October
24, 2007
Anyone got a spare one of
those? 
I need to find one. I
got these earrings at Disneyland a long time ago and I lost one. Hey,
since I can network here, I thought I'd ask.
Can't hurt, right? You
never know when someone is going to go the distance and turn up a lost toucan
earring.
So Eric, being tall and all,
pulled the masking tape from around the top of the boys' walls where the white
walls meet the bright blue (new) ceiling and because the walls and ceiling are
highly textured, the tape did not stick well and so now I've got a number of
steady little bright blue drips coursing an inch or so down the wall at various
intervals. For the flat areas, I was able to cover with some Sponge Bob
border (which also wouldn't stick - staple gun central, I'm telling ya), but
there's a good bit that is on the angle of the pitch of the roof, so a border
with an up or a down to it would look fairly ignorant. I am thinking of
getting a complimentary wide ribbon and just stapling that bitch up there.
The only alternative (since I have scrubbed and scraped and brushed with
everything imaginable without success) is to go along each millimeter of the
wall with off white paint and stealthily paint over the blue drips, one by one,
with an artist's paint brush, which will likely make me want to kill myself at
this point. Meh. I need more Sponge Bob border anyway. When an
engineer tells you that you don't have enough border, believe them.
That having been somewhat
successfully accomplished (pending the stapling up of the complimentary border),
I am now left with the tasks of painting the lower cupboards of the kitchen,
painting the inside of one of the upper cupboards, putting up the rest of the
border and appliqués and then painting the trim in the family room. Then,
I'm done.
Done-y McDone-erstein.
I look forward to that.
I am sure it will happen some day and I know it's just a matter of getting to
it. Getting to it is much more formidable when you've spent a month or so
getting to it already, plus dealing with other obligations.
Today was my first official
day as an "MT" (Medical Transcriptionist) since 1994. It was quite
humbling and eventually, my own incompetence resulted in emails being sent to
both my QA monitor and my Production Supervisor, basically asking them how
desperate they are and telling them that if they want to hang in there with me,
I'll be thrilled to give it my all and see if I can get it together. If
they think I'm just going to be a handicap, I'm happy to part friends. So
far, they're staying in the game, so I'm doing the best I can. After a
while, it became addictive. I was in a quest for a perfect report and I
did get a few. I did 21 reports for a total of 23.72 minutes of dictation
and 206 lines of print. That took me about 4.5 hours. I'm
supposed to do 100 lines an hour or more, so by those figures, I'm just under
50% of where I need to be. Not bad for a first day! Meh. They
probably shouldn't have hired me, but they did, so we'll just see where it goes.
The doctor who dictated my
first 2-3 reports was terrible. It's amazing that someone can speak so
quickly and so incoherently. I had no idea at all what he was saying most
of the time and my report had such a rash of QA flags you just wouldn't believe
it. The next doc, for whom I did about 18 or so mini-reports, was a
transcriptionist's dream. There were a few moments when I didn't
understand what he was saying only because it was a procedure with which I
wasn't familiar. By only having worked in military hospitals, there are
some areas, like geriatrics and long-term hospice care, in which I never got any
kind of experience. So by about hour two, I realized I was so far over my
head that I couldn't really get any worse, so I might as well work to get
better. It's my first day and they give me a 90 probationary period and a
loosely described 1-2 week window to not completely suck, so hey! Let's
see where it goes.
A real disappointment is that
the section in which I work is so desperate for MTs (hence, their hiring of me)
that one day of weekend work is a requirement. This means I'm on Sunday,
Monday, Thursday and Friday for four hours a day and then any other hours I can
put in during the other 20 is greatly appreciated. I can make as much
money as I can type. For the first pay period, (over October 31) they pay
me a minimum of $10 per hour, no matter how awful I am. I have to type
around 150 lines per hour (I'm somewhere around 48 or so now) to get over the
$10 point, so I don't expect to make $10 an hour again any time soon.
Money is money, though!
So that is my exciting day!
Eric is on his way home from the airport after picking up his father, who will
be staying with us for almost a month. I'm making meatloaf (I make awesome
meatloaf), biscuits, mashed potatoes, gravy and [insert some veggie here] for
dinner. I work again tomorrow. Even though I'm not normally
scheduled for Wednesday, I started today to get some hours in since I missed
Monday and Tuesday. Then I'll work Thursday, Friday and back on Sunday and
Monday again. At least in the beginning, I am going to try and do more
than my 4 hour minimum to make up for what I'm losing in speed and taking up in
research time and such.
That's where my world is right
now.
Hope yours is going well!
Be Particular,
Today's
Diva Words: "Personally, I have nothing against work,
particularly when performed, quietly and unobtrusively, by someone else. I
just don't happen to think it's an appropriate subject for an 'ethic.'"
Barbara Ehrenreich
October 22, 2007
I am going to start demanding
that weekends actually be weekends instead of extended work days where the kids
happen to be home from school. I can't remember the last weekend I
actually had that brought with it all that a weekend should have.
On Saturday, I cleaned out the
other side of the old shed so that it now echoes and has nothing in it except
for a dishwasher that I evidently cannot install in my kitchen. I've been
hauling this beast around with me since July of 1998 when we moved into base
housing. Every house I've moved in since then has been a rental or base
housing and already had a dishwasher except this one. I was prepared to
sacrifice a couple of my very few cabinets and drawers to make a place for the
thing to finally be installed, but as it turns out, Eric informs me that it's
too deep to fit under our counters. Who knew that our counters, which seem
of average height, where actually designed for short people and that my
dishwasher was particularly deep? The info I get on a regular basis just
astounds me.
So now it will likely be put
at the end of my driveway with a "free" sign on it just to get rid of it.
The new shed is brimming with stuff and having run out of bins before I even
started the shed I did on Saturday, I have definitely learned the extreme value
of bins over boxes.
With that taking up most of
Saturday, Eric and I then made the trek into town for a date of Chinese food and
then came right back home and collapsed into bed. Sunday morning, we got
up and took the kids out for breakfast because they worked extra hard to help us
haul storage from one shed to the other the day before with absolutely no
promise of reward. They just went out there and did it without even being
asked and I was so very proud of them. When we got back from eats (which
ended up being around 2pm, giving me a very late start on the day), I got busy
with Dylan and Nathan painting their ceiling and one wall bright blue. The
paint on their walls and door and such is a kind of off white heavy latex.
We have an A frame house, so one of their walls goes to the floor, but has a
small wall that joins up to an extension of the ceiling that allows for the
pitch of the roof. The opposite wall from that is only about a foot or so
tall and then goes directly into mirrored closets. (Of course, I'll post
photos eventually). What an adventure it is to paint with an 8-year-old
and a 10-year old. They had a wonderful time but I didn't think they'd ever get
done. One thing for certain is that I will NEVER paint another ceiling
without hiring someone to do it. Today, it is almost dry and ready for me
to pull down the masking tape later on and then touch up any errors or mishaps.
It took all but a tiny bit of a gallon of paint, so I hope there aren't many
glitches!
I plan to spend today relaxing
a bit, then doing mountains of laundry and giving my house a thorough clean.
The kids can put up the Harvest decorations and Eric and I will move the
exercise equipment into the newly cleaned out side of the shed. This not
only creates an exercise room in there, but frees up the rest of the room in the
meditation area shed so that it's all sacred and ready. (Photos will come
there too)
After that, all that's left is
to finish painting the cupboards in the kitchen (the outside of 3 bottom ones
and the inside of one top one) and paint a couple of long strips in the family
room and I am done. It's been almost two months since I started and
this has been completely exhausting. Although I do feel twinges here and
there, I know the full impact of how rewarding it will all feel will hit the
time that I do the big house clean right after it's all done. Now, I can
just feel the other work that has to be done.
I was released from training
on Friday and got my certification email. Now it goes to the human
resources department to assign a supervisor to me and then that person will get
me set up with my accounts to start work. I feel a LOT more confident than
I did before about doing this job. I expect to start Wednesday or
afterward. It has actually been (dare I say it?) fun to dig deep
and use my very old skills and find out that I can do something different.
I am curious to see how it works out and if it doesn't, I'll know I really
tried.
Now, I think I'll take
advantage of the hour I have until the boys have to get up and take a snooze on
the couch.
Be Particular,
