Fireflight.

The lead singer makes me feel… conflicted.

The Clinical:

- Two parts bottom-shelf bourbon
- One part store-brand cola
- Two orange slices
- Ice

Frequently Asked Questions About “The Clinical“:

Q:   Do I have to be a nursing student to drink these?

A: No, but it sure helps.

Q: What makes this a “Clinical” as opposed to a “really crummy bourbon-and-coke”?

A: The following provide the rationale for calling this drink a “Clinical” rather than just calling it  a “really crummy bourbon and coke”:

1. Proportion: there must be at least a 2 : 1 bourbon-to-cola ratio.
2. The Orange: It’s really all about the orange. The orange slices are the distinctive element that sets apart The Clinical and imbues it with the necessary gravitas to be a Drink for the Ages®.
3. Quality Ingredients: Rather, the lack of quality ingredients. The beauty of The Clinical lies in its seriously-cheap bourbon and store-brand cola.

Q: Why do you keep italicizing “Clinical”?

A: That’s just how I roll.

Q: If I order a Clinical in a bar, will I score with the ladies?

A: No, I’m sorry. You’ll be laughed at.

Q: Why should I drink these?

A: They taste really, really good. They taste especially good when you drink them while the washing machine works to get tiny flecks of old-lady-poop out of your whites.

I was at clinicals on the med-surg floor a couple of weeks ago. Clinicals (almost) always start the same way: with our clinicals group stepping out of the elevator and walking up to a clearly-distracted nurse. She, in turn, will shuffle papers and look busy for as long as she can, riding the very last possible microsecond before civility forces her look up. We will cheerily introduce ourselves and offer to help in any way we can, and the nurse will come to grips with the fact that the four little ice-cream suited ducklings standing hopefully in front of her desk really aren’t going to go away. With a sigh, she will begin to deal with us. We each choose a patient that will be “outside of our comfort zone,” pull the chart off the chart rack, and disappear into the nurses’ break room to pore over the paper trail in an effort to get a handle on just what the hell we’re going to be dealing with.

I was working with Hot Girl and The Captain, and we each had really cool patients. My patient was admitted straight from the ER, for some pretty interesting things, and I was enjoying the chart. I am embarrassingly green about figuring out actual hospital charts, but I was kind of getting the hang of it. I still think it’s pretty exciting to fingerwalk through layers of orders and test results, reading the story of how things have unfolded for each patient. The others were looking at their charts, too, and we were talking about lab values and looking things up and asking for clarification and starting to get into it.

My patient’s situation on admission had been so critical that the ER doc had given a STAT order for some badass therapy I didn’t even recognize. “Cardioxeric refibrillation,” perhaps, or some kind of drug I hadn’t heard of… Chlorxano rhodifil, or something. Whatever it was, it had to be something cool.

“Hey, y’all, what does “CXR” stand for?”

There followed one of those horrible moments where your limbic system knows that you just royally screwed up, but the more elegant and dainty bits of your consciousness haven’t quite figured out exactly what you did. Two million years ago, I would have been tiger bait.

The Captain just looked at me over the tops of his glasses, completely motionless, completely expressionless. He didn’t blink. He just looked. Hot Girl did the same, but of course, THAT didn’t last.

“Rob… really? CXR? Really?”

I knew I knew it, but it just wasn’t there. Huge yellow tiger eyes peered at me from between the leaves.

“Uhhh…”

The Captain blinked. Once.

“Dude. ‘Chest X-Ray’.”

“Oh. I knew that.”

At least the tiger would have killed me quick.

I was surprised at how not-nervous I was, given that it was the first time I ever stabbed anyone, but it’s easy to maintain your bearing when you’re fixating on technical details. Check your gear, check your target… check, check, triple-check. Be a pro. Orient yourself to your landmarks, slip in with a smooth quick stab, withdraw carefully, dispose of the weapon, slip out the door.

Of course, it was B-12 rather than a Ka-bar, and the victim said, “Thank you,” rather than bleeding out into his vital-T, but I still punctured someone’s flesh with a sharp piece of steel.

It suddenly occurs to me that this is the second job I’ve had in which I’ve been formally taught how to stab someone.

I’m not sure I want to examine that one too closely.

It has been a week. It has been quite a week, in fact. It has been a week of things tumbling and bumping in the emptiness of my cored-out head, doubts and hopes and regrets and fears and joys and bittersweetnesses all colliding and humming in a brownian dance of tiny massive things that are far too meaningful to be sloshed onto the internet.

So… Numa Numa.

I saw this video the other day, and I have to admit that I think it’s cute as heck*:

It looks like exactly the kind of silliness our speech and debate teams would get up to in the break between rounds. Good for them.

Good for them, bad for me. It put the song in my head, and I’ve been humming it for two days. One of my classmates heard me and asked what song it was, and I shamefacedly had to admit that it was Numa Numa. Since she hadn’t heard it, I’m putting it up here.

It’s a really old meme that most of us came into contact with back when Numa Numa Guy had his 15 minutes of internet fame:

Here’s a slightly-reworked (but embeddable!) version of the orginal song, which manages to be sillier than a tubby nerd dancing on a webcam:

Enjoy.

* Yeah, I said “heck.” I’m giving up foul language for Lent.

As a nursing student, I am constantly struggling with infection – ways to avoid it, ways to prevent it, ways to combat it.

I recently found a link to a very helpful educational video about infectious agents. It may seem a bit simplistic at first, but the information is phenomenal. The presentation is a touch dry, but this is useful, practical information that every prospective nurse should know.

(Here’s a link for those of you on Facebook: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57eh-Ty65u4 )

Oh, hell, do I have a lot to learn.

So, the new Facebook thing is to look up your name on Urban Dictionary and post the first result to your Facebook page.

Since I’ve got plenty of space, here are the best of the first few results:

Rob
Synonymous to ‘rage’.
Hence, to ‘Rob’ is to rage, and gives rise to such terms as ‘Rob quitting’ and ‘ROB ROB ROB ROB’

Rob: “Guys, I’m not in the mood”
Someone Else: “That’s what she said”
Rob: “That’s it, I’m out.”
*Server: Rob has left the server*
Someone Else: “Dude awesome he just Rob quit.
“Robrage”

ROB
Roll Over the Belt. Girls who wear tight shirts and have a roll of fat that goes over her belt is a ROB.

1: Dude, check out that girl, she looks dope!
2: Forget it, you’ve got your beer goggles on, she’s a ROB!

Rob

The boy that every girl wants
The boy that every girl needs
The boy that I want
and
The boy that I need

Omfg rob is so fucking hot I love him
rob boy love need want fuck

Rob
A person with lots of hair.Someone who plays Might and Magic on the weekend.Someone who enjoys the rusty trombone manuver.He who sleeps with one eye open

Person 1: Hey Wes, what are you doing this weekend?
Person 2: Aww man, I am gonna hang out with Rob Little this weekend.
Person 3: Damm… that sounds like a tight weekend, that guy knows how to party!!

A friend says it’s “Doppelgänger Week” on Facebook. You’re supposed to change your profile pic to that of some celebrity who resembles you. My choice may be stretching the rules a bit, but this evil bastard haunted me all through high school, because (and it pains me to admit it) I looked and talked pretty much exactly like him.

Here’s the commercial, in case your mind has repressed the trauma:

Everyone hated him.

I have no idea what he’s doing today, but I hope it involves filthy amounts of money and hot librarian groupies. If there is any justice in the universe, being the Encyclopedia Britannica Guy should entitle him to a lifetime of hedonistic decadence, and I hope he’s living it up.