Monday, July 31, 2006

Mr. and Mrs. David and Cynthia Cooper (assuming there is a name change coming.......)

Sunday, July 23, 2006

Blood and guts and the Sonics going to Oklahoma

Is it bad that my patient just told me that he is from Oklahoma and I was tempted not to give him his pain medicines???? Just to clear things up, my cats did NOT die, and the health of everyone in my family is okay........but they sold my beloved Sonics and Storm to a group of investors from Oklahoma city, and the team is about 99.9% certain to be moving to Oklahoma city after the end of next season. That is a total of around 80 games a year, depending on playoffs, that Ethan and I will not be attending. Another 80 games that we won't be watching. Three walls of our sports room that are now meaningless. $3000 a year in tickets, plus countless dollars on drinks, dinners, and merchandise purchased each year. Plus several hundred dollars worth of playoff tickets, parking fees, and general entertainment dollars that we desperately want to spend, but will not be.
Two years ago, after the Sonics' unlikely rise to greatness and deep run in the playoffs, I wrote a passionate post about how much I loved this team, and what it all meant to me, and how excited I was for the next year to come. In October 2004, I watched the Storm win a world championship, screaming my lungs out, losing my voice and taking 350 pictures in one game of every moment. I knew it would never be that good again. The first championship must always be the sweetest. But I thought I would have other chances, other seasons, other amazing games to watch. Ethan and I always said that we knew we would eventually see the the Sonics win a world championship, because we would never give up our tickets, and it MUST eventually happen. Maybe when we were old, but eventually.
Not now. One season, then they are gone. We have no one to root for. Once a player leaves, you have to let them go. I was so upset when they traded Desmond Mason away with Gary Payton a few years ago. I see him play and have a soft spot for him, and hope he does well, but I don't follow him, and I don't want him to play well against US. When they are gone, they are gone. You root for the TEAM, not the players. Now the team is gone. Do we drive down to Portland a couple times a year to become distant Blazer fans?? Do we get tickets to the Husky games and forgo the NBA altogether?? We haven't decided yet. All we know is this is painful, horrible, and not okay. Oklahoma-not OK. The new Seattle pro-basketball fan anthem.

Because the Sonics were sold by the owner of Starbucks to a groupl of people guaranteed to move them away from the Pacific Northwest, we are boycotting Starbucks. It is easy for Ethan, since he has never actually gone there, but I did some math and figured that I spend on average $792 a year there. Lots of things I could buy for that amount.......

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Anyone who knows me well will understand that it feels like a part of my heart has just been torn out.

I spoke with Davinie and Steve a tiny bit about Denny creek.....it is about 40 minutes or so drive from Seattle, and a 1 mile hike to get there. Lots of smoother rocks with natural water slides and little pools, and not enough water anywhere to wash anyone away. Lots of families and schools come here to play. Jobie and I went here last summer, I am sure there are pictures of it on my hiking blog somewhere. (this is where I took the unicorn picture, and the pictures where it looks like Jobie is climbing a sheer rock wall, but he is actually lying on his side with the camera just turned)

A bit more info here: http://naturalwaterslide.com/photos/displayimage.php?album=9&pos=47

Just a suggestion....we could also stay closer to home and go to the community center across the street. The pool is open to the public from 1pm to 2pm on Saturdays, and there is an outside wading pool for kids that is free and open noon to 7pm, as long as it is a nice day (forecast says 80's). The kiddie gym is open on Fridays, but not Saturdays, so that is a no-go. (It is 930am to 130pm on Fridays)

lots of smooth shallow areas

kids playing in the shallow water

bigger waterslide

Monday, July 10, 2006

yeah, so these are not the pictures I am trying to put on here, which is why the captions don't match and half of them are upside down....hello hates me....whatever. I quit for now...enjoy me upside down

Lots o fishies!!

Fancy fishies

Master snorkeler

Hot on the beach

Feeding the big fishies bananas!

Friday, July 07, 2006

I might get a new job.

I am applying for another job. I would still work in the same place, same hospital, same floor, with the same people, but it would be a step away from bedside nursing and a step towards management. A pay raise is involved, which would be cool; the position would give me a set schedule, and quite possibly weekends off, although I would start work at 6am instead of 7am.
The position is a discharge coordinator, which basically means that you meet with the doctors for every patient on the unit every morning, and figure out what needs to be done for these patients to go home, then make sure that no snags come up. So you let the nurse taking care of that patient know any things they need to do, make sure tests get done, make sure the MDs fill out the paperwork they are suppoesed to on a timely schedule, etc. Lots of interacting with people, problem solving, and communicating. I am good at communicating. I don't butt heads with people, I am able to get my point across, and I can anticipate issues (at least with discharges--my patients LEAVE when they are supposed to, I look out for this kinda stuff already now, just would be doing it for the entire floor instead).

The girl who is doing this now (in a trial position that they are making permanent), totally recommended me to Jack, the manager who makes the ultimate decision. She thinks I would be perfect for the job (felt like a nice pat on the back to me!), and told him so. She wants to work just weekends (has a baby), and that would be fine for me! No more Seahawks game clashes, and I would get off early enough that there would be no Sonics/Storm issues, either.

Gotta clean up that resume' and get going!! Wish me luck!!

Thursday, July 06, 2006

all is well. the bank is doing all the work, putting the money back, and I have a new account with them now.........

Talk about fun.....

not so fun.


Not so fun is discovering that someone made $2220.07 in withdrawals from my bank account last Thursday. Which I didn't know until receiving three letters in the mail last night from my bank saying that I am now quite overdrawn. Not cool.

BUT...the bank says if I come down there today and fill out some fraud paperwork, they will credit the money back to me within 24 hours and investigate this and hopefully find the asshole who did this and prosecute them fully!!!!! Talk about easier than I thought it would be! I am sure there is a snag coming up, but at least it is STARTING out easy. I may need to get a new account, or maybe can just change the ID and stuff so my paychecks can still be deposited there....I will have to find out. The ID of the withdrawals says it is for Paypal, but when I spoke with the Paypal people, they have no record of this money coming through my paypal account (duh...it wasn't me!), and they looked that up by me giving them my bank account info--not my paypal info, so there is no paypal record of any sort of activity with my bank account. Should be easy enough for the bank to verify.

Can you imagine how crappy this would be if this was my only bank account, and I had nothing in savings?? No money to pay the mortgage, credit would go all to hell, all of that, and it not even being my fault!! I put a fraud alert on the three credit bureaus, so if anyone tries to open any accounts in my name, they have to call my cell phone number and verify with me first, so that is a bit of security, but this still is so crappy!!

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

In honor of everyone else updating their blogs with what they did for the 4th, here is the Amerson family report.

We got up at 10am, putzed around, twiddled our thumbs, tried to think of something to do, then cleaned house for about 5 hours, watched some TV, played on the compuer, and went to bed.


We are not big fans of the 4th.


Although the fireworks didn't really scare the cats this year..............(they kept ME up though!!)