Windchaser

Okay guys, I've come to a decision. I was sat there staring as the screen this lunchtime trying (and failing) to get ANY words done at all anywhere on my current story that I'm just going to ditch it and start the next one. I know, I know, it's such a lame cop-out, but seriously? Storyline sucks and is starting to look like swiss cheese, it's so full of plotholes, and I'm bored with it anyway. "Future Tense" sounds like so much more fun to write, and anyway, I can actually PLAN that one out! Work out where I'm going to take it before I start working on it, that sort of thing. So, is awesome, y?

Ki, anyway.

Today we had an EPIC CAKEOFF in work; I forget what exactly triggered it, but it was something like one of my colleagues returning to work from a shortish break had learned to make baked cheesecake, and another friend essentially said "I bet mine's better than yours" and Lo! Today we get to work and there's two cheesecakes in the fridge, one from each "contestant" and a voting card to say which you liked best (By drawing a little tally line on it). The raspberry cheesecake (raspberries on top, not in it) won by a comfortable margin. ;)

I love some of the patients we get at work. One little old lady on one of the surgical wards wanted to do her own insuling, and basically told the nurse "oh yes dear, I inject 150units Novorapid in the morning to last me the whole day!" *headdesk*

I seem to have spent all my time on the wards destroying CDs since Monday, though. I filled a 2.5l sharps bin with them on Monday when I was covering Capel - it took me almost an hour, and 20 minutes of that was just popping the tablets out of their blisters! - and another one today on Washbrook.

I did get a little praise from a rather cratchity old lady, though. I wanted to speak to her friend about her tablets, and basically just confirmed the medicines she took to make sure we'd got her doses right, and the first lady was very miffed that I was the first person who'd treated them like they were still intelligent people and not senile. :\ She was going on about how "all those other girls - and I'm olg enough to be their grandmother - have acted like they were teaching me how to do my tablets and I've done them myself for the last 20 years! I do the cryptic crossword in the Telegraph, you know!"

We're been joking in MI about how little we remember of French lessons at school. We were trying to read the German "Ritter sport" packet without Kirsten's help (she's German so it'd have been cheating ;) ) and it went on to how "usefull" the French we actually remember IS. ¬_¬ I mean, we're talking really vital stuff, here, like: "Je voidrais un pain au chocolat/une glace" and "ou est la piscine?" (or "Ich mochte eine tasse tee mit milch" for German). Because if you go to Europe, the most vital thing to know what to ask is "I would like a cake/cup of tea".

You've probably already noticed I can never think of anything good to do for April Fools' Day. ¬_¬ (Although I wasn't lying about the writer's block). It's been a bit of a boring day in comparison with some - the day started off weird, when one of the girls I get the bus with in the mornings told me Ipswich Buses were changing their timetable AGAIN... At first I was all "ha ha yeah April fool amirite?" but then got to work and found the new timetables on their website. Seriously, Ipswich Buses are so useless - they've not actually ANNOUNCED the timetable changes for that route EITHER time it's changed in the last 6 months. (First time, the bus just didn't turn up, and when it DID arrive it didn't stop because it was full from all the earlier passengers. ¬_¬) Then of course there's the increase in prescription charges - £7.10 to £7.20. And no-one ever believes us - ha ha yeah right April Fool! No, honestly, the price has gone up - I know it's the start of the new financial year and everything, but seriously, you think they'd wait until the 2nd to put prices up. :P

Some April Fool jokes have been pretty good, though. I particularly liked Moo's (and the annoying thing it, I would TOTALLY have bought it, too, if it hadn't been a joke. ;) ) :D They had a great one last year, too, with a GIANT SIZED business card (I think it was A2 or A3 size XD ) "to give you that added impact!" Pizza Hut's was silly and pretty obvious (although it's fun to click through the pages to the end), and CafePress's was too, but at least they made an effort. :D I was a bit disappointed that they didn't also do jokey fake "content" pages for their CafePress-o-pedia. ;)

Then of course we also had the UNFUNNY "pranks" during the day, too. I mean, I KNOW people will use April Fools' to be hurtful and unfunny, but this is just stupid. :P (We got an MHRA drug alert with "not an April Fool!" written on it as well. I was kinda amused by it. ;) )

The weather outside is awesome, for a change, and bawww, we're missing it. :( It's sunny and cloudless and although there's a bit of a breeze it's lovely and cloudless. BUT I can finish my gardening when I get home, so that's good!

OK this is the end of your infodump. Whee. :)

Ughhhh it's been so busy. My brain has disintegrated.

Right now, I'm working in the cytos unit, because Ian is on holiday - and it's all busy and all going to the crazies. *cries* First of all, Monday last week, the senior tech informed us she had a bad back, so that threw a bit of a spanner into the efficiency. Things were mostly okay until thursday, when she was off sick, and things just went to pot from there. First the air conditioning started leaking water all over the floor. Then the printer broke (literally, a bit snapped off it). Then the network went down and we couldn't access Cytolog (the program we use to make chemotherapy). Then we had TWO intrathecals (the ones that go into the spine, oo-er) to make and they SCARE me. And then to top it all, the ward forgot to tell us they'd not given us the chart to make the doxorubicin they needed for one protocol, and we had to come out at 10PM (!) on Friday night to make it! ARGH

And I'm so behind on uploading SBM to my ElJay. :(

And WTF? I live in SUFFOLK, not the US.

( Tornado warning as storms hit region )

And it WOULD elect to be thundery and rainy WHEN I'M SODDING ON-CALL, wouldn't it. *huffs*

And finally... our local newspapers have such classy headline stories:
( Woman traps finger in window frame )

*lols inappropriately*

Edit@09:47: NOES another intrathecal! *dies on floor* At least I haven't had time to OMG PANIC about this one, they announced they needed it about 30 minutes before they want to give it, not several days in advance. ¬_¬

*froths at mouth*

Another week halfway gone by... This week, I'm in “Stores and Distribution”, which basically means “small warehouse”. Parts are fun – like being able to skive off in the IV store and listen to the radio on the pretence of getting IV-bags and sip feeds. Other parts are just doing my nut in, like when 4pm rolls around and the work dries up, as it has done for the past two days.

I'm anticipating handbags at dawn in the department very soon – it's not Star Wars, it's Staff-Christmas-Meal Wars. :P One of the ladies on the department had got a meal arranged, and there was very little interest in it (of the “£20 for a meal? You must be joking!” sort) so she un-arranged it, and was going to do a sort of buffet thing instead, got the venue sorted and what have you... Went on holiday, and came back to find out that another one of her colleagues had gone ahead and arranged another meal, this one being a full four course meal (if you count the coffee) and blah blah, AND more expensive, and she's sold out already. So needless to say, her “rival” (the original meal organiser) has put up some very snide “contrary to popular belief, the ORIGINAL STAFF CHRISTMAS MEAL is still going ahead, and the price is STILL VERY REASONABLE” posters. I think we'll be keeping well out of the way, for now...

ANYWAY.

My birthday was on Monday just gone, and that was pretty cool, for once – very often I've had my birthday when I've either been home from Uni and with no way to get to my Uni friends, or else (like last year) I stayed in Bath to work and all my friends had gone home for summer (humbug). Even though I had to work it was a good day – four of us went down into town after work, went for a meal at Old Orleans (which was very nice even if they did overcook the steak. I knew I should have gone for the chicken) then on to the cinema, just in time to catch the day's last showing of “I, Robot”. And I think I'm probably horribly biased, given my pre-existing love of robots and their kin, but I loved that film. :) Fell in love with Sonny, he was THE greatest, EVAR. *nods* ;)

There were some little weirdnesses on the way home, though – we drove past a church, just on the way home, when it had got dark and traffic was slowing and what have you, and there were some REALLY bright lights flashing inside – like there was a little self-contained lightning storm going on inside. It was bizarre – aside from the fact it was 11pm, I doubt it was to do with a service... ;)

We had a mad thunderstorm last night too – middle of the night, got woken up by the rain hammering on my window, then there was a flash of lightning, and I (in my still-mostly-dreaming state) thought “oo flash I wonder if that means thunder and lightning”, and of course along can a clap of thunder so loud it must have been right above us, very nearly. If I'd been more awake I'd probably have gone to look out of the window and watch it, but as I was still more asleep than I was awake I just thought “maybe I should stop that download and turn the PC off as I don't want it to blow up zzzz” even though the computer had been off since about 8pm.
They say that the storms are from the last little bits of that hurricane that was busy taking Florida apart a few days ago – and yeah, the weather is pretty mad, like that flood just gone in Cornwall.

My hepatitis jab is paining me now. :( Occupational Health said I had to go in to have any boosters/immunisations I hadn't had, and this was one of them – normally I'm all right with injections (so long as I don't have to look) but this one hurt. I keep on expecting to be able to feel a little bubble of liquid in my arm where they injected it (as it goes into the muscle). Although it probably didn't help that I walked into a doorframe on the way out of the IV store today (*grs*). And my knee is still playing up – saw the physio on Friday, who said it was probably nothing more important than a muscle strain, but that doesn't stop it being annoying – every time I crouch to pick things up off the shelves, it aggravates it, and I've only just had my manual handling training so I have no excuse for putting my back out for not lifting properly. *gr* And now my elbow hurts *ows* So basically, I'm coming to the conclusion I'm falling to pieces. :P

There. I done ranting now, off to eak Nik-Naks.

Checking in. :) No, I've not fallen off the face of the earth, even though it's taken more than a month to actually post a new update thing... Just been too busy/distracted/wired to want to go writing in a diary. :P Plus it's not the easiest thing to do, on a beach. YAY beach!

Anyway. Let's see. Started my new job last Monday, and all the “eek new job” feelings I'd been having just vanished so fast once I got in the swing of things. I'm already reasonably competent at using the computer system (ie making labels. Then correcting the stupid mistakes I made on them, like accidentally booking the medicine out to the wrong consultant and so on. Thankfully those are few and far between at the moment *touches wood* Good job I got all those years' practice at the Co-op and Sainsbury's :P). Tomorrow we have the hospital induction, which is going to be like a day off, since it's all the crap like pensions – and since I don't know if I want to spend the rest of my life working for the NHS, I'm not sure I want to have to worry about that, as the taxman swipes a big chunk of the money if you take it out sooner (ie if you change jobs). So blah.

Today it rained. Not that I'm complaining, I love the rain, especially a good thundery downpour. Just that bits of the hospital flooded, including the office in the dispensary *shifty eyes* I was working away, with my colleagues, and the rain started (thundery, you could hear it on the roof) and this voice pipes up “the flood's started!” and there was a bustle to get the mops and buckets. Apparently it does it every time it rains, it all just comes up through the floor. :| I love the quality of NHS buildings...
Hasn't been all that mentally taxing, today, but I'd rather it had been, I was walking around in a daze a lot of the day – didn't help that we had a department safety induction this morning, and my brain just refused to co-operate. I could feel myself drifting all the way through it – it wasn't because the person doing the talk was boring, because she wasn't doing too badly at making an incredibly dull subject interesting (manual handling (ie how to lift boxes safely), COSHH (Control Of Substances Hazardous to Health), fire safety... bleh), it was just that I never really woke up all morning (missed breakfast – it's true that you need to eat to keep your brain awake :P). By mid-afternoon I was nearly screaming for caffeine – I was getting withdrawal symptoms, my head was pounding (someone said it was the department air-con, as it does it to her, but I still think it had something to do with caffeine, as I was fine after a cuppa – made in the department's wonderful melting plastic cups. >:| ).

My new accommodation is pretty nice, too. I share a flat with two other girls – we share the bathroom, kitchen and lounge, but have our own individual lockable rooms and telephone lines and so on, which is a bit of a pain as it means we all have to have individual TV licenses (£112 >:| ). It's nice to be able to know everything's secure, though – after the house next to us a few years ago got burgled, the security has to be good for me to be happy, now. AND everything feasible to be turned off has to be turned off, so it can't catch fire while I'm not out (me = pyrophobe).
Anyway. Flat's nice – bathroom is a bit lethal, though. :P One of the hinges on the toilet seat is broken so it slides sideways on the bowl, and the shower is impossible to control the temperature on – to start with its impossible to get the temperature bearable to start with, then if anyone in the entire block of flats uses a tap, (maybe an exaggeration, but it feels like it) you either get scalded or else freeze.
I share with two other people, but sometimes it feels like there's only one other person here – Sarah, the pre-reg optometrist, is the one I have most contact with. Natasha (I think that's her name) is the other girl, but I hardly ever see hide or hair of her – she's either out, or else hiding in her room with her boyfriend. I haven't figured out if she's just really shy (she doesn't seem shy, though, the few times I've spoken to her) or just doesn't like the idea of sharing with people she didn't choose to share with/NHS staff. Sarah has come to the conclusion she's just really rude, since they never say hello (I think Natasha's joined at the hip to her boyf), and let the front door slam in her face when she was struggling up the stairs to our flat with bags of food shopping. But anyway. Sarah's cool – we and Sunil have been out a few times in the last week, we went to Frinton (the old-peoples' seaside ;) but it has a nice enough beach) yesterday, and had a Chinese picnic on friday night (we bought a takeaway and ate it out on the grass outside out flats), and... It's been a busy week.

ARGH, they just started playing that “Eamon: I don't want you back” on the radio – that single has gone onto my list of “turn the radio off NOW” songs. It bores hell out of me, I hate it... *grr*

Now I need to go off and learn how to use WS_FTP, since I want to update my site a bit and my browser seems to dislike ftp-ing (I used to use just that, last year, but I think the connection is too slow for my ISP here). *grr* And figure out how my new toy on the PC works – I'm going to learn digital painting if it kills me. The only thing that irritates me is the fact you can't turn the paper round.

Anyway. Signing off.