave for Kansas on Sunday, and I'm looking forward to a little brain vacation. And blogging.

One last hurrah.

So that one last research paper I mentioned? Yeah, still working on that.
Turns out it's the paper from hell.

Tonight is going to be a red-eye research paper fest - one. last. time.