I Love Mean Girls

Well, they're not necessarily mean, but girls really do just drive me absolutely crazy sometimes. Even though it's been a year now since I started working in the emergency room, I find I still have trouble adjusting. One of the toughest things, honestly, to readjust to is the presence of women. Lots of women. Going to college for 4 years in a predominantly male environment followed by a brief career in engineering (where I worked with a whopping ZERO women) leaves me a bit out of touch with women. I think I'm charming and charismatic, but I forgot just how much word does travel at the workplace.

See, working in a hospital is akin to a high school. You've got your cliques, your different social standings, and of course, lots of people in the same boat as you. If anybody says or does anything unusual (either at or outside work) somehow almost everybody knows about it within a matter of time. Joe got fired? Within a day everybody knows why and how. Suzy kissed John? Everybody knows. While it does make the job interesting, it also gets really annoying when it's you involved (as I'm finding out now). Lack of personal privacy isn't something anybody wants. And when in the hell did my life get interesting enough for other people to care? Silly coworkers. If I don't get any further in my current endeavor, at least I got a few dates with a beautiful, fun nurse out of the deal. So that's hardly a loss. [Though I'm not planning on giving up just yet.]

Alexandria came down (very briefly) to help her family move all their stuff from their old house to their temporary rental house while their new one is being built. Although I only got to spend an hour or so with her (and boo to her lame-ass husband for not coming along, work or not!) it was fun. Elise dropped into town the weekend prior, and I got to spend some quality time with her, though THAT was too brief too. I really need to see her more before she heads up to Yale.

Fantastic Four was outstandingly mediocre. No real story to speak of, but it was very pretty. Catch it in the cheap theaters. It was a decent popcorn movie, a good way to waste an empty afternoon, but not worth paying serious cash to see.

A truck load of new nurse techs have been hired at work, and apparently I've been thrust into a "teacher" role. It seems whenever I've done a procedure recently, whether it be a splint, drawing blood cultures, or small things like applying tube-gauze to a sutured finger, I've had an audience. I took 4 people up to the helipad the other day. It's just odd to see all these young 19 and 20-year-old techs running around and them ask me questions about all sorts of stuff. Sunday we had 15 techs at work, though only maybe 5 are properly trained to do everything an ER NT is able to do, so the rest of them are glorified stockers/transporters. 15 was too many people. 5-6 less would've been ideal.

I've started reading the new Harry Potter book and I enjoy it so far. Haven't read enough yet.

Chemistry and Biology classes are going well as I could hope. School will be over in a couple of weeks and I'll start up another monstrous murderer's row stretch of work - something like 20 out of 23 days. Should be fun. Maybe I'll throw a 24-hour shift in there.

Emulation on the PSP is amazing. Mike Tyson's Punch-Out! is still one of the best time-wasters of all time.

Not a lot left to say here. All the juicy details have been left out because I don't really feel like typing them out, but you can get the general idea. Life's going well, and I like to just sit back and think of the fact that one year from now I'll have my MCAT score and a decent idea as to what kind of medical school I can get into (if at all).

And congrats to everybody starting new forms of education in the fall:
Laura's going to Wake's divinity school, Elise to Yale's psychology program, and Amanda C's admission to Penn. Good job, kids. I wish you ALL the best of luck.