It's been too long...

So, ya, I've been way lazy about posting. I promise I won't make this one a novel!

I haven't posted because not a heck of a lot has happened, but I think I have some decent updates to report.

Most recently, the wonderful people at work have started orienting me to be able to perform as charge nurse now. It's cool...and ok. Not too crazy business. Mostly, on the weekdays on night shift there is maybe 3 people who are trained to be in charge, and they don't always work on the weekdays. So, since people get sick, take vacation, and don't always work the same days, they're orienting me and I think at least one more (I know they want to hijack John and Christine, but I don't think John has agreed to it yet lol). Either way, it just means I generally don't take a patient and help out on the unit, am knowledgeable about every patient on the unit, am the helper for the unit, the go-between, etc. My first orientation was really nice. A perfect night for first orientation. I have one more orientation, and "Resource" day (meaning I pretty much function as charge nurse on my own but there is someone else there that night that has already trained as charge who I can ask questions of/help from if needed). Anna, one of the night Asst. Clinical Managers who has been the head runner getting me oriented, has already scheduled out when I orient next, am resource, and am in charge by myself lol. I get like $.50 more an hour when I charge, so its not dramatic but still nice. I just hope our staffing stays ok so I can finish out this charge business, which is why it has taken so long for me to orient in the first place!

Next, all I have left to getting my Concealed Handgun License is my fingerprints and to pay the state of Texas $140. I will probably try to get printed September 6th because Brandon needs to be printed, too, and we might as well drive together instead of take 2 trips. I'm not in a hurry. But, I think I will carry a gun when I get my license and, so far, the Springfield XD Subcompact, 9mm. Brandon already has this gun as his backup gun. It is a itty bit big for a concealed gun, but it feels so good in your hand. My favorite gun to shoot so far! (and in case anyone is weirded out by me shooting, I figured I should be proficient in it since I will be surrounded by guns for the rest of my life. If you're like my mom and want to know our stance on when we have kids...ask, I'll tell ya. I've freaking been quizzed about it only 100 times).

I passed my CCRN! That is Critical Care Nurse. Really all it is is a test that covers all areas of critical care: cardiac, neurology, trauma, medical, surgical, multi-systems, stuff like that. I really only am experienced in a small area of critical care so I crammed my butt off (I did try to reschedule but apparently you're locked out of rescheduling 2 business days before the test, so, oops) and passed! I was so nervous because I had typed in the wrong address first and realized when I got there it was wrong, then scrambled to get to the correct address, and once I got there, the proctor had not even arrived! I waited about 7 minutes, then called the company complaining about it. NO WAY was I going to get screwed over because the proctor did not show. But she showed about a minute after I called and all went well! I'm just waiting on my card and information in the mail and then I'll turn it in at work. For having my CCRN or my CNRN (certified neuroscience nurse), I get a $500 bonus, I think, every year. Too bad I can't get 2 bonuses for carrying 2 certifications. I may still take my CNRN, but that I'll wait until the Spring for, so we'll see about that.

Brandon is more than half way through his training. Everyone told him that the training officer he'd have on day shift would be super hard and he loves his current training officer. The guy is practically trying to convince Brandon to try out for the tactical team (their version of SWAT) since he's a team leader or something, and I think Brandon will do that when he's out of training. Which pretty much means we have to live in Denton, not really, but very close. But we drove around Denton looking at neighborhoods the other day and found some possibilities! I'll link a few we drove by:

House A: We like this price and the little description. All the houses in this neighborhood have similar backyards so it would be acceptable for our buttholes. I had to google the address for more pictures. More Pictures

House B: Uhm, a house lol.

House C: This one has wood (or fake wood, I don't care) floors! Score! (carpet + dogs = bad, obviously...least with mine).

House D: Back yard seems cool.

House E: Another house.

Anyways, some of these are a little out of our price range...as in, well, if we wait it out a little longer we could afford them but we'd really like them to be less than $140,000, but we'll see. It was just a reconnaissance event, really. You'll see more psycho Kim posts some day when we're really there and looking inside and out. Just my thoughts for now are 1) I don't give a crap about paint, we can fix that, b) I'd rather have ugly brick and a nice back yard than vice versa, c) gotta have a back yard that isn't tiny. I expect we'll have to walk the pups frequently but I'd like to have at least a decent area for them to expend some energy freely.

That neighborhood is pretty cool, though, because its near a creek. There was another neighborhood I didn't like AS MUCH, but was still nice, that had a lake/pond nearby. That would be cool, too. But we'll see.

And that is pretty much it, I suppose. I have been feeling bad for 2 weeks now and everyone can STOP with the pregnancy comments already! I think I'm more likely to have a clot in my brain than pregnant at this point, thank you very much. As it is, it is likely neither as I feel better today and am currently STARVING for breakfast. So, BYE! :)

About passwords...

So, currently I don't remember if I blogged about the fact that my World of Warcraft account got hacked a little while back. Whatever. It did. I got all my "stuff" back in a very speedy time (go Blizzard). And, no, to anyone who plays WoW, I did NOT currently have my Authenticator active on my account. I'd taken it off because its annoying.

Anyhow, I changed my password and re-added my Authenticator and started thinking about how in the world anyone got ahold of my password to hack into my account.

I never understood why everyone bothered saying crap like, change your password frequently, blah blah blah. I was like...if they're going to get my password, they're going to use it, whether I change it every day or not, that's lame.

I think I understand now. I may be wrong. However, hackers are lazy and slow. They'll hack my account, but it'll take them a while before they attempt to utilize the password. So maybe when that stupid virus got on my old computer it hacked my WoW account password. But it took the hacker people weeks til they hit my account.

So, there. Hackers are lazy, dumb asses who can't even bother to get around to using their illegally acquired information til later. So THAT's why you change your password often. Cause of the a-holes who can't even bother to hack you in a respectable timeline.

OMG, I'm actually blogging again. Beware of length. You've been warned

So, ya, SORRY its been so long. I've just been LAZY.

Brandon will be done with the police academy coming up here soon. I believe he'll start hitting the streets in training in June. He's totally excited. The only thing we're not excited about is gas usage, lol. But we need to keep saving up money for a little bit longer before we start looking into moving. I think living destinations might be around Frisco and Flower Mound. We'll see.

Of course, a contributing factor is that the ol' Toyota Tacoma is no longer functioning as his vehicle. Something about busted A/C compressor, I don't know what he was talking about, especially since he woke me up just to tell me (NEVER a good idea. If you don't need me to do something immediately, don't bother waking me up.) Anyhow, we went out and bought a new truck that night. Turns out, I have a rocking credit score! This baby is all in my name. Here is the truck, courtesy of my iPhone, the next morning.



Because its so pretty it was required that I wash my car the next day. I have pics of that, but you've all seen my car, likely both clean and dirty, so I'll spare you.

If you missed it, here it is, Brandon's getting tazed video lol.



He hurt pretty bad after that but he's getting better now. It tensed his back muscles up a lot and since he'd been anticipating it, he was tense already lol. Fine, maybe its wrong that I'm laughing but we all know he'll be just fine.

Works going fine. It is kinda weird now that I've been there like a year and 9 months and a couple of the new girls will come to me and ask me questions I've found myself asking the senior nurses many times before over the past year and 9 months lol. So, its kinda cool cause they're like holding me to what I should have learned. And, per usual, I give them explanations of what I've learned in much more detail than maybe they desire, but I can't help it! I want them to know why I never give them a direct answer, because with the different patients we have (some are neurosurgery with bleeds, some are neurosurgery without bleeds, some are urology that are at risk for bleeding, some are ENT who are always freaking bleeding, some are plastics AND ENT who have tissue moved from one area of their body to another to function as a better version of the original [like making you new boobs from the fat and tissue in your stomach and getting a tummy tuck out of it at the same time], and so they all require slightly different thought processes!). Either way, it feels weird cause I would still totally describe myself as a newb, but I have to pretend to be an educated/wiser newb now. Eek.

On that note I'm thinking about getting my Critical Care RN and/or my Certified Neuroscience RN. Its just studying and taking a test for both and I'd technically get paid more but it'd be like, $50 a month more or something silly. And, I plan to try to start towards my Masters in Nursing to be a Nurse Practitioner in the Spring of 2011. The applications are due in September for TWU and like October for UTA. I'll apply to both. One requires the GRE, which makes me nervous. But if I go to TWU, I'd take the Family Nurse Practitioner route, if I go to UTA, I can choose between Acute Nurse Practitioner or Family Nurse Practitioner. Acute directs you more towards like working in an ER and such, but I think if I did just Family, I could adapt anyways, just my original training as Acute would be more for people getting sick all of a sudden versus a general population of everyone. So I don't know what to do. Plus, UTA requires an essay of like why you want to be a nurse practitioner and, in short, my answer is because I like to keep learning and finding better ways to "fix" my patients, and the hours and money would be sweeter. I think that's a crappy answer lol. I know I'll love being an NP, but like when I wanted to be an RN I had a great idea of where I wanted to work. Right now, given that NP is a couple years away from actually attaining, I have no idea in what capacity I want to work so I feel like my essay is going to suck. Oh well. I should get to that business soon. Sept and Oct aren't that far away in the scope of things.

Ok, I think that's it. I'll leave you with Bella in HD (HD=happy dog).

To all who may be concerned...

I have FINALLY updated my Google Calendar. It is now accurate to the things that I know that I'm doing. Thanks for reminding be that you guys actually do look at it and should keep it up.

Love you...

It's official...

Brandon is now a new recruit for Denton Police Department! Yay! His first day of paid work was TODAY! Yes! They're paying him to continue attending the police academy he'd already enrolled in! How sweet is that?

He's super thrilled and basically living on cloud 9. He's already got the gun he wants picked out and, I believe, he ordered it. If you wanna know I THINK its called a Sig 2-tone 357.

Anyways, we're really proud of him and he's so happy! He's just weirded out that all those years of hoping for something is at an end cause all he has to do is not screw up training and he's got what he wants! Yay!

Speechless...

So I'm waiting for my patient to show up here at work and Wes is sending me messages about how he's cleaning his house or something. The man is crazy, by the way.

He has so far found 7 harddrives, I think. One listed as broken, 2 that are 500gb, 3 750gbs, and one 1.5 terabyte. Oh, he doesn't really remember buying the last one either. Its just somehow shown up in his house. Oh, and the harddrives were in his kitchen...and he had, I think, 6 forks in his office. Yes, I'm as confused as you are.

So, he's talking about his harddrives and says this to me:

you know what you do with hds that big........ lots of porn
but if that was the case I would be like 90 pounds from wacking off so much

....

And in case you were wondering, this blog post is approved of by Wes.

Yes, ladies, he's still single.

Edit: One more fork was found, another harddrive was found in the living room...

January in summation...

So, this has been a January unlike a couple in the past lol.

Jan 1: Left work, from WORKING NEW YEARS FREAKIN EVE, to find I had a flat tire. By the way, my spare was flat and needed repairs after that day and is still at the tire shop cause it keeps getting forgotten.

Like 2nd week of January or something, we find out Mom's breast biopsy was positive for Cancer. The next week she had the surgery to remove it lol. Course that was followed by the good news of not in the lymph nodes and they feel confident they removed it all. She starts radiation as soon as she is healed.

Brandon started school. Thats been good. He's a bit bored with it, but oh well. He's doing a good job at it.

I got to see Wes! It was fun when he came in town! He even got to see where I worked! I'm sure he's freaking thrilled about that.

The weather has, per usual, been all over the freakin place.

We celebrated our ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY!!! We have not eaten the left over top layer of cake. I fear we won't because of Brandon's fear to not eat anything older than like 3 days, even if its been properly preserved.

I've had alcohol like three times this whole month. Maybe. Thats kinda low lol.

I've done pretty decently this past week of working out most days of this week.

I got a stomach bug and had to call in sick for my on-call shift.

My dogs are great-ish. Chewy, mom's dog, was declared fat again so I gotta find out where we failed him there since Brandon and I are responsible for his feeding portions. Ribby is still fat as always. I can't figure out how to fix that.

Though I'm not raiding in World of Warcraft, my toons, all of them, are doing pretty awesome.

Oh, and it seems my car has a radiator fluid leak again. Bah.

I'm looking forward to February. And warmer weather. And the sun. I miss the sun.