Up, caffeinated, off to work.
Morning all. Nothing. Zip. Nada. Zilch on the job sites this morning. I checked every damn one. Ugh! Everyone says nobody gets hired from them so why do they exist???
fcm, your snow pics look positively artic! I don’t blame you for taking leave.
Cold here, too, swampy, by Flawduh standards.
nava, how ridiculous! I suppose they do that so they [del]don’t[/del] do not have to give you a perfect grade.
I watched the stupor bowl and actually enjoyed the game more than the ads for the first time. I really didn’t have a dog in the race but sided wth NO early on in the game. Just cause…
Off to run through my career coaching tutorials.
Tupug
**Puggy **- I don’t know who the “everyone” are (is? am?) saying that no one gets hired from job sites, but my sweetie got his last 3 job from such places - Monster.com being the most productive for him. In fact, he gets hits 3 and 4 years later on old resumes that are still posted out there. So somebody has luck with them.
OK, I’ve wasted enough of this morning. I need to attack the disaster that is my kitchen. And haul out the vacuum cleaner. And unpack my slab roller components - I know I can put some of it together myself. I need to get to all of that. I just don’t want to. I’d rather pop in a video and knit…
Oh well, time to be all adult and stuff. Stoopit chores.
Thanks, moooom. That is encouraging. 
I have brekkied, cleaned myself up and have a pot of taco soup in the slow cooker. Da cave is smellin’ nummy!
Tonight I have Vestry meeting. Ya know, I agreed to do this and all but I get a real don juana about meetin’s that start at seven p.m. Especially when I have to be at work at six a.m. the next day. Oh well, guess I gotta be all adult like about it. Le Sigh.
Puggy good luck on the job search. It ain’t fun but we just know you’ll find a good job!
It needs to be May now. May is nice…sunny, warm without being hot, nice long evenings…etc etc.
With winter I am done.
Goodluck with the job hunting pugs
Break time!!
In the last coupla hours, I emptied the dishwasher, scrubbed some scuzzy stuff along the bottom, rinsed it with vinegar, and reloaded it. I scrubbed the kitchen sink and wiped down the counters. I cleared away the snow shoveling clothing that accumulated on the counter, vacuumed living room, family room, dining room, hall, bedroom, and kitchen. Also vacuumed cat hair off the ottoman.
I just looked down the driveway - there’s a lump of snow that we should have cleared - I think I’ll try to get rid of it today. After lunch.
It’s cold out there, but not windy, so it shouldn’t be too nasty for half an hour or so. Goodness knows, we spent a lot of time out there yesterday without freezing… much…
No one from work has called, so I’m guessing I’m not missed. Heck, for all I know, my boss and my project lead didn’t make it in anyway.
swampy, cowboy up, dagnabbit! Be a man! Suck it up and go to the meeting. Take snacks - they’ll love you for it!
Nava, that’s just silly talk. Besides, I thought it was LiLi who was under a no-contractions mandate?.. apparently pregnant women and translation students have more in common than I thought. 
{{Puggy}} If it helps, I got indirectly hired from a job site twice, because my resume caught a headhunter’s attention (I’m pretty sure it was Workopolis, but that was a few years ago now, so I’m not 100%). If you’re not on LinkedIn already, it’s probably a good idea to build up a profile there as well… I know quite a few folks who have gotten nibbles from recruiters based on their LinkedIn profiles.
In other news, my migraine is gone and my first article has received editorial blessing, which means it’ll be running on Thursday. Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! I can now claim to be an official freelance writer, though I may wait until I get my first cheque.
Muppet we can only hope your editor never finds out you made homemade lasagna with gasp store bought cheese gasp! Just think what that could do to your food cred! :eek:
MOOOOOOM I don’t gotta bring snacks. We already have cake there for tonight. MMMMMMMMM… cake! There’s my motivation!
I feel motivated towards a nappy poo right now.
I had an ambulance shift Friday night, and it was a doozy. We ran 10 and a half hours of the 12 hour shift, in driving rain and low level flooding. It seemed to me that I finally got dry at roughly 10 AM Saturday, after the shift was done.
Our first one was for a 13 year old boy having seizures. When we were called he already had 9 tonic/clonic episodes over about an hour; while we worked on him, he had 2 more. They were the darnedest thing I’ve seen; his eyes would roll back and his neck would arch, and he’d twitch a bit, which is quite routine; the odd part is that it would end like someone turned off a light. Usually there’s a phase after a seizure where the patient is usually sleepy where the brain basically reboots, and this simply did not happen with him.
He was a tough one, because his seizures were getting longer and increasingly violent, and more frequent. He needed valium to break the cycle, and because my partner and I are not paramedics, we didn’t have any. We traded him off to Suffolk Fire and Rescue because they did have a paramedic who could give him what he needed. That happened in a quite vigorous downpour.
We stopped to eat, and the rain had let up a bit. Og must have been in a playful mood. We weren’t back at the station for half an hour before being paged again for an overturned truck in a ditch; the rain had reverted to downpour status.
The truck was on its side, with the bottom at roughly 60 degrees up from level. The patient was still buckled in to the driver’s seat, up in the air. The passenger side window, down on the ground, was open. I stuck my head in to talk to him, and my gawd, the alcohol fumes done slapped a knot on my head. I wouldn’t dare light a match within 10 feet of him even in the pouring rain.
The ditch he was in was deep and overflowing. He wasn’t going to drown or anything, but the rushing water made for a miserable scene. One deputy fell in trying to get across, and had to be pulled out.
The rescue went something like this:
Partner Bill: “Sir, are you OK?”
Drunk driver: “Uh, yeah.”
PB: “Are you trapped?”
DD: “No.”
Wet Deputy: “Sir, unlock your door.”
DD: “No. I’m gonna stay right here until the tow truck comes.”
WD: “Unlock the door so we can get you out. I’m out here in the rain.”
DD: “Then you’re a damned fool.”
The wet deputy was already mad after falling into the ditch, and that set him off completely. I had already called for an equipment truck in case the door was jammed.
WD: “Unlock the f*cking door or I’ll have the roof cut off.”
DD: “You’re not touching my truck!”
WD: “The rescue is already on the way. You got 2 minutes to decide.”
The patient unlocked the door, and the patient was pulled out. When he was at the top of the hill, he took 2 steps and fell flat on his face into the mud. He got up and said, “My wife is gonna be pissed that I got mud on my pants.”
Different deputy: “I think she’ll be pissed about more than that…”
We got him into the ambulance, checked him over, and found no injuries. We saw him last sitting in the car with the Highway Patrol officer taking the report before he saw the magistrate. I found out later he blew a .15 on the breathalyzer. Oops…
Our next call was another seizure, this time for a very sweet 19 year old girl with neurological and developmental problems. She had one seizure, and came out of it before we arrived. Her vitals were normal, and we ended up with another refusal. What was fun with this call is that she thought I was a doctor, probably because I had my stethoscope around my neck, and she wanted a tour of the ambulance. We obliged her.
The front door of the house was under a corner of the roof, and there was no way to get out without getting drenched by the concentrated runoff. There was no way to step off the porch without getting into ankle deep water, either. The girl had a raincoat and rubber boots, but I didn’t. Oh well, that’s why I get the big bucks for this…
We got back to the station just before midnight, and after paperwork, we went to bed. Not for long…
Around 1 or so, we were paged for one of our frequent flyers, who was sick. We found him on the couch, gasping for air in short staccato breaths. This was classic advanced respiratory distress, and he was getting fatigued gasping for air. :eek: The very first thing we did was put him on the PulseOx, to get an idea of how much oxygen his blood was transporting: that showed 80%. For reference, a healthy person is 95-100%, and we get really excited when the reading is 90%. Our patient was dying right in front of us. :eek: :eek:
He went on oxygen right then and there, and he came back to 97% within a minute. That bullet was dodged. A young woman was there, and we asked her what happened. He was sick most of the day, and was increasingly unresponsive. He had a prescribed breathing treatment about 7 hours before, so that had worn off. The kicker was that he was to use a bipap machine, and she took it off of him because she thought it wasn’t helping. Gee, Toots, it was only keeping him from asphyxiating.
Bill and I independently thought she was either a dingbat, or acting maliciously and feigning stupidity. On second thought, I doubt she was smart enough to act stupid.
Bill drove for that run, and almost wrecked us. We were approaching the hospital and he hit water that had flooded the road. We got sideways, and he recovered nicely, but I was in the captain’s chair calling the hospital, and the motion threw me out of it. The nurses bitched at me for letting slip with an “Oh, shit!” over the air, until they found out we nearly wrecked.
We got back with slightly less than two hours to go in the shift. We had run all night, had little sleep, and I wasn’t feeling dry until I was home for several hours. I hate winter.
I must have bored y’all to death…
swampus, I’m hoping we can let that be our dirty little secret. I’d happily convert my backyard into a dairy farm so that I can make my own cheese going forward, but I think the neighbours might object to the smell.
Vundy, just reading that story exhausted me. I can’t imagine how wiped you must’ve felt by the time you got home. 
I was inspired by **Muppet **this morning and made my own taco seasoning.
Ok, what really happened was that I looked everywhere and realized that we were out of taco seasoning. (And I also couldn’t run down to the Amish Market to buy more because GilaMonster’s van was stuck in the driveway at the time. )
**BBBobbio **- I wasn’t bored - I was busy.
I’ve got the table base and the table tops assembled, and the next step is to put the roller on the table. It weighs 78# and it’s 30" long - ain’t no way I’m getting that sucker up to table height myself. Plus it needs to be set into a notch. It’s going to be difficult enough for 2 of us. I’m also thinking I might want to put wheels on it and they’d need to be installed before the tonnage is added. I’ll discuss it with **FCD **when he gets home.
I also decided to close off the cold air return duct that the furnace installers put in - all it does is suck cold air from the basement and recirculate it thru the house. Not smart. I duct-taped a square of cardboard on the back side of the vent and screwed it back in place - almost. I got 3 of the screws in, but I dropped the 4th one TWICE!! There are 2 perfectly good screws on the floor somewhere under the compressor and I can’t seen them or get to them. I decided to quit. I’ll try again later, or let my manly man do it.
Stoopit vent. Stoopit sheet metal screws.
Just took the dogs out and scooped a couple shovels full of snow out of their teensy pee area. I think I’ll put on my jacket and go out front and scoop a little more off the driveway while I still have a little energy. And I’m thinking I need to be taken out for dinner tonight. I haven’t left the property since Friday about 5… So, this is what house arrest is like??
Oh yeah - and they’re threatening another 3-6" of evil white coldness falling from the sky on Tues and Weds. :mad:
Hi, didja miss me? I missed me.
In the last week:
*FEMA has descended upon The Hotel. They’re here to help the municipalities that are flat broke after the Rockslide on I-40 and the Neverending Snowpocalypses. They are collectively a trip and we oversold the hotel for them. This weekend’s gonna be interesting.
*I had another PMS migraine. That’s it, I’m going to Planned Parenthood to find out what’s going on with this. I never got migraines with PMS before. Am I, in fact, turning into my mother?
*Spaz’s First Scarf is now a foot long and has a home after it’s done. I’m giving it to a friend of mine.
*I gots me a man for my birthday.
Also, does anybody know if it’s possible to substitute melted chocolate for cocoa powder when making a cake. Someone is having a birthday this weekend and a Guinness chocolate cake has been requested, but all of the recipes we’ve found have cocoa powder and he wants better chocolate than that.
Baby steps, my dear. Baby steps.
Totally understandable that you may not always have the resources to travel to Mexico and harvest your own chile peppers and cumin seeds, dry them under the hot Mexican sun and then hand-grind into a powder using an authentic volcanic rock mortar and pestle for maximum authenticity. Under those circumstances, blending your own from inferior store bought products (or even buying pre-mixed, if absolutely necessary) is acceptable.
Just saying it might not be quite as authentic as a result of your corner-cutting.
Glad you survived Son Of Snowpocalypse, Spaz. But please, do tell us more about this birthday present of yours.
Oh, and yes, you can substitute melted chocolate for cocoa. I usually do it the other way around, but basically the conversion works out to 4 tbsp cocoa + 1 tbsp butter = 1 oz unsweetened chocolate. Also, if you’re using dark or bittersweet, you’ll probably need to reduce the amount of sugar by about 1 tbsp per oz of chocolate.
(Also, I’d argue that you can get damn good results using a high-quality Dutch process cocoa as you could with a fancy-dancy chocolate, but I’m not the birthday boy, so he’s certainly entitled to ask for whatever cake best fits his beliefs)
Great story BBBobbio! Your Bambulance stories always are. The DUI one made me laugh. The story about the girl made me awwww.
I ate some grits and aigs for brekkie and a peanut butter sammich for N.O.L.. The taco soup is done and smells so yummy! I’s hongry but bein’ all polite and waitin’ for OYKW to show up to eat. I have cheese (like Muppet I am a slacker and used sto’ boughten), black olives, taco chips and sour cream as toppin’s. Can’t wait to eat!
MOOOOOOM you’re gettin’ more snow, we’re gettin’ more rain. That’s Winter for ya!
Awww bobbio you are so sweet!
Rumour has it that it may snow here in StupidParis tomorrow. I am so over Winter.
I am going to bed - had a traumatic shipping experience after work that involved a line jumper and me summoning all my French and call him an asshole and get to the back of the damn line as we all had to. He was a little threatening and creepy and he followed me through the mall to the train station where I lost him. I should keep my mouth shut I guess…but man he pissed me off. I had been stood for 15 mins in line why should he jump the line!
Hey y’all. Just stopping in to say hi and I’ll be back later with rambling, I’m sure. =^_^=
Yay! Quit O’ Clock!
zooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom