Semi-critical update

I have my first two interviews for med school scheduled. They are both with UofA. My interview with the Phoenix campus is this Wednesday and the Tucson interview is in mid-January. I'm pretty excited about this, a little nervous, but mostly excited. Although this is a big deal for me, I am at most cautiously optimistic. This is a step in the right direction, but only a step, I haven't reached my destination yet. Anyway, that's all I feel like writing now.

Babysitting teaches me so much

My beautiful wife and I did some babysitting this past weekend. We both learned so much from the experience, and maybe I will share some of our newfound wisdom later. However, I did find this little gem due to a helpful hint from one of the little midgets. Enjoy.

A little something till the cows come home

I just got a motorcycle. It's a 2002 Kawasaki ZR 750 and it's wonderful. I don't really have the energy to post right now, my beautiful wife and I have been babysitting four rugrats for the last four days, and we are beat. So in lieu of a post, I have the next best thing a link to someone else's work. This is a funny article buy a rather clever writer. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Stay tuned...

Mid-life crisis

As you already know, I am getting older. Recently I turned the ripe old age of twenty-four. My body no longer recovers quickly after playing sports. I tried some football last week and I couldn't walk for days afterwards. My back constantly aches and my dentures don't stay in like they used to. 

Anyway, I've decided to succumb to a mid-life crisis. I spent this past weekend learning how to drive a motorcycle. I need to give a shout-out to RideSmart motorcycle training. For three days they showed me the ropes of riding. It's really hard. It's not at all like riding a bicycle. There are lots of knobs and levers and buttons and thingies. After the first day, the spread was 3-1 against me actually graduating. By the end of the second day, even I was betting against myself. But I got my Class-M license after all and I'll be getting a bike soon. So stay off the sidewalks for a while. 

A list of things that bug me

This should be a short list, but it's not. These are some of the things that I dislike as of late. I'm not grumbling or complaining, just sharing.

1. Mandatory meetings that don't involve me and disrupt my life

2. People who have a poor work ethic

3. People who are incompetent, arrogant, and do shoddy work and still get paid more than I do for doing the same job

4. Dogs that won't learn to not jump on guests

5. Medical schools that charge me over and over just to have my application considered

6. People who don't know the lyrics to a song but insist on singing along anyway

7. People who take their shoes off during church and have smelly socks on

8. Watermelons

9. People who think my dog is a cat

10. People who like cats

11. Cats

12. Legal disclaimers

13. Being employed yet having no work and subsequently no money

14. The Technical Support line for Rosetta Stone (the language company) where I have spent countless hours on the phone holding to talk to a real person and yet I can never seem to reach one

15. Demon children

16. Downloading updates for computer programs

17. Getting bills in the mail

18. Hearing my phone ring at eight in the morning because a phone solicitor from the east coast thinks it's eleven

19. Myspace

20. People who insist on making things awkward even though the water is under the bridge

21. People who watch "Lost"

22. Cats (Yes, I know this is on the list twice) 

23. People who tip 10% and think they are doing their server a favor

24. People who call their pets "my children", "kids", or any other personification of animals

25. Blogs that have post with lists in them two days in a row

Disclaimer

After talking with the team of lawyers that handles the legal aspects of my blog, I have been advised to post a disclaimer concerning the nature of what I write.

Let's make a pretty little list, shall we?

1.  Any opinions of the Author on the Site are or have been rendered based on specific facts, under certain conditions, and subject to certain assumptions, and may not and should not be used or relied upon for any other purpose, including, but not limited to, for use in or in connection with any legal proceeding. (I'm not entirely sure what this means, but I mean it!)

2. The Information may be changed without notice and is not guaranteed to be complete, correct, timely, current or up-to-date. Similar to any printed materials, the Information may become out-of-date. The Author undertakes no obligation to update any Information on the Site; provided, however, that the Author may update the Information at any time without notice in the Author’s sole and absolute discretion. The Author reserves the right to make alterations or deletions to the Information at any time without notice.

3. This site is for entertainment purposes only. In no way should someone feel there is medical advice being dispensed and no doctor-patient relationship will be established.  

4. Any information posted about my employment, past or present, is technically fictitious and used for illustrative or educational purposes. 

5.  This site is maintained and owned exclusively by Benjamin E. Ihms, all rights reserved.  All opinions expressed herein are those of the author only, and do not represent the positions of his employers or any medical facility or organization with which he is affiliated.

6. If you need to contact me, please do so through the proper legal channels. My lawyers can be reached at beradical.lawteam@gmail.com

7. If you see a small black and white dog running around, his name is Turkleton and he is very ferocious. Be careful.

Disclaimer

After talking with the team of lawyers that handles the legal aspects of my blog, I have been advised to post a disclaimer concerning the nature of what I write.

Let's make a pretty little list, shall we?

1.  Any opinions of the Author on the Site are or have been rendered based on specific facts, under certain conditions, and subject to certain assumptions, and may not and should not be used or relied upon for any other purpose, including, but not limited to, for use in or in connection with any legal proceeding. (I'm not entirely sure what this means, but I mean it!)

2. The Information may be changed without notice and is not guaranteed to be complete, correct, timely, current or up-to-date. Similar to any printed materials, the Information may become out-of-date. The Author undertakes no obligation to update any Information on the Site; provided, however, that the Author may update the Information at any time without notice in the Author’s sole and absolute discretion. The Author reserves the right to make alterations or deletions to the Information at any time without notice.

3. This site is for entertainment purposes only. In no way should someone feel there is medical advice being dispensed and no doctor-patient relationship will be established.  

4. Any information posted about my employment, past or present, is technically fictitious and used for illustrative or educational purposes. 

5.  This site is maintained and owned exclusively by Benjamin E. Ihms, all rights reserved.  All opinions expressed herein are those of the author only, and do not represent the positions of his employers or any medical facility or organization with which he is affiliated.

6. If you need to contact me, please do so through the proper legal channels. My lawyers can be reached at beradical.lawteam@gmail.com

7. If you see a small black and white dog running around, his name is Turkleton and he is very ferocious. Be careful.

UPDATE:

8. By visiting this site you agree to abide by the terms listed on this disclaimer page. You also agree to take no action detrimental to the reputation or employment of the author based on this website and/or its content.

9. This will look a lot like number four, but any stories posted on here are entirely made up. As far as this site is concerned EVERYTHING IS FICTITIOUS. That is all. Thank you.

10. This is ridiculous that I have to have this disclaimer page.

A quick update

I'm not really feeling the whole writing thing today, but I am feeling a little guilty about not blogging. To compromise, I will concede a brief update on life as I know it.

-Jamie landed her first client in the wedding industry and she is now the proud founder of Designer Events

-All my applications have been sent out to various medical schools in the southwest. I am now just waiting anxiously for replies

-I turned 24 recently and I can tell that I have just begun the long decent into becoming an old man. For the first 23 years of life, you are young. When 24 hits, you start to become old. 

-My brother got married.

-That last one is a complete lie.

-Demerol is not five times stronger than morphine, but it is less addictive.

-I love teaching math at my dad's school. I have been doing that twice a week for a while and it is pretty awesome.

That's it.

Ugly little things, aren't they?

If you know me well, you will know that my favorite animal in the world is Ailuropoda melanolueca. So in a rare display of sentimentality here is a picture of some baby pandas recently born in China. (An unsolicited "ahhhh" emitted from my mouth too when I first saw the pics, it's nothing to be ashamed of.)

Loosing my cool

On Sunday I went to church.

I’m getting good at my beginnings, aren’t I? That is one good sentence; it’s nicely composed and yet it’s very simple; it conveys meaning without too much confusion; it's really rather elegant. Picture me patting myself on the back.

Anyway, Pastor Justin is about to start a Proverbs series, but he has taken the past two weeks to talk about the gospel. Last night was about idols that get in the way of the gospel. He gave a long list of things that are common idols and after much soul searching I believe I have identified my major idols. So, I thought I would share some of the things I idolize.

But first some of the other contestants.

Competitiveness – being first or better than other people

Not lonely – being with a boyfriend or girlfriend or husband or wife, and not being single

Feeling good – drinking, drugs, or sex that fills this need inappropriately

Money – not being poor

Fame – everyone knowing your name

Power – being able to tell people what to do

These are not where my struggles typically lie. There are three main areas that I generally place too much of an emphasis on.

I idolize being right. I don’t like people to think I’m wrong, because I never am. Ever.

I idolize my appearance. I strive to be attractive and work really hard to stay in shape and dress well.

I idolize knowledge. Being smarter than everyone else, knowing something about everything is extremely important to me and knowing more than other people

The really bad news is that I am turning 24 soon. Which means that I will no longer be cool. Which means that I can’t rely on my coolness to mask my character flaws any more.  Which means that I am going to have to start praying harder. Well, actually, I guess that’s really not that bad after all.

International Art

If you happen to be in Nairobi, Kenya any time in the next three weeks, stop by the GoDown Arts Center for a terrific art show. The artist who painted the fantastic painting in our living room sent me this advertisement. Dennis Muraguri is pretty phenomenal and his art is definitely worth looking into.

A little goes a long way

Call me Ishmael. What a great opening. I was reading a book that discussed this very line. It delved into the idea of changing the punctuation of the line and how a single comma could irrevocably and completely destroy this thing of beauty. For example, "Call me, Ishmael." Could imply that the author wanted a dude named Ishmael to return his call. Or if you put the comma in a different place, "Call, me Ishmael." makes it sound that the author is a caveman introducing himself to another named Call. Which makes no sense whatsoever.

Even though this wasn't the point of the book, it brought up a good point: Punctuation is important. It can ruin an amazing book or it can launch an illustrious career in novel writing. So, watch your punctuation, you never know who's reading your writing,

Just kidding, I put that comma there on purpose just to throw you off.

Going green

In an effort to save the planet, I will be making this a short post in order to reduce personal carbon dioxide emissions, dihydrogen monoxide consumption, and oxygen intake. Thanks for your understanding.

Does an elephant really never forget?

To begin with, the picture above is exactly what you think it is. Those are elephants. I was there. I took the picture. I'm scarred and I wanted you to know my pain.

On to the serious stuff.

Sometimes I wonder if the me of 15 years ago would be proud of the me that I am today. Introspective soliloquies typically progress to rambling after the initial point. So rather than bore you with more, I shall stop there.

Can I have what that guy is on

Sometimes when I began to post, the words just seem to appear. I sit down at the computer and inspiration strikes as my fingers began to navigate their way around the keyboard seemingly of their own free will. Actually it's quite the experience because I will be sitting there, staring at the screen wondering what's going to happen next. Once I was sitting at the computer and my fingers started typing a scary story - it scared the willies out of me.

But I digress, today is one of those days. I decided that I needed to blog, but I didn't know what to write about, so I just sat down and let my fingers work their magic. I'm sorry. I didn't know they wouldn't be at the top of their game today and they would produce this debacle. I recently read a story about a guy who received whole arm transplants. The doctors think it will be about two years before they know if the new arms will work or not. I wonder if I could get other magic fingers transplanted to replace these defective ones. They are certainly pretty lackluster. We'll see.

Barely even a post

As the loyal reader probably knows, my wife and I have two dogs. To help catch up any new people let me explain. No, there is too much. I will summarize: I have two dogs. 

Anyway, since one of the dogs has slowly been driving us crazy, we enlisted the services of a crack team of specialists to help us figure out how to control our dog. The pet psychic really wasn't much help. He seemed to think our dog was some Confederate General trying to communicate to us from the grave. But he wouldn't tell us the general's name or what he wanted - we were supposed to figure it out from listening to the dog. The pet psychologist thought the dog was acting out because of abandonment issues. We did get her at the pound (the dog, not the psychologist) which led some credence to the diagnosis, but we couldn't really figure out how to work the dog through her abandonment issues so we moved on. The dog whisperer really tried. He tried hard. But I'm pretty sure he was blind because he kept whispering into the ear of a stuffed bear that sits on our couch for decoration and, well, things didn't progress like we were hoping. The exorcist was just a bad call on my part. We're not even going to go there. We also tried asking a ninja, because ninjas can do anything. The only problem is, ninjas are hard to find, if they're any good. So we gave up on that one. The plumber stopped by that day and so we asked him too. He was less than enthused. Our last hope was the dog trainer. 

He came highly recommended: trained by Israeli special forces, able to type 83 words per minute, fluent in five languages, marathon runner, chocolate-dipped cricket eater, and brother to three - he was definitely exactly what we were looking for. Basically he took one look at the dog and said, "She needs more exercise. Run her lots every day." Then he left.

Amazingly he was right. So now we have to very calm dogs. And my wife and I are in very good shape. Everyone wins. Except that Confederate General guy, I'm still not quite sure what he's trying to say. 

Ode to Beaker - the funniest muppet ever

I stumbled on this quite by accident, but it's pretty awesome. Generally I try not to trawl youtube for funny videos, but this one fell in my lap. Enjoy.

72 and sunny beats 108 and sunny any day

We flew out to California for a family meeting in San Diego last week. But we decided that all work and no play is bad for you health. So my beautiful wife and I stopped by Disneyland for a couple of days where we met up with our cousins.

I love Disneyland. I've read the books, visited the park a bazillion times, talked to the guides, read the websites, and still I can't get enough. But the best Disney experience is visiting the park with little kids. Their wonder at the rides, their excitement, their unbridled giddiness, all make for an unforgettable trip.

This is us on the very first day, getting ready to finally enter the park.

This is me along with my littlest cousin. Right after this picture was taken, he beat me on the head and yelled, "Let's go horsey!" Neigh.

This is the proudest day of my wife's life - she got her driver's license. Of course, my seven year old cousin got hers at the same time.

Okay, so we asked a Disneyland employee to take our picture. She said, "Act like you're scared of the boulder. It will be a cool picture..." So I decided to. My wife thought that would be silly, so she decided not to. Thus, we get this beauty below.

I think the cousins liked playing in the fake Disneyland firehouse more than the actual rides. We spent somewhere near a half hour in there and they had a blast. If you ever go to Disneyland, visit the firehouse just off of Mainstreet. Spend a half hour in there and see how much fun you have. It's almost as good as Indiana Jones.

After Disney, we took a train (yes people still do that) down to San Diego. We spent the next four days relaxing at the beach. The family meeting? We met for about two hours Sunday morning and then broke for lunch. Then we met for another hour that evening before dinner called. Since we stayed pretty much right on Mission Beach, we rode bikes along the boardwalk everywhere we went. A lot of time was spent on the beach or in the ocean. And despite the fact that I am so white I am practically see-through, I am the only one who escaped without a significant burn. SPF 70, it wins every time.

Below are our family pictures from the vacation taken at the beach house.

Teaser

For those of you getting antsy, wondering when the next post will be, your wait is over. For those of you who hadn't even noticed anything was wrong, shame on you. My lovely wife and I just got back from a wonderful week in California. Tomorrow I will have lots of pictures. Today, I've got nothing.

Work: It's what brings in the dinner

I don't normally post on Saturday, which is why this will remain short, uninformative, and relatively boring. Work has been rather busy as of late, so my blog is the one to suffer. I spend a lot of time in the OR and not a lot of time sleeping. The good news is that I have made significant progress on my med-school application. I have received some good constructive criticism from a number of people on my entrance essay, but it will still be a couple of weeks before the application is sent out. If you get bored and want to help me with it, leave a comment.

A fool and his money?

First off, sorry about the cutesy picture. I try not to endorse that sort of thing. Second, I'm not a big fan of cats. So there.

I have been criticized often enough for giving money to the homeless that I figured the subject deserved a post. This was never an issue when I lived in the suburbs growing up. There simply weren't any homeless people wandering around. But now that I live in Phoenix, they are common enough.

When they approach me, I try to find out what they really need. Some are just looking for food, some are looking for a bus ticket, and some just want money. I do my best to oblige. You see I view the money in my possession as an investment from God. He has put me in charge of it with the idea of getting a good return on his investment. If someone in need asks me, and I, having plenty, dismiss the request, then I have done a terrible thing. 

Some of you will argue that the homeless person just wants to buy drugs or alcohol. Then he (or she) will have to answer to God for that. I won't knowingly support the abuse of those things. But if I refuse them aid when they have need, then I will have to answer to God for that. So I give, out of kindness and out of obedience. My conscience is clear.

Missed Opportunity

I did a lot of walking today. 

That's a good beginning, don't you think? It leaves you wondering, does he normally not walk much? Why was he doing all this walking? And is it really significant? Lots of people walk. Why should I care?

Well, dear reader, read on to find the answers to your questions and so much more.

My dear, sweet wife got a phone call last night to babysit today out in Gilbert. I had a meeting scheduled a few blocks from our house later in the morning so she took the car and I walked. I was going to have her walk, since technically I scheduled my meeting before she was scheduled to babysit, but she offered to take care of Turkleton too, so I let her have the car.

Anyway, while I was out, a homeless person approached me for money while I was waiting at a crosswalk. I pulled out some money (more on that tomorrow) and gave it to him and conversed in some polite small talk, but tried to show that I was anxious to not miss my opportunity to cross the street. By the time there was an opening in the conversation, the "STOP" hand was flashing and I gave a silent sigh of frustration.

And then I caught myself, instead of seizing this wonderful opportunity to talk with this man, to engage him in meaningful conversation, instead of being enter-active, I threw it all away so I could get across the street faster. That's terrible. 

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, other than to say that I hope I've learned a valuable lesson. Opportunities abound, I just have to have eyes to see them.

Here doggy *whistle whistle*

You know what really bugs me? Medically themed TV shows. I love them and hate them at the same time. Scrubs and House are some of my favorite shows to watch, but invariably I see something that's wrong and it makes me grumpy. Like every episode of CSI. But we won't get into why I frown on that show today. 

It's a lot like a dog whistle. You could throw a party, invite all your friends and then bust out your dog whistle. You blow into it with all your might and nothing happens. Except, your dog that lives there is going nuts. Oh yeah, he can hear it. And he knows it's you. He'll leave something extra special on the carpet for you. But nobody else even knows that there's a problem. "Cool, a whistle that doesn't whistle," your friends will tell you.

I'm the dog. I'm enjoying the party, eating scraps, loving it and then bam! The fun leaves. I was watching House (the second season) last night and typically they get a lot of things right that most medical or regular shows get wrong. In every movie ever made you will find this. A guy is in a hospital and you hear the beep, beep, beep of the heart monitor. When out of nowhere he flatlines and you just hear one single, sustained pitch indicating his heart is not beating. The medical staff all rush in, one grabs the paddles, someone yells "Clear!" and then presto his heart is working again. Wahoo.

In the real world, the paddles, or defibrillator, are used to stop a person's heart. Right before they are used, a persons heart is fluttering like a humming bird's wings. The heart monitor will be beeping rapidly and the patient will be dead soon. Thus the need for the defibrillator. It sends a large jolt of electricity through the body and literally causes the heart muscle to seize up and stop. And that's the point. The heart will restart itself and hopefully find a normal rhythm. If the patient flatlines, then they are either dead and shocking them with electricity is just not nice, or the heart's rhythm can't be picked up by the machine and then other treatment options are preferable to shocking them.

Back to the post, House does a great job of showing this realistically. What they don't show is the painful burn that is almost always left behind. We get cases where I work with people who have been defibrillated and you can clearly see a red burn in the shape of the paddles on their chests where they were shocked. Electricity burns. Who knew.

I was going to let this go as I watched the show the other day, but then in the very next scene they showed a spinal tap. A procedure that involves sticking a very large needle into a person's spinal chord to remove spinal fluid. This is very painful even with numbing agents. The guy on House barely flinched. He grunted in pain like someone stepped on his foot and then he continued to talk. Most people suffer severe pain, some scream, lots cry, most tense up and try to not distract the doctor so the procedure will get over with as quickly as possible. Not this guy, he loved it. He was chatting with the doctor with barely a grimace.

And so ends my rant. It bugs me to no end when shows get things wrong, but like a dog at a dog whistle party, I love the all the free cake. And so I keep going back.

Epic Failure

I was going to post today about my efforts to get into med school, a recent, potentially life changing decision and my search for another job, but I just can't seem to put the words together. So today I will be showcasing a couple of pictures that describe a phenomenon known only as epic failure. 

This first one is sort of depressing, but it gets better, have no fear.

I don't even know how you get into this position.

'Nuff said.

Milk shot out my nose on this one.

Heh. Heh.

Again, how do you get into this position. Was nobody on this ship a little worried when they saw the beach coming closer and closer? 

I'm not a big fan of tag

So my buddy posted this little ditty on his blog and now I'm supposed to do the same. Since it has been a while since I last wrote anything, I thought this would be a good way to ease my way back in.

four jobs I've had

1. Kindergarden PE teacher - best job EVAR

2. Chili's foodserver, aka Chili-head

3. Seamstress (or the male version of that) - actually yes, but not in the typical fashion

4. Tissue Recovery Technician - I recover bones, nerves, veins, and muscles from tissue donors

four movies I've watched more than once

1. Princess Bride

2. Duel - Spielberg's first movie, artistic and slightly 80's

3. Gladiator

4. Emperor's New Groove

four places I've lived

1. Denver, CO

2. Gilbert, AZ - I want to live there again some day

3. the ghettos of Phoenix

4. A very wonderful little townhouse in Phoenix

four tv shows I watch

1. Scrubs - Dr. Cox is absolutely amazing

2. House

3. The Office - I know way too many people like Dwight

4. John and Kate plus Eight - thanks to cable and my wife for this one

four places I've been

1. Florence, Italy - an amazing honeymoon

2. Nairobi, Kenya - I saw two things I'll never forget, elephants mating (I've tried to forget, believe me) and a wild buffalo taking on a lion

3. the vicarage in Laugharne, Wales

4. Vancouver - I would also love to live there someday

four people who email me regularly

1. My boss at DNA - usually updates to the work schedule

2. Shaun Palmer - demotivational posters to brighten up my day

3. My mother

4.  My Uncle-in-law - he sends me a daily devotional, I like that

four of my favorite foods

1. Reese's Peanut Butter Cups

2. Pizza - usually of the pepperoni persuasion

3. Chocolate eclair desert - it's like heaven on earth

4. Chips and salsa

four places I would love to visit

1. Germany - it seems nice enough

2. Spain

3. New York - I have traveled plenty but I have never been to the Big Apple

4. Japan - I just threw this one in here because I couldn't think of anything else

four things I am looking forward to in the coming year

1. Hopefully med school

2. Learning to play the guitar

3. Another wedding anniversary - Number Three!

4. My folks starting a new school

four friends I'm tagging

1. Phatty - my little brother

2. Jamie - my little wife

3. Turk - my little dog

4. Shaun - because you didn't call no tag backs

What you don't know, can kill you

I stumbled across this web page one day and felt compelled to share it with you. It's very informative, and I feel that I am now better prepared to prevent what could have been a tragedy to my uninformed family. Who knows what could be lurking around the next corner?

Give to Caesar... all your money

Tax season has crept up on me and it has been crazy. We just got a letter from the IRS saying that we made a mistake on last year's taxes that needs to be fixed. It took them a year to find this??? Oh, boy. So now I have to make a bazillion corrections before April 9th. Good times. The upside is that I got this year's taxes done and hopefully they are mistake free. The bad news is that we owe about $1400 in taxes this year. 

In other news, I don't have Hepatitis B or C or HIV. Wahoo. I managed to slice my thumb with a scalpel this past week while removing a tibia from a donor. There was a little concern that the donor would be infected with one of the big three and that it would be transfered to me. But the blood tests came back negative, so I will be sticking around for a while longer.

Wow! That guy's good. - Why yes, yes I am

People, people, people. Please stop sending me hate-mail. I realize that I haven't been posting as much as I promised, but well, sometimes life gets busy. And when things get hectic, sometimes you have to remove some of the clutter until things slow down again. I have found that when life gets busy for me, posting is one of the first to go. The good news is that I have been keeping up with my writing in general, so all is not lost.

I emailed one of my favorite professors earlier this week and sent her my latest short story. When I had let my wife read it moments before sending it off, she was very emotional about it and begged me to change the ending. I refused and sent it anyway. We'll see how that goes. In my professor's reply she mentioned that she had made copies of one of my essays that I had written for her Advanced Composition class and gave them to her freshmen class with the idea of inspiring them to achieve such literary perfection. Apparently that was a bad idea. In short, three of the little guys couldn't handle the pressure and dropped the class, four more haven't shown up in the past two weeks, but have not officially withdrawn, and another two switched their majors from English to Accounting. I guess I just have that sort of effect on people. Yay me.

(Disclaimer: most of the above story is untrue in any way, shape or form after the words literary perfection. As such, it should be disregarded and/or taken with a grain of salt)

Yup, I'm a cutter

Well, the MMDC saga continues. I have now been at it for almost a full week and it hasn't turned out quite the way I planned. Some of the things that I have been hoping to accomplish are: pick up fencing or boxing, develop my writing, study anatomy and physiology, workout daily, study Spanish, practice on my guitar, play basketball, and, of course, spend more time with God.

However, I have had to work the past couple of days and random events have arisen that have prevented me from sticking to my carefully plotted schedule. Most days I get in a decent workout and I have my quiet time, but everything else has been pretty haphazard. Here's hoping next week goes a little more as planned...

The two cool things that have happened are that I started cutting at work and I just finished the first draft of a new short story. I have been wanting to be a cutter since I started with the Donor Network five months ago, and last night I made my big debut. It is a lot tougher than it looks. Some of those techs are able to slice, slice, slice and poof! out pops a tibia. But for me, it was like, slice... slice... oh crap... sliceslicesliceslice... slice... slice?... um... is this something we need? They tell me that I will get better with practice. Oh boy. I hope so.

The short story that I worked on is interesting for me because I wrote it in first person, present tense, not a usual style for me. I bought a book called Now Write! that has a bunch of short writing exercises in it, and so I am slowly making my way through this book trying different styles, but mostly using it for story prompts. I haven't read through the entire finished story yet, so I'm excited to do that sometime next week and look at it with a fresh perspective. If it's any good, maybe I'll post it here. So it'll probably stay offline.

At least I'm good at my job... sigh.

I don't know what this is a picture of but it fits my post

Before we begin, let me introduce MMDC to you. It is a new acronym that will certainly change the way I live. But more on that in a bit. It sure has been a while since I last posted. I am really hoping to get back into the routine of writing every day (except maybe Fridays, but those are negotiable). Let's discuss the events that have led up to this point.

Earlier I mentioned my new job with the Donor Network of Arizona. I am still working there. It is because of this job that my life is in a state of... upheaval. I suppose that's the correct word. You see, things are going well. My wife and I are getting along famously and we are definitely enjoying marriage. Our house is wonderful, our puppy is healthy and we don't usually worry too much about money. The problem is the job. Or rather, the problem stems from my job.

We have started a new schedule at the Donor Network where everyone is on call for twelve hour shifts that last from six to six. I signed up for the 6pm - 6am shift for two reasons. First, I am hoping to get more cases this way and in turn, more money. Second, it allows me to be home during the day with the dog and in the evenings with my wife. However, the problem arises when I don't get a case. Because then I am sleeping at regular times and I have absolutely nothing to do during the day. At first it was fun, but now I am feeling lazy (and rightly so).

So finally last night I sat down and made a list of goals. For the most part they were things I want to accomplish, but some, like spending time with my wife, were things I wanted to make sure I didn't neglect. Once I could see what I wanted, I started developing a plan to accomplish my goals. Today is Day One of the epic saga of Making My Day Count. Hopefully in 10 years we can have a reunion and celebrate Day 3650. I was going to make it some really cool acronym like "S.O.AR." or "D.R.E.A.M." but I have decided that I'm not that creative today. Instead I'm left with MMDC.

Meh.

Expect more update goodness tomorrow!