Gas Woes

All of my time spent blogging hasn't been wasted, it turns out. I have become really good at cutting and pasting. I had to. Who wants to type all of the stuff that is stolen borrowed from other places? On the second day of my computer class, we had to cut and paste to construct documents. I was the only one who could do it.

The young nurses are more profient with computers, but obviously, they don't blog. After the first bad day at computer class, my damaged self-esteem got a much need boost.

On a side note, the traffic has changed from the last time I had to drive in rush hour traffic. The 25 mile drive should have taken between 60 and 90 minutes. Both days, it took about 25 minutes. Either half the population of Los Angeles decided to go on vacation at the same time or the gas prices have taken people off the roads.

I'm paying $4.87 a gallon for gas now. The last time I bought gas, it cost $72 to fill up the tank and I have a small car. My gas station has taken down its big price signs which could be read from a block away and replaced them with one small, discreet, sign. Next, they may take the sign away entirely and just say that if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it.

There is no way for me to get to work other than drive, but I have made some other changes. I no longer drive twenty miles just for a Pink Berry. Costco's frozen yogurt isn't as good, but it is much closer to my house and a fraction of the cost.

I'm also driving slower and avoiding quick accelerations. Driving isn't nearly as much fun, but I also don't have to keep an eye out for the cops any longer. Are you doing anything special to deal with the high gas prices?

Paperless

My electric toothbrush stays on for a predetermined amount of time, about two minutes, I think. So, I was brushing my teeth and sat down to watch TV to entertain myself. It seemed like way more than two minutes went by.

I got up, walked into the bathroom and glanced in the mirror. I was brushing with an ordinary toothbrush. I am truly losing my mind.

It is with that kind of brain that I went to a computer class today. My hospital is going "paperless" next month, so we have to learn to do everything on the computer. Usually, I'm a fast learner, so it is hard for me to accept the role of the class dunce. And, I have to go back tomorrow for more punishment. I envy the nurses who were able to retire before all of this nonsense started.

I'm in that awkward age bracket, too old to be comfortable with computers and too young to retire. I've heard of doctors who say they are going to hire secretaries to help them with their computer entries. Too bad that is not an option for me. I'll get over it, but in the meantime, I just want to curl up in a ball and sleep for a few days.

The Quickie

While making my rounds, I stopped to chat with a patient. Suddenly, he smiled and asked, "Would you like a quickie? "

"Uhhh..." was my response.

While I stared at him with a frozen smile, he reached into a drawer, pulled out a canister and opened it. Inside were cookies. He hadn't offered a quickie, but a cookie. Happily, I took one and went back to the nurse's station, eager to tell my funny story.

No one laughed. None of my coworkers knew what a quickie was.

Adventures With Dave

In Skagway, we hired a personal tour guide to show us around. That is him below. His name is Dave and despite the goofy photo, a really smart guy. He picked us up from the train station in the middle of nowhere and took us into the Yukon.

There was another family in his van. He had driven them from Skagway to the train station. We were all going to go to Emerald Lake together, then they would be put on the train back to Skagway. Dave would drive us back.

Somehow, it all worked. Initially, there was some confusion because Dave was expecting two women instead of us. He had room for us in the van, but he was worried about what had happened to the two women. He brooded about it much of the trip. It wasn't until the end that we realized he thought Lindsay and Melissa were two women. We were the two missing women.

Dave had lots of stories and kept us well-entertained. We were especially happy when the other family got on the train. It is not that they were bad people or meant to be annoying, but it was a relief to have Dave to ourselves.

This is proof that we made it into the Yukon. It was nice to have a personal photographer take our photos.

The shot above is what most of the scenery looked like on the drive. We were a little scared at times when Dave was driving and looking off to the side of the road for things to show us. I kept my mouth shut, but there were times a wanted to scream that I didn't care about the goats on the mountain and to keep your eyes on the road.

Emerald Lake, above, was worth the drive. We couldn't go down to the water, but the view from above was good enough.

Once we got back to Skagway, Dave was trying to find some bears to show us, but we weren't interested. We've seen bears and didn't feel the need to see more. We asked him to just drive us around the town. I enjoy looking at old buildings, people's homes and gardens. So, Dave drove up and down the streets and even showed us his house and his sister's house. Dave has one of the nicest homes in town.

It is a small town and took about five or ten minutes to see it, but it was interesting. There are still boarded up, abandoned cabins from the gold rush days. It reminded me of Ireland where there are so many abandoned homes in ruins left over from the famine. I'm used to living in a city that just keeps getting bigger. It seems strange there are places around that lost a huge part of their population so quickly.

Frozen Alaska

In Skagway, we followed the route that the gold prospectors used to reach the gold fields. We had an advantage, though. We simply got on a train. The train was built to support the gold rush, but the rush was over before the train was finished. It is now a popular tourist attraction.

The prospectors had to hike over miles of mountains in the snow. My grandmother's uncle died in the Alaskan gold rush. He broke his leg and never made it back. The train ride was fun. That is my reflection in the glass. I rode on the outside to get a better view and enhance the thrill ride. The route is chiseled into the side of a mountain with spectacular drops. Lindsay is afraid of heights, so he stayed inside.

I'm afraid of tunnels, so I was upset that we went through two of them. I was especially upset that I was outside for one of them. With horror, I saw the tunnel up ahead and didn't have time to go inside and hide. The suffocating hot, train exhaust in the tunnel combined with the total blackness closing in on me led to a disagreement with Lindsay. He insists that he told me there were two tunnels on the route and I'm sure that he said that there were no tunnels. I had agreed to take the train ride only if there were no tunnels.

It was cold. On the mountain, the lakes were still frozen over and snow covered the ground. I spent the two hour journey outside.

The little train depot in the picture below is where the ride stopped. There is nothing up there except for that and a little Canadian customs hut. We got our passports stamped just for the fun of it.

We got off the train and were met by Dave, our tour guide. To be continued.

Juneau

I think that this is a photo of Juneau, but I'm not sure. The memories are already beginning to fade. We didn't get a good parking space. Our ship was far from town, but it all worked out. We had arranged for a bicycle tour and the van picked us up at the ship.

It was raining and cold, but why should that day be any different? It was advertised as a 9 mile, mostly level ride, around a lake. The downhill parts were fun, but getting back up the "mostly level" hills were tough. We had to suffer the indignity of walking the bikes at times.

It was nice to see the town without a panes of glass around me. I could smell wood burning in the fireplaces, listen to birds sing and squawk and get a feel for the area.

This church was a bathroom stop. It is also a popular spot for weddings. The alter is in front of a huge window facing a glacier. It was one of the plainest and most beautiful churches I have ever been in. Who needs stained glass and ornate architecture when you have a simple log cabin with a view?

This is the view from the church's windows. Tiny icebergs float around in the lake like ice sculptures. The glacier looks different from the last time I saw it almost 20 years ago. It is melting rapidly.

After the ride, the tour continued at the Alaska Brewing Company. The tour guides were smart to take us biking before they took us boozing. We were given a tour of the tiny facility while we being given free samples. Some of the samples were for new flavors they are testing and others were for some of the more popular brews. I was a little disappointed that they weren't testing their jalapeno beer the day we were there. The only weird beer we got was the smoky porter, which although an award winner, tasted to me like it had been in a brush fire. That smell doesn't have pleasant associations for me.

The samples were generous and we got tipsy. I don't remember the ride back, but we ended up in town. We walked around a bit. With all of the stores, you would think that we would have found plenty of stuff to buy, but it was all over-priced stuff we didn't need.

We came across a bus driving toward our ship. They let us on, saving us a mile walk in the cold rain while still impaired. The beer was good. Now I need to find some so that I can help relive the trip. I'll only change the memory by drinking it in the warm California sunshine.

Patient Perversions

How many times in one evening does a vagina need washing? The princess thinks that hers needs to be washed every time she pees. The nurses aren't happy about that, but will grudgingly try to please her. The part that bothers us the most is that she insists on a certain male nurse's aide taking care of that task. If he isn't there, she will say, "Go get John, he is the only one who knows how to wash my vagina."

Poor John. He is a nice, handsome young man and the patient is middle-aged and over 400 pounds. It can't be pleasant reaching in with a wet wash cloth while she barks orders to push it in deeper. When I first heard about her unusual requests a couple of days ago, I thought that she was using the word vagina loosely. Some people use that word to describe the general private area. Perhaps she just wanted to be washed off a little after using her female urinal. That is not an unusual request. It was just odd that she wanted a certain man to do it for her.

Tonight, one of my coworkers witnessed exactly what John was doing. He is literally washing the inside of her vagina with a wash cloth about every 45 minutes. He couldn't possibly be enjoying doing that. I think that the patient is sexually harassing John and he is afraid to refuse her demands. I'm dreading the talk that I'm going to have to have with him.

Another patient had major surgery because a dildo got stuck in his butt. Unable to pull it out, the surgeon had to cut him open to remove it. The wound is now infected and he needs complicated dressing changes several times a day. It will take several weeks for the deep wound to heal.

I would almost feel sorry for him, except that that same thing happened to him a year ago. That time there were also complications. He needed several units of blood and spent some time in ICU. They almost gave him a colostomy when they had trouble stopping the bleeding.

Perhaps sex toys should come with long handles or ropes attached. Since we can't seem to stop people from jamming foreign objects in their butts, there might as well be an easy way to extract them when necessary. Maybe I should get a patent.

The High And Low Life

Our cruise was quite cheap. It only cost about a hundred dollars a day each. Considering that they have almost as many crew as customers, plus adding in what their food expenses must be, they must barely be breaking even with the stated cost of the cruise. My guess is that they make their profit with the alcohol, shore excursions, alcohol, photos, alcohol and gift shop.

I did contribute my fair share to the bar, although, I did later start smuggling booze on board. Their prices were outrageous for watered-down drinks.

The drink in my hand was the exception. It was a black martini and poured by a great bartender. When shaking the drinks, he danced for the ladies. His pouring technique was also unusual. He placed the glass on his side of the bar and filled the glass to the top. It was not possible to pick up the glass without spilling it, so it was necessary to lean over the bar and sip from the glass. The bartender would then hold the ladies' hair to keep it out of the drink. What you drank with the first sip, he quickly replaced with more hard liquor. That one drink was my limit for the day. The business at his bar was brisk, especially amongst the ladies.

While living the high life, it was hard not to feel a little guilty. The crew lives a hard life. It borders on being indentured servitude. Out of the nearly two thousand crew members, only three were American. That is usually an indication that the pay and/or working conditions are bad.

The vast majority of the crew comes from third world countries. I spoke with one crew member who said that he signed a ten month contract and works seven days a week, twelve hours a day. His English wasn't that great, so I may have misunderstood what he was saying, but if that is true, it is inhumane. The crew lives down below, three or four people to a room and does nothing but work and sleep, for ten months.

It would be nice if the cruise ships that go to American ports had to comply with American labor laws, but I don't see that happening. If you are having a bad day, think about the kind of life that others live just because they were unlucky about the circumstances into which they were born.

Reasons To Stay Up Late

One of my favorite things on the cruise were formal nights. I love to get dressed up and it is so rare that I have an opportunity to do so. It is fun to feel like Cinderella at the ball every once in a while. Above is the first formal night. Below is the second formal night.

Below is a shot of the filling of the champagne glass pyramid. If I remember correctly, there were something like 700 glasses in the stack. We were given champagne to drink and musicians entertained us while bottle after bottle was poured over the pyramid. We were both feeling thrashed, so we went to bed early, after about 50 bottles.

Like all of the other nights, we had to see the shows. There were four large production numbers like you would see in Las Vegas, only the women had their tops on. There were also comedy acts, a comedy-juggling act and talent shows. It was a challenge to see even most of the shows and impossible to see them all. We had to eat too. Every night, we ate dinner twice, before and after the shows. It was impossible to get to bed before midnight.

Photographers were all over the ship. We called them the Princess paparazzi. They were constantly putting cameras in our faces and then trying to sell the little snap-shots for twenty-five dollars each. We didn't see any reason to pay for what we could get for free.

On formal nights, they had formal sittings with different back-drops. The first formal night, I got into an argument with a nasty photographer who wanted to pose us according to his formula of poses. The poses were not from my best angle, so I wanted to change how I stood. It didn't sound like a big deal to me, but he was sarcastic and rude about my having a so-called good side.

The last formal night, we went to four different photographers in order to make sure that I got some shots that I was happy with. Below is a photo of my favorite photo. Because I can't get my scanner to work, that was the best I could do. The photo shows my best angle with a nice gauzy effect that I prefer to sharply focused photos. At my age, a nice camera filter can erase 20 years. Too bad that I can't walk around with a piece of gauze over my face.

Reasons To Get Up Early

For my fifty-second birthday, Lindsay took me to a fish hatchery. I've already forgiven him. After all, on his fifty-second birthday, I took him to a ballet. We're even now.

My birthday fell on Ketchikan day. I may look cold, wet and miserable below, but I was really only cold and wet. It was a great day. We rented a car and Lindsay navigated with his GPS. There is only one main road, but Lindsay likes his GPS. It wanted us to make a right turn down a boat dock and into the ocean, so I'm a little leary of the things.

But I shouldn't complain. I spent at least as much time playing with my camera as Lindsay spent playing with his GPS. We each have our favorite toys.

In town, I got hugged by a polar bear. They are sweet, gentle creatures. I don't know how they got their reputation.

This bald headed eagle lives at the fish hatchery because she has an injured wing. I don't think she likes me. Look at that glare.

The eagles are larger than they look. Lindsay is posed in front of a chart that shows an eagle's wing span. We saw bald headed eagles flying around everywhere, but I wasn't fast enough to get a photo of the ones in flight.

One of the problems with cruises is that they are on a schedule. If it had been up to me, I would have spent a couple of days in Ketchikan, but the ship waits for no one. In order to see as much as possible, we had to get up early and leave as soon as they opened the door. It was better to lose some sleep than to miss seeing something that we may never experience again.

This is why we got up so early on our vacation.

Still Rocking

I'm home and am really wishing that the ground would stop swaying. A week on a boat has disrupted my equilibrium. I need to go to the store and buy groceries, but am not sure that it is safe to drive.

It is probably just as well that I go hungry. I gained two pounds and am a little tired of eating five big meals a day, plus snacks. Hunger is not a bad thing right now.

I am also exhausted. Silly me; I thought that cruising was a leisurely, restful type of vacation. It never occurred to me that I would have to get up before six on most days, rush around and not get to bed until after midnight.

Anyway, I had a great time and would gladly take the same trip again.

The cruise left from Seattle and we arrived a day early so that we could do the tourist thing. I had driven by Seattle several times on my way to other places, but had never seen the city. It was gorgeous. It reminded me of San Francisco. Too bad about the weather, though. The cold, damp gloom made it a challenge to enjoy the natural beauty of the city.

At Pike Place, I came across an artist who did sketches. I'm guessing that it was the same guy who did Dave's avatar at Emusings (http://dkgoodman.com/). I just let the artist do his thing, which was a mistake. Dressed modestly in a rain coat, buttoned from neck to ankle, it never occurred to me that he would draw me scantly clothed, perched on top of the Space Needle.

This will not be my new avatar, but at least I got a laugh out of it.