Work is going well

At work I'm trying to juggle a whole lot of expectations.  Getting used to working steadily, getting up to speed on being an RN, earning the respect of my co-workers... all of these are important to me and all of them have different ways to be demonstrated.

I complained pretty vocally (at least here) that I was being 'punished' by being put into the med room several days in a row, but I have to now admit that the repeated experience is paying dividends.  I'm now comfortable walking in the med room, organizing my day's work and passing out meds to over 500 inmates all while holding true to the way I learned to pass out medication safely and legally.

And what does doing that earn me?  Well of course it earns me repeated exposure to it.  Not everyone is good at doing this and I've shown that I can do it better than most.  It also gets me added responsibilities... I get some RN tasks early in the day and then finish up my day in the med room.  Keeping my complaints to myself and just getting the job done well has earned me the respect of the LPNs that do this job day in and day out.  In fact when they have an issue with something going on in the med room, they now come to me.  I'm certainly not their first stop for help, but the fact that they see me as a resource in a job that they do daily is quite an honor.

What is Love?

After writing "Looking Forward", I got to thinking about finding that one true Love... or at least love in any flavor that I could find palatable.  And you know, I haven't had the best luck on that side of my life.  It rally got me thinking about what my past can tell me, what my present can give me and what my future will hold in this regard.

And so far I'm not finding anything good.  So I figured I'd write out my thoughts here and see if I can find some inspiration.

My idea of love may well be too old fashioned to ever really be possible.  This day and age includes things that I would never consider... Hooking Up, Divorce, Second (third? fourth?) Marriages, Step Children, Baby's Mommas and Baby's Daddys.  To me these are all things that happen when someone wasn't looking for love.  I like sex as much as the next guy, but I've always believed that the physical act of sex is a mere shadow of itself when it's not accompanied by love.

Early on in life I figured out that I wanted love.  Not a girlfriend.  Not a fuck buddy.  Not a gal on my arm.  Love.  I wanted that person that I could argue with and not get angry at.  I wanted someone whose happiness was more important than my own joy.  Whose happiness would bring me joy.  I wanted someone who I could share a romantic evening with and still be just as happy to read quietly next to each other.

Budgeting, State Job, Lita and Guns.

I don't have a specific thing I'd like to talk about... more just some random thoughts that are going through my head that I want to write down.

First thought is money and budgeting.  I have this nice little spreadsheet that I made up years ago.  It's more than likely an over-complicated way to do a simple thing... keep track of money coming in and going out while helping me plan for the near future.  The top lists what I expect to make each week.  It's done weekly as I currently get paid weekly.  If and when I get hired in by the state (more on that later) I will re-work the spreadsheet to be bi-weekly.  Anywho, the top cell is what i expect to make that week.  Under that is space for the actual pay when it comes in.  For the most part these numbers are the same, but occasionally when I take a day off, as I did last week because of a stomach flu, or work an extra 15 minutes, they are different.  There is a space for extra income, but that rarely gets used now.

Under that is a section for my bills.  I currently have spaces for rent (it's not rent... more of a payback to mom from all the money I siphoned off of her), Fiona (car loan), Cell Phone, Credit Card, Storage (I rent a storage area for all my crap), Student loan (I just made my VERY first student loan payment... EVER!), cigarettes, cartomizors (the nicotine containing parts for my eCigs), and Gasoline.

Did I just buy a song from Hanah Montana?

Oh dear lord.  I have a song from Miley Cyrus on my computer.  And not only did I put it on my computer... I bought it.

As I talked a bit back in my "I Love Music" post, I like all kinds of music.  But in general I don't like music because it's popular... which means I don't like much top 40s pop.  So the last thing I ever thought I would be listening to over and over again is a song by Miley Cyrus.

Well... not exactly by Miley.  Let's be clear, she didn't write this song... at least not alone.  The song was written collectively by  Mike L. Williams II, Pierre Ramon Slaughter, Timothy Thomas and Theron Thomas (known collectively as Rock City), Cyrus, Douglas Davis and Ricky Walters.  But it WAS written FOR Miley.  The song is titled "We Can't Stop" and the lyrics are about a house party and include such deep lines as:

"It's our party we can do what we want (no drama)

It's our party we can say what we want (Mike will made)

It's our party we can love who we want"

and

"To my home girls here with the big butt

Shaking it like we at a strip club

Remember only God can judge ya"

There are things, and there are Things

I finally got to play a video game the other week.   Playing video games used to take up a lot of my time.  I couldn't afford many games so whenever I bought one I played through it with a vigor normally saved for life saving measures.  I'd don my headset so that I could fully immerse myself into whatever virtual world would consume me and try to block out the real world.

One of the problems though was that my headset was pretty old and frankly pretty bad.  It was a very 'tacticool' headset from Logitech with a 'letherette' band that surrounded my ears and went around the back of my head.   But at it's core it wasn't anything more than the standard circular ear pieces that sat over your ears.

As such it didn't do much to block out the sounds of the real world.  Oh it looked cool, and if I'm honest it wasn't bad when I got it.  Gaming headsets hadn't really come into their own yet and it had the two features I wanted at the time... an attached microphone and a volume control dial.

Well after years of use and abuse, it finally gave up any semblance of being a useful attachment to my computer.  The left speaker had an incredibly annoying crackling noise in it.  The 'letherette' ear coverings had a crack in it which made it almost painful to wear for more than a few minutes.  The volume dial got so dirty and corroded that it was a major undertaking to change.  The volume slider was difficult to move and if it was in anything bu the perfect position it would eliminate the sound in one or even both speakers.  It seems that the only position it really wanted to be in was at full blast volume... which made the crackling left speaker horrible.

New Music and a bit more

So my new schedule allows me to check out some television that I've missed out on for a long while... Late Night.

I used to watch a lot of Late Night television.  Conan, Craig Ferguson, Jimmy Kimmel... I watched them all flipping between the best bits and guest interviews.  One thing I've really missed though is the musical guests.  I've found quite a bit of music from just watching the bands on these shows.

I didn't really watch a lot of the 'hot' bands.  Instead I'd keep my eyes and ears out for newer sounds.

Well, now that I get home around 11PM and wind down in front of the tube for an hour or so, I can now at least watch the headlining shows.  Last night I was in a particularly good mood because I heard about my brother's interview (more on that later), so I stayed up late enough to check out the band playing on Jimmy Kimmel Live.... Preservation Hall Jazz Band.  And um... WOW!

To say that I liked what I heard would be an understatement.  First off, this isn't some top 40 pop tripe.  This is an actual New Orleans Jazz Band with some chops.

I Love Music

Music isn't as important to life as breathing or blood... but it's pretty damned important.  You see... I love music.  All kinds of music.  A great concerto holds equal space in my heart as does a down a dirty rock blitz or a twangy country poem about a truck a girl and a dog (not necessarily in that order).

Music has always been a big part of my life.  I remember taking long family vacations where we would drive all over the country.  And while those vacations were more about seeing both oceans, Mexico, the gulf, Canada, 47 of the 50 states, most major highways, many major amusement parks, the redwoods, the palms, the scrub brush and the desert... I have incredibly strong memories of listening to 'oldies' on the radio.  Neither of my parents have the same passion as I do about music, but they did believe in listening to the songs of their youth while driving over listening to news or talk radio.

Something I'm going to do in this post is show you what I'm listening to while writing this.  I almost always listen to music while I'm at the computer.  It's mostly in the background, but sometimes it does well up and direct my emotions or inspire a new feeling.  Just understand that I'm writing this post AND chatting with people, so sometimes it will seem that I don't write all that much while listening to a lot of different songs.

Looking Forward

I've never been known as a patient person.  That is unless I have something specific to look forward to.

I'm not talking about waiting for a movie or a game to begin... I'm talking about something specific in my life.  With all the fits and false starts my life has taken, it seems that I've been waiting for a long long time.  I was waiting for High School to finish... then I was waiting for graduation from college... then waiting for graduation from a different college.  Once I graduated I moved to Chicago and began waiting for my first real photo job... then waiting for the photo job that could sustain me... then waiting for my lease to be up so I could tuck my tail between my legs and move home.  Once I was home the waiting shifted and I was waiting to get a job.. then waiting for that job to pay enough for me to live off of.

I was patient in that one and waited for three years... but it didn't pay enough and the waiting shifted.  Waiting for another job... then waiting for it to pay enough.  That worked out... for awhile.

Grow up people!

As a child have you ever entered a class halfway through the year?  It's a complicated process as you have to figure out quickly who is who.  Who is the bully running things through fear and intimidation?  Who is the good guy who will stand by you and be a friend?  Who is the back stabbing tattle tale that will inspire you to get into trouble and then rat you out?

On the surface it sounds like it would be easy to figure out, but all of these people look the same.  When they talk to you they all talk the same and they all seem to want something from you.

Well... it seems that I've entered my own private viper pit sandbox at the prison.  The Nursing Staff.  Office Politics is something that I honestly have trouble figuring out.  Most of my previous jobs didn't involve this type of childish behavior... or if they did I was so low down the totem pole that it didn't effect me personally.  My philosophy has always been on the simple side... do my job well, do what my supervisor tells me, try to help my supervisor an any way possible.

The only job where this philosophy failed me was my last photography job in a  portrait studio.  I honestly believe that it failed me there not due to politics, but because I had a insecure back stabbing studio manager.  She saw me not as an asset to be groomed and utilized but as a threat to her own little fiefdom who could almost outsell her using good photography and honest selling techniques instead of the deceit and trickery she used.