This is another non-medical post.  I hope you find it interesting, though!  My husband and I have taken up a new hobby that we are having a great deal of fun with, so I thought I’d share it in hopes that others will give it a try and find it just as fun!

It all started with a new iPhone app called Gowalla.  I play Packrat on Facebook and the developers gave us the heads up about a new game they made for the iPhone 3G.  Since I love Packrat, I decided to give it a try.

From Gowalla’s FAQ page:

Gowalla is a location-based travel game that rewards you for visiting both extraordinary and everyday places with your iPhone. In other words, it’s a bit like having a passport on your iPhone that displays beautifully designed “stamps” from all the places you visit.

In addition to collecting stamps from real-world locations, Gowalla also lets you gather virtual souvenirs, or icons, that can be traded with friends or hidden for others to find. Think of it like virtual geocaching.

It’s still a new game, so the only “featured” cities are Austin and San Francisco. I played in SF and had a good time with it.  Just because you don’t live in those cities, though, doesn’t mean you can’t play Gowalla.  Users who download the app can play in their own cities by making their own spots and encouraging others to join them.

Anyway, from Gowalla I started looking into real geocaching.  I used to think that geocaching was where outdoorsy types went out in the woods with GPS receivers to find certain trees or rocks or something.

I am not outdoorsy, and I know nothing of GPS.  Trouncing around in the woods is not what I consider a “good time.”

I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was generally wrong about the whole thing!  When I typed my ZIP code into geocaching.com’s search engine, I found a cache hidden in a park less than a mile from me!  Not only that – I found that there are LOTS of caches hidden in various areas around my city.  No outdoorsishness required!

What is required, of course, is a GPS.  The iPhone 3G has a built-in GPS and you can even download some geocaching apps from iTunes for various amounts of money.  If you have no iPhone, GPS receivers are not horribly expensive, most going for around $100 or less… maybe even way less if you get one used from Ebay.

I wasn’t entirely truthful about there being a total lack of outdoorsishness.  All caches are hidden outdoors (except for a few virtual and other indoor caches), but thus far we really haven’t done any backwoods trouncing.  That isn’t to say we haven’t encountered our share of looking through tall grasses, tree trunks, and dark recesses.  Just yesterday we found a cache hidden in a place that I was not about to put my hand into.  Husband to the rescue! :)

Finding these little hidden treasures has been really fun.  We’ve been out walking almost every single day since we started. Sometimes we only manage about 1/2 mile, but there have been days that we’ve walked at least 3 miles.  For a couple of couch potatoes, that can add up to some great exercise for the week!  We’ve found parks that we never would have known about before…. so our 2 year old has LOVED going with us!  He gets to play in a new park almost every day.  We’ve learned a lot about our city, and we’ve come across some really interesting places.

It’s also changed the way I look at my surroundings.  There are so many clever hiding places to put caches!  I find myself walking around wondering if there’s something under that bench or behind those vines.  I’m fascinated by the thought that I’ve been walking by these little treasure hiding-places, never knowing they were there until now.

If you’ve been interested in reading about our new hobby, check out some books on Amazon that explain the sport in greater detail… Buying used books on Amazon is good for the environment; it’s even better if you can find these titles at your local library.  (There are even caches hidden in libraries!)

This one is written by geocaching.com:

But I like this one a little better. Maybe I’m more dumb than idiotic?

This is not going to be a medical post in the least.  Instead, it will be a post wherein I complain about our flat screen TV.

We bought it from Dell in the middle of 2006.  42″ flat screen, model # W4201C. I thought it was a little odd that my husband wanted a TV from a computer company, but whatever.  It has worked flawlessly… until about a week or so ago.

At that point, it started shutting off randomly by itself.  A few days later, it would do the “click” when we turned it on, and the power light would come on, but there was no picture for at least 5-15 minutes.

On Saturday, it simply refused to come on at all.

I called customer service and they had me do some dancing and unplugging and replugging, etc etc etc.  Then when that failed to work (shocking), I had to call the out-of-warranty phone #.  I did that… only to find out that while it would only cost $260 to diagnose/troubleshoot the problem, it would cost us $1,200 to ship it to Ohio.

Um.

Why am I writing about this on my blog exactly?  Well, because after a cursory search on Google, I cannot find a decent way to contact someone at Dell to complain.  I have a burning need to complain about this SOMEWHERE to SOMEONE because this TV is not even 3 years old yet.

So because I looooooove watching The Amazing Race (and last time I checked it was not possible to watch it online), my dear husband hooked up the TV his parents bought him before he went to college.  We are now watching an 18 year old 13 inch TV.

We plugged it in and it came on instantly.

So the moral of this story is to think twice about buying anything from Dell.  I am aware that our big 42″ flat screen TV is out of warranty, and I’m semi-happy to have it fixed, but if the only place I can send it to is 1400 miles away, then Dell – I am awarding you an official Customer Service FAIL.

Anyone need a 240 pound paperweight?

Ever want to know who my favorite reindeer are?  How about my most embarrassing moment at work?  I dished it all over at Addicted to Medblogs!

And that picture?  That is soooo totally me, right down to the white fur-lined knee-high platform boots :)

Not to be confused with “Change of Shift,” for which you should head over to Emergiblog to get info on how to submit your entry for the next edition! It’s quite easy – all Kim wants is your very first post!

We were recently on vacation and on our way to returning the rental car, we stopped to fill it with gas. I thought I’d go in and get the boy some pretzels to munch on until we could get him some real food. I picked out a bag and went up to the counter to pay for them. The clerk informed me that they were doing “shift change” and that I’d have to wait if I planned on buying that bag of pretzels.

Seriously? I have never been in that situation before. I was quite surprised. My face must have shown it, because she said that she’d allow me to have the bag if I provided exact change.

In the hospital, we have shift change at least every 8 hours. Our shifts are so varied, though, that it’s possible to have nurses coming and going every 4 hours. We even had shift change at 3am at times until that shift was eliminated. The biggest shift change is undoubtedly at 7am, the next at 3pm and the next at 11pm. We have a rule that there is to be no family in the unit while shift change is occuring, and we aren’t too keen on taking phone calls from family members either. For the former, patient privacy is the main concern. We talk to each other at the desk, but the desk is really out there in the open and anyone standing around can hear private information. For the latter, it is a courtesy to the nurses. The off-going nurse wants to give report and go home. The oncoming nurse wants to get report and start her shift. Constant phone calls that interrupt this just prolongs report and so we encourage people not to call for updates during these times.

I don’t find this unreasonable. Most other people don’t either. There’s rarely anyone around or calling at 7am, but the 3pm shift change is another story. There are usually lots of visitors and phone calls during that time. Most people understand, but there are a few that get angry at being told they have to wait until report is over.

I gotta tell you though. Shift change at a gas station was a new one for me.

Maybe you won’t be after reading this.

Like the title says, this post has nothing to do with nursing. Or medicine.

Ok then! I just read this on Yahoo! news:

“His father, Yosef Cavalin, frets about the piano-playing, noting that his only child recently broke his arm pursuing another passion, martial arts. He has won several trophies for his age group.

“Finals are coming and everything and he cannot play with both hands. He’ll just try to play with the right hand,” he says. “I don’t know how his grade’s going to be in piano. It worries me a bit.”

Um. Your kid, who 10 and is excelling in college level science courses, broke his arm while winning trophies in karate. And you’re worried about his piano grade? I can confidently say that no one is going to take the kid to task over a B in piano that he earned while playing one handed. I’m just saying.

And secondly, I have a plea. Go read this. I have thus far managed to snag some on Ebay here and there, but it’s not even available there anymore and I’m down to the last bottle. (If you keep it in the fridge, it keeps it from going icky.) It is truly unobtainable. So now I guess I have to switch to something else. Any ideas? It has to be leave-in. And it has to smell delightful. :)

Hmm… I guess I will tack on something nursing-related (kind of) seeing as how it just happened about 90 seconds ago. I started a business a couple of months ago and it doesn’t even matter what that is – what matters is that I haven’t sold a thing, have not brought in one penny. (I’m not ready yet! But that is besides the point.) Just now I received a call from some Congressman (well, his “aide”) who is proud of my business accomplishments and would like a business leader like me to get some sort of Congressional merit honor badge club ring and go to Washington to represent business leaders, blah blah.

I have been a bedside nurse for over 10 years. I have seen and done some incredible things. I have helped fellow humans through some truly horrible illnesses and have been there for them. I have been hit at, hit on, spit on, kicked at, thanked, hugged, and I’ve even had a couple of thank you letters to the hospital with my name mentioned. I have been a business owner for 40 days and have not yet managed to actually do any business. Yet this is what they want to send me to Washington for. This country is MESSED UP.

My last post referred to making new buttons for some blogs that I noticed that had gotten facelifts. Makeovers. New ‘do’s. However you want to say it.

One of those blogs belongs to PixelRN. A web designer in her previous life, she did a great job redesigning her blog. She explains how she did it in this post. She should put out a shingle, maybe redesign the sites for a few other bloggers, don’t you think? (hint/wink/hint) :)

Another post she did was about RSS feeds, and it is also very well done. If you are a blogger, you really really really need to know about RSS. For me personally, it doesn’t matter how good your blog is… If I can’t subscribe to your blog to read in Google Reader, I’m probably not going to read it. There’s another side to that. You can choose how much of your post shows up in a reader. Some bloggers make their entire posts available to be read, and some only allow a few sentences to show, thereby requiring the reader to click on “read more of this post” in order to read the rest of it. This also drives me nuts. I realize that we all like to have our stat counts be nice and high, but I almost never click through unless the first few sentences really grab my attention. That is not always easy to do!

(Addendum: Although Rebirth only provides partial feeds in Google Reader, I always faithfully click and read her entire posts. Because she rocks. And I don’t want her to stop blogging, as she has recently threatened to do.)

Remember this baby?

Well, he turned into this 1 year old:

I have never done anything so simultaneously frustrating and rewarding. Mostly rewarding :)

I was tagged by PixelRN, so here goes:

1. I have a few goals in life: I want to someday design and build my own house, see the northern lights and visit the 7 wonders of the world. That last one might be a little difficult, though, seeing as how I’m not very fond of traveling.
2. For one summer in college, I worked at Eastman Kodak in a lab. I’m amazed that I can’t remember exactly what I did, but I know it had to do with testing the silver emulsion for…. something. Anyway, it was a fascinating job and I still remember my coworkers there, although I don’t keep in touch with them anymore.
3. I make mosaics.
4. If I could have any job in the world, I would want to be an astronaut.
5. I was married on Halloween.
6. I love playing video games. I can remember playing Mah Jongg on my dad’s old 386 and Missile Command on the Atari. I’ve graduated to Nintendos and Xbox’s now, but it has truly been a life long “hobby.”
7. Last and least, I have ADD. I’m sure no one noticed, but I posted only 7 times during my pregnancy last year. That’s because I wasn’t taking my meds and the desire to write pretty much vanished. I was diagnosed and started treatment in college. One semester I was about to flunk out of the nursing program and the next semester I was on the dean’s list. Pretty
impressive turnaround. Think what you will about ADD, but finding out how to manage it changed my life.

Honestly, I don’t know who to tag – I feel like I’ve read this meme from pretty much everyone, but I guess I don’t remember seeing one from Kevin MD or GruntDoc.

Nursing ratios are very important. When I worked in IL, I once had to take 3 critically ill patients. I had never been so busy at work in my life and I constantly felt as though I was way behind. I was very scared of possibly missing something. There simply was not enough of me to pay very close attention to each patient.

There were a few nights on med-surg that I took 9-10 patients, mostly fresh post-ops. That’s a lot of patients. And that was over 10 years ago. Even in the last decade it seems like patients have been getting more and more complicated what with their chronic medical problems.

Here in California, there’s a law protecting ICU nurses in particular; it says that we can only take 2 patients in ICU. Even if they require a lower level of care and are overflow from full med/surg units, even if they have transfer orders – if they are physically in ICU, they are to be 1RN:2pts. California has been moving towards staffing ratios on transitional care units and med-surg floors as well.

There’s a bill that’s been introduced – the Registered Nurse Safe Staffing Act of 2007 (HR 4138). It would provide a staffing system that has input from nurses who give direct patient care. This is a very good thing. It is something that we do in my ICU all the time and I can’t imagine it any other way.

PixelRN has also written about this issue, perhaps a bit more eloquently than I. WashingtonWatch.com provides information on the current status of the bill and a wiki where you can put forth your arguments for or against the bill. There’s even a link on their sidebar where you can write to your state representative. I plan on doing so right after posting this. They don’t know if you support it if you don’t tell them! They all have email; it’s very fast.

There have been more and more regulations lately from JCAHO, the most recent and notable being those which state hospitals will not be reimbursed for care related to preventable complications such as pressure ulcers and UTI’s. We do the best we can with what we have. More nurses = more care = less complications.

This is one regulation from the government that actually makes sense. I’m so glad it’s been taken to a national level. We really need to get behind this bill.

When I started out in nursing, the hospital I worked at required CNA’s to wear cranberry, RT’s to wear teal, and RN’s to wear royal blue, etc. We could wear certain scrub tops that were approved and that matched the royal blue pants. The hospital did not pay for them.

When I moved and got a new job, there were no standard uniforms. We could wear whatever we wanted. Some people took this too far and started looking a bit unprofessional – scrub pants with little t-shirts that actually showed off belly buttons, that sort of thing. One or two nurses wore street clothes, but they actually looked fine to me. It wasn’t like they were wearing jeans or anything. It looked appropriate in my opinion.

A committee was formed to discuss the possibility of requiring standard uniforms. Most of us in ICU (and the rest of the hospital) were completely and totally against it. We liked our individuality and we didn’t want to look the same. I realize that there are professions that wear standard uniforms (police, EMT’s, firefighters, the military, etc), but some of us felt as though we should not be told what to wear.

Patients often comment on our scrub tops, usually compliments :). Then again, it was argued that if we told patients at the outset that all RN’s are wearing blue, they’d be able to discern who they were talking to. Or, you know, the person could just tell them that they were the RN. Why make things so hard?

Most of us felt it was up to the manager to take care of those who were dressed inappropriately.

The idea was eventually shot down, but I found it most interesting that the hospital was prepared to buy everyone’s uniforms for them, the number of which was to be based on how often one worked. I couldn’t believe that they’d spend so much money on dressing everyone.

So what do you do? Once again, there’s a poll up at Nursing Voices if you care to weigh in there!