So what's five months between friends?

So yeah... sorry.

I know, more or less, what happens when I stop feeling like Caitlyn and lose interest in making caps and playing at D+X.  But I'm not sure why I lost interest in posting here.  I mean since I made this into 'Calvins Musings' and started posting more personal things, this has more or less become my journal.  My diary.  I don't post daily as that just wouldn't make sense.  I'm not one of those people that post a photo of every meal to instagram or post everything funny I see to facebook.

But I DO get something out of putting up ideas here and working through them.  Even if I'm just working through whether to buy an iPad, or getting excited about another trip.

Anywho... I don't know why I stopped having interest in posting here.  It's not as though nothing happened, and it's not as though I haven't struggled to get my thoughts together on certain subjects.  So I'm not exactly going to go through everything that's happened to me in the five months since I posted.  But I will catch up on some things that were in motion and mention a few things that have come up since.  If I want to go into any real detail about things (I might with the whole car thing), I'll make another post later for that.

Fuji X-T10

So most of my current co-workers know that I was a photographer in my life before nursing.

I guess it's not surprising that they don't find it amusing or strange that I came from a photography background as most of them came from another background.  Many nurses choose it as a second career.  In fact the rarer find is a nurse who graduated from high school, got their nursing degree, and continues to work as a nurse.  I have to pause and wonder if that's a comment on the career of nursing or a comment on how our system of careers work in theses United States.  Hmm.... possibly another blog post later.

Anywho.

Like most groups of people there are various levels of photography experience within my coworkers.  Most of them say they take photographs too... on their camera phones.  I always fight the urge to puke when I hear that.  One nurse tried to defend their statement because they use an iPhone.  I suppressed the urge to slap that Apple arrogance (iArrogant?) off their smug face.  Three of them actually have real photography equipment, and one has a rally nice set of Canon camera's and lenses.

I've thankfully gone through most of the standard questions and answers about my photo career:

Take my mind and take my pain

I visited the doctor last week.  The shortest version of this post is this:

I'm healing

Obviously that doesn't cover everything, so let me dig a little deeper.  This started with my 6 month lab work.  My main focus was on my diabetes.  My A1C last time was 6.7.   My goal is to get that as low as possible, but that isn't a bad number.  If it goes much higher, I'd have to add a different medication... and adding medication is the road to adding insulin.

NO NO NO

Thankfully my A1C was at 6.8.  That's a good number and according to the doc, one worth holding pat on.  There were two alarming numbers in my lab work though.  My cholesterol and my microalbumin. I'm sure I don't have to go into what cholesterol is, but let me say that it's broken up into four numbers.  Total Choletserol, Triglycerides, LDL, and HDL.  You want Total Cholesterol, Triglycerides, and LDL to be as low as possible while you want your HDL to be high.  Now I've been taking fish oil capsules twice a day for about a year now as that raises HDL, but it doesn't do a damned thing for the other three numbers.  My last lab results showed that I was 'borderline high' on all of three bad numbers while my HDL was in the 'good' range.

It's really (not) good to see you once again

I'm feeling depressed.  I'm feeling depression.  And for the first time in a long time I'm feeling suicidal.

If I were at work and someone told me they were feeling how I currently feel, I would put them into protective custody and refer them to mental health.  I would do almost everything in my power to stop them from acting on their feelings.

There's several things to consider about a person's suicide intentions.  The first is suicidal thoughts.  A person imagining a better existence after they die (heaven, hell, purgatory, nothingness... an end to their pain).  A person picturing their death, but not in a participatory way.  Next there is suicidal ideation.   Think of suicidal ideation as the beginning of making a plan.  It's not imagining the result, but the method of suicide.  Hanging?  Gunshot to the head?  Jumping off of a high ledge/roof?  Pills?  The penultimate step is a plan.  It's knowing how one would kill themselves and moving on to the peripheral acts... giving away their things, saying goodbyes, writing letters.

I'd say I'm somewhere between ideation and plan.    I know I'm there because I've been feeling more and more 'down' over the past few weeks.  This morning I went though the suicide prevention screening I'd give a new patient.  I don't have a specific reason to kill myself, but many people who commit or attempt suicide don't have a specific reason.  I have attempted it in the past.  I have a method in mind.  I've begun formulating letters and figuring out to whom I'd write those letters.  I even have most of the plan in mind.

My thoughts on the candidates

Fair warning... this is political.

Before I give my thoughts on the current group of presidential candidates running, lemme give a 'broad strokes' summary of my political stance.

I am not a Democrat.  I am not a Republican.  I don't particularly like either political party and believe that both are far to big and unwieldy to ever really bring me into their fold.  I most often vote Democrat because more often than not they are on the liberal side of any social issue and that's where I tend to sit.

I'm pro-choice.  I believe that allowing gay marriage is a step forward to our country.  I believe we spend way to much on our military and not nearly enough on our people.  I think education should be a priority and that the people deserve protection from businesses and not the other way around.  I believe that there are many other views than mine and that 'my' views will never be our country's views.  That the best I can hope for in government is a lean toward what I want and like and good compromises be made so that neither 'side' goes away empty handed or angry.  Going backwards in presidential elections I have voted for:

You Dirty Rotten Bastards!

So I edited my last post on February 25th to mention another useless (but completely AWESOME!) toy I bought.  Unlike the other items I bought this one was predicated on me getting a big surprise influx of cash.

To recap that situation really quick, part of working at this particular correctional facility is the 'retention bonus'.  I get $5000 every year just for working there.  I didn't know about this bonus when I was trying to get the job but I was incredibly happy reading about it in the Union contract.

I should add... reading a labor contract negotiated between the State and the UAW is NOT as clear as anybody would like it.  The part of the contract that spelled out the retention bonus also covered the possible use of a recruitment bonus... so the language was QUITE unclear.  A whole lot of 'If this particular nitpicky criteria is met in this time frame at this particular location while a cat crosses the road in this other area THEN this thing will happen'.  So even when I got the job, even when my supervisor told me that yes in fact there was a retention bonus, even when my co-workers said that I would qualify as I had two years as a state employee and worked there.... even THEN I held my breath.  I figured once the state actually gave me the check (well... deposited it into my account.  I mean who actually picks up a paycheck now-a-days!?), I would believe it.  If they didn't pay me the bonus... well that's the breaks and I would most certainly qualify for it next year.

Useless Wastes of Money

So I have purchased several new toys.  To be honest, these are all complete wastes of money and I'm not here standing up tall and saying that I'm spent my money wisely or purchased something that will make my life better.

Nope.  I just wasted some money, far too much money on one, on things that make me smile.

On each item I justified it to myself just before purchase and it seamed reasonable at the time.  In retrospect I wasn't so much getting reasons to buy them, I was pushing down my financial responsible side that was saying loud and clear "YOU DO NOT NEED THIS".

I think that part of me, the financial responsible side of me, is weak.  It had far to much help in the past.  In the past it was hardly ever a decision to make.  I simply didn't have the money to make purchases like this.  Sure, I wanted the techy toys since I got my Voltron action-figure/toy when I was a little boy, but I also recognized that they were wastes of money.  I guess it's kind of like wearing a cast.  Your broken body part can't support itself, so the cast does that job.  Once the cast is removed your body part is used to NOT supporting itself and needs work so that it can do it's job again.

In that way, my cast was removed when I got this job and I skipped going to physical therapy.

So my purchases were, in order of purchase, a Roku 3, a Kindle Voyage, and a Microsoft Surface Pro 4.  The Roku 3 is a video streaming device that connects to the television.  Think Netflix.  The Kindle Voyage is the Cadillac of ebook readers from Amazon.  The Surface Pro 4 is a tablet/laptop.

Autumnal Musak

I'd love to say that since the last time I posted about my music I've gathered up an amazing collection of songs that will blow your heart away.

I mean... it's been since October 8th!  Surely in 102 days I can come up with something grand, or spectacular or wonderful!  Right?

Umm...  no.  Unfortunatly including the three songs that I just now purchased, I have only accumulated 10 new songs.  And one of those is a Christmas song.

It's just been a dry few months for me and music.  I thought starting the new job in November would be a boon to my music collection.  A whole new crew of co-workers to bounce music ideas off of, several radio stations including a 'Classic' rock station that also plays new rock music.

But I swear, I think I ended up in some kind of music purgatory at work.  The first problem is that a majority (maybe 60%?) of the nurses there prefer to have NO music playing at all.  NONE!  Many of those nurses are at least on the early shift, so by 3pm they're all but cleared out.  But the nurses that remain for the rest of my shift?  There's the nurse that prefers christian music.  I have no problem with Christianity, but just as I don't look to the Vatican to make a good dramatic movie, I don't look to the Christian media companies to put out good music.  Even if I could get past the singular nature of the music subjects (there's the one about praising God, and then the one about how we're all horrible people until we take God into our hearts... that's it.  Variations on those two subjects.)  their music tends to focus on hearing the message.  Meaning that it's clearly spoken lyrics with some sort of musical accompanyment.  It's not about good music, it's about spreading a message.  I'm sure I said this before, but I look at the singer as merely one piece of the music and it shouldn't be the sole focal point.

Time - Over and Annual

So the new job has a couple new wrinkles when compared to my old job.  These are neither good nor bad in and of themselves... they just, Are.  The first is overtime.  I'm going to go ahead and include Holiday Pay in this category.  To put it bluntly, there is none.  At the old job there was a few ways to get overtime and almost every single pay period included at least SOME overtime.  I could have had a busy day and not finished my documentation until 10 minutes after my scheduled end time.  That's 10 minutes of overtime that was perfectly acceptable according to the supervisors.  Even on a slow day there could be an urgent or emergent case that comes up just a few minutes before the end of shift.  In general we wouldn't hand that off to the next nurse up, so we would stay and finish it up.  If that means staying an hour after shift, then that means an hours worth of overtime.

Then of course there is the 'nightmare' scenario.  Being mandated.  I was mandated a total of three times in my two years as a state employee.  Twice it was to stay over night, while one time I had to come in early.  Neither of those are any fun at all and I didn't appreciate the overtime for it... but the overtime pay WAS impressive in hindsight.  Eight hours at 1.5x pay.

Then there's Holiday Pay.  The way this works is that there are 13 paid holidays in the year.  Each paid holiday is 8 hours of pay.  If you are working the holiday (or more specifically, not taking any time off during that pay period) that 8 hours of pay is immediately overtime.  Basically that's 12 hours of free pay.  And those holidays are bunched up at the end of the year.  Thanksgiving and the day after Thanksgiving are both paid holidays.  Christmas Eve and Christmas are both paid holidays.  New Year's Eve and New Year's Day are both paid Holidays.

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!