Self rewarding is good

A quick update as I am in the land of high-speed access as I run errands this morning. Picking up a few thing and printing photos – what fun are pictures if you can’t share them eh? Managed to treat myself with a quesadilla and Cape Light smoothie from Dan's while I was at it. Yum.

Yesterday I attended a union meeting and while in the land of accessible technology was able to download my e-book which I had purchased – The Bishops Man by Linden McIntyre. This was accomplished by downloading the Adobe Digital Edition and then attempting to use the Kobo icon to transfer the book to my e-reader as I had gotten it as far as my laptop (in less than 1 min I might brag) but that wasn’t where I wanted to read it from. For those of you who should be heading towards such a thing as an e-reader (and no it is not a 6 ft. tall attractive man who reads you stories in a sexy voice as suggested by one of the Dr. I worked with last week) apparently there has been some kind of a ‘bug’ with Windows XP so it wasn’t something I was doing incorrectly which I learned when I called the helpdesk (one of the more aptly named groups at Kobo compared to Bell for example). The tech talked me through the transfer with Adobe (extremely simple) and sent me along a new link to the Kobo reader. And if you are going to download books from other than Kobo ex. Amazon etc. then you do need the Adobe anyway, so I’m all set up. As my (good thing she’s been a friend since age 3 years old) friend asked “how did you download that book when you don’t have high-speed?” I explained I had visited the internet via the library and assumed she was just jealous – ha! You know you’re determined when you buy an e-book reader before you even have the ability to access the e-books from your own home. Sigh. This could get to be a habit, although I’ve not given up on reading books which have killed some trees just yet as I picked up Coventry by Helen Humphreys which looks to be a quick read. It’s about the fire bombings during WWII in London and extremely well written.

I am making my way through the trauma course material and a good thing too as the course begins a week from today. I only have two night shifts to work before that as I’m heading off to Truro for a NSNU bargaining conference because this is the year we negotiate a new collective agreement. Proposals are being exchanged between union and provincial employer in September and as one of my co-workers stated “oh, I hope they get things settled soon as it’s so cold standing out on the picket line in the snow like the CUPE folks had to”. I reassured her that the political damage done to the NDP government with that few hour healthcare worker strike this winter is still remembered well and not likely to be repeated any time soon.

And of course on day when I’m feeling sorry for myself I think I just might run away up north and finish out my nursing career as I’m getting my clinical skills up to par because the Mother of the Groom is doing speaking engagements in Nunavut and is in tight with the recruiter there so I have the hookup. Some of these tender feelings come from the new graduate from Ontario who studied in Calgary being asked for her opinion (as if she’s the expert) on how retention in nursing at our facility should be focused, or all those recruited in the past year with $5000 sign on bonuses are being asked to a get-together at the end of the month (which I haven’t heard of – likely because I didn’t get a bonus being already an employee) or hearing the District Nurse Manager yesterday describing how a third year nursing student has already been given the bonus and guaranteed her job when she graduates next year. Call me small minded but regardless of where I find myself on the seniority list the fact remains that of the RNs in our facility I came to work first (of course having left many times I admit) in 1976. Old nurse – not a bad thing to be. Off to the shops. Hasta.