Time is Flying By!!

Where is the time going? I mean, yes sometimes it seems to drag, but I swear every time I turn around another week has passed and the things I wanted to get done remain undone. Sometimes it’s all I can do to keep my head above water between my kids, work and school, but somehow I keep swimming. I’m sure many of you feel the same from reading your blogs.

Over Spring Break I was hoping (not sure why) to get some cleaning and stuff done around my house. Of course I was discounting the fact that I still had to work my shifts and had a Trauma Nursing course last week that many people say is the hardest class to pass that they’ve taken at the hospital. I’m happy to report I only missed 2 questions on the test, and one of them was because I second guessed myself. Oops. So I now have that under my belt and am down to two more classes to take for work, yay! On top of that I’m officially and finally off of orientation so get to take care of patients by myself. That’s pretty cool, a little intimidating, but pretty cool none the less. Needless to say my week went crazy and cleaning didn’t happen. Oh well, I did my classes and got a jump on this week’s work once I realized I had four chapters of Pathophysiology due, plus one each in Economics and Lifetime Wellness… ouch. I have to admit I was tempted to wait and blog later in the week, but decided since it frustrates me when all the blogs pop up on Friday I wouldn’t join that group and I’d try to stay ahead of the game. On top of that I’ve found it’s easier to hit 500 words if I work on it earlier rather than later, if I feel rushed I get kind of blocked on what to say.

My personal life is still a bit wacky, but I’m making plans to make all of that change. I’ve laid down some rules and outlined some requests with everyone I live with as well as opened lines of communication on all fronts in an effort to promote some peace in my world, here’s hoping it works, fingers crossed!

I’m getting a bit excited about getting into the RN-BSN program for next fall, yes the mandatory orientation is on a less than ideal day for me, but I think I have a plan in place to make it all work. I’m hoping so at least J

Oh! My poor little beat up car I bought, wow has it undergone a transformation! It looks pretty different now, I finally got my new to me door on it, we beat some of the dents out of the fender (I haven’t had any luck finding a new one) and I ordered front and back seat covers for it, so it’s looking better. Plus I cleaned it inside and out which helped a ton. Now to find some new hubcaps for it since I only have two and they don’t match and I think it’ll be a pretty decent little car for me J

Money Saving Thoughts & Ideas

Okay, nose back to the grindstone, with the whole push to the end of the semester and all of that Spring Break is over kind of stuff. J

Since my budget like many others in this world seems to get tighter with each passing day and Yahoo had a bunch of articles on saving money without resorting to the typical clipping of coupons I thought that would make a great blog post for this week.

In the first article I found (the one that started this whole blog post idea) it goes over 4 Discounts You’re Earning But NotUsing. That title made me stop & look, not surprisingly I think I qualify for a couple, and am thinking of making a change or two to take advantage of at least one of the others. The article discusses checking account rewards, and how yes they’re hard to find at your brick and mortar banks, but if you choose internet banking you can cash in. I’m going to look into this since I need to open a new account to accommodate some upcoming changes in my life anyway. The second thing is club membership perks, I am a member of Sam’s Club, so am going to look and see what other ways I can use my membership to save money, other than the obvious. Social media promotions are the third thing, I’m on Facebook far more often than I should be, so I’m going to start using my presence there to save a few dollars every now and then. The last one is credit card reward malls, I probably won’t be taking advantage of this one due to the fact that I don’t have and don’t plan to get any credit cards, but it might be worth it for those who do have them.

The second article I found went over 7 Ways You’reWasting Money Without Realizing It. I’ll hit a few of the high points. Some big ones I noticed were ignoring your credit score, this hurts you anytime  you need to borrow money and can hurt you in your job hunt too since most companies will check a credit score before they offer you a job. Failing to get lower rates follows that one, if you take care of your credit you can refinance loans to take advantage of lower rates when they are available. There have been times in my life I wish I’d been able to do so. Overpaying for car insurance was made obvious to me recently, when I bought my little Prizm I shopped around and figured out I’d been paying far too much for my auto insurance. Those are the ones that stood out to me, you’re more than welcome to check all seven out and see if the others will help you save some money.

The third article fits in too in that it gives you  9 Things You Should Always Buy WithYour Credit Card. It’s food for thought, I might put it in my mental maybe I need a card again someday file and consider it. It points out perks on appliances and electronics you can utilize with a card, also cell phone replacement perks if you pay your bill with your card and that if you use your credit card to purchase things you’re going to write off on your taxes your bill can be your receipt and you don’t have to keep track of as much paper for tax time. All pretty good ideas, plus a few more.

So those are some things I’ve learned about saving money tonight. Hope they help you too!

My Thoughts For and On the Week

Okay, I’ve gotten in the habit of just relating my week to all of you for my second blog post every week. Sometimes I feel a bit guilty, but then I realize that none of you actually have to read it, so as long as I write something and it’s fairly coherent I’m probably ok.

I got AMAZING news today. (well it might have been here a day or two, but I’ve been in Joplin working and just returned to my “eastern” home.) I got accepted into the RN-BSN program for this next fall!!! I’m super excited! I was hoping I’d get in, but not being one to get my hopes too  high (hurts to much when you don’t get what you wish for) that I wasn’t counting on it. So I’ve been floating tonight. The only minor and it really is minor down side is the mandatory orientation is the same night a leadership retreat I go on every year starts, but I’m just going to show up late to my leadership retreat, school has to come before that.

In other parts of my life the other super awesome part of the day was spending part of it with my best friend. That’s a pretty rare occurrence due to work schedules and locational difficulties, so yay!

I’ve spend the last three nights in the ICU at Freeman. I had a pretty interesting and diverse set of patients. I really learned a lot, but that’s about all I can really say on work due to all of the HIPPA laws. L I could seriously write a pretty lengthy post on any of my three shifts if I could share more details.

I had my first Pathophysiology Lab Test on Monday, I’m not super confident on how I did, but have my fingers crossed. I went right after I got off of work and was tired on top of still processing a super busy night, so maybe wasn’t at the top of my game. Oops!

Onto a subject on everyone’s mind… Spring Break. I keep hearing about everything from doing fun stuff to spending the week cleaning at home, all of that sounds nice to me. I have a Trauma Nursing course for work I’ve been putting off as I’ve heard that it’s pretty intense so I’m taking it next week. I’m hoping I can at least go out for dinner with friends or spend some time relaxing or something during the week, we will see what I can manage.

Oh, and a follow up to my post about my car, I’m feeling better about it. I have some replacement parts for it and am going to get them on next week (I have a friend that can help me on Tuesday, so I’m going to fit it in) and I spent a good part of my morning today cleaning it, amazingly it looks a lot better with what I’ve done and I haven’t even broken out the heavy duty chemicals yet. 

Well, enjoy Spring Break everyone! I’m going to do my best to J

Your Digital Afterlife

Have you ever wondered what happens to your online presence when you’re no longer a part of this earth? As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a RN in the ICU at Freeman, and though we’d love to be able to send all of our patients out the front door of the hospital whole and hearty, sadly it isn’t always possible. The other night while working I started to wonder what happens to things such as your email accounts, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, eBay and all those other lovely ways we interact with others online? Unless you’ve included passwords and your wishes in your will or other document, is there anyone to shut them down? Or do you want them left active? So many questions. So as we all do in this digital age I typed “what happens to your online presence when you die” into my favorite (of the moment) search engine Google. As we all have come to expect I got pages and pages of results.

One cool way to deal with your email accounts is to set up a Dead Man’s Switch. This is an online service that you check into periodically and if you don’t it sends you emails asking you to verify you are still living. If you don’t respond it will send messages you have securely loaded into their servers to predestinated individuals 60 days after your last check in. This is a pretty cool service in my opinion. This way you can say things you wish you’d said, or even give directions on how to deal with all of your accounts. This is a pretty neat service overall, in my opinion.  Another advantage of setting up a switch is to avoid the misery this family is going through.  The author Clare Jacobson’s boyfriend’s mother passed away without leaving anyone information on how to access/close her email account and they now receive constant spam messages from her. That is a pretty creepy thing and I think wouldn’t do anything good for the grieving process. Of course there is the flip side of that where emails are received that seem to actually be messages from beyond the grave that reference things that only the deceased would know and even events that have occurred after their death. I found a recent example of this occurring in this article about Jack Froese whose friends have been receiving seemingly pertinent messages from him since after his death from a cardiac dysrhythmia. They refer private conversations in attics and an ankle injury that occurred after he passed away.

Another concern is what happens to Facebook after you pass? Of course Facebook has a few options available, your profile can be memorialized, where sensitive information is removed and only the friends you had when you passed away can view your profile. Or the profile can be deleted entirely; these options are both available via a form in the help section. The third and newest option is that with proper documentation such as a court order your entire profile can be downloaded.

I can see this post going on forever if I let it, so I’ll wrap up with saying that another site I found TheDigital Beyond has a bunch of really cool articles on it, I saw ones about people being buried with their cell phones & spouses and such receiving messages they believed to be from them after burial (creepy!) or family members calling and leaving voicemails on these phones. (yes the family/spouse is continuing to pay the bill and continue the service. There are also articles on how to deal with your digital presence after death and lots of other information. Happy reading! 

Another Week in my Life...

Another crazy week in my world for sure. But the good news in life is I found and bought a car. The not so stellar news is that it's really not that exciting of a car. It's a 1998 Chevy Prizm with 200,000 miles on it. The only saving grace of the car for me is that it has a Toyota manufactured engine & drive train so in theory should run for another 100,000 miles if I have any luck at all. Hopefully I'll be able to upgrade it long before then, but if not at least it'll probably survive for a long time. Other not so stellar points with this car are that it has been hit on the driver side and the door is in rough shape. Add to that how dirty the interior is and the fact that I need to replace the interior door handles and it's a bit of a challenge to actually be happy about it. The up side to all of it is that I already found it a new door (that's actually the same color as the car) and bought door handles on the cheap off of eBay. So now I just need a bit of free time to try to put the car together. The super good point about it would have to be the best I can tell so far it's getting well over 30 miles per gallon which is amazing compared to the 12 mpg my Suburban typically gets.

This car is also a stretch for me as I've always been a hard core GM person, I think that's just how it works in my family, pretty much everything is a GM, except for my brother's Toyota truck and sister in law's Acura MDX. I have friends that have Toyota's with the same engine in them and they've pretty much driven them into the ground so there's hope for this car I guess. I put some seat covers on it, am going to clean it up really well and see how I feel about it then. I'm pretty sure as gas prices rise I'll like it more.

This car was just more of a compromise than I'd originally planned on, but I think it'll work for the best in the end. Not to mention I got it majorly cheaply. Plus as I was typing this I was talking to one of my friends about it and we figured out a way to make a seat cover for the back seat to cover up the nasty there. Plus her son details cars for a living and he's giving me some tips on ways to clean up some of the parts I can't cover up with fabric. This car is looking better & better all the time!

Other than that it's been busy, I worked last Wednesday, Thursday & Friday, got the car Thursday (took a nap, slept in the car on the way to Kansas City then drove back to go to work) then went to a guard competition on Saturday, worked on Sunday, took a Pathophysiology test on Monday, and have been in education classes Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week. On top of that I'm getting all of my school stuff done and studying for two tests on Monday of this next week. I'm worn out. I need some time to sleep, just not sure when that one's going to happen. 

Bribery

Bribery is an interesting thing. You, at least I, typically associate bribery with large corporations or with political candidates. I ran across an article on Yahoo tonight that enlightened me to the fact that it is a much larger and more pervasive issue than I had anticipated. According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica website bribery is defined as “the act of promising, giving, receiving, or agreeing to receive money or some other item of value with the corrupt aim of influencing a public official in the discharge of official duties. When money has been offered or promised in exchange for a corrupt act, the official involved need not actually accomplish that act for the offense of bribery to be complete. The crime is typically punishable as a felony.”

Overall bribery doesn't seem to be a major and pervasive issue in the United States (or maybe I'm just clueless here) but in many foreign countries such as India or Bangladesh it is a pervasive and far reaching issue. For example in this article I found there are examples given such as to claim a legitimate tax refund in Hyderabad, India is 10,000 rupees. And that it will run you 20,000 shillings to get your child who has already met the admission requirements into High School in Nairobi, Kenya. If I didn't spend as much time as I do randomly reading articles on the internet I might be more surprised about how rampant bribery is among public officials in some of the middle eastern countries. But since I spend a fair amount of time unable or unwilling to sleep I read way, way too many articles online and was not surprised.

In fact a week or so ago I stumbled across the website I Paid A Bribe which was founded in August 2010 by Ramesh and Ms. Ramanathan along with Sridar Iyengar. It was set up with the purpose of being a forum if you will, to demonstrate how prevalent bribery is and give the people an anonymous way to vocalize their true feelings regarding bribery without fear of reprisal. The main page actually features new bribe reports as well as ones that have been voted most popular. There is even a scrolling feed of legal advice on one side of the page. When I clicked over a moment ago the newest posted bribe was from a streetwalker in Mumbai that when she decided to visit relatives in Canada was told she was too ugly for the shutter mechanism to work until she paid a bribe to get her passport photo taken. I've already spent a fair amount of time browsing through the different bribe reports, you never know what you'll see.

I personally am not a fan of bribery and find the policy of doing so to be very corrupt and dishonest. I think there should be a way to stop bribery and make things fair for all across any given country/the world. Also a point from my Economics class, bribery hurts international trade as the countries that engage in bribery must figure those costs into their trade costs which makes trade more expensive for them in the long run.