B

B is for Bookcases of which I have three.

Two tall ones

And one small one.

Bookcases are great storage spaces!

A

OK Here we go with the first post of the April A-Z Challenge. There is over 1,600 people signed up for this challenge! I plan on visiting every one of them! Ha ha! Just kidding of course!

A is for Avenger

2008 Dodge Avenger that is ...my car.

I leased it in January 2008 and in 2011 when the lease was up I bought it.

I loved it and couldn't bear the thought of giving it up! It's a great car with all the bells and whistles!

It's getting on in years now with over 60,000 miles on it but I plan on driving in until the tires fall off!


See you tomorrow!

Rough Week

man I am glad this week is over. It's been a rough one!

Last Monday I started to feel kind of yucky and it developed into a full-blown, congested, coughing, sore throat from sinus drainage cold that pretty much kicked my butt the whole week! Regardless, I only missed a half a day of work! Yeah, I was one of those people! I feel better now, though. I'm still coughing but plan to rest this whole weekend. Yay for a good excuse to not do housework!!

On Thursday night I spend a few hours at the emergency vet with Shauna. She had to have her beloved cat Wiggy put to sleep. He had been sick with chronic kidney failure for a couple of months. Although he was doing pretty good on a special diet, this past week he started to decline and when she came home from work on Thursday he was pretty sick.

Rest in peace Wiggy. You were a awesome cat and you will be missed!

Tuesday starts the A-Z challenge!

See you then!

Anniversary Trip

I've had the last 5 days off work so Rich and I could take a little trip for our anniversary. We didn't want to spend a lot of money due to a certain wedding we are saving for, but we desperately needed to get away for a few days.

So we left on Saturday morning to spend the night  in Traverse City.

On the way up we were listening to music with my iPhone when all of a sudden it stopped working and heated up so much we almost threw it out the window because we were afraid it would catch on fire! Needless to say, it was fried! So feeling like I was no longer connected to rest of the world we continued on to Traverse City.

Let me tell you, it was COLD there! It never got out of the teens and it was 3 degrees when we got up on Sunday morning.  At one point we ran outside to get a couple of pictures but it was for a very short time!

The Grand Traverse Bay was frozen solid!

.
It was a nice hotel, though. Our room was right on the beach! I bet it's really nice during the summer!

And a lot more expensive!!

We never got the chance to walk around downtown Traverse City because it was just too cold, but I snapped a few pictures driving through!

This was a interesting house right outside of town we saw when we pulled down a street to turn around.

You can't see in the picture but this house sat right next to a river!

We left TC on Sunday and drove south to Mt. Pleasant to spend the night at my favorite hotel in the whole state, the Soaring Eagle Resort and Casino.

I just love this beautiful hotel.

Our room had a balcony that overlooked the (frozen) pond and a outdoor fire pit.

And the pool room.

I managed to meet up with my old friend Michele while we were there. Her aunt was married to my uncle so I've known her practically all of my life. We lost touch for a while but thanks to Facebook we got back in touch. She lives in Mt. Pleasant and came to the hotel with her daughter to see us. Her daughter actually works there. It was wonderful to see her and we visited for several hours!

 We had a nice dinner afterwards and played video poker for a while but didn't win anything!

Monday we left Mt. Pleasant fairly early and on the way home we stopped at the Apple store so I could get a new phone. Unfortunately, it was out of warranty and I did not have insurance so I had to pay for it, but it was not as expensive as I thought it would be and I have to have a phone! So oh well!

Today Rich went back to work and I still had one day off. I just ran some errands and cleaned the house.

Tomorrow it's back to the grind again!

Until the next time.....

Floor and More

 Happy Friday night! I have the next 5 days off of work so it's a especially happy Friday!

The floor is 99.9% finished  and it looks 1000% better.

Here's some before and after shots for you:

Before

After

Before

After

 

The pictures don't really do it justice but you can get the idea of just how much better it looks now. We've been living with that sub floor for a way too long!.

We spent all of a Saturday, some of Sunday laying the floor, and then Rich spent the majority of last Saturday doing the trim. I have to say he did a fantastic job of it!  There is no end to the things that guy can do! So talented!!

We  he just has one more trim piece to put by the bathroom but it has to be different than the rest of the trim because of a height difference. 

Now do figure out what to do with these.

 (sigh!)

Last Sunday we all got together to celebrate my Dad's 82nd birthday. 

We're a big group!

 

And we're missing my niece Gina and Shauna's fiance, Brad! It's always a good time when we're all together and food is involved!!

Well, we're off to Traverse City tomorrow for the night and then a night in Mt. Pleasant at the Soaring Eagle, where I hope to meet up with an old friend. 

Tuesday is our 37th wedding anniversary!

Until the next time!

 

Day Off

I took the day off today to go to my brothers office. I got my teeth cleaned and a crown started. I know I've said before how great it is to have a brother for a dentist. It never costs me any money to have my teeth worked on.  Luckily I have dental insurance so he's not working on my teeth for free. Even though he would. He has before when I didn't have insurance. Just charged me for the cost of  materials.

This has been the longest winter ever I think! I'm so glad it's almost the end of February. All the snow we've had and the frigid temperatures have taken their toll on our roads. It's kind of like this:

LOL! This may be funny but it's pretty true! You either have to drive half on the shoulder, half in oncoming traffic, or hope it's in the middle of the road and you can straddle them!

We're going to be seeing lots of orange barrels this summer!!!

Shauna and Brad are going to be signing the contract to book the venue for the wedding. Then the date will be official May 30, 2015 and we can start planning! I am so looking forward to it! 

I have been trying to work some overtime. I worked last Saturday for a few hours. This normally very busy hallway looked like this:

 

Like a ghost town! That first door on the left is the entrance to the pathology department. I wish it could be like that all of the time! No one around...no line in the cafeteria....easy parking. But I guess if it was I wouldn't have a job! 

We plan on finally putting a floor in the upstairs hallway this weekend. We ripped up the carpeting a few years ago because it was worn and gross looking and we've never replaced it. It's just been the plywood sub floor. No one ever goes up there except for us and the cats so we've never been in a hurry to do anything with it. Last weekend we finally went to the hardware store and ended up getting whats called Vinyl plank flooring  It looks like wood but it actually strips of vinyl that lock together.  It's supposed to be really durable and I think it will look nice. Of course, there will be before, during and after pictures! 

In a few weeks we are planning a little anniversary trip. We are going to Traverse City for a night and then a night at the Soaring Eagle in Mt. Pleasant. We went there last year but neither one of us felt very good and we didn't enjoy it very  much. This year hopefully will be different. Plus I plan on meeting up with a old friend that lives up there.

That's all for now. In April I'm going to be doing the A to Z challenge, where I'll post every day from the 1st to the 26th using one letter from the alphabet per day! I've already got most of the posts planned!

Until the next time....

What Goes Wrong!

So last post I let you know what a big part of my job at U of M entails. Sending slides out for patients to get second opinions when they've been diagnosed with cancer or some other disease.

About 50% of the time things go pretty smoothly. We get the request, pull the material, get the pathologists approval and get the stuff shipped out, all within 24 hours of receiving the request. I love that part!

However, this is a teaching hospital with heavy focus on research. Besides all of our regular labs for routine diagnosis, we have tons of research labs scattered all over the campus.

Many time when I send in a request for slides someone has already beat me to them.

For example, here I put in a request for two sets of slides for the same patient.  The first set was pulled by Dr. Lim in December, probably for her research lab. The second set is just not in file; which means what it says, the slides are not there and there is no tag saying if they were pulled for someone else.

In this case I can either contact Dr. Lims secretary and have her check with Dr. Lim to see if she still has them. !

Or, I email the doctor directly.

Or sometimes I page them if I'm getting desperate and need their attention immediately!

 If I get no results either way, I can send a mass email to the whole pathology department! In all my years there, however, that's only worked once or twice.

So eventually I just have to request the blocks and have new slides made. That causes a delay of a few days and lots of times I'm getting phone calls from patients or the requesting hospitals wondering what the delay is. I can't exactly tell them that we lost the slides so I have to be careful what I say!

T

This is the pile of trouble cases that has been on my desk all week. Each tray is a case in various stages of trying to find the slides or getting recuts! No stress there!!

As a side note: See that jumble of cords under the desk? One time I spilled a glass of water on my desk and the water ran down the back of the desk and all over that power strip! Luckily I was able to reach the main power cord before it blew everything out!

Finally the most frustrating thing is when I finally have all of the materials together and I go to prepare the shipment and I get this

The FedEx site is down! Thankfully it doesn't happen too often but when it does it can be for the whole day! Then we have to hand write a label! Terrible!!!!

So that's part of my job.  The other parts include

Receiving requests from clinicians for specialized testing and having to send materials to one of our specialty labs.

Answering phone calls from clinicians looking for biopsy results on their patients. We are not allowed to give them the results before the pathologist is finished, but we are allowed to give them the pathologists pager so they can contact them themselves.

Scheduling patients for our cytology service, which is fine needle aspirations, like for cysts.

Returning pathology materials that we have received from other hospitals. Although that actually is done in another area we are the back up when they get behind, which is all the time!

I'm also a member of the Employee Appreciation Committee. That committee plans any events and outings that the department does for the employees. Once a year they do a outing for the whole department. Last year it was a day at the Toledo Zoo. This year I think it's going to be a murder mystery dinner. We also  have a little award luncheon once a year for people who have been there 10, 20, 30 or 40 years. We plan that and arrange food and decoration and gifts. Plus March 7th is Employee Appreciation Day so we have some stuff we're doing for that.

I'm also on the Workplace Recognition Committee. Every month people send in nominations for one of their coworkers who has gone above and beyond on part of their job. After we've gone through the nominations and decide who get an actual award, my job is to type a nice letter to them, make sure the head of that particular lab signs it, get the  letter to the employee and copies to the head of the pathology department, the nominator and their supervisor. In May there will be a nice luncheon ceremony with the presenting of the awards. We'll plan all that!

I received a customer service award a year and a half ago. I posted about it here.

It keeps me busy but truthfully, I was getting bored with all the usual stuff so this has definitely helped! A little stressful at times but worth it!

So that's pretty much it. Other than having to take a bus from my parking spot to the hospital every day, it's a good job with great health insurance for me and Rich with minimal cost to me and a retirement plan that is second to none!

And that is worth it's weight in gold!

Until the next time!