Category Archives: The Site

The Things I Would Like to Say

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When I first started working, The Hospital was having a softball tournament, and my floor was fielding a team. I wanted to fit in and be one of the cool kids, so I joined the team. I went to a couple of the practices, which were attended by two girls, two burly dudes from another floor, some kind of little terrier-thing dog, and me. You will probably not be surprised to learn that the burly dudes were a lot better at softball than I was, and probably not really surprised to learn that even the girls were better than I was. Also, the dog. The dog was better than me.

 

I would like to say that there was an inspirational montage set to 80′s pop music where I became a great softball player. I would like to say that our team, coached by a cowgirl in a giant pickup instead of coked-up Emilio Estevez, went on to heroically win the tournament like a scrubsed-out Bad News Bears, but that didn’t happen. The team just kinda fizzled, and for a year I’ve had a softball mitt and some neon-yellow softballs rolling around in the trunk of my car for no good reason.

 

So, a couple of nights ago, I was walking back to my floor after picking up “lunch” (“lunch” is in quotes because it’s always, like, 1 a.m. when I eat it.) It was after hours so the hallway was dark, and I saw the silhouette of Burly Softball Dude #2 walking toward me.  I said, “Hey, man,” and he said something very improbable:

 

“We’ve been reading your blog.”

 

At that point, the nurse he was walking with said, “Oh, you’re Rob. I’ve been reading your blog. It’s nice to meet you,” whereupon she gracefully extended her hand.

 

I would like to say that I handled the situation like this guy would have:

 

 

I would like to say that, but I can’t. I mean, I guess I could say that, but it wouldn’t be technically true.

 

The reality is that I kind of limply shook her hand and rudely didn’t even think to ask her name or make a proper introduction. I’m usually not totally socially incompetent, but it was so jarring to come face to face with people who had read my site that my treacherous brain just vapor locked.  I just stood there with my jaw agape, hoping not to fumble the styrofoam container loaded precariously with three pieces of pizza standing in mute testimony to the sickening reality of my pasty, greasy dorkiness.

 

 

When I float down to that floor, and I will, I’ll have to wear a fake mustache or something. Otherwise, everyone will know that I’m that nerdy dude from the internet…

and that I cringe like a girl when someone throws a softball at me.

 

 

 

My PBDS Guide is Underway

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I am not above shameless pandering.

Since most of my traffic these days comes from folks looking for information about the PBDS test, I’m finishing the series that I intended to start a few weeks ago:

The Official Abilene Rob Guide to
Not Having Your Colon Perforated by the PBDS Test.

I only have the first part up, but I’ve got some of the groundwork laid for the next few entries in the series. Hopefully, I’ll get it all done this weekend.

In the meantime: my plan is to slack, drink red wine, and share with you Apes From SPACE!

(The sample is the thing that totally makes this song.)

 

 

Oh, yeah, baby. Daddy’s back.

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After far too many torturous hours of jacking around with config files and wading through the murky, candiru-infested waters of sql databases and decrepit tables, the blog is back. I managed to dig out the old posts, but I’m serving them up on a fresh install. All the image and include links are broken, though. One of these days I may get around to fixing that, but no promises. If you’re looking for something specific that’s not here anymore, e-mail me; I’ll be happy to hook you up.

Through good living, small meals, and 5-night weeks, I have lost six pounds in two weeks. I’m throwing it all out the window tonight, though, for a fat steak and a delicious bottle of pinot noir that an ex sent me as a graduation present. (How many pounds are in a bottle of red wine, anyway?)

I’ll get a real post out soon, probably, but I need to spend some time playing with the site’s graphics. (To be honest, I only make posts when I need an excuse to play with the graphics.) Much has happened, and much is about to happen.

My NCLEX is scheduled. If I pass it, I have a job. If not, it’s back to the salt mines for me.

If all goes well, I will also have a new lady by the end of the month.

In the meantime, I’m living in the space in between. I worked like hell to buy myself two weeks of breathing space before the most important test of my life. For the next couple of weeks, I’ll be studying and reading and cleaning and visiting friends and loved ones and trying to get my head straight before the page turns and the next chapter of my life begins.

Fun stuff. See you soon. I need to rework my logo, and I picked up True Grit at the Redbox, and I’ve got a steak in the fridge, and I’ve comma-spliced together an impossible number of clauses that should probably be independent sentences except that would make this sound like Dr. Seuss, so I’m totally not gonna do that.

P.S. – Here’s some wub-wub for ya. I’m digging this song, but I use a patch cable to hook my computer up to my big stereo. If you just have tinny little computer speakers, this will sound like garbage:

It’s Unnerving to Find Out That I Have Readers

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I still tend to think that the only people who read my blog are the handful of medical incredibloggers kind enough to toss me pity links, my dog*, and my mom**. When I find out that someone reads my blog, I get red-faced and stammery – like I just got caught staring at the underwear pages of the Sears Catalog. I had a moment of terrible awkwardness last week when Hot Girl told me that she reads this (and, of course, recognized herself,) and I felt a little flush of embarrassment when my whiny post about my whiny life yielded a letter from “K***.”

The awkwardness of learning that someone actually reads what I write was immediately swept away by a raging torrent of whitewater awesome**** thundering down from the mountains of Valhalla.

K brought me a gift.

It’s better than I could have possibly imagined. 2:05 – 2:10! 2:05 – 2:10!!!!!!

Thanks to everyone who sent good will. I’m feeling much better.

 

 

 

* He only reads it because I give him pizza crusts in exchange for proofreading. I have to whack him on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper when he misses a run-on sentence.

 

** Hi, Mom!

 

*** It turns out that “K” has a blog. I don’t want to link to it, because it’s better than mine in every way, but I guess I’ll stick out my lip and scuff my sneakers on the floor and go ahead and send you there: Nursebound*****.

 

**** I know it’s passe to make “awesome” a noun. I don’t care. I still have a jeans jacket with a Def Leppard back patch.

 

***** Please note my continued dedication to professionalism******.

 

****** This blog post was made possible through the generous support of our sponsors: House of Leaves and Infinite Jest.

 

A Few Cool Links

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My life has been busy of late, but I want to give some shoutouts to blogs I’ve seen in the last few months but have yet to acknowledge:

If you dig my blog, you’ll probably like Nurse J’s more, though I’m loathe to direct you that way since he’s obviously much cooler than I am. He has MUCH better stories and his writing has a liveliness that I can only grit my teeth and envy. He’s also got way more style than I do. He seems like that badass nurse that sits in the back row of orientation with one foot cocked out in the aisle, not even bothering to contain his sneer over wasting time when he’s got shit to do.

I also recommend Nurse XY. XY’s writing is fantastic, and carries a surprising amount of emotional resonance for a dude who looks like he should be MMA fighting rather than nursing. At the time of this writing, the front page of his blog has: a very candid post about his personal life, a post about maintaining the proper sight picture for a 600m rifle shot, “It’s an ICU room, not a freaking clown car,” and a very poignant post about a patient’s death. Good stuff.

I have been following Bad Emma on Facebook for a long time, and am very glad to see that she’s finally gotten around to making her own blog. She’s been writing about her journey through the prereqs, and is about to start writing about her journey through nursing school (congrats.) She writes a lot about her personal fitness regimen. Emma has been very deliberate about running and eating well, and the results, even in her profile pics, have been remarkable. A word of caution, however, for those of us who like to drink and smoke and listen to Tom Waits and brood: her positive outlook is infectious.

Tinker Tinker

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I’m toying with the site design this weekend, so forgive my fiddling. When it’s done, it will load a little heavier, but should look cooler.

In the meantime, here’s a random pull from my images junk drawer:


Playing With Pictures

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I’m a giant web nerd since way back in the day:

Like all giant web nerds, I have entire directories filled with godawful porn awesome pictures that I’ve collected from here and there. They’re not doing me much good gathering digital dust, so I’m going to start turning some of them into headers and inserting others randomly into posts.

 

Enjoy.

 

Blog Link Roundup Shoutout Post Thing (with Bonus Carpentry!)

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One of my all-time favorite people in the whole world wrote a post last week that just linked other blogs. It’s cold and rainy here, and I’ve been up since 6 and am just now getting around to actually brewing coffee, so I don’t feel up to writing anything real. I’m just going to steal Jo’s schtick to make a quick post.

Head-Nurse is rad.

In the time between getting my acceptance letter and actually starting school, I spent hours soaking in her posts and rolling around in her writing. When she is writing for really-real, her voice is so clear, so brilliantly moving, it leaves me breathless and occasionally moves me to tears. I am insanely jealous of how her fun posts look so effortlessly fun, and even her quick throwaway posts are tiny tidbits of savory goodness. Let’s hope we’re lucky enough to get another thousand more from her.


Occasionally, I will get e-mails or links from marketing people. They haven’t figured out that I only have three readers (me, Googlebot, and Mom), and they’re hoping that I will add their site to my blogroll, make a post for them, or do something to push traffic to whatever they’re pimping: usually a scrubwarehouse or a diplomamill (though sometimes the sites they’re pushing are just these weird, giant conglomerations of incestuously-self-referential autoupdating links to any medblogthing ever, which I can only assume either generate ad revenue or funnel traffic to some place where guys named Sergei smoke unfiltered cigarettes in a dank basement and keylog bank passwords.)

These sites usually have impeccable corporate design and generic hosts, so I was somewhat wary about a message from bsndegree.org, with its particularly-clean, fixed-width, two-column layout, small selection of articles about degrees and salaries, and plenty of stock photography with shiny, happy, appropriately multi-ethnic models. The site doesn’t have any ads, however, and the outbound links go directly to where it looks like they should, so:

Kaitlyn will answer your questions.

Kaitlyn, who runs the site, is friendly and genuine in her e-mails and her posts, so I’m going to park my skeptical cynicism and give her a link. The site’s format is driven by reader interaction, so drop by if you have questions about BSN programs or student nursing.

(I would post there myself, but I think “When will this pain END?!?” and “How long, O Lord? How long?” might not be in keeping with the tone of the rest of her content.)

Bonus carpentry: I use a drill, just like a big boy!

Cleaning Day

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The ex ran out of time when she was here packing her stuff, so my house has been a total disaster for the last couple of months. It has been driving me crazy, so I plan to spend Spring Break cleaning everything from top to bottom. The first step was to shift her boxes out of the living room and stage them in the dining room, in preparation for moving them to the storage shed (once it’s been cleaned out).

I’ve been thinking about playing with video on the blog, so I moved the webcam for a trial run at playing with time-lapse.

(Gotta love a dude in sweats!)

I hate it when I spill interweb on my real life.

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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.