Sunday, July 31, 2005

Well, woo and hoo. We are going to Los Cabos for our anniversary next year. How can we possibly know that, you ask?? We went to a timeshare presentation yesterday for Trendwest (to get the free trip and a champagne cruise on Lake Washington), and DID NOT buy their membership (good deal, good idea, wrong time, and if we WERE to buy, we would get one off of ebay, which would be much cheaper), but we DID buy their trial membership, which basically means we bought 8000 points, which gets us a week in Los Cabos, Mexico during peak season. We can use it any time in the next year, and if we DID decided to sign up with them, we would get to use the money we paid for these points as our down payment for the membership, which is nice. We also got our free trip, which will obviously be to Las Vegas. We love Vegas! Nice place to go for short trips, not too far, always a good time.

So now, we are going to Puerta Vallarta on October 29, to Vegas sometime this winter, may be January or February, and to Los Cabos in June. We had been planning to go to Hawaii next year, but maybe we will put that off. I am planning a trip somewhere with Alexsandra, haven't decided when or where yet. If any readers out there have suggestions or want to come with us, you are more than welcome. It would be a shorter, 3-4 night trip somewhere, most likely just back to Disneyland again, but somewhere else if I can think of another good place. I had a lot of fun last time, and it would be good for her to get to know me again and have some good quality time. I don't think Papa will be coming, although he is certainly invited as well. Alexsandra is busy thinking of ideas........

So that is our vacation schedule for the next year or so. In the short term, I am planning to go on another hike next week, not sure where yet. I want to buy one of those walking poles. They take up to 20% of the strain off your legs, and are great for balance, I am told. I am going to get an earlier start this time, and have no appointment to get to, so I can walk all day. It was really good exercise last time, and so refreshing! I am combining the exercise factor, the getting outside and away from the keyboard factor, and the creativity factor, with my photography. I am going to attempt to remember to bring my photography instruction book with me, and take more pictures playing with all the settings I have. I might even venture southward to Mt Rainier, since I have been wanting to go there for quite a while. I'll have to check out the forecast and see what it says. But...should be a fun time. I definitely have a new hobby.

Wednesday, July 27, 2005


huge blurry leaf with lens cap for perspective. This plant is called "Devil's Club", and has stings all over the bottom of the leaf. Glad I didn't touch it!

red huckleberries

upside down squirrel. picasa sucks with rotating my pictures nowadays. They either won't show up as having been rotated, or they rotate too far. NOt sure what the problem is......they used to work! I am not putting up the rotated ones for now, I will add them once I figure out what is going on

red Indian Paintbrush

Salmonberry, not quite ripe yet

Foxglove

white flower and bee

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mushroom

purplish flowers

False Hellebore, in the lily family

moss

reflection

closeup of water

Snow Lake again

bridge over dry gully

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Snow Lake

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

I am going on a day hike tomorrow. Wanna see why??
This is Gem Lake. It is in the Cascades, off of I-90. It is beautiful. Here is more info. http://www.hikerbob.com/guide.php?hike=G033


http://ronhayward.net/index.html?http://www.ronhayward.net/mtntreks/snowlake/snowlk1.htm

I always end up sitting around on my days off, doing pretty much nothing. I have wanted to go to Mt. Rainier for a long time, to take pictures in the hopes that I get one or more that are good enough to blow up and frame on my wall. Ethan says he wants to come with me to Rainier, so I am going to do some other nature things instead. This will be my first. It is supposed to be a pretty tough hike, about 9 miles round trip, but a few of my coworkers who are expert hikers/climbers have given me tips and I think I will be fine. Weather should be awesome, and pictures hopefully will be as well!

I pass Snow Lake first, which is bigger and fairly easy to get to, then a couple miles more to Gem Lake. I have a backpack, bottles of water, an extra shirt, windbreaker, trail mix, energy bars, my camera and accessories, tripod, trail map and info....I think that is about it. Oh, and sunscreen. Come on, this is ME we are talking about! Can't go ANYWHERE without sunscreen! Oh, and a book or two and my cell phone and a little am/fm radio with a clock.

Monday, July 25, 2005


Suzy signing the jersey. I asked for a picture with her, and she got up, but the organizers told her she was supposed to sign and NOT take pictures. Suzy looked a bit irritated, but that was okay....

Betty couldn't sign because of a tendonitis flareup in her wrist, so Ethan took our picture instead

Our jersey signing quest was successful!

Sunday, July 24, 2005

Long time no post, but hey--I have been busy. Lets see....... Work, then no work, then work.......
Actually, I worked Thursday for 12 hours, then went home and had a lovely evening alone. Ethan worked overtime 3pm-6am, so I had the house to myself. Well, and the cats, but they only count so much. I let them into the bedroom with me late in the evening (usually they can only come in for short, supervised visits, and they have to stay on the bed or they get kicked out. They have a propensity for finding hidden crap in the room and exploring it. They love to browse the closet and the bathroom and the cords behind the computer), so I let them in and blocked the door open slightly with a shoe, so they could come in and out as they pleased. Shadow came right in and curled up on the end of the bed and took a nap, but Boo decided to fine EVERY SINGLE THING in the room that could make the slightest noise, and step on it or drag it around or try to eat it. So, I had to throw them both out.

I have been getting up a little early each day before work to watch the Tour de France on OLN. Very cool. I watched the whole thing last year and really enjoyed it, and have enjoyed it again this year. I am also currently reading "It's not about the Bike", the Lance Armstrong autobiography. Well, one of them. This one ends in 2000, but he has another shorter one about his life since then and more Tour de France wins. Today was the last day, the final race into Paris, and I have it recording at home. Should be fun to watch tomorrow on my day off.

Tonight, we are going to the Storm season ticket holder party. We are excited that they are having it at the Pacific Science Center. The Sonics had theirs there a few years ago, and it was nice. Lots of space so that there isn't a mad jumble of people swarming around the players. We bought a Storm basketball yesterday to get autographed by the players, and also a youth size small Lauren Jackson jersey. It was ridiculously spendy, but if we can get her to sign it (pretty likely that we can), it will look AWESOME framed on the wall. We have an autographed Ray Allen jersey and an autographed Danny Fortson one, but this will be so nice. We also have a mini jersey that I keep threatening to put on Shadow (it is just his size) that is autographed by....I can't remember. Number 1, from years ago, ---oh, Gus Williams. When they retired his number, they had a promotion going on, and we got one. It is so cute! Anyway, we are hoping. Last year, I brought pictures that I had taken of the players to get autographed. That was really nice. Personal. 'I' took the pictures, I didn't buy them or anything. Cool.

So, lets see. Yesterday, we went to the Storm game at 1pm, and the Bite of Seattle was going on, so we got there early and stayed after the game to get a bite and have a drink in the Beer Garden. Justin was finishing up his shift at the Space Needle, so we stopped by to see him and went home with him and barbecued. We brought some boar ribs and boar burger meat, and we grilled that up with some chicken shishkebobs, which were great. Got home late last night and headed to work today.

This blog has become a glorified date book. Whatever. It is mildly interesting to ME, and it keeps a history and everything, so I can look back and see how retarded I am.

Oh. I am not going to my 10 year high school reunion. For several reasons. I have to work that weekend (I work EVERY weekend, so is is always tough to get one off/switch with someone), and I looked up plane tickets to Redmond, and they are twice what I used to pay. So it would be like $400-500 to go, including hotel and car rental, and I need to get time off, etc. I just can't swing it right now. I want to go, I REALLY want to know what people have done with their lives, and I would love for people to see what I have done with MY life, but whatever. That's the way the cookie crumbles. I totally feel that I am a completely different person now than I was in high school. I was a really late bloomer, in terms of figuring out who I am and what I am about. I am still discovering things about myself. In high school, I was just too shy and too scared of people to even think about who I was, but now I have a pretty good grasp. And I want those people to know that. But, whatever. Life goes on. Maybe I will get email addresses or something and learn what happened to everyone that way...

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

More ortho poetry (first draft)

One morning on ortho, while I looked through a chart,
I saw something inside that gave me a start;

My patient, the one in the green stripey gown,
Was injured while drunkenly monkeying around;

Wrestling over the remote control,
Her back went ‘snap’, and she said ‘Whoa!!’

So now she’s here and low and behold—
She’s wearing a lovely T-L-S-O

Another patient was tipsy as well,
When a bush reached out, grabbed him and he fell;

Now this was not a typical fall,
The man fell over an overpass wall!

It seems he was skin popping into his tush,
When he stumbled backwards, over that bush;

Lucky for him, he bounced when he hit,
But with his teeth, his lip he bit;

A broken pelvis and two shattered knees,
He lay there calmly, cool as you please;

The medics found him there, just resting up,
With his 20 gauge needle still stuck in his butt!

All of our patients here have unique histories,
Like the guy whose kite carried him up three stories;

While flying this mammoth behemoth outside,
A wind gust caught it and took him for a ride;

Now, most of us would have let go of the string,
But no, not this guy—kites are his thing;

So thirty feet up into the air,
He flew with the wind ruffling his hair;

But when the wind suddenly stopped,
The kite slowed down and he quickly dropped

Down to the ground, then to our ER
‘Harborview hospital—that’s where you are’

‘Cause whether you come from Bozeman or Kent,
Anchorage or Boise—to Harborview you’re sent

Monday, July 18, 2005

Check this out......


http://www.peepresearch.org/surgery.html
I finished reading the new Harry Potter last night. Not too shabby, considering that I bought it at 0930 Saturday morning, and spent that day with Mom at the Kent Cornucopia Days dragonboat races until 430pm, then came home and went to a movie with Ethan. I worked 12 hours on Sunday also, but still managed to find the time to read the entire stinking 650 page book. Now THAT is dedication! It is a testament to how really good this book is. By far my favorite. It is so good, I am regretting reading it, because I am going to have to wait YEARS before reading what comes next! So.

Lets see, I worked 12 hours yesterday, which means I MUST have something to say about work........well, I ended the last 4 hours of the day with the utmost of confused, brain injured patients who has been with us for well over a month (most patients on the trauma floor stay 5-7 days), and will never leave us, since he is a screamer, curser and all around general pain in the neck to take care of, so none of the nursing homes want to take him. So, he SCREAMS at the top of his lungs quite frequency, but I managed to shut him up for the entirety of my 4 hours with him. My secret--I talked to him for about 10 minutes at the start of the shift, told him the plan, told him exactly when I would get him up in the cardiac chair (sort of stretcher that sits up like a chair and can be rolled around), when he could have pain medicine. I asked him which of his many tattoos was his favorite, where he grew up, etc. After our chit chat, he would still call in on the call light every 5 minutes or so, but no screaming. I made sure that when he DID call, I either told him over the call light that he wasn't due for pain meds yet or that he couldn't get up in the chair yet, etc, or went into his room within a few minutes and saw him face to face. I think he gets most frustrated when his addled mind wants something, but he gets no response. I said a lot of 'no', but he still did not get out of control. Go me! Although, it was stressful and time consuming, but not more than some of our other needy patients, so it was doable. I just hope they don't give him to me tomorrow!!!

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Okay, today I 5S'd (Sort, Simplify, Sweep, Standardize, SOMETHING), which means I did not have patients. Nevertheless, I have a quote for today. From a movie I watched last night which made me want to spit a liquid of some form from my nose. Probably milk, because I think that would be the least painful.

"God is just an imaginary friend for grown-ups"

Come on---that is funny! You must admit. I giggled a bunch over that one. So.........Tomorrow, more 5S'ing, in which I may or may not find humor. More likely may, since it is ridiculous. 5s is basically a thing where we reorganize the nursing station, which is horrible if you are taking care of patients THAT DAY, but okay afterwards, since it is nice and organized. But today and tomorrow, lots of construction and debris, so we shall see. I spend my day apologizing to all the REAL nurses for being in the way....

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

NEW nursing note of the day

Just for Sabrina, I will attempt to put down something interesting from work each day that I am there. I need to be a little more attentive to my blog, so here goes.........

Today I admitted publicly for the first time at work that after taking care of a 'Terry Schiavo"-like patient (not QUITE as bad, but close...she could blink yes or no once in a while), who had a trach and TONS of nasty phlegm/respiratory goo coming out at all time that was uncontainable and unbelievably nasty (when she coughed, which was frequently, if the face tent that she had on to give her some extra oxygen was't perfectly centered on her, the goo that was coughed up would fly out of her trach and across the room. We literally had to DODGE it.) Anyway, after taking care of this unfortunate lady for a 12 hour shift (where the respiratory therapist who was seeing her every 4 hours said seeing her made him depressed, and he hoped that no one in HIS family loved him enough to do CPR on him when he was already so far gone, as she had been), and gagging frequently at the sight and feel of slimy nasty icky mucousy nasty-ness coming from her trach CONSTANTLY, I was unable to make out with my husband. No exchanging 0f slobber in any way. For just a day or so. I didn't want to gag on him. And I would have. It was so nasty!!

Chew on that..........

Monday, July 04, 2005

all right, I worked today, July 4th, and ALREADY there were tons of fireworks injuries from people out on July 3rd with itchy trigger fingers. I had one poor guy who happened to cut his finger pretty badly on a router saw. Worst day of the year to do that! I told him that in the ER, the medicine, neurology, etc docs were not so busy, but the ortho hand/plastics people were SLAMMED with firecracker injuries, so this poor guy was waiting and waiting for a surgeon to be able to take him to the OR to fix his poor finger.

Another guy had some pretty crappy injuries. It seems that he took 50 sparklers, put them in a bucket, then lit them.

Note to self, sparklers ARE NOT TOYS!

They exploded, sent shrapnel over his entire body, blew off one pinky (most of the way), massively dislocated his thumb and another finger on one hand, big cuts on the other one with more fractures, and burned him from his socks to his chest. He had deep, huge wounds on his thigh, knee, calf on one leg, a puncture/burn wound in his groin, burns up both arms and burned areas on his chest. All nasty and grey with firecracker residue, despite the fact that this happened on the 3rd and he was flown in from Montana and sat in our ER for many hours. I was irritated when he came up to me at 1030am. Covered in blood and soot from head to to with only one little halfhearted dressing on ONE of his wounds. I doped him up with some pain meds through his IV, and monopolized 2 of the aides for 45 minutes while we scrubbed him from head to to and covered him with gauze and non-stick dressings to protect his wounds.

Seriously--he looked GOOD. I like a pretty dressing. No sloppy slapped on stuff. Nice and neat and not going to fall off.

Then I went back and added tape labels of deep or shallow so that when he went to the OR a bit later to fix his hands, the OR people will hopefully remove the dressings from the wounds marked 'deep', because they need some serious cleaning that a little saline and gauze on a conscious patient just can't clean off. Nasty grey burned skin. Not cool. But, he was young, actually has a birthday TOMORROW, and will heal and be okay. I hope they can at least save his thumb. From the Xrays, it is seriously dislocated, but if the major nerves and/or blood vessels are stil functional, he should be all right.

I hope this finds you and yours in full possession of all your digits and with intact skin (maybe a mild sunburn if you were so lucky as to have perfect 4th of July weather, as we did here in Seattle)

Sunday, July 03, 2005

So, today is July 3. Yesterday, we spent almost the entire day watching the 4400 marathon on USA, starting at 9am. What a good series! We saw every episode from the very first one, and are thoroughly hooked.

What else.....I am working 8 hours today, and Ethan came in for some OT since his boss screwed him and called in sick for no reason last week (apparently the RN in employee health told him he had a mild fever, so he went home early Thursday and no-showed Friday. How convenient that he is taking vacation all this week. Pure coincidence, I am sure), and at the last minute dumped an entire building worth of locks on Ethan, which he had said he was already working on/finishing up. Turns out, he never even started the job, and the Medic 1 people need to move into their building by Wednesday, and they need the locks on before that, so Ethan is stuck working on it to get things all done. Not fair. It was nice, though, to have several people in the engineering department tell him that they wish HE was the lead and Dean was the shop guy. Nice to feel a little appreciated.

Anyway, we are going over to Justins for a bit to check out his BBQ, then we are off to the Storm game at 6pm. I am working again tomorrow, but only 8 hours. We have not yet decided what we are going to do after that......

You know, this blog is terribly boring. Nothing interesting happens in my life. Always same old, same old, with occasional rants about random things.

Can I just say that I really love my cats? I think we love our cats more than anyone loves their pets (except for the wierd people you hear about that make little cat clothes for their cats and put them in purses and carry them around everywhere) We really like them. And they love us, too. They meet us at the door when we get home, 'plop' so we can pet them, head butt us if we aren't petting them exactly how they want us to, and generally entertain us with their kooky antics. Cats are great.