Sonicrusk Blog

Whenever the topic of my job comes up, my dear aunt always likes to bring up the fiancée of her friend’s nephew. I feel like this guy’s old lady is my sister RN down south.

“Hey, Frank’s (friend’s nephew) fiancée is a nurse too.”

“Oh really? Where”

“She works in the emergency room at St. Suzie’s in Santa Monica. Do you work in the ER?”

“No, I work on the Med/Surg floor.”

With a perplexed look, “What’s that?”

You might think that the “ER” is the heart of the hospital. It could be, it depends on context and definition. If you get into a car wreck, or are having a heart attack, that’s where the ambulance is going to take you. It’s also where people walk in at all hours when “they need to go to the hospital.” If it’s serious and you need to be admitted, you go to the ICU. If not, then it’s the Med/Surg floor. If you are in bad shape but improve, you get transferred to the Med/Surg floor.

While still in nursing school, I had to interview one of my old college professors that had spent several years working in the ER, and still worked occasional shifts there. During this interview, she scoffed at the “hoochieism” of ER nurses concerned with their make-up and fake tits. She told me that nurses in that unit sometimes went to dentist’s appointments or shopping on the clock. Just slipped out the door for a few hours. It was a common occurrence, and apparently is elsewhere.

I’ve seen the ER nurses who bring up the patients for admission, and some of them are pretty sexy. Sexy hairstyles, sexy smoky eye shadow, nice fake tits, and a colorful silky looking thong peeking out from beneath their form-fitting scrubs.

The ER is the nemesis of the Med/Surg floor. They will pawn off anything that can on you. I’ve had patients tell me how they laid in the ER crying in pain while two nurses drank coffee at the foot of their bed. This is possible because there really aren’t any rooms in the ER. A curtain can separate a foot of a bed from the rest of the department.

I’ve had plenty of patients come up from the ER with nothing done. The nurse had eight hours to take care of certain orders, but didn’t do anything besides start a crappy IV line that will beep once I connect it to a IV pump. I’ve had patients wailing in pain because they hadn’t pissed in eight hours. So, in order to continue my admission, I have to stop everything and call the doctor to get an order for a catheter. I insert it, and a liter of urine immediately dumps out. I once had a patient wheeled up to the floor covered in urine. She had fell, so she couldn’t turn to either side for us to put the bedpan under her. I again had to call and get a catheter order. An hour later and five tries later, I finally got it in, and 800 milliliters of urine dump out. I look back through the chart to see that a catheter had been ordered eight hours before she arrived on the floor. According to the patient, no one had tried to put a catheter in her. Write up!

The pharmacy won’t give out medications without three things recorded on a sheet and faxed to them: height, weight, and allergies. To be honest, I do not know if it is their responsibility, but the ER has always completed this sheet. The pharmacy closes at 11PM. A lot of times, the admission orders are written well before this, but the patient has to wait for a bed to open up or some other arcane reason. If the ER nurse can just take a minute to fax those orders written at, let’s say, 1800 to the pharmacy as well as getting the patient to answer the three previously mentioned questions, I would have all of the ordered medications on a computerized sheet. Otherwise, I have to write them all out by hand for both my current and the day shift.

Lately, the ER hasn’t been doing this. There was one guy, a fellow RN that received a patient on the M/S floor with orders written from 2PM. Twelve hours later, the patient arrives and nothing was done! No labs drawn, no allergy sheet. He had to scurry to get all of this done along with his usual tasks for the other four patients he was responsible for. The ER has hours upon hours to accomplish this; we only have a couple. We don’t have time to “write them up” because we are trying to get everything done. Maybe they know this.

I read a couple of fellow bloggers who are ER nurses. I’m pretty sure that they are highly talented and care for their patients. But it seems like a lot of my old classmates wanted to work in the ER because it’s got a lot of pizzazz. At least people know what the hell it is.

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I went with my dad yesterday to eat dinner at Akira’s Japanese Food. It was a teppan-style dinner. A cook with a floppy hat presided over a large skillet and cooked the meal around the patrons. It was my first time at such a place, and actually my first time at Akira’s.

The teppan cooking area is the skillet with two chairs on both short sides and four chairs facing it from the front:

   XXXX 
X           X
X           X

My dad and I sat on the left side of the above diagram. An old white couple sat across from us. Nothing too remarkable or extraordinary about them, the guy had thinning white hair and his wife was fat with cankles and short died blonde hair. The four chairs in front were unoccupied.

The cook arrived. He was a young Asian dude with a frilly blood red shirt like a pirate and a floppy cook’s hat of the same color. The hat looked like a deflated mushroom. He sprayed some stuff onto the skillet, lit it with a flame, and with a fiery flourish the cooking entertainment commenced.

My pops and I talked between us, but I was able to listen while the cook and the couple talked. The cook told them how he had been in the military for six years. Soon, they started talking about Iraq. I thought I was in the Fox News Channel studios with the tired talking points bandied about, especially by the fat lady.

“Fight ‘em over there instead of over here.”

“This is what war is about.”

“That is what soldiers do.”

“Not supporting soliders.”

Blah blah.

I was tempted to open my fat mouth. I mean, c’mon, politics is a volatile subject, and could’ve blown up in the cook’s face like the skillet earlier. I could’ve been a big jerk about it and argued, since my beliefs are polar opposite of the old couple’s and the cook’s. Then, what type of pleasant atmosphere would we have had? Of course, if I had done that then I would’ve been pegged as the jerk.

I looked at my dad during this period, but he didn’t seem to notice. Later, after dinner, I brought it up and he told me that he did notice. He also agreed with my that it was very inappropriate conversation to be occurring during the dinner. Anyway, I’m tempted to write a letter to Akira’s, but I don’t want to give away my address. I also don’t know the name of that cook. The food was good though, at least the steak and fried rice. I am not a great fan of multitudes of fried vegetables.

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It all started yesterday when I went to McDonald’s on F Street. They play some wacky music there at that McDonald’s. Last time I went it was Madness. This time, they played Men At Work while I ate my Deluxe Breakfast. I was tired of greasy food, but had to get something in my stomach in order to donate blood.

I like to go to the Houchin Blood Bank on G Street. I don’t really like to donate blood because they can only use the antecubital (AC) fossa vein in my right arm. It is the vein right where the arm bends in the middle. They can never find the same vein in my left arm. One time they tried, failed, and ended up poking the right AC anyway. They use a gigantic needle when dealing with the removal of blood and I always bleed a lot afterwards from the puncture site. But donating blood is the least I can do when I get around to it.

Afterwards, I went to Albertson’s to buy some stuff for Chicken Fettucini Alfredo. Some chick at my work brought some in so I thought I’d give it a whirl. I found a recipe on the web that sounded pretty easy.

I went home and puttered around, then fell asleep until 7PM. I got up for a few hours, and again fell asleep on my couch until around 1AM. I watched a TiVoed Medium, then made the Chicken Alfredo. This was how it went:

Cut up chicken into cubes and cook in butter after sprinkling with garlic powder
Cook pasta in boiling water
Open up McCormack’s Alfredo Mix, put it and milk into sauce pan, simmer
Mix Everything

Easy for such a good meal. I’ll probably eat it for the next few days. Then I’ll order a pizza.

I watched an episode of Columbo where Jack Cassidy is a magician who kills his asshole blackmailing boss. I like Columbo. Who would ever think it would be the typewriter ribbon, flower on the lapel, car keys, light bulb, or tied shoelaces that did these smarmy jerk killers in?

After that I wrote a letter, read around on the web, and am now typing this.

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It isn’t a recent thing, but I’ve noticed that a lot of bloggers categorize their posts into different tags. That is, the writer writes about different things and puts them into different folders. As a reader, I usually don’t pay attention to them, and they don’t affect whether or not I read something. If I read a blog, it is usually all or nothing. If it is the nothing portion, well then by definition I don’t read it, eh?

I only have a couple of categories as it is: Movie Chumps and Originals. Movie Chumps, as regular readers know, is where I rant against a certain activity, group, or concept that irritates me. Originals is the default category; every post is in Originals. You might also remember the retired category of Spokesmodels. I removed the category (not the posts) because I thought the blog was becoming too scantily clad babe focused. According to my Site Meter results, that really hasn’t changed. Virtually all traffic comes to my blog via image searches. I believe that is also where a lot of my spam comes from too.

Should I bring back the category at least of Spokesmodels? Maybe I should create some additional categories. I talk about a wide range of weird things such as

Dog Life
My Joe Past
Amateur Anthropology Babble
Nursing
Odd Stories
Cheese Sandwiches
Inquiries such as this post

Probably no one cares. Just thought I’d bring it up.

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I am often told that I have a dry sense of humor and for the longest time I didn’t know what this meant exactly. Was it dry in content or delivery? I discovered that it could be either, or both. What matters is that “people do not know if you are kidding or not.” To me, that is funny as hell.

I do a reasonably good job of making people laugh and it is not about deadpan one-liners or stories. I am not above making comical gestures or producing weird accents to correspond with the story I am telling.  Sometimes people double up, begging for me to “do it again.” I decline. I am not a performing monkey.

The Good Lord has blessed me with the ability to say just about everything with a straight face. Therefore, truly gullible people fall prey to my dry humor. I can tell them that I am an Arab from Yemen, or that I have two kids in Los Angeles with different mothers that I do not claim because who needs the burden of child support? Not me, I say. Neither of those facts is true, by the way. My babies’ mamas are the ones from Yemen.

Some people peg me as a liar because of this. It is an erroneous assumption. I almost never let the “jokes” ride out long before declaring their falseness. Some people absolutely hate my sense of humor. I don’t know why except maybe they like a black and white world of pure truth and pure fiction. Dry humor is gray like an unbrushed tongue.  Maybe they don’t like any humor, no matter the flavor.

Nothing works better to break up tension at some government bureaucracy than dry humor. The meanest teller can crack a smile when you tell him or her something ridiculous with a straight face, only to point your finger at them with a wink, “Ahhh! Just kidding!!” Those that don’t laugh at probably duds no matter the situation. They are hopeless, so I don’t fret. Old folks love a dry sense of humor for some reason. I always get a slap in the back or the grab of the arm, “Got me!” Young women are often the most opposed to dry humor and I don’t know why.
 

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Regular readers will remember that I am a bit of a stamp geek so you can guess how interested I was to find out what stamps the USPS had in store for 2007.

One of the perennial favorite honorees featured on stamps are government programs. My stash of stamps feature Veterans Administration, Social Security, the ZIP Code and even postal carriers themselves. Still, I cracked up to see that the post office is going to have a stamp honoring Jury Duty. I could write a post on that topic itself, outside of a commemorative stamp, but my involvement with this particular civil duty is sparse. I have only been called to the courthouse two times. Once I sat in the audience all day. Eight years later, I was actually called to the box, but dismissed by the DA one turn after answering the preliminary questions. It could be worse; I’ve met people that never even left the jury services building.

On Matildakay’s blog back in October, the former Black Dog joked how he wanted to emulate Jim Rockford the Malibu TV detective by being sold out by his best friend and getting clocked over the head/kidnapped by gangsters. This renewed my interest in the show. My dad and brother used to watch it over the years. I was familiar with all of the main characters: Jim, Rocky, Angel, Dennis, but couldn’t remember any single episode.

I remembered that WGN showed reruns of The Rockford Files at 0600 so I added it into my TiVo Season Pass manager. That show is solid entertainment, and good fun. There was never anything lurid about The Rockford Files. Virtually all of my favorite shows nowadays, while potentially brilliant, have some level of luridness in plot or character. Captain Turner gets his eye yanked out, Leotardo’s crew leaves Spatafore bludgeoned and keestered, whole families get shotgunned to death on Medium. Rockford Files is good 1970’s fun. Alas, Suddenlink canned WGN from its lineup for the start of the year, and it appears that WGN did the same to Rockford.

Speaking of TiVo, I have been using it to watch some old classics that I simply have never seen. First was The Lost Weekend. I had seen a bit of it as a kid so I knew the basic plotline. 1940’s guy is an alcoholic and the movie shows what he goes through on a weekend bender. The movie is quite good, especially if you are curious as to the life of a drunk. Next, I watched North by Northwest. It was also a very entertaining, engrossing movie.

A couple of weeks ago, I watched Sunset Blvd. I am not usually a fan of old movies. I never liked the rigid mannerisms and voice inflection usually portrayed by the actors. Sunset Blvd is an awesome movie, however. I sometimes watch movies and try to find holes in them. When the Kill Bills came out, they received magnificent reviews. I watched them with vigilance trying to find holes. The story was solid so I was impressed. I’m no expert, but I couldn’t find any true ridiculousness. I did the same with Sunset Blvd, and couldn’t find any holes in the plot or characterization besides the fact that Joe Gillis was running from repo men.

I was talking to a Filipino guy at work. I asked him if he had ever seen this movie. He replied with a no, and then asked what it was about.

“Well, it is about this screenwriter in LA who is broke. He is getting chased by guys who want to repossess his car. He ends up at an old actress house…”

I stopped there because it probably sounded ridiculous to him. I didn’t dare mention the dead chimp.

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I’ve finally admitted to myself that I have always been low maintenance when it comes to my hair. A lot of guys nowadays see hair stylists and spend a ton of money on their dos.

When I was a kid, I had a bowl haircut until the sixth grade when my dad finally made me get a “regular” man’s haircut, parted to the side. I suppose it was about time to not look like Pete Rose anymore. As a sophomore in high school, I had a mullet for a few months, the first and only time I ever let my hair grow long in the back. As an upperclassman, I had the surfer cut, short on the sides and really long on top that I combed back luxuriously.

I had that until the army where it was unceremoniously shaved off in reception battalion at basic training. After those two months of Missouri winter, in the decadent hub of Monterey, California, I got it cut short yet again. Then I started getting shit from my roommate Hoat.

“Grow that shit out,” he would admonish me.

How I asked? My hair was too short and too fine to do anything with. His answer? Pomade.

I let my hair grow out. Hoat was right; pomade kept my hair parted to the side in a short, conservative “regular” haircut. Without it, my thin hair would friz straight up in spikes. I kept it that way for a while, long for army standards. Then early one morning, my platoon sergeant was measuring our height and weight to make sure our dimensions didn’t add up to fatness. The ruler measuring height sank down into my bed head. He told me to get a haircut – today.

For the rest of the army, a short haircut. After my discharge, I let it grow out fairly long. I didn’t need any pomade. Then I got a girlfriend that liked it short and spiky. I kept it that way for years out of convenience. My old army buddy Hoat would still give me shit for keeping it short. He is still in the army. Maybe he thought I was taking for granted my civilian freedoms. Isn’t that really what Iraq is all about, the freedom for us civilian yokels to grow our hair out?

Recently, I’ve been letting it grow out again. I don’t know if it is some type of life crisis, boredom with the super short look, or the number of women who tell me that I should let it grow out. Whatever the case, it is at that same weird stage that I found myself in after basic training.

I tried to use regular gel. My hair laughed at me. I would part my hair accordingly and it would shake itself off into unruly spikes. Drats! It was time for the pomade.

I hadn’t used pomade in almost a decade. I slathered some onto my hair and combed it to the side. No movement. My hair autonomy was defeated.  It stayed the way I combed it all day. Pomade - A miracle hair goo that looks like something bought at Pep Boys.
 

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Both Christmas and New Year flew by, with me working a ton of hours in between it seemed.

I kept true to my blog word by giving out gift certificates to loved ones as gifts. I’m going to have to get over that and somehow develop a talent for picking gifts. Gift certificates aren’t going to fly for the next fifty years that I hope to be alive.  

In return I got a gift certificate from my dad for the Valley Plaza. I bought a stethoscope, a scrub top, and a duvet cover for the down comforter my mom bought me.

I used to be quite Spartan when it came to my sleeping accommodations. It probably stemmed from the army. There, you were given a twin bed to sleep on. If you were lucky, the bed was fairly new. If not, then you slept on a bed with prisoner stripes that was manufactured in the 1960’s.

After the army, I slept on a firm full-sized mattress with basic sheets. Everything was handed down to me. A couple of years ago, I was given a much plusher full-sized mattress that began my sleep revolution. A few months ago, I bought some high-count thread sheets whereas before, I just used sheet sets handed down to me or bought on the cheap at Target. It was all the same to me.

Now, I have a down comforter. This thing is great. I can crank my thermostat down to 65 degrees, and this thing keeps me as warm as a campfire. I used to use a top sheet, a micro fleece blanket, and a regular comforter to keep warm at night.  It did nothing compared to the down comforter and simple top sheet I used now.

Down comforters are pricey. I don’t know exactly how much they cost, but I do know that the duvet covers, which are like a sheet that encloses the comforter so you don’t get it dirty, run about $60-80. Why so much? I don’t know. They are hard as hell to find for a full-sized bed. Today, I decided to continue the trend by buying another duvet cover and some sheets with even higher thread counts. You can tell the difference in comfort when you are trying to sleep during the day. You need all the help you can get.
 

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