Squeezed

Lots to do and not a lot of time to get it done. Lately this seems to be the way it is,  but I suck it up and go foreqard.  After all,  what are the alternatives?  Stay put?  Not going to happen.  Go back?  Not possible,  nor would I want to.  Laterally?  Also not an option,  and totally unproductive to boot.  So the choice is clear.  Move forward and don't bitch about it.

I have three projects that are all directly related to coursework.  Two are problem sets,  one in Pathogenic Microbiology and the other in Genetics. .  The third is as well but different as it is related to practicing Chinese grammar and sentence structure. All are due tomorrow.

After class Wednesday I'm working overnight Wednesday until 3:00 Thursday afternoon in Boston.  And I'm in Goffatown from 6:00 Thursday evening until 6:00 Friday morning as usual.  I'm not back to work until 3:00 Sunday afternoon,  though.  Martha and I are going to a wedding on Saturday and I needed it off so I worked this past weekend in its entirety instead.  And it was busy.

So now I have to get to work.  I can't put it off any longer and I want to get it done.  So off I go...

At Post

Working today in Boston.

Since the spring semester started I haven't had much time to do anything except for study and work. Those are the main reasons why I haven't posted anything for a considerable amount of time. That said, I actually had a minute to put up something - anything - to at least show myself. I am still out here, and as Mark Twain said (I'm paraphrasing, and at least I think it was him that said this), the reports of my death are highly exaggerated...

The course load is different this semester. I didn't expect Genetics to have a significant Mathematics content, but I should have. Because of this I have to think out of this box more than I expected. The sets of problems are computationally intensive, plus it is a whole different focus. Much narrower. Adjusting how I approach the content is challenging. But I am doing my best. Pathogenic Microbiology has its own set of difficulties, mostly due to how content is delivered. It isn't ideal - the people involved in teaching are in Durham and the content is on line. And I'm behind the 8 ball in terms of being current. But I'm getting close to being caught up and I'm pretty confident that I will be soon. And Chinese? Well, it is more of the same, just being taught at higher speed.

All in all, I'm doing reasonably well. I'm constantly working, and this is necessary but I have no problem with that. It is to be expected.

Another post will follow in the next couple of days. This is being done from a touch screen keyboard, and I'd much rather type on a conventional keyboard. And that is where the next one will come from.

Pneumonia

Not me!!

Peyton,  my beloved little grand-daughter,  spent four days as an inpatient at the Elliot Hospital in Manchester being treated for what turned out to be a rather vicious episode.  She actually staeted getting sick about 10 days ago with a cough and sniffles.  It blossomed from there into fever then chest congestion that would not clear.  The fever also refused to go, and that was the laat straw.

Chest x-rays confirmed the presence of infiltration on both lungs.  Combine that with the fever and dehydration (regardless of how much we forced fluids she was in defecit) it bought her a 5 day hospital stay.

Fast forward to today.  She is being discharged as I write this.  She is definitely doing better,  albeit a little bit cranky.  She is going to be home-bound for the next week while she recovers and she needs to follow up with the pediatrician at the end of the week.  But she is definitely better.

This has been an especially bad season for anything respiratory or pulmonary.  Lots of influenza that seems to be getting around this year's vaccine plus the non-flu stuff (like this) that is simply wreaking havoc. On my way home from work I was listening to a news story that was a report on virulence of diseases that are showing up a lot,  and one of the points of the story was the presence of gram-negative bacteria that is much more resistant to anti-biotics than ever before.  This is quite true;  it is becoming more difficult to treat a lot of gram-negative bacteria now than it ever used to be because the resistance of many of these microbes is much more present now.

As I'm studying this a lot more (by virtue of the courses I've been taking)  I understand this much more than I ever expected I would. It certainly gives me a much better appreciation for precautions around patients,  plus I can understand why some people get so wigged out about disinfection. All I can say is that precautions and vigilance will go a long way at keeping us from getting sick. And if you or someone you're close to does get sick, pay attention to the symptoms.
Dealing with them early could potentially save your life.

Looking Back - Just For A Minute

Let's be honest.

2012 really, truly was not a good year for many people, myself included. There was a great deal of stress that so many people had to endure due to events that were beyond their control. Some of them bordered on being downright cataclysmic. Between natural disasters, major mass casualty incidents, and the overall state of our country, there has not been very much good that came out of it. It's not to say that good things didn't happen or that there were no good people out there; it's just that there seemed to be very little mention of that anywhere.

I really hope that 2013 shapes up to be better than 2012 was. I don't know how much worse it could ge, and I pray that we don't have a repeat performance of the badness we all saw.

Personally, I'm hopeful. I mean, if you don't have hope, you have very little else beyond that. And as I write this, I'm managing the after-effects of what I believe is a glancing blow of the flu. If I can make a statement like this even feeling the way I do, I figure I have to have something.

That said, Happy New Year. Be well. Don't do anything that could be harmful, and drive safely.

Peace.

Out Of The Woods

The fall semester is now officially over. Thanks be to God.

It was busy and frantic, which explains my inability to write since before Hallowe'en. I haven't had a lot of time to really sit down and put thoughts and ideas in a blog post. But I have some time now, and since my last class of the semester was this morning, I have some time to contemplate what happens next.

Overall, I think I did reasonably well. Microbiology was by far the most challenging of the three courses I took. The reason for that was due to the changes that happened near mid-semester with the professor who was teaching the course having to go out on leave due to illness. Her replacement was a relative rookie who earned her Ph.D. this past May. Nice enough person, and certainly intelligent. But it was clear that this was her first real assignment teaching undergraduate students. In her defense, she was placed in a really difficult situation. But her difficult situation translated into a difficult situation for 28 students. I'm not sure it really had to be that way, but this is how it played out. We had our final exam in that class yesterday and I am not terribly confident in the outcome. I was carrying a class average of 85% up until then, and I have a feeling it may not be so when the exam grade is published.

Chinese I ended last week. The professor is back in Chengdu now, visiting with her family. I believe she will be back here sometime in the next couple of weeks. I'm looking forward to Chinese II in the spring; if the fall semester was any indicator of how the spring will be then I should be fine. I didn't expect to like the language so much, but I do. And I am really interested in learning more. So I'm going to spend some time between semesters working on conversational Chinese and reviewing the characters I have learned to this point. And I'm hopeful that I can do as well with the second part of the course. One thing that is certain is that I have to practice writing Chinese characters; I have had a hard time with that since I started. It's not learning how to write the characters that causes trouble for me as much as it is trying to be consistent and correct about the order of strokes, the correct stroke count, etc. Then there are the rules for use of certain adverbs and adjectives. For example, there are two descriptors that mean almost the same thing:

• 有点 儿

and

• 一 点 儿

Both say the same thing: a little. But 有点 儿 (you diar) and 一 点 儿 (yi diar) both mean "a little." The first, however, is used with adverbs and the second with adjectives. And there are other rules that make me think of learning English grammar in elementary school that, under other circumstances, could potentially drive me insane. That said, there are some things I like about the Chinese language as a whole:

1. There is no gender
2. There is no past/present/future tense
3. It is a contextual language; a character can have different meanings depending on the context it is used in
4. The subject/verb/object model is consistent

Other languages (Russian, other Slavic languages, Japanese) also use this model. The Romance languages (Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian, etc.) are not consistent about this. I learned some Spanish when I was younger and I found that it depended on the situation where certain phrases and terms were used. On the other hand, I have friends who are Romanian (and both native speakers) and while it is a Romance language (its basis is Latin) it shares many properties of the Slavic languages spoken in countries sharing its borders. Additionally, many of the words in Romanian are borrowed from Slavic languages as well as Turkish and German. I think the percentage of loanwords into Romanian is 14-15%, but I can't be certain of that.

People have asked me why I am interested in the Chinese language? We are learning Mandarin, which is billed as "Standard" Chinese, as opposed to Cantonese, Hui, or Hakka.  And it really is; Mandarin and its associated dialects is more widely spoken in China than any of the other dialects I mentioned. If you consider, however, that over a billion people speak the different dialects of Chinese (and there are many more than the ones I mentioned), that is a lot of people speaking a single language and the dialects associated with it. My answer to that question is pretty simple: I have been interested in Chinese culture, language, history, etc., for as long as I can remember. I've also got a strong interest in anything related to Russia as well, and I'm working on learning more about both. I'm not nearly as far along learning Russian as I am Mandarin, but they both have my interest. And I could do it as part of the process of getting through all of the academic requirements I have for PA programs. Not that a language is necessary; it is not, in fact. But when presented with an opportunity like this I took it.

Next semester has the potential for being just as busy. It will be interesting to see what happens, but not only am I taking the same 3 course load but I am also increasing the number of hours I will be working. So we'll see what happens. For now, I'm going to enjoy a little bit of down time. Next week, however, won't have too much of that; I'm schedule to have a minor medical procedure on Monday (the joy of turning 50), Martha is traveling on Tuesday - she's also traveling this week - and I am doing a rotation in the OR and ER at the Cheshire Medical Center in Keene to fulfill a requirement of employment at my job out there on Wednesday. Then I'm driving to Boston to work the overnight and following day, followed up by returning here and working in Goffstown that  Thursday night.

So much for that. Maybe I'll have a little bit of time to write now, but we'll see whether or not that happens.

Bracing For Impact

Sitting in my house watching news reporting. A storm is approaching and we're waiting to see what is going to happen. Hurricane Sandy. It is supposed to make a mess, especially in coastal areas. And it could also cause some mischief around here.

Right now it is a Category 1 hurricane, but that isn't as big a problem as the size of the storm - it is approximately 800 miles in diameter, making it a monster. And areas that are facing south and east (especially Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, and a big chunk of Rhode Island and Connecticut) will likely get hammered. Further, it will likely morph into a hybrid storm, meaning it could take on the characteristics of a Nor'Easter because of the cold front making its way across the United States. If they do merge as has been predicted, the storm won't move. And that would be messy indeed.

I worry about all of my friends that work in Public Safety as well as those that work for the power companies. The potential for utter badness is real, and all of those involved in emergency management are gearing up for what could prove to be a nasty, nasty storm.

If you don't have to go out, don't. If you do, please be careful. As for my friends on the job, stay safe, each and every one of you.

Recap

My last post was a little over 6 weeks ago. It goes to show how busy life is when classes are in session. I have had a lot to do, between taking 2 biology-based courses and a foreign language. The good news is that this is the last semester that I have required courses. In the spring I expect to be back in the classroom, but only taking courses I want rather than need to take. I have to wait to see what is offered before deciding what to take on.

Today Martha and I spent some time cleaning out our garage. I didn't believe the amount of sheer stuff that we had in there that needed to be pulled out. It looks like I'll be making multiple trips to the transfer station with things that need to be disposed of, and none of it - totally none - is salvageable. At least we will be able to get a car into the garage now, though; that was not possible before. And it was a lot of work, between getting everything out that needed to go and re-arranging the items that will stay, but it is not a problem now. Also, access to the grill and the snowblower are set, and they should not be difficult to access even with a car parked inside. The last thing that I need to do, however, it get a peg board that I can put up to hang brooms, shovels, etc., on. That is a project for this week.

Tuesday I have an appointment at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy for the second time. I am planning to re-apply for admission to the Physician Assistant program for the 2014 class. I had applied for 2013 (starts in January) but I was put on the wait list. I suspect it was because my application material went to the wrong campus (Worcester instead of Manchester). I could be wrong, however; maybe I wasn't an appropriate candidate at the time. However, I don't know the answer to that question. I guess it remains to be seen whether or not this is the case. So I will make another attempt at gaining admission to the program and see what happens. It is the best I can do.

If I get accepted, then there is the question of how to finance it. I don't know the answer to that question yet, but we will see.

On the subject of work... I now have 3 instead of 2 jobs. In addition to working in Goffstown and in Boston, I was hired by an ambulance service in the western part or New Hampshire. I haven't done any real work for them yet except for orientation, but they have requirements that are slowing me down from being able to pick up shifts, including a requirement of spending a day in the emergency room at their resource hospital. While I think it is a good idea in principle, it is one more thing I don't have time to do because of my academic obligations and my existing work schedule. It's kind of frustrating, but I'm trying to find ways to work with it.

More to follow in the days ahead. And I feel like it is an endless game of catch-up. I simply need to find the time and just write....