Bruised Ego and Idiot Test

Ok, let me just say wow. Nursing Skills Lab was a bitch and a half today. I just feel completely stupid and over whelmed now. Well I guess I've felt like that since I've started but today was just a kick in the gut.

We're learning how to do Blood Pressures. The instructors were asking us questions about what is causing the sounds and I just drew a complete blank on the anatomy. Then we, rightfully, get scolded for not remembering the valves and flow of blood. It was just in they way they said it that I feel completely stupid. Right after I get done with this I'm going to hit my books. I also have a test coming up Thursday that I need to get prepared for in lecture.

Lecture, by the way, wasn't much better. We had a "pop quiz" where the instructor asked us to identify the 6 stages of infection. For some odd reason I thought she said 7. So, fortunately for me I did get them all, but I was sitting there pounding my head trying to figure out what the 7th was. Even when she had them all written on the board I didn't catch on that there were only 6 not 7.

I'm just feeling very dumb right now. I just have to realize i need to buckle down and study a lot harder.

It's like the little engine that could. "I know I can. I know I can. I know I can!"

From Shared

Now to review my anatomy. Study the chapters for Thursday and drink a nice cold Labbat Blue Light. Dang neighbors started getting healthy and I've been peer pressured into drinking light beer. Soon though I'll be getting a couple packs of the fall seasonal beers. I'm a huge fan of them. Fall is the time of beer and there fore the time of Sucellus. May he help me get through this with most of my sanity intact.

My What a long time it's been

So well, Life has gone on pretty well since my last confessional to the void that is the inkernet. Still drinking my beers one at a time. Kind of hard putting more the one bottle or mug in your mouth at the same time. Guess i could use straws but then it'd get all foamy.

So, new of my life, may it interest you much.

I've officially started clinicals in Nursing. Talk about stress. Had to study 3 chapters in 2 days. This might not seem like a lot but I've also had to clean house after my 3 kids and wife, who is now the bread winner of our little tribe. Also soccer practice, karate, and gymnastics. Not to mention making lunches and meeting with school teachers. I'm also in the midst of a custody battle for my daughter. I've been a little stressed. ah well such is life.

Any who. Nursing school. Love it even with all the stress. First lab freaked all of us out. We go to the lab to learn about positioning, this is how you place a patient in the bed.

The instructor breaks us up into groups and assigns us a position to demonstrate. So we all look in the book and set the "patient" up to look like the picture in the book. We have some idea what we're doing because we are all good students and did read the assigned pages. My group was the first one to explain what we did. We explain everything we read in the assigned readings from our syllabus. Then the instructor starts asking us questions about stuff that wasn't there and we're all making brown stains in our pants.

Come to find out there are also chapters in our lecture book that we're supposed to be reading too. So we flip open the big book of nursing and start skimming to come up with answers. All around the lab you hear the big book slamming open and people scurrying to locate the necessary info.

Well we made it through that and have lived to tell the tale, but let me tell you it really gets a type "A" students heart racing when you're expected to read stuff you had no way of knowing to read.

Up for this weekend is Blood Pressures. Let me tell you I'm going to be scrubbing out brown stains all weekend till Monday. Luckily my mom has a cuff for me to use to practice. I just feel bad for my wife's arm.

P.S. I want to thank the Pagan Soccer Mom for stopping by and reminding me that i have this little stress release thing-a-ma-bob

Returning the pot

Well apparently the feds do have to legally and lawfully return pot to you if under your state laws you're allowed to have it. Even if it has been years. I'ld really hate to have to smoke that stuff but i guess it is the principle of the matter.

Federal Court Rules Pot To Be Returned To Driver

Eight grams of medical marijuana seized from a Garden Grove man during a traffic stop must be returned to him, according to an appeals court ruling directing local law enforcement to uphold state, not federal law.

A three-justice panel of the 4th District Court of Appeal weighed in on the issue in a published decision that sets precedent for future cases on similar issues.

The marijuana, which belonged to Felix Kha, 22, was confiscated during a traffic stop on June 10, 2005.

Kha pleaded guilty to a traffic violation. The charge of possessing marijuana while driving was dropped after he produced a doctor's note approving Kha's use that he said was for severe back pain.

Despite objections by the prosecution, the judge ordered Kha's marijuana returned, according to the ruling.

A night with friends

So yes. This occurred while drinking some Beer. Oberon to be exact. We were playing some Euchre when my friend Angie there decided to tell us about this guy named Davey that she had been talking to. This of course sparks the singing of Davey Crockett and me remembering that i have this get up ran into the basement and dug it out of my kids dress up clothes. :-) It was a fun night. I miss my friends dearly. I can't wait till they're back for Yule and possibly new years.

Hope you all are fortunate to have nights like this. The morning after is definitely worth it.

RIP: Madeleine L’Engle

She was one of my all time favorite authors. She's the author that got me hooked onto the sci-fi genre. :-( I'm going to miss the hope that she'd write more books.

I snipped this from Boing Boing Blog.

Snip from NYT obituary (urls added):

Madeleine L’Engle, who in writing more than 60 books, including childhood fables, religious meditations and science fiction, weaved emotional tapestries transcending genre and generation, died Thursday in Connecticut. She was 88.

Her death, of natural causes, was announced today by her publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Ms. L’Engle (pronounced LENG-el) was best known for her children’s classic, “A Wrinkle in Time,” which won the John Newbery Award as the best children’s book of 1963. By 2004, it had sold more than 6 million copies, was in its 67th printing and was still selling 15,000 copies a year.

Link (thanks, Marc Powell)


Here's a tribute to her. The explanation of a Tesseract.

9/11 Message from Starhawk

Original Posting

Time to Become Pre-Emptive Peacemakers

On this tragic anniversary, I'd like to remind us all that whether we say God or Goddess, him or her, however we depict the divine, the ultimate essence is love.

Pagans believe that we are each an embodiment of the Goddess. Other religions speak of the divine spark in each human being, or the incarnation of God on earth. They are all telling us to treat each person as if she or he might be God walking around, perhaps begging for a meal or a kind word, perhaps hitching a ride as Pele the volcano Goddess is said to do in Hawaii.

If we treat each human being as if she or he might be Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, or Gaia herself, if we cherish that spark of creativity and compassion in all, then we might create a world in which we see our differences as facets of the jewel of truth—something to delight in and cherish, not a reason to divide ourselves and destroy. If we strive for a world based on justice for all—not just those we agree with, but all—we will diminish the causes for hate and despair that lead to acts of violence.

And I'd like to remind all of us, here in the U.S., that if we respond to violence with violence, if we use our own grief and wounds and fear as an excuse to unleash the horrors of war on others, if we are complacent about sacrificing the innocent civilians of other nations in payment for our own, then we have abandoned the moral high ground. If we let fear open our ears to lies, if we stop questioning and seeking truth and demanding accountability from those in power, we contribute to horrific acts of death and destruction. Retaliation and revenge have a grim logic of their own, that can never be satisfied by more of the same, and can never bring us true security.

If we want peace and security, we must address the causes of war. If we want a world based on spiritual connection and humanitarian values, we must become pre-emptive peacemakers. The Shambala warriors of Tibet are said to have two great weapons with which to dismantle the weapons of destruction: insight and compassion. Let us all wield those weapons. The earth is crying out for us all to use all our powers of mind and heart for her and our healing. Let us listen to that call.

Starhawk

Presidential Canidate

Just heared about a Presidential Canidate from MemePool. He is very concerned about circumstances.

Click on the image to check him out. I might vote for him. :-P