Perfect fit

Why does it feel soo good sometimes to go grocery shopping? See the colors of the fruit, feel for the right one, too hard, too soft, just right, smell the sugars ripening. For a moment, there is no nursing school.

I spent $100 on this and that from Pcc and trader joes. I have lots of ideas for the the things I got... Gonna use an Alice water recipe for the Golden Beats. I might go into Ed Brown's book and do something zen with the sweet potatoes.

Ive got a big tub of fresh ground peanut butter in the fridge. Fresh ground can be too thick when its cold, so I buy a more thinly ground organic peanut butter from Tj's and cut the fresh stuff with it. Both mom and dad have said that when I do that, it makes the best peanut butter theyve ever tasted. I need to find something to do with it.. Perhaps a peanut sauce? Gotta find a recipe.

Risotto? Ive been talking about it. I need to find Arborio rice. I could use Saffron, got that.

Caprese salad?- Tomatoes still arent local and so arent that great yet. Just think, in a month or so, fresh garlic from that indian guy in the market(that shit will nock your socks off), Il buy a shit load and hang it up to cure. Fresh basil. Good mozzerella( wish I could buy it very fresh and cheaply). I want to get fresh local olive oil next time Im down in the bay area. I saw some, its expensive, but it has to be awesome. Balsamcic?-how much money am I willing to spend? By august I should be able to make an amazing salad. I will also be able to recreate that sandwich I had with Ron in Palo alto- marinated tomatoes and mozzerella on fresh ciabotta bread.

Failed two tests in one day.

The last 3 weeks or so have presented with a progressive sense of something missing, something not quite right. I have no clue what it is, and the best I can pin it down is that there is a void, or blank spot that isnt being filled. It would be easier if it were just the run of the mill depression, but this is something different, at times more intense, and at other times more wimsical.

All I know is that( i like to think) im a pretty easy going guy with a posative outlook on life, but lately something has been wrong ... and the happy go lucky box is out of whack.


Today I went out into the yard and dug up some of my arisaema bulbs to see how they were fairing through the frost, in hopes that getting my hands in some dirt would give my spirt a spark, and it did. As cold as it has been my arisaema bulbs are getting root nubs and it looks likely that il have to plan spring break as a repotting time... If not before.

Frank and I laugh at a term used in one of our hyper feminine nursing books,"emotional bandaging". Well... forgive me for saying something so horrible .. but whats the propper means for spiritual bandaging?

sometime it seems that change is in the air.. and if you dont roll down your sails and catch those winds, you will be left behind.

big changes have happened in my life over time, but some of the more personal changes have been harder to push through.

Recently ive been having what I call incontinent nostalgia.. dreams and thoughts of people gone by, faces I dont see anymore or not nearly enough ...things that have changed and gone away.. Some sad, some good.


So, I sit here, idle for a time, in the waters fiddling with the rigging hoping for that surge of power when the sails catch the wind and change will thrust me forward.

so I opend this thing with the strong urge that I had something to write about, but now that I sit here looking at the blankness in front of me I cant think of a damned thing.

Well.. Schol is goin swimmingly. Ive been trying to force myself to get some good studying done today and thats been going ok. This next exam is gonna be on allergic responses and rheumatic conditions with an overview of cancer thrown in for good measure.

Ive decided that i need to study more efficiently. So, Im going to take the notes handed out in class and make my own notes on them as a I do one more pass over the material in the book.. then Il just use the notes for re-review and re-re-review.. with possibly a re-re-re-review... then who knows I may do well on he test!.

I feel badly for some of the first year students... there are currently 26 out of around 45 students who arent passing. The class average is a 77% which is failing by 5 points.

Hmm .. I really know what I could go for right about now .. Drunken fun and conversation. If Ron werent a plane flight away I'd give him a ring and see if he were up for some corny movies and boozin. Frank would be a good candidate for drinks.. but he is on some nasty antibiotics for his latent Tb infection and those dont play nicely with booze in your liver.

Saw this topic in a movie recently and it got me to thinking.

Get a well paying Nursing Job that I enjoy and be able to interpret on the side.

Find a comfortable spot to live where I can have some sort of dirt to grow things in

TRAVEL TRAVEL TRAVEL, with an awesome travel buddy... travel to all sorts of places.

Fall in Love

Cliche- but I wanna go Sky diving.

Be well on my way to learning a third or fourth language.

Feel up a set of sixpack Abs... Hopefuly my own (gonna lose weight)

Sit on a tropical beach at sunset.


Ill add more later.

Today I finished watching a documentry serries from the bbc showing a family that moved to a farm with the goal of developing a totaly green and self sufficient life. This would entail creating a water wheel and using wind turbines to produce electricity to power some of the functions around the farm. Also would require them to create a large garden to essentialy feed themselves ... they also had some pigs.

The serries kept me watch because, for one, the family seems like an awesome bunchc of funny laid back people, but also this is the sort of life style Id love to have.. at least for a period of time in my life. Im not sure if its an attraction to being green or if it is more of an attraction to growing my own food... farming things.. getting my hands dirty. I think the later is probly it. I have always felt amazingly good when I have gone to the farmers market and brought something home to cook with. When I have in the past grown something however small and used it to cook with... it has felt even better.

My renewed gardening goal for this upcoming growing season( I know im jumping the gun a bit) is to create as big of a patio garden as I can. I think Zuchini..maybe lemmon cucumbers.. and at least peas can be grown in pots. I want to plant some heirloom carrot varieties .. I know I can grow some Kale..and I can do awesome things with Salad greens..... Perhaps this will be my hippy summer... This recent summer wasnt nearly as hippyish as I wanted it to be at all.. DUnno how it all got away from me, but I guess I got sidetracked. I will bet you that if I put a reall effort into it, I could have more veggies from my little patio space at dads than I would have any idea what to do with.

I also want to do more things from the farmers market.. I want to make more Jam. If canning werent such a bigger step, id love to can tomatoes or make pasta sauce or Salsa and can it.

Really I feel torn when I think about where Id like to move to when I "grow up". I would be totally happy moving to some Rural area and getting a place with about 2-3 acres and planting it out in veggies and having chickens and being a bit hippyish. BUT, I also want to live in the heart of the city with all of the culture and things to do, gay people, brown people, people who speak different languages and have other ideas and cultures than my own. I guess the tradeoff would be like some of the hippy type seattle folk ive seen who have a little house on a postage stamp size lot with vegetables and plants spilling out and nearly busting the seems in the fence.

Im also thinking, why dont I start on these goals, my hippyish ones, right now? I can totaly change the way I eat.. and incorporate alot more fresh and green things, though it is much more expensive on a student's budget during the winter time when things arent in season. I also am a total nut for the farmers market and really dont have any love of doing veggie shopping at the local supermarket. Pcc and wholefoods are a bit spendy .. and a few steps off my beaten commute path right now.

I think when Im a nurse.. I will definatly be able to splurge and pay for a share in a CSA so I can get tons of fresh local veggies and fruit all year round.. and itl be just as good as the farmers market.

I guess im weird in the sense that my greeness doesnt stem directly from a place of wanting to protect the environment and worry and frett about my carbon foot print.. It totaly stems from my botanical inclination and ideas about nutrition and love of cooking and food.. and having connection with what I eat and knowledge about what Im actually putting into my body and how it was grown by who and where... So, i guess in a way my greenness is a little backwards .. but it gets me there anyway.

SO, I was at school by 6 this am and had a very nice review session with Frank. Marleah and Susan and Daniel showed up later which was very nice to have some more minds to bounce things off of.

The test was a tough one! The volume of material that we had to go through for this exam was very large. I know, as always, I had issue with the prioritizing or critical thinking questions.. Blah blah blah .. what is the nurses first priority response? What is the nurses best response? Well, it always boils down to ABC, airway, breathing and circulation. OH yeah, it any of the answers says to assess anything .. thats usualy IT. There was some trickyness though, one of the questions had us prioritize interventions for a burn patient. assess for impaired breathing pattern, insert large guage Iv, remove the pt from the burn source, and establish and maintain open airway. SO my reasoning was.. Move the patient out of the fire first *duh, i hope*, establish airway* remembering my ABC's*, assess for imaired breathing, and then insert the IV.

SO, I hope I got in the 90s. IF I can make it through the quarter with all my exam scores in the 90's I will be quite Happy!

I got to school at just shy of 6:30 this Am and reviewed until 9:00 with Frank. Im not sure if I should classify it as too much of a thorough review because, as always happens, it de-evolves into joking and laughing and chit chatting. Tomarrow Im gonna do the same thing, but Il get there at 6 and then until 9.

Lets see .. what to comment about? I start psych at sweedish this week. Pretty good chance Il get to observe an electro shock therapy session. Will be interesting having a clinicla that has the entire focus being the psych social stuff that I havent been all that good at during the med surge clinicals. IT can be tough to keep things going toward a theraputic relationship... Yadda yadda.

Have a test tomarrow on immune function, immune deficiency syndroms, Hiv, Hepatitis, TB, and burns. With some epedemiology thrown in for good measure. Im really nervous, but il get through it spose.

I wish I had some deeper topic rattlin around in my brain to sit blank faced in front of the computer and blab about, but I really dont.

Well, maybe, I do. Ive started to get a glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel. I have this picture of what life is going to be like once I graduate and am earning a living wage able to support myself living on my own. To imagine being out on my own. Amazing! It has been a loooong time coming. I get glimpses of what it would be like to come home to my own home with my own things. The dream is I come home and hear a voice that says "hey Hun".. guess that one is another separate goal of mine.

Its so quiet when you wake up early in the mornings. The hussle and the bustle ... as if there were that much on the street I live on, is all silent. These are the hours right before you know you have to get off your ass and do something constructive. The hours where it is perfectly sensible to be lazy and not have any negging little pinprick of conscience saying you should be studying or doing x,y, or Z.

Yesterday was my last day of Med surge clinical for the qtr. This coming week we are starting our psych rotation which should be very intersting.

Im at a small cafe in some far off country at dusk and the last glints of the sun are just edging the roof tops of the centuries old buildings off to the distance. Im sitting outside on a small two chair table with only a small votive candle in the center that the waiter has just lit on his way by. He is beautiful .. dark feature , gorgeous brown eyes, Im already doing the currency coversion for his tip in my head. An entire days worth of worrying disolves into the liquid swirls of the cup that I casualy sip from. the sun's light hasnt yet faded, but the hurried energy of the square has changed to the night shift.

The waiter comes round to drop off the check, as he turns to clear the table off to the side I glance down his muscular neck and broad shoulders..on down to my own table where I see below the price.... His hand written home phone number.

Right now is one of those breaks where ive been reading for around an hour straight and my mind gets that tapped out feeling ... like the sponge is having trouble absorbing anymore currently. Im not sure if I am very efficient at studying ... or very inefficient. For exams, I block out pretty much entire weekends... Il start friday and go for whatever amount of time I can go until however late in the night.. until I feel the info isnt sticking anymore.. then I repeat for Saturday and Friday. I usualy go in chunks, taking breaks here and there for tv.. or staring off into space for however long it takes to decompress.

This is my final week of my med surge rotation, Im gonna take on two patients. Hopefuly I can manage to pick two patients that arent that complicated. I always end up getting the opposite of what I set out for. the complicated looking charts yeild patients that are totaly self sufficient and dont want anything to do with me while the simple looking charts having my running around all day. I once picked a patient with 3 meds during spring qtr last year... thinking hed be easier ... the pt ended up taking up an immense amount of time with this and that, getting a glass of water.. helping to feed changing diapers and bed linnens, marking input and output etc etc,.. the Rn I was working with said .. Chris you shouldnt work so hard!! I guess its the same idea as the old timers told me when I was working that construction job.. Work smart .. not hard. Of course the nurse also was used to having a CNA and an LPN under her ... I was doing all 3 roles by myself.

I feel like I have nothing to talk about with anyone lately that doesnt have to do with nursing stuff. My entire life revolves around class or tests or projects or clinical .. wounds.. draining oozing with medications thrown in for extra flavor here and there. I havent had much social contact with friends outside of class... and when I do it tends to involve them askin how nursing school is going and then I tell them about the gross gaping wound I saw ... they say Eww ... and thats that.

I have managed to do a smidge of interpreting..Its always amazing to feel those old skills come oozing out of the depths of my brain ... and nice to know that Im still good at it. I wont do or think about signing for days on end then suddenly when I call it forth ... it flows out naturaly. I guess years of interpreting has imprinted it solidly in my noggin somewhere.

I have crushes now... or I guess Id call it fleeting infatuations. I never really was a crush person before, but now I have these guys I see around school who just get my internal child gigglin and blushing. Its purely a looks thing they could be total assholes for all I really know, but not in my weird little standing there with a blank look on my face momentary fantasies whenever I happen glimpse one of them... Im guessing that my brain is starving for food for thought that isnt school related... and my libido is starving for an anatomy lesson that isnt from a book.

im spending lots of time in my car lately ... and alone in the office closing for shari.. I need good conversation about something .. anything else , but I have no idea what id talk about given the chance... .. I guess there are the old standby topics of interest ... sex and porn.

I dont mean this to be a mopey post, but i guess im venting. Lately feel like im stranded on a desrt island surrounded by stacks of nursing books .. and oh yeah the plam trees have coconuts filled with Dr pepper (my recent drug of choice)

I think I need one of my dream men to show up in a stylish car and whisk me away to some exotic location ... sunshine .. no traffic... and no nursing books. chit chat for hours under palm trees.. cuz of course we have so much in common. Have a nice dirty weekend .. then send him on his way .. ya know cuz I dont need nuttin long term right now. Though hed be on speed dial :)

am I just so absent minded... or is this early alzheimers setting in ?

ive been looking high and low for my wallet.. bathroom .. in the car... under the bed( hey could have gotten kicked there).. Laundry room .. kitchen .. etc, etc. It feels like it was a good 45 minutes ... actualy was a half hour.

In a panic I turn on the lap top to check my account balnce to see if ..I had dropped in a parking lot .. if my accounts have been drained....

I go to scratch an itch on my right butt cheeck...and there is my wallet... in the pocket where I never ever put it anymore.

Im glad Im the sort of person who ..... Just laughs at myself.

I Have an obsessive personality type.

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with bugs, ants,slugs,beatles, any creepy crawly that I could find. Even then, I wasnt the typical gay kid. My mom has told stories of finding worms in my pockets when I was really little. I remember being covered in dirt trying to dig up ant nests. I couldnt tell you how many ant farms I had when I was a kid.

Around middle school, my obsession turned to reptiles. I had Iguanas, anoles, a little horny toad, and even a box turtle for a few days. I devoured any book I could find on the subject. Oh, I also had a snake that escaped.. that got a bit dramatic.

Early highschool brought ASL... which nearly totaly consumed all of my attention and lead to my current career.

Late Highschool brought plants to my bizarre attention. Anyone who knows me, knows how that obsession has gone.

College brought ITP and a continuation of plants, then there was a brief obsession with weight loss.... and an obsession of sorts with a guy.

Probly the remnants of a childhood of making up for being the fat lonely kid, this obession aspect of my personality is now in limbo. Im not feeling as into the plants as I once was. Sure plants are cool, but the amazing tropical plants just done yield the stimulation they once did.. and take wayy to much effort. I have a mild obsession with fossils, but they dont do much aside from sitting on the desk to remind me how much of a nerd I am.

So, here is my proposal. I think I should become obsessed with myself. IF, I turned all of the massive amounts of energy and focus that I have given all of those odd little subjects in my history onto my self, think what I could do. Weight loss, lifting weights, nutrition, social life, getting laid, ohhhhh I could do amazing things.

Somehow I need to appeal to my own brain. Please, while things are in limbo, set what ever cogs into motion.. or re-wire the circuit boards up there to make this happen. I mean sheesh, I was obsessed enough to spend years learning an entire language, then spent yeas more learning how to be an interpreter in that language... I should be able to do this.

SO, I will plead with my brain and try to make this happen. If my brain gives me any guff, I will remind it that if it doesnt give me what I want, and lets things go on as is, then eventually the veins giving its blood supply will be blocked so badly that it will cut off its oxygen supply and it will be sorry then now.. wont it. That or Il get diabetes and deprive it of glucose.. just to piss it off.

I have a lot on my plate today. I had a job at 7am in seattle. I have to clean up my rooom, Shawn's room and the guest room for Debbie and Grandma visiting tomarrow. After that, I need to meet up with Frank at 3:30 to go to the hospital and pick out a patient and get their info.

For some reason, yesterday, I was being a big grump about all the things I had to do today, and now that Im getting in the groove...Im feeling really good.

While doing some cleaning in my bedroom I found a huge stash of my old ASL papers from highschool mixed with papers from Itp(probly nearly all the papers I ever got from 3yrs of highschool asl)... This is almost a complete paper history of my sign language education...very very weird to look over all of it.

I dont know if I should save it.. trash it... or start a big bonfire.

The sun is at just the right angle to shine through the gaps in the canopy and create thin spighetti shadows while illuminating only random objects, a rock here, a tree stump there in an orange glow that only comes at the end of the day. The air is sweet with smells of resinous saps heated during the glaring days sun, now wafting to me on the evening breezes. In the distance I can hear the the river flowing over rocks, the sound being filtered as it bounces off each massive tree trunk. The sounds, so close and yet so far, make it feel as though It were so close I could smell it, the glacial run off; like the smell of ice cubes.. as if they had a smell.

I have never stood so still and experienced so much at the same time.

I find a place amongst the waist high ferns.

I take a seat.

I close my eyes.

A 6 inch tooth from a Megalodon shark. Between 2 and 15 million years old.




1,700 year old Constantine era roman coins.




67 million year old Arm bone (im guessing) from an Edmontosaurus





66-ish million year old Mosasaur teeth.