Yes, it's been quite awhile, but then it's kind of been same old, same old around here. Except of course for going down to Amy's, having Amy & Co here for Thanksgiving, working 12-14 hour shifts 6-7 days a week trying to get this new registration system working right, still trying to get the yard cleaned up after the October storm... you see what I mean? However, things are going well. We seem to be surviving the work load and Dad has developed a real talent for house work. I appreciate all the support he's been giving while I have been working my tail off for Kaleida. I had today off and while I was gone to lunch with some friends, Erie Co Water Authority dug a great big hole in our front yard...........

No heat, part 2

It was a little cold in the house on Monday night, but I didn't think too much about it... it is fall after all. Then yesterday I didn't have to work, so I was in the house all day. I kept hearing this sound like an electrical motor trying to start and not being able too..... it was the furnace. Dad has pulled the blower motor tonight and he is going to try to find a place to buy one tomorrow. In the meantime, it's getting pretty cold. The Marriott is starting to look pretty good to me.

We have Light!

The juice came back on at 7:45 this evening. We had 62+ hours of no electricity and no heat.... Now that may not sound all that bad to you, and maybe it isn't. But it was darned inconvienent. It's the little things that get you. Dad kept putting things in the microwave and punching the buttons. Everytime I went into the bathroom on the 1st floor, I flipped that stupid switch for the light. Everytime my eyes popped open at night I raised my head up to see what time it was... I have now gone 3 days without blow drying my hair and I am afraid some of the interesting shapes it has take may be permanent. All in all, we made out pretty good. No damage to the house that we can see. We had plenty of help on Saturday and got the lion's share of the yard cleaned up. And I broke out the cast iron turkey roaster and cooked with it a couple of times. It cooks frozen ham baked potatoes really nicely and I baked corn bread in it tonight. Thanks to the Hatzenbuhler's generator we didn't even loose anything really important in the freezers. Alas, it's back to work tomorrow.

Oh, all right...........

I know, I know, I haven't written anything for awhile. Between Relief Society's lice-a-thon #2, working nearly full time again, and things around here, I hardly have time to run to the bathroom. Enough said about lice-a-thon #2. At work the powers that be decided to scrap the two registration systems that the hospitals use and bring in a brand new to put everyone on. Now, I'm all for this. I think all the hospitals ought to be using the same registration system and the new one is much more up to date than anything anyone was using before. I'm not, however in the majority with this opinion at work. This new system is more complicated, more detail oriented, and anyone doing an audit will know immediately who is doing what they are supposed to be doing and who isn't. Some of the secretaries don't think this is such a good thing. I figure is I'm doing my job correctly, I've got no problems. Anyway, there are several components to the training and I took the 1st one over the weekend. That means I worked last Monday, Tuesday, went in for a couple of hours on Wednesday and then drove to Bath NY for a funeral, then went to work on Thursday, Friday, trained Saturday, Sunday and back to work on Monday for another full week. Needless to say, I'm getting a little tired. I'm looking forward to the weekend just to do something other than work. The only consolation is that I will be getting a couple of good checks and will be able to pay off one of the credit cards and start hammering on another.

Updates

OK, we made it through Dave's surgery, Andy and Kay's quilt is finished and on their bed (yipee! yahoo! OK! alright! FINALLY!), and I had a great visit with Kate, Mary, Emma, Ruth, and Anson. All and all not a bad couple of weeks. Now for a little rest before Darren, Amy, Evan and Madelyn get here on Thursday.........

It doesn't take much...

It doesn't take much to throw me off my diet. I thought I had done so well last week. Stayed on program and drank all my water. And when I weighed in I had lost a great big 2/10 of a pound..... needless to say I was upset. Now I know that last week I weighed in in the morning and this one was at the end of the day, so, I really was likely to have lost nearly 2# more than that, but I was not in the mood for thinking rationally. So, we went to dinner at Smokey Bones and I had pulled pork, smoked sausage, and french fries and ate every morsel..... Today I am very sorry for having binged and will try to get back on program.......

In spite of being very non-compliant...

I managed to loose another 1.4# this week. Up to 10.8# lost so far. Hopefully, this will be a better week. I only have to work 2 days....... YAHOO!

Now that I am off the soapbox...

I also weighed in yesterday. Drumroll please! Another 2.4 # gone. That's up to 9.4.... not great, but I'll take it.

Dodge Dealerships

For anyone out there considering the move to a Dodge Caravan -- think carefully. It's actually not a bad little car but it does have some annoying problems and the Dodge dealerships aren't particularly helpful. We've had a lot of suspension problems with this car (and apparently so has everyone else who owns one judging by what I learned on the net). Now so far everything has fallen under the extended warrenty and we have had to shell out very little for repairs. However, the dealership has never been able to do the work in one day and frequently I have been without a car for up to 3 days. They also seem to always be able to find at least $400 worth of work that isn't covered under the warrenty that absolutely must be done. According to what I read from others who have owned this car, Dodge acknowledges the problems, but just refers everyone back to the dealership where they purchased it. What has happened to standing by the product you produce. Dodge isn't paying for the repairs on this car -- our extended warrenty company is. If they know that this model has these many problems you would think they would take responsiblity for them wouldn't you? And, you would think that once a problem is fixed, that you wouldn't have to fix it again. Wrong! We've had the bushings replaced on the front end at least twice. Power steering has been completely overhauled twice. I drove that last Ford van 167,000 miles and never replaced bushings or sway bars. I did have to have the power steering system completely replaced while it was still under warrenty (only up to 36,000 miles) and never had another problem with it. Needless to say, I will not buy another Caravan.

Success raising like a phoenix....

It's been a bad couple of weeks at work.... too many patients, too many docs, working too many hours, so the diet has not gone well. Last week I didn't even get to go to a meeting. However, I forced my self to go last night after work and much to my amazement, I had lost another 1.4 #. That is a total of 7 altogether. It is very slow to be sure, but something is working......

Otherwise, it has cooled off here and we are loving this weather. Days like this remind us why we haven't left Buffalo yet. When it's nice, it is darn near perfect.

Nearing the completion of Drew and Kay's quilt.... 5 1/2 years is a long time to be working on one quilt.... Sorry guys!

Cats and Dogs

That's what it's been raining here, cats and dogs. I will refer you to Dave's post from yesterday..... it wasn't very fun to come into work with no phones and no computers. It did make for an interesting day however. I weighed in last night before we went to Red Lobster and was down another 3#..... of course this morning tells another story. But, I'm sticking with another 3# loss!

Another week down

Let's suffice it to say it was a wild one at work this week. But good news, I was down 2.6# this week.... almost back to where I started.......

Went to pagent last night. They have made changes in presentation and costuming... it was pretty good. The anti-Mormons are better organized and infinitely more annoying than ever. They now have bull horns, professionally made signs and are quite aggressive in persecuting us. It was very tough to ignore. We were parked up front right by the fence so we had to walk right past them to get to our car. Next year I think we are going to take Rumples and tie him to the front bumper of the car with a 25 foot lead and make sure we get parked right up front. See if they can tolerate a little persecution right back. Hope they have their track shoes on!

Garden

Ok, since John bragged about his pear tomato -- we ate the first cucumber and the first zucchini out of the garden last night. Both were wonderful! I was amazed to find out how many web sites there are out there with Zucchini recipes.... We may get to try many of them judging how large the plants are getting....

Update

Ok, so I haven't posted for 2 months.... it's been a little busy here. We really enjoyed having everyone here this summer. We're almost back to normal. I'm going to leave the outside toys out for a little while longer to see if anyone decided to come back for another visit, hint, hint, hint. And, the diet isn't going well -- I think I'm going to have to go back to weight watchers meetings. If I can find a session that is convienent.... Since the first of this month I have had to replace my education counselor, enrichment counselor and leader, welfare services counselor and compassionate service leader..... don't you think it would be just as easy for the bishop to replace me too? Anyway I have 4 more weeks of full time work and then I think things will settle down to a dull roar again. Rumor has it that they are close to hiring another part time med sec and then I can go back to part time. I'll miss the full time money, but need to be at home more.

Weigh in #2

Saturday is weigh-in for me. I was down 2# this week. Not spectacular, but, better than nothing.

Problems

I need suggestions.... if you've got any. 2 weeks ago Titan bit my visiting teacher in the face. Now, he was provoked, he didn't tear, she didn't need any stitches, and as of right now they haven't mentioned anything about suing us. But, Titan has to go. No one here is very happy about it, but, we can't have a dog that bites. Gordon Setter rescue responded today and will not take him because they won't take a dog that bites either. I really don't want to surrender him to the SPCA -- any thoughts?

Biting the bullet

Ok, since John and Amy are brave enough to put their weight loss goals on the blogs, I guess I will too. Although, I will not be telling you what I weigh.... let me keep a little dignity. Anyway, my weight loss goals are the following:

30# by August 31

15# more by October 31

15# more by Christmas

That's a total of 60# by Christmas. I know it's rather ambitious. I know that I have never been this successful before. I know that basically I am a slug and hate dieting. But, I gotta start somewhere. Hopefully we can positively reinforce each other.

She got me!

Yup, Melissa got me good! It's been awhile since one of you has put one over on me like that -- she is the current champ!

Another week down

Well, I survived this week and I think I did it pretty well. Work is getting easier to survive. I got quite a bit done in the house. And we went to a regional auxillary training meeting last night in Rochester and it was worth going to. I also had to re-arrange my presidency this week, due to my Education counselor being snatched for Primary President.

I am starting to get to know the docs at the new site. It is a family practice with Drs. Thomas, Schenk, Berger, Morelli, Kowalski Sellers, and Newberger as attendings. We also have 3 3rd year residents, and some 2nd year and 1st year residents I'm not paying any attention to at this point. Dr. Berger is the only female attending and seems a bit dis-engaged. I don't think I really know who Dr. Morelli is yet and apparently he and Dr. Berger are married.... at least that's what I think I figured out this week. Dr. Newberger is very quite and doesn't say much. Dr. Kowalski is very nice and went out of his way to welcome me to the site and introduced himself as "Pete". Dr. Sellers is pretty elderly, and will only see his very own patients. He is only there one afternoon a week and only sees about 6 patients. He's a little crotchity, but generally well liked. Dr. Thomas is the director of the facility, and Dr. Schenk is the character of the bunch.

Two stories. I met Dr. Thomas last week, but he pretty much ignored me until yesterday. I over heard him talking to one of the residents telling him about being an officer in the air force. I piped up and told him about Adam being a sargent in the army and getting ready to go back to Iraq for a 2nd tour. All of a sudden I had value! I'm an army mom! He went out of his way 2-3 times then yesterday to talk to me. Thanks Adam!

I also met Dr. Schenk this week. Now keep in mind that he must be at least 6'3". He has a full beard that is graying sort of unattractively and he has his thick curly hair tied back into a pony tail that hangs down to his mid back. I was looking for a chart on Tuesday around his desk when he came into the library. He growled at me. I kinda smiled and kept looking for what I needed. and he growled again. It wasn't a cough, or clearing of the throat, it was a growl. I thought, is he nuts? or is he messing with me? So I took what I thought was a safe route and chuckled a little bit. Darn if he didn't growl louder and meaner again. I turned around, looked him straight in the eye and said, "Hi, I'm Pam Payne the new medical secretary. I've raised 5 boys and I carry a great big old stick!" He howled! He thought that was about the funniest thing he had heard in a long time. Now he's my buddy... thanks boys!

Progress

I'm beginning to make a little progress in getting ready for everyone being home soon. The step down room is definitely beginning to look like a room. We had estimates on building a fence around the back yard.... why didn't someone tell me it was going to be so expensive?!? For a nice vinyl fence like John and /or Drew's, it was going to be $8,000. But the estimate for a 6' high wood fence was $4300. Even the cheap 4' chain link which we didn't think could really keep the dogs in was $2700. So, no fence. I guess we will just have to keep a closer eye on the kids and get switching dogs on the cable.

Spring -- maybe

I think Spring may have finally arrived. I've seen daffodils, forsythia bushes, tulips, etc. I even saw a Robin today. How do you spell relief? SPRING! Work is going well, although I feel more tired working at the new place than at the old one. Don't know why, maybe I'm just getting old.

April 2, 2006

We got through April 1st this year with no torment, no craziness, no tricks, no fibs, no swearing, no adreneline rushes. It was nice and boring. I do have to admit though, I did check the caller ID every time the phone rang just to see if it was one of you lying in wait to torture me. I did answer a call from John -- he got me on the way to an early meeting and I figured that it was actually too early for him to have thought up anything really awful. Then at 9:30 this morning -- no early meetings, no work to get up for, no dogs barking, Ed Stull called.......

Good and Bad News

The good news is.... I have a new job. The bad news is.... I have a new job. I am grateful that I've been hired. It's a very busy family practice clinic that sits behind Millard Suburban. I'll be making the same money I made at the pain center and everyone there seems really nice. Just when I was getting good and lazy again......

Short & Sweet

Yesterday after church, Dad asked me if I knew that there was a Stake High Priest meeting at 7:00 and that wives were invited. I thought, great, another long winded meeting, making me miss "West Wing", etc, etc, etc,. We got there about 5 minutes late and Brother Bunker was speaking. I thought, I really like to hear Doug speak, so maybe this won't be too bad, but I'm still gonna miss "West Wing". Doug wound up about 7:45 and President Free went up to the stand, and instead of introducing the next speaker, he announced the closing song and prayer. I was stunned. A 45 minute stake high priest meeting. Go figure. And, best of all, Dave had taped "West Wing".

Argh..........

Just so everyone knows, it snowed today. It's going to continue snowing today, and tonight, and tomorrow too. They don't expect to get too much out of it, but the fact remains that it is snowing. Yesterday was wonderful, and today it is snowing. I have a lot to do today as we are putting on a dinner in connection with Enrichment Meeting tonight, and it's snowing. Did I neglect to tell you it's snowing here?

Yes!

Today is about as beautiful a day as we ever get in March. It's about 40 degrees, bright sunshine and no wind-- really couldn't ask for much better. It's got me hopeful again that winter will soon be over. Anyway, when winter is over, everyone one will be coming home for a visit. There is much to do before they get here. Currently, I am cleaning out the step down room, again. I have never seen a room that could get so cluttered so quickly. It's as if it grows it's own clutter. But, when I start cleaning, I recognize nearly everything there. I have a plan though and I'm hoping that I can stop some of the "dumping" that occurs in that room. We're going to turn it into a TV/rec/craft room. I have a vision. I'm not sure that Dad completely shares my vision, but he has been very co-operative so far. I think though that he's not really interested in replacing the carpet because everytime I stopped to look at carpet the other night at HomeDepot and Lowe's he would keep right on walking.....

I Would Have to be Completely Nuts

I just got back from a job interview at the Millard Suburban ER. I would have to be completely nuts to accept that job! Double the stress of working at the Pain Center and you might be approaching the stress the medical secretary is under at the ER. I sat with her for about 3 nano seconds before I decided that that wasn't the place for me. They were prepared to offer me the job and have me start on Monday -- had to disappoint them.

Hopes Dashed

Yesterday we had thunderstorms and 62 degrees..... today it's snowing. There is just something fundamentaly wrong with that! Fortunately, I really don't have to go anywhere today. Yesterday I had an appointment @ corporate to take a typing and Microsoft Word skills assessment. Wouldn't you think that since I am a registrar I wouldn't have to do things like this? Anyway, they now know I don't follow directions. I started off with a bang by jumping right to the test instead of the warm up and of course I typed the wrong script. So, they had to start me over again. I did redeem myself though by scoring 50wpm with no errors. Then I took the MS Word test.... I didn't know there was so much I didn't know about Word! Anyway, I know how the program works, so I bluffed my way through to a very high composite score. They think I'm extremely employable......

No will power...

I was just going to take Angie up to Pine Grove because she needed material for a quilt she was making and just couldn't find what she wanted anywhere else. I wasn't going to spend any money, maybe look around, but definitely not spend money. $60 later I had some great stuff, could have spent at least $100 more, fortunately some reason prevailed. But I did get some great stuff!

The job search

I got a call from human resources at the hospital yesterday.... let's say they are worse than useless. The union guidelines say they are supposed to see that we are placed in a comperable position to the one we lost.... These people do not know and don't care to know what they are doing. Basically they went through the job postings from Kaleida -- which I had already done. Told me what was available -- which I already knew, and told me I could apply for any of them -- which I had already done. Thank you human resourses! Anyway, one of the jobs I applied for was a non-union job -- it would be nice to be able to tell the union to take a hike. Other than that I haven't really put much effort into finding a job. I guesss I want to exhaust my Kaleida options before venturing out into the real world.

Is spring ever going to come?

I know, I know, it's only March 6th, but I am really tired of winter. After spending a few days at Amy's where spring is literally coming in a few days, it was hard to come back to snow on the ground in Buffalo. Anyway, it was great to be in Maryland to welcome little Madelyn to the family. Everyone is delighted with her except Evan..... let's say he's not quite smitten with his new sister yet. The Beck's and Hatzenbuhler's came for dinner yesterday and brought birthday presents.... can't wait to spend the gift certificate at Pine Grove. Should hear from human resources at DeGraff today. Hopefully they are going to do something to get me employed....

More Craziness

So, Dr. Bansal comes in this morning and right off I here her for yelling for me.... she just wanted to let me know she missed me and was glad I was back.... OK, so who took our Dr. Bansal and what did you do with her? Anyway, she wanted to chit chat and eventually she got around to asking me why I wasn't going with them to the new office. Not wanting to ruin a perfectly lovely morning, I told her it was because no one had made me a serious offer yet. She seemed a little confused, so I told her that just because I was making $12.75/hour at Kaleida didn't mean that that was all I was worth. I also told her that I had skills that none of her current employees had and she was going to need them in the new office. So, I might have just set myself up.... but, I really don't think they are going to want to afford me, so doesn't hurt to tell her.

Valentine's Day

Valentine's day was nice. I didn't have to work, Dad got me some nice flowers, Missy got me some nice flowers, we had a good meal (which I cooked, but that seemed Ok this year). I want to know what Tara, Amy, & Kay got though.... are you boys doing right by your girls?

Extended Warranties

In general, I am not a believer of purchasing extended warranties -- you hardly ever use them and then you've spent all this money for nothing. However, when we bought the Caravan, we did purchase an extended warranty for up to 100,000 miles. Well, we're almost there folks.... and that warranty has paid for itself a couple of times over. I took the car in yesterday for a power steering problem and came away with a few power steering pump, a new water pump and a new transmission selenoid package (whatever that is). This is the second power steering pump they have put on the car, makes you wonder if Dodge put the wrong pump in this model. Anyway, she's up and running and ready to go again.... just in time to make a run to Indiana hopefully before Miss Krieger makes an appearance.

Part time, Yeah!

Yes, I believe that part time work is the way to go.... I can escape the asylum before the inmates can have too much effect on me. Dr. B. asked me yesterday how my mental health was now, like she gives a rip! But I told her I was a happy girl, skipping all the way home every day. Dr. W asked me today why it was that I wasn't going to the new office with them. I told him that no one had made me a serious offer yet. He was a little confused until I told him that the morons he had left the hiring to had screwed up bad.... I think he got that.

TGIF

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood! Relatively warm (42), sunny, birds are singing, a promise of spring in the air..... not bad for January. Today is Rod's birthday. I asked him last night what he wanted for his birthday dinner tonight and he said bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches..... he must really have a craving. I got him some socks, a pair of jeans, some dress pants and a GC to Gander Mountain. He should be pretty happy with those things.

Yahoo!

I think yesterday was the last day I have to work full time. I informed the powers that be on Wednesday that I wanted to go down to part time as of this coming Monday and when I got my work done this morning, they said I could go home. I went shopping, had lunch, put the groceries away, and got on line all before I would have left the torture chamber. This is going to be a very good thing.