concerns and a neat experience

I have tried not to offend anyone here. I have really tried hard not to mention to much information on here. I am sure that I have not brought up the company name that I work for. I have not said any of the peoples names that I work with either, to keep some confidentiality. But, I will say that this is a blog and I will write about my experiences good or bad to form a journal of my experiences for the future.
My wife's wrist operation went well, with no hitches. If she doesn't lift anything too heavy or use it too much the pains ok. We both have follow-up appointments with the hand/wrist doctor on Thursday and I think for the first time ever we both meet with the same doctor about different things. Our appointments are at the same time too.
I had an unusual experience this week with the fire department. We went to a car accident during a snow storm in the early evening. I was one of the first department personal there and after inquiring with the patient about her well-being, we helped her out of the broken out back window of her car that was on its side. When she got out of the car and realized who was helping her, she gave me a big hug and said how glad she was that I was all right!!!! She was the one just getting out of a wrecked car, wasn't she. I told her the same thing I have told alot of people,"I am glad to be here to tell you I'm doing fine "and are you sure you're ok?

wrist work

The event this week is that Carole is getting her wrist operated on. The tendons are apparently rubbing on each other and are not supposed to be. The same
Doctor that worked on my finger will work on her wrist. A couple of hours, more or less on Monday and I hope her pain might go away. We will see what Monday brings. I set up a meeting with my Manager near by, during the time she's in the operating room, instead of setting in the waiting room.
Last was a challenging year for our team. We were significantly under budget for the year, but for several months during the year we were short on people... For many weeks our team members worked without days off. These were not just because of my situation, but we also had a member out for back surgery in May. There were no extra people in the system to fill in, so they more or less had to suck in up and keep working. Two new fellows were hired, but it was too late in the year to have an impact on our dollars of sales for the year. Unfortunately, I feel that there was some grief that came down on our manager and now that we have plenty of people and its a new year, that grief is coming down further. Fortunately, for us we had a good January and February is coming along ok. Our team is a good bunch of guys that work hard and I wish they didn't have to read between the lines. Right at the moment, we have one team member on vacation for a couple of weeks and we will have to work around it.

Nurse practicioner

Well, it's been an interesting few days, with a couple of highlights that I will relate here. Earlier this week, I scheduled myself an OSHA physcal for the fire department. Everyone has to have one, but there are different amounts of time when you need to redo them depending on how old you are. They came to the fire station a few weeks ago and did a bunch of people there, but I had to work that day and couldn't make it. There is a fairly long personal history page that you have to fill out ahead time, that I had them send to me so I could mull over the answers at home and not in a waiting room. I didn't answer a few questions because I wasn't exactly sure what to put down,ie;"have you ever had a seisure?" They said I had one shortly after I hit the ground, but just one and I wanted to talk to someone about my answer. The person who did the physcial was a nurse practicioner who was a middle aged man. I passed the physcal part just fine and during so, we were just talking and he asked me how I felt. I said "fine", well he said I would feel better than today in a year+ from now. I asked him what he meant and he related a college experience to me. He said that while in college he was on the boxing team and ended up in the hospital from numerious head shots. I think he said that he was out for part of a day. He said that one day after a period of time, he just noticed that some things were not bothering him any more. He hadn't noticed, but they just weren't. It was nice to talk to someone else that had a positive experience. I guess the brain is just one part of your body and it might get injuried, like any other part. I know, it just so happens that it controls all the rest of the parts. I was thinking, my tag line should be "don't hit your head".

nursing homes

Per my past experiences, I've felt that I should make it a point to visit people I know in the hospital. Maybe it sounds noble, but I'm going to try. It's not been one of my favorite things to do, but I'm a strong enough human to get over that. This week, after a little bit of information at a meeting, I went to visit another fireman that's an elderly town resident. He is getting over pneumonia by spending alittle time in a nursing home. I made some time in the early evening a couple of nights ago to sit and chat with with him for some time. He knew the members of my family, what they did and just needed some recent updates. I found out during our chat that he had graduated with my father from grade school in Truxton. He also has three children that are scattered around the country and are alittle younger that myself. Coincedently his son is a teacher at the grade school that he graduated from. Nursing homes are not fun places, but who knows how many of us might end up spending our final years in one. I got the inpression that he hadn't had many visitors, so I was glad that I took the time.

whim

Somedays you do things on a whim. A few days ago, I mentioned to Carole that since I was going to have some body work done on my truck in a few days it would be nice to order a rear bunper that I damaged last year. We looked them up on ebay for a price, $200 -300 plus shipping, which seemed like kinda high. My son came by the computer about that time and said he visited a nice u-pull-it place in Horseheads. I looked their website up and they had just taken in a 2001Dakota that had been rolled over. I called them and they said they don't pull off parts untill you look at it. So on a whim, at 2:00pm I headed off to Horseheads to look at a bumper. Mapquest said 65 miles, but I drove right to the place. They had 25 rows of vehicles and a whole row of Dodge trucks and at least a couple with good rear bumpers. Their guy to pull them off was doing a transmission that day and I suggested to them that I wasn't going to drive back there the next day. So I borrowed some tools and it came off fine, and I came home with bumper for $42. An ovious great bargin. We have been working with a new employee that has some issues. From the get go we said he would be a project and that's for sure. His english skills are not great, so sometimes It makes hard to understand what he really means. His skills are good and he is very appreciative of everything you do for him. Now comes the but. He's been trying to take a course or two at the Community college and it meets during the day when he is supposed to be working. The one class is a Microsoft office class and it takes him a long time to prepare for the class. That's ok on his time but now the second problem. He was trying to get into an English as a second language class, the only problem was that it met twice a week at 11:00am?? It would seem to me that anyone that would be taking the class would also be working during that time of day. I think the lack of good english skills makes the computer class prep. go slower too. Us, as a team, have been trying to work around these challenges, but he is a new employee. He is taking a lot of advantages of the system which the more tenured employee's are becoming less toleratant of. I would hope that his common sense would get better, which would lead to the realizeation that he is not pulled his fair load. Again a blog is just my two cents......