Love/Hate

I started writing this with no idea what all I was going to talk about.   I normally have an idea when I start a post and even have an idea of what I'm going to title the post plus what kind of image I want to use.  But as I started writing I knew I wanted to update you on my brother B's situation, let you know about my trip to Dallas and San Fran, tell you about talking to my friends A and E about my Queerness, and even talk about Nina on the road.  I just didn't realize that almost everything I was going to touch on would involve Love and Hate.  I Love my brother and hate his situation.  I Love my other brother while at the same time Hating him.  I Love driving and Hate that Nina isn't as comfortable.  I Love San Fran's liberal status, but Hate that they can't take care of their problems.  I Love flying.  So... let's go with Love/Hate.

Guns are an American problem

(As I mentioned in the previous post, I've been dealing with some pain issues lately, so this post was written over the course of a week while I was in a lot of pain.  Forgive me if it's a less than clear.)

You know, I could have sworn I'd talked about guns on this blog before.  Maybe I'd intended to but never got around to it, or maybe I've buried it in some post with other subjects.  But it's in the news again and therefore in the forefront of my mind and I'm in the middle of several facebook debates so I figured I'd put my thoughts into order here.

Driving Vacation

So tomorrow I leave on vacation.  Last year I got to experience my first paid vacation in almost 10 years.  Not only did I get a vacation, I got several.  A trip to the Windy City, two flights to Tex-Ass, and a staycation over Thanksgiving weekend.  I had another vacation earlier this year back to Chicago.

So getting time off isn't anything new.  It's something that went from Amazing, to wonderful, to great, to just another part of the job.

So at face value, this shouldn't be anything worthy of writing about.  I should mention it (I have a couple times) in a post but it's nothing that should occupy my mind in a way that makes me write it out.

But this vacation is different for several reasons.  First... it's by FAR the longest stretch I've taken off.  I try to plan my vacations around my weekends off.  I mean that just makes sense' start with the only two days off I have in a row and by taking two days off I've grown it organically into a four day vacation.  I believe my two trips to Tex-Ass and my Thanksgiving extended weekend were both a total of five days off.  The other trips were all three or four days off.

This time I'm taking six days off.  When my weekend and other regular days off are added in I'm getting a total of 10 days away from work!!!

Gun Rights, Mandated, M, Smells Like Creepy

A few quick hitting ideas for this post.

First up, gun rights.  I mentioned in a previous post that I bought my first handgun.  An ATI FX 45 1911.  It's a recreation of the M1911 A1, and it's a BLAST to shoot.

I've wanted to have a handgun for awhile now but was afraid that I'd missed my opportunity.  You see, I have no desire to have a gun all by myself.  My buddy who had several guns moved down to Texas.  He was the one I was going to share this hobby with.

Thankfully my brother R got his job and recently picked up his dream gun... a Kimber 1911.  His is a beautiful gun with some very nice parts.  It's not a custom gun but a custom 1911 can go for anywhere from $2500 and up.  His was 'only' about $1200.  Mine, by comparison, goes for about $500 brand new.  I paid $300 for it.

Now I really like guns.  They're fun as all get out to shoot and it's something that you can really sink your teeth into.   Being able to hit a target isn't exactly hard.  Being able to do so with both accuracy and preciseness IS difficult.  And doing so consistently requires not only the right equipment but the right skill and muscle memory.

A long drive

I've been planning (in the loosest sense of the word planning) several trips this spring/summer/fall.  I was hoping for an international trip as my buddy E has traveled quite a bit over seas.

Speaking of E, he lives in San Fran and I've always wanted to visit there.  And if I'm visiting friends, I want to go visit A down in Dallas.  A just bought a new house and I always enjoy spending time with his family.

In addition to these longer, more expensive trips I also want to hit up Chicago again with my local buddy A.  That would be the easiest as we could quite easily head down Saturday morning and return Sunday evening.  I wouldn't even have to talk time off for that trip.

A little quirk came up in scheduling at work recently.  As a union member there is a pretty strict way of taking vacations.  There are two vacation books per year and you put your 'request' in them.  If anybody is asking for the same days off and it will affect the scheduling then it goes by seniority.  I'm no longer the newest nurse at the prison, but I'm still fairly low on the totem pole.  By union rules the vacation book has to be available for a month before it's figured into the schedule.

Give and Take

So I was at work last week internally complaining about some skills.  There are a lot of nursing skills to know.  A LOT.  Many of them are skills that I simply don't have to know in my job.  How to use a doppler to get a bladder level.  How to give a proper bed bath.  How to perform a detox assessment.

These tasks just don't come up all that often, if ever at all.  But one that does happen almost every day at the prison is drawing blood for labs.  Monday through Friday there are between 5 and 25 separate blood draws each day.

Thankfully those are almost exclusivly performed on first shift.  That makes perfect sense as many of the blood draws have to be done after a minimum 8 hour fast.  No food, no water.  Just like in a hospital those are best performed just after waking up.  The patient then only realistically has to go without food or drink for a few hours before bed, and almost immediatly follow up the blood draw with breakfast.

Happily working on second shift means that I don't have to deal with drawing blood.  At least not all that often.  There is one test that requires the blood to be drawn just before it is delivered to the lab.  At our facility that's at 3 pm.  That's firmly in second shift territory.  Thankfully every time that's come up on a day I was working, there was a morning nurse doing her 12 hour shift and she was able to do it.  There are also occasional surprise blood draws.  For instance when an inmate has just experienced a seizure and we want to show that it wasn't in fact a seizure, we can draw blood and do a particular test.  That blood has to be drawn within an hour of the non-seizure though.

Striving

'I don't always know what the right thing to do is, my Lord, but I think the fact that I want to please you pleases you'

Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence

If you look for perfection, you'll never be content

Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.

I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business

There are a million and one quotes dealing with perfection.  The vast majority of them are like these... more or less don't go for perfection as you can never achieve it.   I think I know why there are so many quotes like this... because far to many people strive for perfection.  I'm one of them.   These quotes are a good example as I was looking for that last one (not to confuse excellence with perfection).  It's a quote from Michael J Fox.  I couldn't remember it exactly so I just spent 20 minutes googling for it.

Yeah... I spent 20 minutes striving to find the prefect quote about not striving for perfection.

Vacation Recap

I have returned safe and sound from my vacation.  I would love nothing more than to say it was magnificent, wonderful, amazing, or any other superlative description.  It WAS good.  It WAS fun.  But overall it felt like driving over to my friends place when he lived a couple hours drive away.

And you know what... that's good enough.  If I had to describe this in as few words as possible it would go something like this:

I flew down.  I hung out.  I flew back.

I guess since I went into so much detail in my last post about flying, I should cover how that went.  I could say that I overworried about it, but I believe that honest worry helped me research it fully and be prepared for everything that came up.  I ended up getting a ride to the airport and they dropped me off at the curbside 'departures' area.  Walking into the airport I was presented with a very long 'hallway' with all the ticket counters.  I had checked in online 24 hours earlier and therefore didn't have to stop at the counter so I stopped and packed up the last few things.

Getting Hired and Getting Respect

So first a little good news.  As I said in my last post, I am in the process of getting hired in by the State.  No longer will I be a contract employee working for Manpower.  No longer will I be 'less' of a team member.  No longer will I go without the benefits of most full times jobs like insurance, retirement, sick time, paid time off, and overtime.

I am still holding my breath a bit though, as I'm not finished with the hiring process.  I guess I'll recount what's happened so far.

So in the first weeks of October I was called up by the HR department of the correctional facility where I work.  They actually called me while I was working (I guess they knew where I was!) and asked me if I would be interested in interviewing for a nursing position at the facility.  I actually had to pause for a moment and wonder if they knew I was currently working as a nurse at the facility.  It only took me a moment to realize that they were offering the chance to get hired in by the state.

I of course said yes, and then all the drama began in earnest.  I think I mentioned that I was working with another nurse that had previously been hired in by the state, but had to quit when she got pregnant.  It seems that while on probation (all new hires are on probation for their first year) you can't take that much time off in a single chunk.  How that doesn't violate the Family Leave Act still baffles me.  Anyway, she had recently come back as a fellow contract employee, and she too was being offered the chance to interview.

Hunting... For A Good Time!

I visited with a couple friends this past weekend and had a blast.  We didn't do anything in particular... just hung out and enjoyed each other's company.  We talked politics, relationships, growing older, jobs, and family.  All interspersed with taking care of their two children.

One thing that I used to do with this friend is share a love for guns.  This is the same guy that I used to go to the range with and target shoot.  Sadly he went through a rough spot and had to sell off all of his guns, but times are getting better and one thing we did was stop by Dick's sporting goods and pick up his newly purchased shotgun.

Now, the guns he had previously were for 'fun'.  A long rifle that could shoot fairly acurately at 500 yards, a couple hand guns, and various other rifles.  But this purchase is for a more specific purpose... hunting.

You see, a few years ago we took our first hunting trip together.  Neither of us had any great desire to 'bag a buck', but we did want to get away from everything and hunting seemed like the best reason to do so.  Lemme tell you... hunting with a rifle designed for accuracy at long distance is NOT the best thing.  First, we were hunting in a national forest.  It would be difficult to see a dear over 50 yards away.  So the weight and length of this rifle actually worked against us.  But we still got to set up camp, build a fire, drink our instant coffee and have a great time.

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.