I think the caption should read 'yum, this is my favorite flavour of sleeve'. As you can see Gary is very fond of the shore captain's bait infused insulated coveralls keeping me company in the mud room. He and Stanley have taken up residence there as I type. I don't have the heart to put the suit in the washer as it's providing so much feline entertainment. And since I'm transitioning from the night shift I worked yesterday with a half sleep day (have to be careful to not oversleep and so be unable to go back to bed this p.m.) the laundry is on tomorrow's to-do list.I am into the home stretch for the ACLS studying and the night shifts were busy enough that there was only a cursory review of the course materials with co-workers so I'm doing my best to keep the panic to a minimum. I have been reassured by an OHN colleague (ACLS instructor) and the physician on call last night who did the course last winter that I'll do fine this weekend and now I'm just trying to convince myself of that too. I have a spot reserved at Fidelis House: http://www.nsnet.org/fidelishouse/
which is a residence next door to the hospital where I'm attending. The price is right at $20 per night with breakfast available and that suits me fine as the expense claims at work have been slow getting paid back lately. I will be glad to have this behind me as studying has used all my available time for the past month.
I was however, very pleased to find that my pay is $200 more in my staff nurse position, even before I receive the education credit for my degree and certification which the collective agreement entitles me to. I have been getting my head wrapped around the new technology of IV pumps, cardiac monitors, and electronic ordering and am feeling more settled every shift. My co-workers last night were of my vintage so it was almost a deja vu event.
On the home front...this evening I was finally able to use the rangetop because we ran out of propane on Sunday night and Superior apparently have only one employee that is able to problem solve/provide decent customer service. When the annoyed man of the house called them first thing Monday morning he was told they needed to know what the gauge read on the tank causing a 6 a.m. phone call to the son to look at it (not that NO propane and a strong smell of mercaptopurine meant anything to them) and say it was less than 5. No feedback from Superior so another call from himself on Tuesday which resulted in a chirpy phone message from 'Lee at Superior Propane' stating that she was sure we'd be pleased to know that we'd be receiving our fuel on Wednesday, November 18th. No, Lee I was NOT pleased to hear that, I would've been pleased to NOT have run out of propane for three days since we were supposedly on automatic prefill as I reviewed with Ian when I phoned the 800 number attempting to figure out how this happened to prevent a recurrence. A 53 yr old nurse just out of bed after a busy night shift who is trying to scheme up supper to be cooked solely in an oven and microwave is not someone you want to have to tangle with he discovered. I suspect they changed a database, lost a fill slip or just tried to get less deliveries in to save the transportation. Today the plot thickened. When I got up at 1 p.m. I had a call from the life partner telling me that the delivery man had come to fill the tank but left without doing so as the tank was outdated. The hired man was working on lobster gear in the yard so noticed this (good thing as there was no note or phone message) and called mister who got on the horn again to Superior and by this time HE was as unimpressed as his wife. They located a service man working in the area who arrived with a replacement tank which was about 1/2 full - unfortunately the tank wasn't in good shape so was only a temporary fix and will need to be replaced again. The service man (the one employee at Superior who understands the concept of customer service) tells me that tanks are inspected for 10 years (we've only been in this house for 3 so they obviously put an old tank in) that the drivers are held 100% liable if they fill an out of date tank and anything happens so they are not to fill them and that likely there had been a couple of trips to fill the tank but the message about the outdate never got through the system. I was pleased to have this service man look at the igniter which we'd been trying to get replaced for some time so that is now ordered and he'll replace when he installs the new tank. The fact that I only lost one branch off my azalea bush in the process was a bonus. So I boiled something for supper tonight - just because I could.
The lads are getting themselves ready for lobstering and as the heir apparent said tonight "eleven days left, oh I'm not starting to worry yet" as he came home covered in grease, algae and javex as he had grounded the boat out and spent the day cleaning the bottom, putting on the buoy catcher around the prop and stripping off the fishing gear in preparation for the next season. He's gone to take the boat off the slip when the tide (hopefully) floats it this evening. Thought he might take the girl he's been visiting along to help him - now that would be my idea of a hot date eh?
The western daughter was filling me in on the FireMedic she's befriended and his work Christmas party she'd attended with him which all sounded like fun. Then she mentioned that he and his partner had to wait at the hospital for a patient for some reason and had asked a nurse about a bed for them to sleep in until they could get out of there as they have bunks in the fire station. Apparently the nurses response (likely with eye rolling) translated to 'who do you think you are someone special?' I'm not sure what this guy looks like but I'm guessing he's a pretty big boy if he takes on night nurses with those kind of questions!
Anyway, enough rambling - bedtime as this brain isn't going to absorb much at this hour.
