Turtle delays and travel tips

I am always so amazed when I check the projections / expectations for the coming week or set of shifts when I sign off the blog. How can such wonderfully optimistic plans dissolve? Well....the first step was that I answered the phone on Thursday to hear my Nurse Manager asking me to do 12 hr night shift, then sleep a bit on Friday and do a 12 hr day shift on Saturday and now my night shifts on Sunday and Monday. And you would wonder why shift workers are confused? It meant that I couldn't ask the cleaning lady as I needed to sleep Friday morning and didn't want to be in bed/underfoot when she made her inaugural visit. However this enabled me to enjoy a sunny afternoon on Friday which I would have missed and nights are almost always guaranteed to be more manageable than days. I am considering asking for a rotation of one day, three night shifts which would work on many levels.

I was less than impressed to find that the car (which the shore captain had insisted on taking to the garage where his trucks are maintained) had a very loud clunking sound as if something was going to come up through the passenger side. At the risk of looking a gifthorse in the mouth I complained that although a bit more pricey MY garage would have never let me leave in a car making that noise as they would have test driven it. So...while I was sleeping on Friday morning my car disappeared and since we aren't talking about it, and I'm driving the 'additional' car which is in the yard, I have no idea when it will be repaired by them, returned by him.

I caught a ride in to work with a coworker on Saturday and after the day shift the life partner and I had a great supper at Lothar's Cafe:

http://www.lothars-cafe.com/Home.html

which included (for moi) a large spinach, chicken, almond and strawberry salad with honey dressing, stuffed chicken, rice and veggies for the main and panna cotta with strawberry sauce for dessert. The shore captain had scallop cakes then beef roulade, spaetzle and veggies and a lot of self control as he passed on dessert. Lovely spot for lunch or dinner if you find yourself in town.

It seems that I may just find myself in town during my days off as I have to run some errands as the goodies purchased on eBay are finding their way to me in the mail now that it is moving again. Almost as good as the gift dropped off by a summer neighbour on my way to work this evening. At any rate I shall refrain from making extravagant projections of plans for my days off - I shall simply work on my course as after the email peptalk from the instructor all of the material has been posted.

Well, time to read back to help out with the work but I leave you with some travel stories.
I just loved the headlines recently about turtle delays at JFK airport in New York - nature vs technology:

http://bit.ly/jlEXs9

In my research for something else (isn't that the way all great discoveries are made) I found a website for Dr. Ivor Mendez. He's a neurosurgeon who does wonderful research, remote robotics, brain repair etc. He is originally from Bolivia and he does worldwide projects (there was a great photo of him taking a dentist chair into a remote Andean village in the paper once). I was particularly impressed with the laptop sections here:

http://imihf.org/what/

His way of approaching the world made me think of the quote of the day........ 
We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same. ~ Carlos Castaneda

And (again) speaking of traveling here are some great Girl Guide (I mean MacGyver) tips:

http://alittleadrift.com/2011/06/how-to-travel-macgver-gear/

So here's hoping you're able to enjoy some of our all too short summer weather! Later.