Since this is hump day, it makes it a good time to try to capture the mood of the moment. I’ll post a photo of the sunset I snapped last evening as I got home from the meeting I presented at. The harbour was like glass and the colors beautiful. That and scoring great label finds at Frenchy’s as I waited for the session time to roll around made my day complete.I think the irony of the day award goes to the new employee who I have been tracking for two days because if someone is not a recent grad and new to healthcare work they often require + + contact with an OHN wielding sharp objects i.e. injections and tests. For example a two step mantoux (TB) test in which the serum is injected under the skin of the forearm and the test read two days later then repeated the following week, a series of three Hepatitis B vaccinations now, a month and six months later and then a blood test to check for immunity 2 months following, a tetanus booster (with pertussis – whooping cough) if it’s been longer than 10 years and one MMR (measles, mumps, rubella). With the logistical problem being that these have to be done in particular order and so many at a time as they affect each other with a shift schedule etc. But the irony is….this employee who reports to me a morbid fear of needles as the reason for the hesitancy admits to having.....eight tattoos! Yes you read that correctly. I was unable to formulate a therapeutic response to that statement.
I was reading the sad account of the investigative report of the plane crash near Buffalo with the icing problem and came across a term which I think I will begin to use regularly. The report discussed the fact that the pilots were chatting and not aware of the instrumentation as the root cause analysis of the event and the term ‘lack of situational awareness’ was used. Lot of that going around in my work world. On a conference call today the Communications person suggested that the H1N1 messages were at risk of becoming repetitive and it was possible to over communicate the information. Now, that is clearly what I suffer from – too many people are over communicating with me.
I am hearing via the community grapevine that the public meeting for high speed internet access went well and we should all have wireless by December 2009 at the latest. And not a moment too soon, I say. It’ll be pricey at $50/month and a $100 connection fee – and worth every penny. But the summer people will have the sweet deal if they use less than 6 months they’ll be able to access for $15/month and no connection fee. Good on them.
The Swedish daughter is still enjoying clinical and looking forward to possibly visiting Lapland – think reindeers, Sami on a bus trip to Narvik. Good times, good times. The boy Captain continues to excel as Lobster Lander to the delight of his father who is forced to live vicariously through him this spring. The French daughter is working hard at her BEd studies and looking forward to a summer road trip to Boston on a short break. The western daughter is doing well and has made a contact with a friend who has completed flight school and is getting in flying time so is going flying on Sunday. Now we will get to see aerial views of Alberta.
My social life received two pleasant messages today. The first was a lunch date with a former coworker who is doing a shift at the next door facility tomorrow so we’ll get caught up on her love life – always good to live vicariously through a single friend. And an email from my proposed cruise partner for the fall as she will be traveling next month to our area and coming to visit overnight after the meetings. Yeehaw! I’m guessing she is looking to review itineraries and see if we can scare up anything good for October as a bonus. And why not?
Oh, I almost forgot to relay the smile of the week. When I visited Superstore on Monday to print three travel photos in a small size for the shore captain’s clock (now that he has a real office he’s decorating it) not that I would have chosen pictures of fish markets but I guess you have to consider the context and I was just the photo editor so none of my concern really. The very calm, older female clerk came over to help – she remembers me as needing interventions when the computers have malfunctioned after I’ve worked for long periods of time with my photos and I am not trustworthy to be left alone with their equipment in my volatile state after that! She is excellent and we manage to get close to what mister wants and I comment that his taste in photos doesn’t match mine but you know gender differences. She laughs and says the best example she ever had was while working as a cashier. This guy comes up to the cash carrying a basket which is full to the top of cans, cartons and boxes and when she gets to the bottom she is amazed to find two squashed, almost flat loaves of bread which are no more than an inch high. She looks at them in amazement for a moment, recovers herself and says “would you like to take these back and get two more?” And he replies “oh no, that’s okay, they’ll fluff up in the truck on the way home” and maintains that stance even after a second prompting. She said that she thought as he made his way out the door with the bags ‘fluff up? You must be nuts and I’m sure you’re wife , if you have one, is going to fluff you up when you get home with those’. These encounters are one of the few joys of standing on your feet, working a low paying job and dealing with the public apparently.
The scrapbook is coming together nicely and I’m just finishing up the Bergen Fish Market so perhaps by the weekend – yes as it is a three day one, I refuse to call that long, three days is just a taste – I’ll be finished. This one.
