Category: Uncategorized (Page 161 of 212)

Hahaha ahaa, jk! Dudes, water is $4/liter here, and we haven't found
a single drinking fountain. Crazy. Mac king show was hilarious, I
think I busted my gut laughing. Could be the aches from mirandas an
workout yesterday *shakes fist at Miranda*.

It's hot here!

We made it safely to the glittering city, albeit am hour delayed. But
the shuttle ride and checkin went smoothly. Our room is beautiful, I
promptly checked the bathroom and see it to be appropriately
sumptuous. I love nice hotel bathrooms. We have a view from the 24th
floor of the strip, including the pirate show below. Were just going
to stay in tonight, it's 2 am Colorado time. It looks luke were in
for a fabulous weekend!

Friday May 1 I had my pinning ceremony for nursing school graduation. I was thrilled that all my grandparents and most of my close family flew into Denver to visit, despite rain and plane breakdowns. These are photos from the the ceremony and party following, taken by my personal photographer, Ben Mason, who is quite excellent. You can see more of the photos on his photostream here. But these are some of my favorites. I’d love to see the photos that others took, Miranda and Mom and Dad! Send them my way when you get a chance.

We got rained out of the park so I moved the party to our community clubhouse. It was beautiful with fresh flowers, lovely cupcakes, and lots of friends stopping by with well wishes.

Driving back from the airport Saturday Amanda found out that the Alpaca Festival was going on Right Now! My humoring parents let us spend a couple hours admiring the fuzzy creatures and getting some fleece for spinning.

More pictures are on my flickr stream.

If you know me, you can confirm that I am a huge Chipotle enthusiast. This week they changed their menu *gasp!* It was my duty to investigate. It seems the only item change is a new pozole soup. Bleh. What is wonderful though, is that they offer more items at lower prices now. I usually get three tacos or a salad. Both are HUGE and leave me happy but bloated and heavy. Oh happy day, they now have a single taco and salad combo – behold!

It’s so beautiful.

Perfect taste, not too much food, and it’s a tad cheaper. They also added a kids menu, which is genius since I can’t imagine what kids would eat there before, their portions are so huge. My love for Chipotle has only deepened.

My first day off was spent cleaning my house top to bottom. I scrubbed baseboards, people. My cleaning day was slightly dampened by the 2 inches of snow we received this morning. So I couldn’t open the windows and let a gentle spring breeze freshen the air. Oh well. I also started a new knitting pattern. I might not have enough yarn for it. We shall see.

I’m pretty stressed out about not having a job lined up. I know it’s early and I haven’t even sent applications in (I will this week, I promise!). But try telling your brain that. I’m out of school and out of work. I’m starting to study for NCLEX, that will keep me pretty busy while I look. Nevertheless, my emotions are up and down lately.

Miranda is inspiring me to throw a nice party on Friday for graduation. In my mind I was just going to spread the taco bar out on a table with some 2 liters of soda. Now I have visions of garlands and fancy cupcakes and fresh fruit juices. Darn that girl! Making me be cool and stuff *pout*.

Ben just turned off his xbox and announced “time for bed.” Since I’m still trying to get on a normal sleep schedule I should obey.

Waiting for the elevator to take me downstairs for the last time. The next time I put on scrubs to go to a hospital, I’ll be an RN. Hoo, boy.

It was a good last day. I like lists, so here:

• I had two pleasant, friendly men with cardiac problems
• I totally heard a murmur. Not just sort of – a REAL murmur. Finally.
• The lemon pound cake that I made for the nurses was devoured by midnight. (see shot-a-day blog)
• It was only an 8 hour shift
• I didn’t get mugged in the middle of the night for the whole month. Yay!
• My nurse gave me tons of compliments, boosting my confidence
• And what made it a GREAT shift? NO POOP! Seriously. I can deal with it when I have to, but I HATE having patients poop in the ICU where there aren’t bathrooms.

It went by so fast. I’m so excited to get back to a normal life, but I don’t think that will happen for at least another 3 months.

We had another crazy late snowstorm in Denver. Well, mid April isn’t that crazy, but still, it was a LOT of WET and HEAVY snow. Ben was so kind by letting me borrow his car for the night. I got to work a little late because of traffic but saw that my usual street parking was available. When I pulled in I noted that it was the third Friday of April, and thus my car might be towed for street sweeping. Hmmm. There was another car parked in the zone and it had a good layer of snow on it. I circled the block and didn’t find any other parking (duh, they were already taken by the people who usually park on my street but left their house earlier like a smart person would in bad weather). I pulled back in the spot. The tow time only lasted another 1 1/2 hours, and with the snow I doubted they would be sweeping. I decided to risk it.
I made it up to the floor in time. My coworkers informed me that they would probably just ticket me if they made the rounds, and the ticket is just $20. Whew, good risk.
But I got nervous as I left the hospital. Would my car still be there?

Oh very much so.

Hmmm. That sure is a lot of heavy wet snow plowed up close to my car. I tried to open the door but it was completely blocked by the snow. Here’s where the blessings start. I have NEVER seen anyone when I leave the hospital (but always with pepper spray in hand just in case I do). Today on my way to my car I passed a man shoveling his walk. Why was he shoveling his walk at 4 AM? I don’t know. But I ran over to him and asked if I could borrow his shovel (yes mom, pepper spray still in hand in pocket, just in case). He turned out to be a kind Chinese gentleman who shoo shooed me away and insisted that he shovel out my door for me. I profusely thanked him and got in the car. Engine on, defrost on, and located the window scraper. I attacked the windows and quickly ditched the scraper, this snow was way too heavy so it worked better to wipe it away with my arm. Once I got those cleared I started stabbing at the snow around my tires. I was skeptical this would work and predicted another favor from the Chinese man. I was right. After he had a go shoveling out my tires, with me helping by lifting out wet ice bricks from the wall, I tried again and failed. Blessing #2: a dude with a plow on his truck pulls out of the driveway on this street and sees me stabbing at the ice wall. He pulled up and offered to help dig me out. Between the shovel man and the plow man, it took 15 minutes further to dig me out. I tried to take photos casually so they wouldn’t freak out, but they didn’t really work:

(red blur is plow on the blue blur truck, skimming by my car)

I can’t believe these two men happened to be there and were so willing to help. I wonder how long it would have taken me to get home with my stabby ice scraper technique, and how long before I would have broken down crying and called Ben to come get me. I wanted to talk to them, introduce myself and thank them more, but they just gave simple “You’re welcome, no problem, be safe” replies and hurried off to their days. Isn’t it amazing how kind people can be?

PS: Ben, a little dingus came off the front of the car, either when I was pushing through the snow or when they were digging around me. They found it in the snow and gave it to me, it’s on the bureau by the stairs. It looks non-important and I think I can snap it back into place later. I’m sorry! Remember to wake me by noon!