Musings

Okay, this made me laugh and I think I have to buy one to stick at the nurse's station at work:


Do ya get it?? It's the "superbug" (hence the cape) MRSA. I'm a nerd. I love the little ThinkGeek disease plushies, what can I say? :P

Just had to share that, you may return to your regularly scheduled programming.

Old Solutions, New Problems

Pinkie
Shut up. So I named my bike. Get over it.

Turns out (not surprisingly) that my problem with my bike was not my weight, but the fact that I am a total retard :P

Everybody on BikeForums kept telling me I needed to raise my seat. Well, I thought I was, but I quit raising it when it became impossible to get on the bike with it standing straight up and down. Apparently this is wrong. Get it that high, raise it 3 more inches, and develop some acrobatic ability to mount the thing and you're there! Actually it's not that hard. Retardedly easy, in fact. Tilt the bike sideways. Who knew?

And, the old adage is indeed true, but I have an addendum: as long as you know what the fuck you're doing, riding a bike is easy once you've learned once. Took Pinkie for a spin around the block and was absolutely fine! So tomorrow will be my first real ride. I have an Excel spreadsheet all ready fixed up so I can start counting the miles and the pounds!

Next up on the Obstacles to Overcome to not be Obese (OOO) list: Diet. I've got the exercise thing taken care of (at least I have no more excuses to NOT do it), so the next step is diet, because either one on its own will never be enough. So, I've dusted off the old WeightWatchers points counter and will be keeping close track of caloric intakes from today on.

Hmm. I should get some "before" photos taken of myself.

Nah - if I wanted to see my fat ass any more I wouldn't be losing weight, now would I?

Work
Suffice to say, and I want to get this written, I DO love where I work. It has many flaws but the nurses I work with have taught me a lot and I'm not only a better person and employee, but I'll be a better nurse in the long run from having worked there.

HOWEVER, and this seems to be a pattern with any healthcare job, but my unit is going through a period where the scheduling just sucks. Most of the time it's good and you can work when you want and be off when you don't, but eventually there'll be a period of time that, for whatever reason, you must work on a Sunday on your weekend off.

That's fine, I don't mind pitching in if it's needed, in moderation. But please, PLEASE do me the courtesy of telling me instead of releasing the new schedule one week before the start of it and then not telling me that you're changing up my routine. I get irritated. What's more, I look bad because I have to be called at home at 7am that morning and get the wonderful news that I'm on the schedule.

So I have to go in and be all assertive to my boss tomorrow. And I really hate doing that because I'm not any good at the whole assertive business. At least not to those I'm intimidated by and boy does my boss intimidate me. But this has to stop, and it won't if I don't take a stand - that's been made obvious enough.

Anyway - I'm focusing on the bike ride tomorrow morning and then I'll get the unpleasantness over with when I'm feeling good about myself for having done something productive.

Off the Wagon

Work Ramblings
Working Christmas was rather odd. Since most of the ancillary staff weren't there (Clinical directors, educators, therapists, case managers, etc.), it was really just like a weekend day. After Thanksgiving, I wasn't surprised to find that we were mostly full. What DID surprise me was the acuity of the patients. My theory is that everybody who the doctors could even stretch to send home, had gone home, and we were left with the sickest ones.

The really ridiculous part, though (there always has to be one, you see. It's a corporate environment, after all), was that we had an astounding SIX patients with MRSA (a "superbug"). Okay, remember my oft-cited fact that we are a postsurgical cardiac ward? There is just no reason for this highly infectious, difficult-to-treat infection to be anywhere near patients recovering from open heart surgery. I mean...DUH. Yes, we wash our hands religiously. Yes, we gown and glove up when entering the room. But that does not, by any stretch of the imagination, mean that these patients are absolutely protected. Case in point, one of the MRSA patients was actually a patient that had been recovering from a CABG when she got MRSA in the chest wound. You know what they have to do if that chest incision gets infected like that? They take out your entire breastbone and you're in the hospital for weeks. It's unreal, and I'm sure the expense is mind-boggling.

But, God forbid we have a low census because that means we're not making as much money, so send us those infections! Hell, give us a round of tuberculosis patients while we're at it! The more shit we have flying around here the better!

What do you wanna bet next month we have to have a meeting to discuss our high rate of MRSA contamination to other patients?

Fitness Ramblings
So I got a bike for Christmas:It's a Raleigh Detour 4.0. Brand spankin-new for 2008. Yes it's pink. Is it weird that I love the fact that it's pink? If you knew me, you'd be saying What the fuck? Since when does Kris like pink? However, it works for this bike. Haven't ridden it yet. Couldn't really tell you why - it's all shiny and new and sitting in the dining room right by the door saying, ride me, ride me. It's been years since I've been on a bike, though. Yes, I know "x is just like riding a bike". But it's really big. And shiny. Not too big for me, just a good deal bigger than the last bike I was on when I was 12. And I suppose I'm terrified that I won't be able to get into it as much as I want to cus it's just not going to be nice the first few rides. Bikes hurt your ass. Everything I read for beginning bikers says that. And I'm afraid it'll take, like, months to go away because I have a very big ass.

I'm also not sure what to expect of myself. Can I ride a mile? Can I ride 50 feet? I just don't know. With walking I have a very good idea of how long it takes before my shins can't take any more (bout a mile at chihuahua walking speed). Riding - zippo. I so very much want to do this, though. Riding a bike is like flying, and I always had fun doing it. It's so much easier long-term than walking or jogging because the pressure on joints is minimal. I'm afraid I'll let myself down.

But I suppose the biggest letdown of all would be seeing that beautiful pink shiny bike sit there and gather rust and want to ride it but don't have the guts to. My whole thing with being off school for a semester (besides the money and the no prerequisites to take and the working more) is to do some personal improvement (PIMPing, if you will). Things like cooking more, reading more, AND getting exercise. All those things I'm usually too burned out to put any energy into. And I'm ready to put energy into something. The last couple of days have been really long because I'm bored, and I think now would be the perfect time to really jump into something new with both feet, and with it being riding, well, the exercise and fitness will just happen naturally then.

I got on Google Earth the other day and mapped out the distance around the track at a park VERY close to where I live. The track is about .75 miles around and the distance to it another .25. How perfect is that? With a track I wouldn't have to worry about cars, I could see anybody else there for safety reasons - it would be so perfect. God, I want to. I drove by it today and the track looks so safe and fun for me. Okay, okay, enough, I know :P Just fucking do it, Kristina! God!!

Can I just say that I love blogs? Can talk about myself all day long and don't feel bad because you can stop reading whenever you want ;)