Fiona's New Shoes

This past Thursday I finally decided it was time.  Fiona was going to get a new pair of shoes.  I decided I was going to get something local as any savings earned online was surpassed by the costs of shipping and having the wheels/tires assembled and installed.

I really had it down to two places; Belle Tire and Discount Tire.  Discount Tire has always treated my family fine and has given years and years of service to my dad, mom, various aunts/uncles and of course myself.  Sadly their website is a little lacking.  They only offered a couple options for snow tires on my current rims and had no easy way to display which 16 inch wheels that would fit onto my car.

Belle Tire, by comparison, let me put in my car's information and then offered the option of choosing a 'downsized' set of tires and wheels.  Now I could have just assumed that Discount Tire would have options available and that I would simply have to visit them to get all the options... but that was more work and more opportunity for me to throw up my hands and say 'whatever' and end up buying something I didn't really want.  So... Belle Tire won out.  I printed out an order of cheap (but stylish) 16 inch wheels and Bridgestone Blizzak WS70 tires.

The Big Four Oh

You say it's your birthday

It's my birthday too, yeah

They say it's your birthday

We're gonna have a good time

I'm glad it's your birthday

Happy birthday to you.

So... yeah.  It's my birthday and it's one of those annoying 'milestone' birthdays (damn base-10 counting all to hell).   I remember when having a birthday was a celebration and almost every year was a milestone.  Turning 10, 12, 16, 18, 21, 25, 30.... those all held some special meaning that at the time seemed so important.  Now the only milestone birthdays I have left seem to be the ones counting down to my eventual end.

It seems as appropriate as any other time to take a look back and to take a look forward.  What I've accomplished, what I've failed at, what I hope to accomplish and what I'll likely fail at.

Let's start on the happiest note... accomplishments.  I was the first member of my family to ever attend college.  At the time it just seemed like the appropriate thing to do.  I mean what else was I going to do?  One of my grandfathers didn't finish high school and was already working a career at that age.  My other grandfather, father and older brother went into the military upon leaving high school.  I probably would have followed suit and joined either the Navy or Marines if I had the health to do so.  But once that doctor told me that I wasn't healthy enough to play sports, I never looked at myself as physically fit enough to do something like that.

Old School Shaving

Because of the genetics I inherited from my father and grandfathers, I've never really had to shave all that often.  When I was young, I remember being amazed at any man who had a beard as my father never seemed to get past the 'whiskers' phase of facial hair.

When my father would get his two week vacation from work he would often go all caveman and not shave... but at the end of those two weeks he still only had what could realistically be called a five o'clock shadow.  And so it was and is for me.

My history of shaving was a long fight between getting a good enough shave that I wouldn't have to bother with it for several days while trying to keep my face from bleeding all over the place or becoming as red as a stop sign.  My first shave was using my dad's cheap disposable bic razor and water.  I think I ended up with about a dozen little pieces of toilet paper dotting my lacerated and badly shaved face.  I didn't feel all that bad about it as my father would often have the same look after slicing hair from his chin and just expected that this was what all men had to deal with.

For a couple years that's what I did.  I'd splash some water on my face, run the dollar store special razor under the running faucet and start rubbing it over my face.  The cut's never bled all that much and I was able to remove the bloody bits of TP by the time I headed off to school.  That lasted until I moved up to the University.  While there I decided to get serious about this activity.  I went electric.

Government Jobs

Talking to a colleague last night, I've come to the conclusion that working for the state is hard.  Not the job itself... a correctional nursing job certainly isn't on the difficult side of the scale when it comes to nursing in general... but just having the state government as an employer.   This applies to nurses, managers, administrators, bureaucrats... everyone in state employment (I imagine the same applies to federal employees, but I can't be sure).

You see, nothing happens quickly.  It doesn't' matter if something NEEDS to happen quickly, it will take however long the state dictates it will take.  Take staffing for example.  So far as I know, the health care team at the correctional facility I work at hasn't been fully staffed since I got there.  From what I understand we should have four RNs in both the North and South side clinics.  We should have three RNs for four and five block.  We should have a total of nine LPNs for the med rooms between North and South side.  This doesn't even get into the administrative assistants and nurses working in the background.  Instead of the eleven RNs and nine LPNs we currently have nine RNs and six LPNs.

Much of the time we can reduce our staffing level down to critical levels (four nurses (RN or LPN) for the med rooms, two RNs for four and five block, two RNs for the clinics) on each shift, but we can only do that by adding in a lot of overtime.  And when you add in things like calling out because of the snow, sick time, and annual leave, it just gets worse.  Now I've only been here for six and a half months, but in that time we've hired only a single RN onto staff.  There were two other rounds of hiring, but that was just moving nurses on contract into state jobs.  They didn't add any new contract nurses, so we're still understaffed.

Things on my mind

I don't have anything major I want to discuss in this post.  Unlike most posts here, I'm actually writing this initial paragraph last, as I had no direct theme to talk about... just a few things I wanted to write out and mention.  Nursing, friends, inmates... all quick hits.  BTW... the image for this post is there only because I wanted to have an image for the post... the photo merely looked interesting and has nothing to do with this post whatsoever.

We're having a nurses meeting tomorrow about the 12 hour scheduling shifts.  Or as it was said in the email announcing the meeting; "discuss 12 hour scheduling and some of the issues related to that".  I'm still firmly on the fence about the whole issue.  This week has given me at least a slight taste of what that might be like.  By calling in on Monday I ended up with a stretch of three days off in a row... something that isn't possible under our current scheduling system but something that will be fairly common with 12 hour schedules.

That's not to say that I felt like it was an extra day off.  I didn't prepare for it and I spent most of the day trying to get my car out of the driveway and/or learning about and shopping for snow tires.  The thing that is making me wonder about the scheduling is the fact that I only worked for two days before having another day off.  My current rotating two week schedule is this:  Three days on, one day off.  Three days on, one day off.  Four days on, two days (weekend) off.  Rinse, repeat.  There are obviously differences in each nurses individual schedules and some do in fact have a two days on, one day off set during their rotating two week schedule.  But it feels... wrong.  I feel like I should be going to work today.

I fought the snow. And for the first time ever... the snow won

I woke up this morning to the haunting sound of my phone ringing.  Well... technically it's not a haunting sound as my phone's ringer is the theme to Super Mario Brothers.  Still, it's not the way I want to be woken up at 6:50am.

As I feared, it was work.  It seems that because of the snow, several nurses have called in and the scheduling supervisor was asking if I wanted some overtime.  I politely lied about having to take my mom to the cardiologist later in the morning and he replied by saying that I was the low man on the totem pole and he therefore was mandating that I come in.

Nice... why ask then?

I told him that I would take a quick shower and head right into work.  I took my time for a full shit/shower/shave and even made some coffee to take with me. I took my time knowing that I could full well blame any delays on the snow.  It never crossed my mind that the snow would prove to be a burden to high to jump.

You see, yesterday we got about 16 inches of snow dumped on us.  I didn't pay it any mind though as beyond the clearing of the driveway, I've never had a problem driving in the snow.  Seriously.  If you read my entry on my previous cars you probably remember The Black Shadow Of Death.... my 1990 Beretta GTZ.  I was living in Chicago when I owned this car in 1998/9 and there was a blizzard that year that practically shut down the city.  I remember it well because I went out to clean the foot or snow off my street parked car and had a neighbor laugh at me, saying that there was no way my 'little car' was going to get out.

Swing Kids, Swing Music and more

The impitus to write this post came from re-watching the movie "Swing Kids" recently.  While I have adored this movie for decades now, this won't merely be a movie review.

You see, the movie is great but the music that it's about is bigger and better, and has had a greater impact on my life.

But first, the movie.  If you haven't seen it before and enjoy swing music, then it's worth watching for the soundtrack alone.  From Benny Goodman's "Sing Sing Sing" to Count Basie's "Shout and Feel it".  From Slim Gaillard's "Flat Foot Floogie" to the classic "Bei Mir Bist Du Shone".  And that's not even getting into James Horner's background music which is emotional and tells a story all it's own.

The story is fairly simple on the surface... a bunch of pre WWII German kids are into swing music just as the authorities are stepping down on such things.  Underneath that veneer is the story of conflict.  Conflict between wanting to be true to yourself and wanting to fit in.  On side you have Arvid (played  by Frank Whaley) who loves swing music.  He wants to play it, he wants to know it, he wants to be it.  He does so even when it leads to him getting bullied and beaten.  The other side is Thomas Berger (played by a young Christian Bale) who loves swing music because his friends love swing.  When he gets into the Hitler Jugend and finds friends there he turns on his swinging friends.  In the middle is Peter Müller (played by Robert Sean Leonard of 'House M.D.' fame)... he loves swing but is pulled in by the Hitler Jugend.

Finding the silver lining

Yesterday was a bad day.   Not bad as in someone got hurt, or bad as in something awful happened... just a bad day from beginning to end.

Before I get into the day itself, let me tell you about the disappointment of the snow blower.  We used to have a small snowblower that was a god send when my father was alive.  We loaned it to a 'friend' several years ago and he just kept it when he moved.  For the past few years my brother and I have shoveled the driveway clear... mainly my brother.  With the job this year, I knew that my brother would be doing far more than his 'share' of the duty, so I figured the least I could do was to buy a new snowblower.  We don't need a big one, and frankly after the holidays I only had the cash for a small one.  I found the perfect one right in my price point on Monday, but where the website said this store had it in stock for local pickup... they didn't.  I had to order it online and it should be here next week.  Then we got about 8 inches of snow.  With my luck it won't snow again all year.

So... the day started off like any other... coffee, web, television.  I did have to leave early for work though as the skies opened up and dropped many inches of snow.  I normally like the snow, but having to drive an hour to work in a car that's scared of the white fluffy stuff is no fun at all.