A little less than six months...

I went to Jeff and Gloria's wedding this past weekend and Jeff made the unnerving observation that our wedding is six months away, to the date, from their wedding. Okay, so here are where Nik and I stand in the wedding planning: we have a place, a date, my ensemble, and the cake. Still remaining to be done: the caterer, invitations, photographer, florist, and probably a million other little things that I'm forgetting at the moment. *sigh* Does it get any easier? I'm just waiting for the date the come and go, since I have a feeling that the next few months will just fly by.

I feel very grown up at the point. Maybe that's why I've decided to start capitalizing on this blog post (ha, we'll see how long that lasts :P). I have a "real" job, I'm getting married, I'm moving out of the family home, Nik and I are looking at homes to buy.. all this foreign grown up stuff. I'm excited about Nik moving up north and the changes that that will inevitably bring, but it's a little nervewraking as well. I'm sure that I'll have my moments, but I'm excited about these changes and I'm going to try my best to enjoy the ride.

reading

lately, i've been returning to an old hobby: reading. i've theorized that since the advent of the internet, my attention span has dwindled to the point where i can barely read a paragraph before clicking onward to the next page. like so many other things, much of the credit goes to nik, since he's been encouraging me to read and we've been reading books together (we just finished the devil in the white city). now i've begun the ambitious project of compiling a list of books that i've been meaning to read and books that i want to re-read. it's become quite a long list.

i'm going to try to keep up with it. i'm really enjoying this hobby and i think that it taps into a part of my brain which has lay dormant for too long.

working the night shift

anyone who knows me well know that i'm certainly not a night owl. but here i am, 2 in the morning, writing a blog post. i've been working the night shift for a little over a month now. it's been quite an adjustment and i still find myself running out of steam by my last assessments around 4 or 5 in the morning.

you may be wondering about my work and how it's been going (or not). there are good days and bad days. some days i feel like i'm finally getting it: i'm on top of my assessments, my babies are being fed on time, and the night is going smoothly. and then there are the days where everything goes wrong: my meds are late, my babies are all crying, i'm scrambling to catch up on my charting, and my change of shift report is sorely lacking. for now, the bad days are outnumbering the good ones. i'm still feeling the growing pains of being a new nurse and it's been a rough couple of weeks.

however, the nurses on my unit have been wonderful and supportive, helping me out when i'm falling behind, reassuring me, and reminding me to not be so hard on myself. nik has also been wonderful and he usually gets the brunt of my work-related rants as i'm driving to or from work. nik always helps me put my work into perspective, and reminds me that it's only an aspect of my life. on the whole, my life is going great: family, friends, nik.. everything is going so well. also, even though i stress myself out, it's a good job.. after all, who else gets to feed and play with babies while they're working? i'm very lucky, but i think i have a tendency to take it for granted sometimes.

i hope that the work situation gets easier with time. i still feel that there's so much that i need to learn: about neonates, about treatments and therapies, about time management.. i have a long way to go. but i'm going to keep pressing forward and doing my best, and hopefully that'll be good enough.

first!

this'll be the first post of 2008. wow, it's been a while since i've written in here... so what's new? a lot. honestly, i want to write a huge update but it would take forever and i need to work early tomorrow. anyway, i'm sure most people are like me and have short attention spans. so a brief update:

1. spent new year's in houston with nik's friends and family
2. studied like a madwoman for the nclex
3. passed the nclex (yay!)
4. went to thailand, met nik's parents for the first time and had an awesome time
5. started work in the good sam nicu
6. went snowboarding for the first time with nik and his friends (painful, painful..)
   

and that's the basics.. there've been a few visits down to l.a. sprinkled in there, as well as a few visits from nik up north. big thing right now is work, of course... working with teeny-tiny babies has been a completely new experience.. nursing school doesn't give you the specialized knowledge that you need for nicu. also, although i work three days a week, 12-hour days are long.. and those extra four hours make a huge difference. i'm still getting used to being among the ranks of the income earning and employed.. weird transition.

a few projects here and there. i'm still knitting. i finished my first knitting project a little before the snow trip, just in time for nik to have a cozy scarf ready and waiting. i'm working on learning mandarin via pimsleur. there are a total of 90 30-minute lessons.. i'm on number 10. ouch. still running too. actually, i just registered for my first marathon which will be in december. one would assume that i have plenty of time to train, but i'm still trying to figure out how to plan my training runs around work and visits with nik.

ok. so that's my life in a nutshell... also, as you can see, i'm ditching the rest of my web site since it never got updated and facebook's better for that kind of stuff, anyway.

sometimes, the past comes back to haunt you

omigosh, on a whim, i was just looking at the old archived posts of this blog. can you believe that i've been writing in this blog since 2003?? i couldn't either...

i think i'm going to set up archiving for this blog. they're kind of fun to read through.. on a quickie glance-through, i had written a post obsessing about how david turned 27 and how old that made me feel. guess how old i am now? yup, that's right, i'm 27.

*sigh*

da dum dum dum da da

so i haven't written in here in a while. what've i been up to? well.. i've been making my way through my final semester of nursing school. even though it hasn't been terribly busy compared to the course load of other semesters, i still find ways to procrastinate and waste time, and end up being super-busy as i cram a ton of work into the course of a few days. some things never change...

my preceptorship has been an eye-opening experience. i still have so much that i need to learn, there are so many more skills that i need to acquire, and i definitely need to work faster. at this point, as a novice, i feel very far-removed from experienced nurses. sometimes i get caught up in making sure i make the grade and obsess about doing well in my tests. but as nik (appropriately) reminded me, it's not about getting the grade or passing boards, it's about doing right by your patients and having the information you need to know when your patients need it.

i definitely need to study/work harder. so for the next couple of weeks, i'll be working on knowing what i need to know to be a safe and effective nurse.. and hopefully i'll be able to pass the boards in the process.

another thing that i've been working on is my running. after the disneyland half, i set up a pretty ambitious goal of running 25 miles per week before the end of the year. so i've been tacking on the miles each week, and have been keeping a religious running schedule. up until last week, i had actually worked myself up to 21 miles a week. but.. unfortunately, between the rainy weather and getting the flu, i haven't been out to running much this week. now that i'm in the recovery stages of the flu, i plan to get back to running soon (maybe tomorrow). still have a week or so left!

also, if you haven't figured it out yet, i have a significant other. nik and i have been going out since february, so there've been a lot of trips up to the bay area on his part and lots of trips down to l.a. on my part. aside from the long-distance, things have been going wonderfully. the long-distance aspect of the relationship can be tough, but lots of phone calls, letters, and postcards, along with frequent visits do help.

so.. on to the primary reason for this post: I'M GRADUATING TOMORROW! it's been a tough year and half, but i made it out in one piece--mostly through support from nik, my family, friends, and classmates... i feel very lucky to have been surrounded such a good group of people throughout this time.

the title of this post? it goes to the tune of 'pomp and circumstance'.

mm.. yogurt-ey goodness

while i was visiting my grandma this summer, i discovered that canada is THE place for yogurt-ey goodness. pinkberry and the like are okay, but they don't hold anything over yogen fruz. which, i'm excited to announce is making its debut in the u.s.!

unlike pinkberry, which simply puts mix-ins on the side of the yogurt, yogen fruz actually mixes fresh frozen fruit into the yogurt.. which equals super-duper yummy yogurt. plus it's canadian and most canadian things are good (i.e., celine dion, etc.).

mm.. yogurt...

inspired!

running a race is always so inspiring. you have the hoards of runners, blaring music, the crowds cheering.. and the energy. there's just so much energy during a race that you don't have during a normal i'm-jogging-by-myself-for-kicks run. despite the fact that nik put together an awesome training schedule for me, i ended up slacking on my training about a month or so before the race. not ideal.

anyway, i still had a good time. even though the race started at 6 am, it was super-duper hot as the sun started rising. still, it was great to run through the parks, it was fun with the characters cheering you on and people running off the course to take pictures. the run through anaheim was torturous. we ran up and down streets as the sun rose, and it felt like it would never end. when we finally got to angel stadium, there was an awesome group of boy scouts and girl scouts who cheered for us on either side, and running into the stadium and around the field was a pretty neat experience.

good times. next time, more training. and there definitely will be a next time.. now i'm inspired. (see the castle in the background? awesome!)