Before we move on to 2016...

Just as I did last year, I'm stealing this idea from Joanna.  This is a set of questions that sum up the last year.  While I've intended to make this post for several months, I have specifically not re-read the questions so that I can answer them with a fresh mind this year.

2015 was strange only because everything in it felt ‘normal’.   There many highs and not many lows.  I traveled, I helped my family, I changed jobs, I grew in my job… but none of that had the newness that 2013 and 2014 did.  This year was just normal.  If this is my new normal and I can hold this type of good times close, I can live out the next 20 years or so a happy man.  And after 30+ years of NOT being a happy man, I think it’s a prize well earned. 

I even got the surprise of having Caitlyn come back into my life.  She’s completely re-arranged my free time, but it’s good free time with her so I won’t complain. 

Taveling wise, I took a cold blistery trip to Chicago, drove down to Dallas once and flew down for a second trip.  I had meant to fly out to San Francisco and had intended on another Chicago trip but those are things I can still plan on for 2016. 

I’ve made plenty of big and small purchases.  I can’t really talk about spending money without mentioning the new Ride.  Ginger.   I adore having a big sedan that gets 40+ mpg.   But what really struck me this year is how making purchases has changed.  I still research things, but the time scale has shifted.  I used to research things because I only had one shot to get it right.  If I messed up and spent a couple hundred bucks on a bad thing, it wasn’t something that I could correct.  Now I do the research because I honestly enjoy learning about things and making the right choise…. But if I make the wrong one it’s no big deal.  I can always correct it later.  For instance, my most recent ‘thing’ has been a media streaming box.   Specifically a Roku 3.  I wanted to not only watch Netflix which my bluray player let me do, but wanted to add Hulu, Amazon Video, and other streaming services.  I wanted to do them quickly which the bluray was just horrible at.  At less than $200 for every option, I could afford to ‘try’ one, but I still did my due dilligance to figure out all the differences, all the benefits and all the detriments or each option.  I compared Apple TV, Android TV (the nVidia Shield and Google Nexus Player), the Amazon Fire, and the Roku 3 and 4.  It took me about a day of on and off again research, but I made the right choice… the Roku 3 is everything I could have hoped for!

Changes Come, Changes Go

I still don't know what I was waiting for

And my time was running wild

A million dead-end streets

And every time I thought I'd got it made

It seemed the taste was not so sweet

So I turned myself to face me

But I've never caught a glimpse

Of how the others must see the faker

I'm much too fast to take that test

-Changes by David Bowie

I don't think I've gone this long without a post here.  Ever.  But two big things have changed.  First, I started my new job in early November.  Second... Caitlyn's back. I'm going to take the job first as that's more of the reason I haven't posted here, although Caitlyn has her fingers in that pie too. 

So I've said a lot about this 'new' job here.  I've only been going after it for about a year now.  Almost everything I've said turned out to be true.  It's working only one out of five or six weekends.  It's Monday through Friday.  It's 10:30 AM to 7:00 PM.  It's at the intake center for the MDOC.  The commute is a little under 15 minutes.  It's a total of 13 miles both ways.... 6.2 miles there, 6.5 miles back.  There are a lot of personnel there including four other RNs on my shift.  There is no med room work (NONE!!!).

When is it time?

So a couple weeks ago when I went out to my car after work, I got a text from Mom.  It was more or less this:

"No dinner tonight.  I feel down the stairs into the driveway"

Umm... what?

Knowing mom, I assumed she was minimizing her accident on purpose.  Which to me means she's right on the border for needing medical attention but hasn't gone out to get any.  She sent that message long after my brother got out of work, so I know he's at least seen her.  So I don't focus on the message and head home.

Not surprisingly she is hurt.  Bruises on both legs, both hips, both arms, both shoulders, and on her head, just above her eyebrow.  She has bandages on two different areas of her right lower leg, and she just looks tuckered out.

After quizing her for a bit, here's what I understand to have happened;  The fed-ex guy left a package on our front door.  Our front door is rarely used for an actual entrance or exit as it has a pre-formed set of concrete steps that don't quite rise up enough.  With the door sill, there's quite a first drop down to the steps.  Mom didn't want to walk to the back of the house, outside to the front door and get the package that way.  Instead she opens the front door, takes the bit step down while holding the door jam for stability and reaches down to the next step for the package.  From her angle, she can reach the package but it's too heavy for her to lift with one hand.  So instead of walking fully outside and down the steps to get the package, she lets go of the door jam, grabs the package with both of her hands and tosses it behind her and into the house.

Got the Job

Since the title let the cat out of the bag, lemme start off by saying that searching for an image about a new job kind of sucks.  It either involves people shaking hands, or signs or post it notes.

And then I come across this bear card.  It made me giggle.  It still makes me giggle.  That's why it's there!

So.  Yes, I finally got the transfer.  A quick recap, I heard about this job at the intake center in September of last year.  I hemmed.  I hawed.  I thought long and hard about it, but I decided to try and get it.  Unfortunately that though processes took to long and the door closed before I could toss my resume in.  Of course it also closed just after I told my supervisor that I was looking at a different job!

I told my supervisor, after finding out that I wouldn't be getting the job, that I would happily stay where I was... until that job came open again.  That job eventually opened back up in May of this year.  This time I got my name onto the transfer list soon enough and was even invited in for a tour.  If I was interested in the job before, the tour completely sold me on the idea.  The job would be primarily as an intake nurse.  It would be 10:30 am - 7:00 pm (as opposed to my current 1:30 pm - 10:00 pm), the clinic closes at the end of the shift and all urgent calls are sent elsewhere during the last hour (meaning no unexpected hour long overtime stints to take care of a fake heart attack), I'd share the shift with like 5 other RNs, it's Monday through Friday and only every 5th weekend, and never work in the med room again.  Yeah... I fell in love.

Late Summer Musak

Well I've finally got enough songs that it's worth putting them up here again.  Beyond one great song, I'm not sure any of these are real winners.  One is just damned funny in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with the song itself, one is another postmodern take on a good song, one is a bad cover, and two are blasts from the past that should have been on my playlist years ago.

I think one reason I haven't got as much 'winning' new music lately is that they've really come down hard on us at work.  Technically nothing has changed, they've just started to enforce a rule that has always been in effect.

Here's the laydown.  The software we use to document on our patients is huge.  I mean that in just about every way imaginable.  I'm pretty good at it, but I still think I only know about 50% of it's capabilities.  Some of it's capabilities are beyond me as they are intended for medical providers.  Doctors, Physician's Assistants, Nurse Practitioners.  But I'll still occasionally find something new (to me) that seems like an obvious improvement.

Anywho, the software is also ran completely over the network.  Sure, there is a large local file that runs, but all of it's data comes from a server farm.  And when I say 'all' of it's data, I mean all the data from the entire department of corrections.  All of the patients past and present.  All of the facilities.  All of the LPNs, RNs, RDs, Pharm Techs, NPs, PAs, and Doctors.  Naturally with that much data moving in and out, it's incredibly temperamental of network availability.  Unfortunately this makes the network a key area for the 'techs' to point at whenever we complain that it's slow.

Playing with fire at work, home, and DX

I don't like to play with fire.  At least not  in reality.  A lot of that has to do with the fact that I don't like to be outside, and it's rare to play with fire inside... but I have a healthy respect for flames.

In the figurative though... oh yes I play with fire often.  These past few weeks I've done that in several ways.  At work I butted heads with custody officers and I'm still looking for that elusive transfer.  At home... well yeah I was frighteningly playing with real fire there.

And lastly, I'm jumping from the frying pan of capping into the fire of roleplaying at DX again.

So yeah... fire is the theme for today's post.  First, let me update you on the 'Last Call' situation.  It seems that my email lit a fire under the HUM and she took it to the Captain with a purpose.  Not only was it made clear that no officer would order any nurse to perform some medical or nursing task, it was also made clear that the entire idea of "Last Call" is on it's way out.  At least in it's current form.

Unfortunately shit rolls down hill, and this particular pile of shit ended up on a sergeant that I bear no ill will towards.  For the purposes of this post let's call him sergeant H.  Sergeant H wants to transfer out of our facility.  He came here a couple years ago to serve under our deputy warden and that warden has since moved on to his own facility.  BUT since he recieved his promotion to sergeant at our facility the current warden won't let him transfer for another couple years saying he owes us that much time for the promotion.   I can kind of understand the warden's though process, but it's still a dick move to make.

Days

So life trudges on.  I'd love to tell you all that I've been so busy and been having a great time, but honestly the past two and a half weeks have just been... blah.  Not good.  Not bad.  Just blah.

I had a migrane outbreak.  One Wednesday while at work I had a pretty bad headache.  When I got into work I took some acetaminophen and ibuprofen but the headache didn't even budge.  I took my normal lunch and when I got back to the prison I took some more acetaminophen and ibuprofen.  And added an Imitrex.  Imitrex was prescribed to me last December for the migranes but I've only had cause to try one once since then.  And just like that time it didn't do anything other than upset my stomach.  So I called my supervisor, told her that I couldn't continue to work, and went home.

I then called in the next day as the headache hadn't lessened in the least.  The next day, Friday, I went into work but still had a bad headache.  Thankfully it was my weekend off, and I felt it melt away sometime Sunday afternoon.  If you're counting that's a headache spreading out over five days.  Ouch.  And it's had an echo of sorts... every day or so it tries to come back.  I've beaten it away by avoiding loud sounds (driving with the radio quiet sucks!), and a lot of acetaminophen and ibuprofen.  They've helped mange it, but it feels like before I started taking the propranolol.  When I see the Doc in October I'll ask  him about another step... maybe we can up the propranolol.

"Is he your partner?"

So that I can write my thoughts out faster, lemme set some things out here first.  I don't look at or see 'Gay' as an offensive word.  The thinking voice in my head almost always uses the term 'Gay' when it's forming thoughts about homosexual men.  When I speak or write, I often will change that internal 'gay' to homosexual.  But that's my internal censor especially when talking to people who have anti-homosexual feelings.   I guess I want it to sound both more intellectual and at the same time want to remove the idea of a derogatory term from their vocabulary.

But I don't think of it as derogatory.

OK. With that out of the way let's get into this.  I've often had the feeling that some if not many people assume I'm gay.  This goes back to the 90s while I was in college and afterward while working in Chicago.  I don't know where that thought came from.  Maybe it was my own internal struggle.  I was reading a lot of transgendered stories, and had fantasies of being turned into a woman.  I had and have spent a lot of time imagining what it would be like to give a blow job.

I'd often take a step back and look at my life and see... gayness.  I would wear more flamboyant clothes.  I was working on a career as a photographer.  I didn't follow sports closely.  I wasn't dating.  I was living with a guy.  Does any of this mean gay?  No.  Gay has a very strict definition; being sexually attracted to a person of the same gender.

Musak for July

I've complained before about music discovery.  Sometimes the best music just falls into my lap.  I hear it on the radio (internet) at work.  I hear it on a TV show or in a movie.  I hear it on a game video or someone posts it in a forum I frequent.

Well this month has been a bad one for that free discovery.  It might be the TV, or more specifically the lack of TV.  I watch John Oliver's Last Week Tonight on HBO, but that's about it.  The rest of my TV time is currently spent re-watching The West Wing on Netflix.  I'm sure once the fall season starts back up and I start watching Fear The Walking Dead (just a couple weeks for that!), The Walking Dead, Person of Interest, and a few others, I'll get back into some good discovery.  But for now, it's just a wasteland of pop and songs that I already have/like.

Even iTunes has started to let me down.  The first few years I was using iTunes I could rely on them to get me some good music.  I just had to look at their 'recent' music, or better yet their recommendations specifically for me.  Eventually the 'recent' just turned into more and more major label stuff (i.e. pop), and the recommendations broke down.  They recommend songs that I already have (that I didn't purchase from them), or they are so close to what I already have that I've already heard it, considered it, and decided not to add it to my collection.

That's about the time I started looking at their 'top songs' lists.  I couldn't use the main one as they more or less listed the bilboard top ten lists (more pop). So I would hit up the genre specific lists... but even those are getting screwed over.  When I go over to the classical top ten it's all the 'pop' classical.  Five guys on a piano, or whatever was last played on America's Got Talent.  The Alternative list varies so much as the Alternative genre is, by definition, simply 'not mainstream'.  So sometimes it's pop (ick) and sometimes it's rock.  Occasionally an artist will break in with an alternative take on bluegrass or country, but that's rare.  The Rock stuff.... well damn it Journey is still on the list.  JOURNEY!

Bastards.

A new computer for Mom

Windows 10 is out now.  I really hate how companies play the expectation game.  Since around April, when Microsoft announced that Windows 10 would be a free upgrade to every current Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 user, I've been excited about it.

I haven't been excited because there was something wrong with Windows 8... I just wanted something 'new' to play with.  Taking out the Start screen and changing it back to the Start menu isn't a big deal to me.  I actually liked the Start screen and I had become accustomed to it.

I guess as a 'design' minded guy, having the entire screen dedicated to lining up the programs I use appeals to me.  But I know that most people hated it.  I couldn't care less about adding Cortona as the only microphone I have attached to my computer is the one on my headset.  And I'm not going to put on and take off a headset just to ask my computer a question.  And oddly enough, I didn't even need a clean install.  I normally have to install the OS cleanly every 18 months or so and I've been working off the same install for over two years now.

Well... now that I think about it, I DID build a new computer last year... so yeah, I guess this install is only 9 months or so old.  Anywho... I didn't HAVE To have Windows 10.  But I wanted it.  And Microsoft knew it.  And Microsoft played with my expectations.  They said they would have it out in Summer.  YAY!  That means I can get it in June right?  No... when they announced the date they said it would be July.  When they put a specific date on it, they said July 29th.  And when July 29th came around... they said it would be installing in waves.  That I would probably get it before September.

Grr.