Lead CNA and I are cleaning up a resident who has had, in her words, "a really bad emergency." (No kidding. *grabs clothespin for nose*)

Resident: So how are you dear?
Me (worried she may actually be coming down with something): Oh, I'm fine. More importantly, how are you feeling?
Resident: Shitty. *giggles*
Me: *if not for the state of hands & gloves, would facepalm*

On that note, off I go for more.

Two fandoms, two gutting character deaths. In one, I'm startlingly okay with following where canon has gone since (while still preferring to read & write fic that either ignores or fixes said character death). In the other, I have yet to see (and have no desire to see) either half of the final installment in movie form, lest said character death be made more real once seen on-screen, as if I don't believe I'd still be able to buy into or write fic in which said character death either never happened or is fixed. Have read and written more in fandom #2. Am currently reading and writing more in fandom #1. Oh, and I've had an additional two years to process the character death in fandom #2, in which I'd actually *like* to be writing more but have been struggling with for rather a while now.

WTF, brain?

In other news, due to a call-out, I came off orientation a day early. Managed okay, so far as I know (guess I'll find out what I missed, documentation-wise, on Monday, as I'm sure there was something). Am once again having moments of "WTF was I thinking with this whole nursing thing?" Hopefully they'll pass.

Finished Cryoburn the other night. Even knowing a particular character development was destined to be coming up, even seeing all the foreshadowing for exactly what it was, that was quite the gut-punch. No wonder I put off reading it. ( Cut for a spoiler that really isn't a spoiler, since Bujold had said all along that the next book would contain this particular element. )

Also, an epilogue composed of self-contained, exactly 100 word drabbles? With a definition for the unfamiliar of what a drabble is? Stroke of genius. Admittedly, if someone did that in fandom, as we're so accustomed to drabbles and drabble-series, it might not have gone over quite as well. But it was such a surprise and the format worked so well for what she was doing that I just loved it.

In other news, orientation at work proceeds apace. I definitely prefer working the floor to supervising, despite the fact I'm basically just pushing pills. I apparently have two more weeks of orientation scheduled, plus the iv certification class that hasn't been scheduled yet. But I'm definitely feeling more confident about it all.

The 3rd annual wintercompanion Summer/Holiday fest has started with a lovely bit of Jack/Nine hurt/comfort. I'm looking forward to seeing them all. Very cool approach they took with the prompts, too, using the "psychic password" format we encountered in "The Doctor's Wife" of a color, a number, an emotion, and an aroma. Very effective and evocative, and the prompts are open for people to write/draw/create other things throughout the month, which should lead to seeing some intriguing variety on how people run with them.

I think I'm about over my "What the hell was I thinking?" attack re: my femslash11 assignment and have moved into research mode, which is a very good thing.

And now, time to run around and do stuff to get ready for this weekend's Anadikia retreat. Coming up with appropriate offerings has been rather challenging. (I got it into my head that I needed special liquor offerings for each of the Temple patrons. Ginger liqueur for Zeus and Oracle of the Sun Shiraz for Apollon were easy enough to find. I'd wanted retsina for Pan, but nobody around here even knows what it is, much less carries it, including the place Tim found it a year or so ago. So I went with Bully Hill wine that has a goat for a logo. *facepalm*)

Have a great weekend all! Don't break the intarwebz while I'm gone!

For the first time in months, I managed to write 500 words a day for at least 5 days out of the week. That included finishing off the fic that got posted, making some headway on my wintercompanion fic, and entirely too much puttering around with TFTWSD.



Now if the thing that's actually got a due date looming would just show some sign of where the hell it's trying to go. :-D

Also, I made it through the "watch a gazillion videos" and "be shown a gazillion forms you will never remember" days of orientation and am on the floor tomorrow shadowing. Meep!

I've just been offered a job at a nursing home! After sending Idon'tevenwanttoknowhowmany resumes into apparent black holes and having exactly one truly tortuous and disastrous interview, one of my classmates suggested I check out the facility she'd recently been hired at, as she knew they were looking for a second-shift RN, and that's my preferred shift.

So, not expecting much, I sent off a resume and cover letter. They called the next morning, like before I'd have expected it to even reach them. Two days later, tour and interview. Two business days later, offer.

Everything just really clicked, and I'm Over. The. Moon!

It's a bit of a drive, but under an hour, so hardly the longest commute I've ever had. (That was high school. Two hours each way. Can we guess when all my homework got done? LOL)

Have written up my resignation letters. Feels a bit scary to be leaving one job I've been at for ten years and another I've been at for four and a half, but this was, after all, The Plan.

Working a single full-time job instead of cobbling together part-time stuff, what a concept. Though I'll still have my Reiki practice, and may stay on as a per diem for the mental health job, if for no other reason than I think I'll know what to do with every other weekend off.

Meep!

Still no nursing job. The class behind us was apparently advised not to bother looking for jobs and just to apply for transition-to-BSN programs. One of my classmates looks like she's going to be working in NC, and she was the most aggressive person I've spoken to yet in terms of applying for absolutely every possible position in-state. I'm holding out a slim hope for one of the organizations that's slated to come to the Career Expo this week. I already work for an agency that's under the same state mental health division and have done for almost 10 years now, so maybe that will count for something.

Meanwhile, my car STB. Head gasket. I'm not plunking another grand into it. Going to look at a used vehicle in a little bit. If it can buy me a year or two and hold some trade-in value, it'll be worth it. Mine needs more work than just the gasket, some of it computerized, otherwise fixing it might be the better deal.

In rather better news, it looks like I'm going to make it to Aeternitas for at least some of the Friday programming. Definitely should be there in time for the readings in the evening. (Well, assuming I have a vehicle. I'd better have a &*^%ing vehicle by then.)

In theater, hell week is (iirc) the week before a performance opens, spent chasing down every last thing that's trying to go wrong and fix it before opening night. So, yeah, with pinning on Friday, it's a bit like that. (Personal drama: dress I ordered didn't fit and clearly would look like crap even if it did. Found an outfit yesterday that I'm less than thrilled with but will have to do.)

In college, hell week is either finals week or the "reading week" some places schedule between classes and finals, which tends to become crammed with every study group and prep workshop ever perceived. Given that we took practice NCLEX exams yesterday and now have four 8-hour days of review ahead of us, it's a bit like that too.

Good news: apparently, if that practice NCLEX had been real, I'd have passed.

Bad news: I got 100% of the pediatric questions and 75% of the OB questions wrong. And I recognized less than half the drugs that came up (seriously, where did they come up with those???), though I weaseled my way around some of the questions just from the wording. All of which is apparently typical but still annoying.

Other good news: Niece's baptism Sunday was lovely ... once we found a priest. Seems there was a major SNAFU about the time of the service. I'm admittedly rusty on scripture these days, but when Jesus said that thing about the left hand not knowing what the right was doing, I'm pretty sure He didn't mean the admin versus the priests. For all that my mother drives me insane and we have reams of Issues, I do admire her pluck. How many other 70+ year-old women, upon discovering that their granddaughter's baptism may not happen due to bureaucratic idiocy, whip out a cell phone and call the archdiocese to demand a replacement be sent out? (How many have the archdiocese on speed dial, first off?) This was not how the replacement priest was found, but I still admire her for doing it.

There is also mega fannish squeefulness, some of which I can eventually talk about but not yet, some of which I just kind of can't at all without forever linking this handle with my full legal name. I'm bummed about that part, but not enough to take the shine off the squeeage.

Working on hospital residency app #3, which was late before I started due to confusing and conflicting application info. (If they don't hire me for this, I'm tempted to suggest they hire me to edit their website so that it doesn't provide date ranges for things to happen that would require a TARDIS, a Vortex Manipulator, or a Time Turner to actually make sense.) Keeping an eye on local hospitals that don't have new grad residency programs too, but nothing really there yet. (I actually wouldn't mind being in a float pool, but I'd like a residency type orientation first, with at least a couple of weeks on each unit prior to being turned loose to float, not just a few days on each that add up to a few weeks total. That just seems like a recipe for disaster.)

All of which is to say I'm sorry I've fallen behind (again) on drabbling and commenting and such, but I hope to catch up a bit once this week is done. Hugs to those that want 'em!

So, I've been on the road a lot lately with little time for my preferred method of studying, which mostly involves taking practice tests and then looking up whatever I get wrong, with a large dash of flash cards and study sheets. I always record lectures, but I mostly just scan through to things I've missed in my notes or need to clarify. With all this drive time, I actually re-listened to all the lectures for this last exam, figuring that was better than nothing.

Better than nothing. Hah!

Dude, either they just decided to go reaaaaaaallly easy on us, or I should totally have been doing this all along. Clearly, I'm going to spend from now until the final re-listening to the entire freaking semester, because I haven't seen a grade like this since 1st semester. *boggles*

Hoo, boy, have I got a lot of catching up to do! So, things that I'm grateful for, more or less associated with days on which I was particularly grateful for them.

Sun 8/15 - A Sunday with no commitments whatsoever to actually relax.
Mon 8/16 - A friend got good news on her husband's health status, which may not yet be great but is improving.
Tue 8/17 - Last visit with the in-laws of the summer. Sort of a mixed grat, but mainly that it went all right despite a near-fiasco assembling MiL's new flat-screen tv. And then disassembling it and packing it back up to be returned. After losing screws inside the tv set itself. It's actually very funny in retrospect.
Wed 8/18 - For being able to make lemonade out of lemons and spend a day at Kripalu doing yoga and workshops and hanging out with ubiquirk, whose other vacation plans had fallen through.
Thu 8/19 - Patsfan's birthday. Ummm. That we got to have a little time together despite work.
Fri 8/20 - Discovered flu shots available already! Got one before school could start nagging about it! (Later learned they've decided not to make it a requirement unless our specific assigned hospitals require it after all, but I was still very psyched Walgreens was offering them already. Regardless, it's done, and with the way the asthma has been, I should probably be getting it, required or not.)
Sat 8/21 - For the opportunity to spend a day with my new niece. I'd been feeling oddly disconnected, having only seen her at the hospital and then one other brief visit. So having a day of babysitting was actually very nice.
Sun 8/22 - That despite the rain, RI Pagan Pride Day went off well. (Note to self: next time, remember your audience when referring to Pagan Pride Day as PPD. Fellow nursing students are likely to misinterpret. *g*) Also, that people were so receptive to the Hellenic Temple of Apollon, Zeus, and Pan ritual. Usually, PPD closing rituals are a bit more open/generic. But folks were very receptive, whether they participated or observed. Also grateful to Tim for opening up the last round of libations to other Gods. Obviously, I included Kwan Yin. Another Temple member later said he'd bet someone I'd do that. My response? "Seriously, what idiot took that bet? That was a gimme!"
Mon 8/23 - I think I spent most of the day in bed recovering from the weekend. I think I've already been grateful for having a day to do that earlier this month, so I need to come up with something else. Unfortunately, as that is probably all I did, I'm not sure what else there is!
Tue 8/24 - New student orientation went well. Other GSA members showed this time as well, so we got to hang out a bit. Got quite a few people interested in joining too.
Wed 8/25 - Local library has wifi, making it a safe place to escape to whilst the landlord cut a hole in our bedroom wall. (Originally tried staying home, just at the other end of the apartment. Lungs decided that wasn't good enough.)
Thu 8/26 - Kind of covered by drive-by post: 1st day back was survived.
Fri 8/27 - Personality Disorder Role-Play Theater! No, seriously, that was the absolute best part of the whole day. The prof who designed this should do more stuff like this instead of reading her PowerPoints to us. Interactivity=much better learning experience. I got to be Adam Avoidant, which probably came off more like Social Anxiety Disorder than Avoidant Personality Disorder, but seemed to more or less work anyway.
Sat 8/28 - Angel Food Ministries. So far, I'm very pleased with the program and the site. This month, I had enough leftover frozen meats that I just got the fruit & veggie box, and it all looked good when I unpacked it. We'll see whether that continues once we get into fall and winter and things are out of season, but for now, it's working out really well.
Sun 8/29 - I'm grateful that my other niece (on Patsfan's side) is progressing well enough in her pregnancy that her shower today is still on. There have been concerns about placenta previa and possible pre-eclampsia, so this is definitely a non-trivial thing. Just about a month to go. Looking forward to meeting my third great-niece. (Well, second great-niece. Other is a great-nephew. Again, where is the gender-neutral collective for this relationship? Grrr.)

Will resume trying to read flist after I finally get to see the second part of EoT, because even half the spoiler cuts in various comms are using spoilery text. Meanwhile, memery.

( How I fared with 2009's goals and what I'm setting for 2010. )
( The past decade in review. )
Okay, that's just about enough navel gazing. Happy new year, all!