Friday, August 03, 2007
Things I Learned This Week by: Cathy Laws
- Apparently, Ebay feels that my user name 'celaws' is too "soft" a user name as it is also the start of my email address. Long story short, I received an Ebay love-note asking me to change it. Great, no problem. After much chin-scratching, I decided to go for a user name incorporating my would-be new-name. It's a good time to start getting used to it, right? Go ahead and change from my 4-letter, all-letters-make-a-sound name -- a name that is an actual plural noun that gets messed up so frequently it might make your head spin -- to a 6-letter, all-letters-make-a-sound name that is never misunderstood - weird. Seriously, I get Lewis, Law, Lawson (and this is not counting people starting my name with a K..) -- I got "Oaws" once and haven't figured out how that one happened. (and why not start the name-transition since my mom's big plan for me to go into the practice of law, ideally a judge, just so that I could use the name more effectively -- ie: "Judge Laws" -- so great it's almost a tv courtroom show....didn't pan out for her..) So yeah -- put that new name into effect early as to give me time to start acclimating to the idea. I thought I might sign a credit card receipt with my new name one of these times just to put into practice what I've been rehearsing on paper at home like a lovesick 6th grader -- but I keep loosing my nerve, fearful the transaction will be voided, alarms will go off and I'll be hauled away for name fraud. A friend of mine, the morning after her wedding, made a big deal to the new-hubs about signing her "new" name for the first time on the breakfast room service receipt. It came, she scribbled and when waiter-dude left, she realized she'd still signed her "old" name. Yeah, I'd like to be all ready to perform when the time comes. It's just how I roll.
- And in the idea of name-changing, I was told that I ought to make all my big bank, rollover, etc. transactions now before my name changes and it gets sticky. Which was awesome, because I really wanted to spend most of my afternoon on the phone with two separate investment companies on several different calls getting that squared away. I know, woe is me. People in the world are starving and I am trying to rollover my 401K.
- This week the hospital is putting me (and others..) through a critical care nursing fellowship to last the next few weeks, intermittently. The first day was the most boring -- primarily because they spent 8 hours introducing to us the foundations of critical care -- foundations that we heard about 10,000 times in nursing school (when to call a code, how to not stick yourself with a needle, what TB is... ). One of the more priceless powerpoint slides that I managed to stay awake through was about the importance of handwashing. Don't get me wrong, it's super important. If you're not all that sick, come to a hospital, hang around and see how much sicker you can get (I should go into hospital advertising... ). There are so many grossy-gross things floating around and it's way to easy to take them, as a nurse, from patient to patient if you don't wash your hands. But screw the patient, imagine what you're exposing yourself to. Ew. IN ANY CASE, the powerpoint presentation was meant to hit on the highlights of when you ought to wash your hands: after using the bathroom, before and after eating, when your hands have visible soil or bodily fluids on them, before and after patient contact and after contact with anthrax. It just seemed like an awfully out-of-place list ender.. La, la, wash your hands when they're dirty and when you TOUCH ANTHRAX. I'll be honest, my biggest concern was that I don't know that I'd recognize anthrax if it were sitting on my lap. But I guess it's good information to tuck away. How about we just wash our hands. Period.
- If this whole "nursing" thing doesn't work out the job that I might be the worst at would be mine-hunter. Well, "minesweeper" I should say. Judging by my abilities, or lack thereof playing it continually over the boring stretches of class these past 2 years, I'd say that in a real world scenario, I've decimated thousands of acres of rural farm land, made amputees and/or widows/orphans out of countless villagers and most likely completely annihilated myself into the tiniest bits more times than I can count. I'm terrible at this game. And I'm legitimately bad -- not like "don't really make an effort" bad. I really try. I stare at it, I think about it, I count out loud. It's a bad scene. Now, if someone needs Bejeweling, I'm there.
- It occurred to me in one of my more thoughtful moments this week that getting married's biggest bonus at this juncture is that I never have to be called out by a DJ as "single" and be made to stand in a lowly clump of women attempting to catch a bouquet. Aww, man. And then there's that chick who is, like, DYING to catch it. My condolences to those of you still left in the clump and my heartiest sympathies to those of you who find yourself on the business end of that girl's elbow-to-your-face when she makes her dive. Your day of exodus will come. I'd advise you to fake-like-you're-not-single, but let's be honest. Someone else at the wedding wants to gleefully watch your ultimate humiliation and spotlight your singleness and will inevitably shout for the DJ to hear: "Get up there XXX, you're SINGLE! Don't you want to catch the bouquet?!"
- Oh, and I officially joined the 21st century this week and purchased a digital camera. Now don't go getting all excited. I have yet to come upon something to photograph that isn't my cat. And it is likely that when I do come upon such a subject I will be camera-free. It has been a hot minute since my sorority days of constant-camera-clutching and so it might take me a while to get back into the memory-capturing swing of things. Unless you just want me to post the random pictures of my cat. I didn't think so.
# posted by Cathy @ 10:17:00 PM 
