Shopping!

How do you classify someone who goes shopping all afternoon and returns home with three shirts and a north face zip hoodie after spending a grand total of $13.67?
I love shopping but I always end up buying stuff from the thrift stores in this town rather than at the mall. Becoming athletic-minded has made me such an athletic-gear fashion horse! I want everything Nike Woman makes. With my race coming up this weekend I don't have time for new shoes, let alone new Merrell barefoot shoes (I run in conventional Nike Moto +8) that take 6 weeks to transition to and are probably a bad idea. Though after this race, it will likely be time for new shoes - there's maybe 150 miles left in my current pair and 50 in my training pair. I get 300 miles out of a pair if I am really lucky right now, but I'd rather save my feet than risk anything permanent.

Enough about my feet. The nasty part of graveyard shift has hit me full force now and I got mean this weekend. Fortunately it didn't stop me from going 3/2 in my five fights at Saturday's tournament and doing very well at practice on Sunday. I'm glad my fencing is improving - I hope it gets really good before I go so that maybe they remember me when I get back from school, I'd hate to lose all my currency toward the next award level. We don't have tests for levels, those of the level meet and discuss the lower levels and about once a year they choose to elevate someone based on a number of factors. With school looming I anticipate it will now be at least 5 more years before I qualify, and that is 5 AFTER I get back, if they elevate me at all.

Well, more better info tomorrow night... I'm off to make a t-shirt quilt!

A little hiccup

Ho boy.
I totally booked my tickets wrong yesterday. So much for a clear head at 6am. The good news is, if you get back to them in 24 hours, American Airlines will not charge you to change the dates as long as there is no difference in the fares on the new date. Yay for actual human beings! The hardest part was waiting 3 hours for there to be actual human beings available. I am once again learning the joys of being on an opposite schedule from the normal world.

While I may be on that opposite side from everyone, I do now have time before work while shops are open. This is really nice considering in Santa Barbara most shops close by 6pm. I now no longer have to do all my shopping/leisure activities on my days off. I wandered around Five Points mall for two hours today and didn't buy anything, but it was great. I avoided all temptation, including the pumpkin spice latte calling my name on a rainy day - it will have to wait for Friday, when Cat and I pamper ourselves.

Tickets

Tickets are expensive. But they are booked. Yay!

Back to Graveyards

Graveyards is the one shift where you can truly feel alone in the station. Especially now that our squad room is in the old rescue temp trailer rather than here in the building. In the time I've been a dispatcher, the squad room has moved from literally across the hallway from dispatch, to down the hallway and around the corner, to outside in an entirely different building (well, trailer.) I wonder some times if the moves were not so much about space but about getting further away from the requests of dispatchers. It's not like I can walk down the hallway to the squad, I have to stay here. And when I ring their phone they have the choice to not answer me, unlike when they were across the hall and I could yell at them through my sliding window. But anyway, it means that I am currently the only human being in the main station room.

I'm running on caffeine right now, as you can probably tell. I had a great rest of the weekend involving a trip to the beach with a good book (Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier) which left me with bikini tan lines so stark you can see where the string was tied at the back, another rock-out Guitar Hero sesh with Sean and some general relaxing. I topped it off with another run today, actually two split into one. I ran the 5k route from Five Points to my apartment, collapsed and re-hydrated, only to get a text from Sean suggesting I run to downtown and do the farmer's market with him and he would drive me home. So that was about another 1.9 miles. Not my best miles but the point is to be out there doing it, right?

I was supposed to get a nap in before work, but it didn't end up happening. We got sucked in to season 2 of Breaking Bad instead. That left me worried I would fall asleep here at work, but I've made it 7 hours so far, with 3 to go before I crash. When I did arrive at work, my radio console was apparently on the fritz, which made my day easier as all I had was secondary traffic due to my transmitter not working. About 3 hours in to shift I glanced at my console, which we had had a tech looking at during day shift. I noticed there was an unplugged cord, so I set about finding where it went, plugging it in and re-booting my DOS radio. Sure enough it came up like a charm. I can't believe our tech didn't see it, the darn thing has a label on it from a dot matrix printer. It could not have screamed "I belong to the radio console!" Any louder. But I'll take credit for being the fresh pair of eyes and breathe a big sigh of relief that our Centracom Gold Series has not crapped out yet. My eyes will not be so fresh tomorrow, as I recover from this caffeine fueled 24 hours of consciousness, but such is the life on night shift.

Lazy Saturday

I got so much done Friday I deserved a day off! I ordered tank tops from Target (favorite style tank in many colors) that were free shipping. Yay for working around the fact that there are no big box stores in 50 miles of here except Kmart and Sears. Speaking of which- I then went to try on coveralls at Sears. They had one size medium navy short sleeve in the smallest section in the back basement of the store. But it fit passably.

I then took my Honda in for an oil change and to schedule the 60,000 mile service and they totally had time on the Friday before Labor day weekend to do the service and replace my rear brake pads! While waiting for my car I had an epic cheeseburger as a treat and walked over to Alpha to do some thrifting. Boy did I get lucky, they had another Red Octane guitar controller! So now the total amount I've spent getting Guitar Hero gear to play with: $14.97 that's $3.99 for the first controller, $5.99 for GH 3 - Legends of Rock and $4.99 for my second controller. Not bad for feeding my addiction.

After that I went for an 8 mile run. Eight miles, while there were a few walk breaks involved, I turned in a passable time and it makes me feel better about the impending half marathon. Especially when I factor in the walk home and it comes to 9 and a bit. The best part was starting the run late, it was about 7pm when I set out and the sun set faster than I expected. There was a wonderful moon down on the waterfront however and it was balmy without the direct sunshine of midday. I also ran down State St. on a Friday, so great people watching was had too!

But this post is about my lazy Saturday, not Friday. I slept in all the way to 8:45am, not the best start for my transitional weekend for night shift, but I'll take it. Sean made eggs and maple sausages for breakfast and then we took off to play disc golf. If you've never played, it is so much easier than real golf and a great way to get outside for free. We have two courses in the area, the one we played is a 9 hole in the student community called the "Isla Vista Peace Course." After that, Sean made an even more delicious dinner of pork loin glazed in ginger syrup and maple spice rub with wild rice. I'm going to miss the home cooking in Grenada I think.

Day Off

Today begins the weekend before I return to graveyards. I'm obviously not adjusting right now as it's 9am and here I am blogging. Soon I'll be waking up at 3pm and going to bed at 8am. My mission for the weekend is to get back in the groove of bringing lunch and dinner to work instead of breakfast and lunch. I usually do this with frozen food and supplement with Sean's excellent cooking when he has time to cook.

My other mission is to find another guitar controller so we can both play Guitar Hero and Rockband at the same time. Watching Sean play last night was fun, but I'd rather be part of it than an observer.

And then there's the run. Today is my long run day. I've got a half marathon in 16 days. I'm going to try for 8 miles today. Shame is it will probably be the longest run I've done pre-race because I need to start taper a week from Sunday and schedule-wise I won't have the time for that distance. If you thought I was fast- think again. I'm hoping for a 2:30+ half if not to just finish the thing. If I have a bad day it could be 3hrs or more.

Wow, I got in...

Gosh, it's been a while since I posted here. I guess I felt so down after being wait-listed by Western that I gave up on this whole idea. Didn't want to be that chick that whined at my non-existent readers about everything.

Well. I'm back. I've been accepted to St. George's University, Grenada, West Indies for their DVM/MPH dual-degree. I don't even know where to start with how grateful I am to everyone who supported me in my path to get here. Right now I'm still in shock, and yet trying to take care of as much as I can as fast as I can. I've got about four months left at my job, but I'm going back to graveyards rotation on Tuesday. Then again, once the schedules adjust, graves might not be that bad, if it means less public contact and customer service chit-chat. I don't wish emergencies on anyone, but I'd much rather actually help someone in an emergency than field 50 calls about where the live scan office is and how to do things for your child who is an adult.

So on my list right now:
-Flights to and from Grenada
-Supplies I'll need (I still have no idea where to start with some of them)
-Decide whether or not I want to do the masters in public health (I'm 90% sure this is a yes.)
-Decide when to leave my job. (I know everyone says to do this earlier and take the time off with family but I don't want to forgo the pay, benefits etc. and I'm not sure I can justify living without an income for more than half a month.)

And those are just the big ones biting at me.

Maybe more important than all that is the half marathon I'm hoping to finish. It's coming up in 17 days! I'm woefully under prepared of course, but I will finish it, dang it! Anyway, there are lots of things going on in my life right now, some of which I want to happen faster, others I'd love to not face at all.

The Bottom line: Four and a half years from right now, I will be fromthebox, DVM!