Prosaic Paradise

We did get a new professor last week. I think he got a taste of why we can’t keep a professor… we all spent a good hour hashing out the situation. Whiners whined, and I got called out as some kind of jackass, once I tried to get things straight. I am holding out a strong hope that half the class withdraws and asks for their money back as they were threatening to do.

I studied with my buddy two nights this week but it was slow going. I really hate this semester. I keep trying for that joy of learning feeling, but it is elusive. I’ve never been a great self-teacher. I don’t know if that’s something to be ashamed of or what, but I just do better when I have a leader, a teacher, and a structure. Most drummers supposedly teach themselves, for instance. It never occurred to me not to get lessons.  When I was working as a network tech, I was screwed maybe from the beginning because there was plenty of “here’s the book, try to know it” business.I have so many friends who operate that way and I have a great respect for that. I wish I worked that way.

I’m not really that discouraged and I’m sure we’ll have a new syllabus and plan tomorrow at class. Last week brought more anxiety due to obvious hostility from classmates than anything else. Ah, well. a mere 6 weeks left.

Tags: class, School

This is the first and maybe last post in a (non?) series I will call Fun For Anal-Retentives. That reminds me; I should write about my renewal of faith in psychoanalysis (if not Freudian) but I’ll save it. Particularly since this month is NaBloPoMo and without doubt by next week I will be stretching to fill my daily space!

At any rate, since my last car (The Ford Aspire Is Dead, Long Live The Ford Aspire) I’ve kept somewhat meticulous spreadsheets of the interesting data on my gas receipts. I’ve managed to keep about 80% of my actual mileage’s worth of these receipts tracked (I have about 44K miles on the car now) in a google spreadsheet.

Apart from the somewhat boring graphable mileage, I can also keep track of how gas prices are (I end up buying a tank 1-2 times a week, so it’s not the best sample) and if I were just slightly more meticulous I could do something fun with maps. Now, I stay in a window that’s not at all unlike what the maker says is right for the Mazda 3, but since I do this the nice thing is that if there were a consistent dropoff due to some mechanical problem, I’d know about it.

All it takes is making sure you always reset the trip meter and writing that value down on the receipt when you get gas. I take all the receipts out when I clean out my wallet periodically and pile them up for when I have an extra five minutes about once a month and voila. I guess it could be considered a waste of time since mostly what I get is the satisfaction of knowing my car’s working right (and the satisfaction of making a spreadsheet) but it’s so little time that it’s worth it!

Tags: Cars, organizing

…on a hillside. It was a bad thing, then. Now I kind of have a dream of living in a commune of little boxes on a hillside. Fortunately for me, someone is traveling that path already, so I can see that it works.

“I am supplying little houses for a Buddhist compound (also programmers), which might be a model for other communities.”

Model, indeed. Someday perhaps I will find like-minded individuals who want to do something like this with me. (And yes, I would need a separate shed for music, unless the “main house” could keep that sort of thing.) (Oh man! Solar powered music studio. I wants it!)

Tags: Tiny Houses

We still don’t have a permanent professor. It’s been 3 class sessions with either no teacher or a sub, and 3 class sessions with no lecture to speak of; maybe I’d call it 4 since one of the subs was a little lost. This is pretty tough for me, feeling a little rudderless in a difficult class, but for people who were just trying not to fail it’s somewhat devastating.

Full disclosure: I got an 88 on the lecture exam (I got the exact set of questions wrong which I had marked on the side of my scantron sheet that I would get wrong – there’s a lesson in that somewhere.) and an 81 on the lab practical. Most of my class feels this is stellar and grew up in a world of curves or wonders why that is disappointing when they all got something in the 40-60 range. I, on the other hand, find this totally unacceptable, particularly after studying my butt off. So I’d like to talk to my professor about what I can do better next time. Only I don’t have one.

I’m not that worried about it apart from the fact that since vacation it’s been hard to rein in my attention span and focus on the textbook. But my problems aren’t quite as rough as those of my favorite study buddy (not the aryan study group leader I’ve told some of you about – she dropped the class) who is coping with other stuff outside of class and is playing catch-up on any and all math skills. I really want to help her succeed. Which is where you guys come in.

I’m trying to sort out some ways to help with her test anxiety. I sure have some test anxiety of my own, but I think my friend’s may go beyond and are limiting her ability to get things she knows translated out onto the test. I’ve studied with her; I’ve quizzed her and asked her questions and made her explain stuff back to me. I know she does know or has the ability to know. But her test grades are not reflecting that. And from what she’s been saying, it’s because she gets into the test and freaks out and decides she doesn’t know anything. I told her about my experiences with automatic thoughts and we tried to tease out the direction her mind goes when she gets into the test situation, but I’m by no means a professional.

So does anyone out there have experience with test anxiety and some ways to overcome it? Maybe I could set up some real test taking situations and she and I could self-test together and grade each other or something. I really want to help but I’m not sure how.

So that’s current school. I’ve also been thinking a great deal about future school, and trying not to limit myself. I am still following my original plan with a target entry to HCCC for the abbreviated Associate’s in 2010. But in the meantime I am looking around at other programs all over the country to see what the course offerings are and who offers what kind of RN to BSN or RN to MSN, what kind of specialties, etc. In my groping and stumbling (there are so many ways your nursing career and education can go. it’s kind of ridiculous.) I discovered a bunch of pages about forensic nursing. And I got really excited. There seem to be two schools of thought:

1. “Don’t get excited, Forensic Nursing isn’t all about CSI and cool dead bodies.”
and
2. “People think Forensic Nursing is boring, but just think! You could help solve crimes!”

I intend to look into this more thoroughly because apart from my desire to someday specialize in psych nursing this kind of piqued my interest. In the meantime I’ve been adding every nurse blog I can find to google reader (which I just started using – and almost demands a whole other post!) in the hopes of getting as diverse a set of public internet opinions on the field as I can.

Tags: Career, nursing, School

Last night as the “next time on” for Grey’s Anatomy heralded the return of Kevin McKidd, I started to wonder why us Americans are big suckers for guys from other English-speaking countries strapping on an American accent and playing snarky anti-heroes.

The Moonlight guy: Australian
The Life guy: British
The Life on Mars guy: Irish
House: British
Rome guy/now on Grey’s: Scottish

Or maybe this says something about my tastes. I love each of these shows (except House but I love Hugh Laurie) and it’s based at least in the first three cases mainly on the protagonist. In the case of Moonlight, you have the sensitive vampire standard. He wears black leather, he fights bad guys, but you (supposedly) have that whole “wild animal lurking inside” business. In the case of Life, you have a previously-caged unpredictable cop who plays by his own set of rules. I’ve only seen one ep of Life on Mars, but our hero already threw down with his asshole boss (Harvey Keitel) and by definition is a fish out of water. Kevin McKidd is now playing a “bad ass” military doc who’s been to Iraq and back a few times and will trach you with a drinking straw and probably chew off his own arm if he were in a trap.

I wonder what it is that each of these actors brought to the table to get cast instead of natives. Not that I have a problem with this, lest I was not clear. I do after all have a weakness for both redheads and dudes with accents. But these guys are not sporting what from my perspective is an accent!

Can anyone out there think of other instances?

Tags: TV

That is how I used to feel, as a kid, when standing on the sand at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. I used to give a good bit of thought to the idea of how I would find or contact my parents when the ocean swept me away to France. I grew out of that, but never quite forgot it. So at some point last week, when we were questing further out to [oh wow – “On The Shoreline” from the Genesis Archives just came on the ipod – spoooooky!] find the far edge of that sandbar, I shouted out, “Look out France, here I come!” And I wasn’t talking to Todd.

I think I had given up on ever really bothering to swim in the ocean again when I first moved inland. But no, I really do enjoy it after all. Sand in the crotch of one’s bathing suit and all. I found that I could sit in the extra-big crunchy sand when the tide was out and just look at all the little ground down bits of rock and glass for an indefinite period of time. I found I could fight my way out to that sandbar and pretend to know what the heck you do in order to bodysurf. It was really, really good.

I got a lot of other stuff out of vacation too; time with old friends and yet older friends. A massage at the spa by a lady who shares my taste in TV shows and my hometown. Several amazing homemade meals. Popovers for the first time. The knowledge that a ranger is my new favorite D&D class to play. Lessons in DSLR use. Time to finish a book I’ve been trying to finish for over 6 months. To see my parents. Curlier hair. New shoes. And, to top it all off, a general sense of well-being.

I actually haven’t been on many real vacations in my adult life. A few years back we went to New Orleans for a week, but other than that all “time off” has been parceled into little weekend trips or mental health days. This week I’ve felt clearer-headed, calmer, and generally more prone to thinking things like “I know this work is hard but I can do it!” or “Oh, our prof quit on us but left everyone with crap for grades on the last exam? We can overcome it!” than I was before I left. Back when I was just thinking “ohshitohshitohshit” for the most part about everything.

Phew.

Tags: travel

Before I manage to get up to date on anything else, I have to recount the only dream I remember from vacation.

Todd had formed us into a team that played extreme chicken wing soccer. This was a sport where you kicked chicken wings into goals. The extreme part was that we had to break into churches that had marble floors to play on. I was the goalie. I decided I could not abide the blasphemy anymore and tried to quit. All the while trying to stop chicken wings from getting past me. I was also tired of feeling greasy.

We made it home safe and the cats have forgiven us!

Tags: Dream

My most recently updated list of Hobbies I Wish I Had More Time To Pursue:

• bowling
• photography
• singing (chanties, madrigals)
• sewing
• taking a drawing class*
• dance OR weightlifting
• Whittling!!!

I am sure I’m forgetting something.

* I have always thought I was terrible at drawing but at the same time, haven’t really learned anything since like, 3rd grade art class, so who knows.

Tags: to do list

I had a lovely weekend last weekend, even though everything was all about my future career and not necessarily about living in the moment. The main thing I had planned this weekend was a trip to Johns Hopkins, where they were having an open house for prospective nursing students. Let me tell you… this was an exciting event. For the first 1.5 hours. And then I recieved the sheet which details the cost of attending.

But before I tell you about that, let me explain that JHU has the 2nd ranked Nursing school in the country, and they are quick to tell you why. The primary motivator of my attendance at this thing was the fact that I had nothing better to do & their extensive international program, but there was so much more. It is a little unnerving to hear the sort of breathless assurances that Hopkins nurses can write their own ticket; of course I think to myself can I settle for anything less than the best? Immediately before I attended this session, I was perfectly happy with the concept of getting my Associate’s at HCCC and figuring the rest out later. The other hopefuls seemed like really driven, smart people and I sure love being surrounded by driven, smart people, even if it makes me look less so by comparison.

But, I ask you, where are all these driven, smart future nurses going to get $60,000 – $80,000?? For a 13 or 21 month program? When private student loans are drying up and more doctors’ offices make due with LPNs and MAs? Anyways, that discussion was terrifying. (According to the session speaker, some of these students are former mechanical engineers, attorneys, and priests – so OK, second-career-seeking professionals might have access to more money.) On the way home from this adventure, I called my go-to friend for pragmatic advice. She set me straight and reminded my moony-eyed self that they hold these things to sell you the program. And just how much money sixty thousand dollars really truly is. All of this is food for thought, and I plan to do more research on my options somewhere between HCCC and JHU.

And then, inspired by the fact that you have to be a stellar student to be in the 25% of applicants who are admitted to the JHU nursing program, I studied my butt off the rest of the weekend. I could have made better use of my time, sure, but having the study group over was a huge boon. Come to find out, not quite huge enough, because I made some dumb mistakes on the exam, and utterly blanked on several of the lecture exam questions. I forgot about the existence of the gastrosplenic vein… I mislabeled the veins in the leg of the cat… I got a formula for cardiac output delta backwards… It wasn’t an unmitigated disaster, but it was not an A. This tells me one thing, mainly, which is that I really do require classroom time and teacher interaction to succeed. I can read things all day, but in the end interacting with others is the best way for me to learn something.

Actually, I forgot, I had a really great band practice with the (still unnamed) band where we actually did some stuff with GarageBand. It was the first time I’d tried it and we barely scratched the surface but did capture several good songwriting/improv moments. Definitely refueled my musical creativity. Most recent rejected band names: Herding Cats, Hey Girl Hey!, Platypussy (taken, of course). I am so useless for picking band names as I tend to dislike all of them.

Saturday afternoon I couldn’t stay awake long enough to read a paragraph of my textbook, so I had Jack follow me on a walk. We went down Montgomery, cut over to Prince George, and ultimately decided to come back on Main. This was our mistake, because the fun little secondhand furniture place was going out of business. Yay, new chairs! Boo, we kind of had to carry them home on our backs. I dispensed with my mod chrome and white leather chairs via freecycle the very next day. The new chairs are clearly some kind of school chairs which we should make a fun project of refinishing. Sure, when we retire someday.

I’ve been taking some photos for a 31 day challenge. Here are some highlights although there are naturally ten more cat pictures if you click through. On my list of “hobbies I wish I had more time to pursue” photography is rising in the ranks.

Tags: Band, Career, School

I have just had a very intense work day/week. I keep reminding myself that it’s not giving me the dreads, like I have had before with jobs, the kind where you wake up and want to roll over and smoke a cigarette. (Yes, that is gross; it was not a great time in my life, to be sure.) So far I am rolling with the punches and putting out fires (many of which are from my own smoldering heedless matches I tossed weeks ago). At least I am earning my keep.

I got some more work done on my sleeve; I added a giant hogweed and a the volcano. I think this is the first time I can say I would have done things a little differently now that it’s on my skin, but it’s a catch-22 – I doubt I could have envisioned those things prior to the work being done. There is one thing I feel confident we can add as an afterthought, so that’s cool. I think this puts me over the halfway done mark for sure, as well. Wow.

The Genesis fans like it; in fact I took my arm to the east coast fan club anniversary shenanigans last weekend. I’ve said over and over again how amazing it is to be surrounded by people who get your particular interest so thoroughly. This time it was more casual and social, since there was no show, just socializing. I got to just chat with people. There was even some impromptu jamming. Oh, and of course we projected the Rome concert on the wall and watched it together, as well as playing silly theme-appropriate games. Whatever, I loved it all. There was even a dog in a Genesis t-shirt. And that image to the left is not an earthquake in Jersey, that’s the sight of everyone air drumming together. I’m in there somewhere. Nerds.

Slight musical left turn: if there are any aussies out there who can do me a favor, how would you feel about going to your local big box music store and picking me up a copy of Mental Notes by Split Enz? The fan club is in a push to get the record gold status in Australia (it was their debut and apparently never quite made it) and I want to help, but it’s hard from here. It’s as old as me! God, I love this record. That guy at the link says it better than I can.

In class we’ve been doing cat dissection for three sessions. The cats are getting rank. My lab partners are doing a crap job of it, as you may know sometimes arteries are small and hard to see, and they almost destroyed a bunch of the important ones we have to identify. It is hard to not display my anger with them. Nonetheless, I think I have the iliolumbar straight from the internal and external iliac…

I am going on vacation in just over a week. I am thinking of trying the Curly Girl no-poo method on my hair. If anyone out there is a no-poo fanatic, let me know. It is really hard to find hair products without “cones”.

GREAT FUCKING NEWS: Beardfish to play Nearfest. I AM FUCKING THERE. No matter what.

My foot is still effed up some but my teeth have no new cavities.

And now for my brief TV thoughts… (includes Fringe, Supernatural, Grey’s, PR, Life, and more…) Continue Reading »

Tags: Music, Tattoo, TV, work