Have Gun, Will Travel
Hello World,
Happy April! Well, I guess that's what you call an early April Fool's joke, because April doesn't actually start until Tuesday, but we are certainly right on the very doorstep of it, that's for sure. It doesn't seem possible that March could be winding down to the last few precious days, because around here it's still so cold, and yet even Easter is behind us already. That reminds me that one good thing about Palm Sunday the previous week, since I knew I would not be able to attend church on Easter, they managed to include just about my favorite choral music of the season, so I didn't have to miss it after all. The prelude was "The Palms," which never fails to delight, and for the anthem, our resident soprano gave us "The Holy City," and she really ripped the top off of it, by golly. It was like a little mini-Easter concert for those of us who had plans to be elsewhere the following week, and since I was going to be one of them, I was a happy little palm waver indeed.
I already knew that last weekend would be busy, because we had plans for Saturday as well as Sunday, so I thought a good idea would be to take off some days from work to balance that out. It turned out that where Bill works, they decided to close for Good Friday, so I stayed home also, and although Bill went back to work on Monday after Easter, I opted for one more day of rest and relaxation at home, and glad of it. It was a nice treat to have a couple of unfettered days off to catch up on things, where my time was my own, and I was beholden to no clocks or itineraries. On Saturday, I was up with the chickens and driving out to the wilderness to help my sister do yard work, which turned into a longer day than I had expected. It was a beautiful day, and we got a lot done, but after I got home and soaking in the tub, I couldn't help but think that I'm getting way too old for this kind of nonsense.
We were up fairly early on Sunday, but the Easter Bunny still managed to be there ahead of us, and we discovered a cornucopia of sweet treats, interesting trinkets and even some practical stuff hidden away in there besides. Soon it was time to get into our Easter finery and head for Long Island. Even though we left later than we wanted, the traffic was not as bad as we expected, and we made good time to Mom's. It was another beautiful day like Saturday, and we were glad for a chance to get out and go to the diner for lunch. I wouldn't describe my spicy quesadillas and seasoned curly fries as traditional fare for the holiday, but they were certainly delicious, and that was good enough for me. After a pleasant and leisurely lunch, my sister and I exchanged belated birthday presents, since we had missed getting together for our birthdays a few weeks earlier, and you know I always say that the only thing better than a day with presents, is a day with two sets of presents! My sister was still hurting from all of her hard work on Saturday, so she was delighted to get a special vest that provides different settings of heat and massage, plus a remote control to switch between all of the various features. In fact, she put it on right out of the box, and never budged after that, and we left her on the sofa, making happy noises and experimenting with all the different options. That was one useful gift that certainly came in handy at the right time, which was interesting because we had bought it ahead of time and didn't realize what a hit it would be after the yard work marathon. Sometimes things just work out that way, although we can't rule out the possibility that the Easter Bunny may have had something to do with it.
Meanwhile at work, I found myself involved in one of those inadvertently funny situations, like trying to explain a spiral staircase to someone without using your hands. The supervisor of our Central Sterile Supply department, who has been at the hospital so long that I believe they built the building around her, and certainly should know better, was trying to get some office supplies out of our Storeroom, and apparently having no luck at it. She started out with the supply clerk, a very polite and accommodating older man, who would not only give you the shirt off of his back, but himself right along with it, if you asked him. She described to him what she was looking for, but since she had no idea what it was called, he was unable to bring to mind anything that would match her description. He finally had to tell her that he had no idea what she was asking for, but she was welcome to wander the aisles of supplies and see if she could spot the correct item on her own. She let him know that she was disgusted at his lack of proficiency, in spite of the fact that he was born at the hospital, and had been working there practically since that day, and certainly knew pretty much all there was to know about supplies in our Storeroom. Compared to these two old-timers, I was a mere newcomer, and know practically nothing about the Storeroom supplies, so of course, she called me next. Here's where I got involved in the "spiral staircase without using your hands" scenario, because she still didn't know what to call the thing she was looking for, and now she was trying to describe it to me over the phone, which is sort of like playing charades blindfolded. After what only seemed like an eternity, it finally came to light, and turned out to be something very simple, although not all that simple to describe. You can go ahead and give it a try for yourself, and imagine that you are looking for Post-It Notes, only you don't know that they're called Post-It Notes, and your descriptions are full of terms like "sticky," "small," "you write on it," and "they hang off the edge." Since we don't keep this as a Storeroom item among our office supplies, it was no wonder the supply clerk couldn't help her, although I have to believe that he would have given anything he had to get her out of his hair. I'm sure the next time she walks up to him with another one of these wild goose chases, he's going to tell her to call me first, and not bother wasting his time, and take her spiral staircase with her.
That shaggy dog story had easily shot to the top of my favorite anecdotes of the week, until unexpectedly, this other tale came out of nowhere and passed it at a flat run. It was late in the day on Thursday, when I got a frantic phone call from the nursing supervisor at our sister institution in Mount Vernon, and she needed a purchase order number immediately so she could place an overnight order for some orthopedic supplies desperately needed to alleviate a patient's suffering. Of course, everyone knows how I aim to be helpful, so I was prepared to give her a verbal number on the spot, and asked her for the name of the vendor she was going to order from. "Smith and Wesson," she replied at once. Excuse me??? This is where I'm thinking that patient care has certainly changed a lot since the last time I looked, and I was about to ask her if this might have been one of Dr. Kevorkian's patients, or someone taking a page out of his book. In the background, I can hear everyone else at the nurses station laughing, and they're all saying, "It's not Smith and Wesson!" Sure enough, it turned out to be instead those fine and upstanding folks at the health care giant, Smith + Nephew (and please feel free to visit their web site at www.smith-nephew.com and see for yourself) whose medical supply divisions run the gamut from orthopedic implants and cardio-vascular grafts, to prosthetic devices and wound care supplies, and everything in between. The nursing supervisor, in spite of decades in the field, and just as many decades using medical supplies from the vast S+N family of products, in the stress of the moment, instead blurted out the name of a well-known gun manufacturer, which you would expect would be totally at odds with what you would be thinking at a time like that. Well, it's certainly true that our minds play tricks on us, but I have to admit that even I wasn't expecting it to come up with Russian Roulette. Or in the immortal words of Dirty Harry, "Do you feel lucky?"
Happy April! Well, I guess that's what you call an early April Fool's joke, because April doesn't actually start until Tuesday, but we are certainly right on the very doorstep of it, that's for sure. It doesn't seem possible that March could be winding down to the last few precious days, because around here it's still so cold, and yet even Easter is behind us already. That reminds me that one good thing about Palm Sunday the previous week, since I knew I would not be able to attend church on Easter, they managed to include just about my favorite choral music of the season, so I didn't have to miss it after all. The prelude was "The Palms," which never fails to delight, and for the anthem, our resident soprano gave us "The Holy City," and she really ripped the top off of it, by golly. It was like a little mini-Easter concert for those of us who had plans to be elsewhere the following week, and since I was going to be one of them, I was a happy little palm waver indeed.
I already knew that last weekend would be busy, because we had plans for Saturday as well as Sunday, so I thought a good idea would be to take off some days from work to balance that out. It turned out that where Bill works, they decided to close for Good Friday, so I stayed home also, and although Bill went back to work on Monday after Easter, I opted for one more day of rest and relaxation at home, and glad of it. It was a nice treat to have a couple of unfettered days off to catch up on things, where my time was my own, and I was beholden to no clocks or itineraries. On Saturday, I was up with the chickens and driving out to the wilderness to help my sister do yard work, which turned into a longer day than I had expected. It was a beautiful day, and we got a lot done, but after I got home and soaking in the tub, I couldn't help but think that I'm getting way too old for this kind of nonsense.
We were up fairly early on Sunday, but the Easter Bunny still managed to be there ahead of us, and we discovered a cornucopia of sweet treats, interesting trinkets and even some practical stuff hidden away in there besides. Soon it was time to get into our Easter finery and head for Long Island. Even though we left later than we wanted, the traffic was not as bad as we expected, and we made good time to Mom's. It was another beautiful day like Saturday, and we were glad for a chance to get out and go to the diner for lunch. I wouldn't describe my spicy quesadillas and seasoned curly fries as traditional fare for the holiday, but they were certainly delicious, and that was good enough for me. After a pleasant and leisurely lunch, my sister and I exchanged belated birthday presents, since we had missed getting together for our birthdays a few weeks earlier, and you know I always say that the only thing better than a day with presents, is a day with two sets of presents! My sister was still hurting from all of her hard work on Saturday, so she was delighted to get a special vest that provides different settings of heat and massage, plus a remote control to switch between all of the various features. In fact, she put it on right out of the box, and never budged after that, and we left her on the sofa, making happy noises and experimenting with all the different options. That was one useful gift that certainly came in handy at the right time, which was interesting because we had bought it ahead of time and didn't realize what a hit it would be after the yard work marathon. Sometimes things just work out that way, although we can't rule out the possibility that the Easter Bunny may have had something to do with it.
Meanwhile at work, I found myself involved in one of those inadvertently funny situations, like trying to explain a spiral staircase to someone without using your hands. The supervisor of our Central Sterile Supply department, who has been at the hospital so long that I believe they built the building around her, and certainly should know better, was trying to get some office supplies out of our Storeroom, and apparently having no luck at it. She started out with the supply clerk, a very polite and accommodating older man, who would not only give you the shirt off of his back, but himself right along with it, if you asked him. She described to him what she was looking for, but since she had no idea what it was called, he was unable to bring to mind anything that would match her description. He finally had to tell her that he had no idea what she was asking for, but she was welcome to wander the aisles of supplies and see if she could spot the correct item on her own. She let him know that she was disgusted at his lack of proficiency, in spite of the fact that he was born at the hospital, and had been working there practically since that day, and certainly knew pretty much all there was to know about supplies in our Storeroom. Compared to these two old-timers, I was a mere newcomer, and know practically nothing about the Storeroom supplies, so of course, she called me next. Here's where I got involved in the "spiral staircase without using your hands" scenario, because she still didn't know what to call the thing she was looking for, and now she was trying to describe it to me over the phone, which is sort of like playing charades blindfolded. After what only seemed like an eternity, it finally came to light, and turned out to be something very simple, although not all that simple to describe. You can go ahead and give it a try for yourself, and imagine that you are looking for Post-It Notes, only you don't know that they're called Post-It Notes, and your descriptions are full of terms like "sticky," "small," "you write on it," and "they hang off the edge." Since we don't keep this as a Storeroom item among our office supplies, it was no wonder the supply clerk couldn't help her, although I have to believe that he would have given anything he had to get her out of his hair. I'm sure the next time she walks up to him with another one of these wild goose chases, he's going to tell her to call me first, and not bother wasting his time, and take her spiral staircase with her.
That shaggy dog story had easily shot to the top of my favorite anecdotes of the week, until unexpectedly, this other tale came out of nowhere and passed it at a flat run. It was late in the day on Thursday, when I got a frantic phone call from the nursing supervisor at our sister institution in Mount Vernon, and she needed a purchase order number immediately so she could place an overnight order for some orthopedic supplies desperately needed to alleviate a patient's suffering. Of course, everyone knows how I aim to be helpful, so I was prepared to give her a verbal number on the spot, and asked her for the name of the vendor she was going to order from. "Smith and Wesson," she replied at once. Excuse me??? This is where I'm thinking that patient care has certainly changed a lot since the last time I looked, and I was about to ask her if this might have been one of Dr. Kevorkian's patients, or someone taking a page out of his book. In the background, I can hear everyone else at the nurses station laughing, and they're all saying, "It's not Smith and Wesson!" Sure enough, it turned out to be instead those fine and upstanding folks at the health care giant, Smith + Nephew (and please feel free to visit their web site at www.smith-nephew.com and see for yourself) whose medical supply divisions run the gamut from orthopedic implants and cardio-vascular grafts, to prosthetic devices and wound care supplies, and everything in between. The nursing supervisor, in spite of decades in the field, and just as many decades using medical supplies from the vast S+N family of products, in the stress of the moment, instead blurted out the name of a well-known gun manufacturer, which you would expect would be totally at odds with what you would be thinking at a time like that. Well, it's certainly true that our minds play tricks on us, but I have to admit that even I wasn't expecting it to come up with Russian Roulette. Or in the immortal words of Dirty Harry, "Do you feel lucky?"
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 8:30 PM
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