daytrippin', Piper-mache, and more!

David came for a visit this weekend, and managed to talk me into standing around at the ferryboat docks (at five thirty! on a Friday! with the crowds!) in order to take a ride out to the bay, where it would be easier to dump my lifeless body.

Just kidding.

But, look, LOOK I say, at the Obligatory Photos of the Seattle Skyline, with the Ultra Obligatory Shot of the Space Needle:



Some random guy said I have "Happy Hair."

We went over to Bainbridge Island, where we saw lots of Tourist ShopsFull of Gratuitous Waffle, including one which sold what I call Piper Mache:

After a tasty meal at a local Mexican restaurant, we took the ferry back, and lo, I have another Obligatory Tourist Picture to show you, entitled Seattle At Night:

And, David's favorite shot: Ivar's House of Clams at Night:

practically a made man.

Sad how simple my life has become, really.

I'm very excited, because I made it through my brutal forty-hours-in-four-days Wurk Challenge 2007, and the week was actually decent for a change.

I had this cute patient's husband (who no one else thought was cute, by the way) who was very typically The Sky is Falling! Type. Originally from Noo Yawk, he would stand outside the room, just in the doorway, very audibly complaining and threatening to leave "because he couldn't take it any more!" and then stay, any way, hobbling in the room, and kvetching up a storm about "what this was doing to him!" and his "palpitations!"

You see, from my Connecticut nursing days hanging out with a bunch of High Strung Italian Catholics Who Can't Keep Their Mouths Shut, I recognized his behavior for what it was: extreme love and concern for his wife manifesting in the most irritating way possible, that is, constant complaining. About everything. And anything.

It was Noo Yawk at it's finest, I'm telling you.

I knew called when me, affectionately, a "pest," when I came around to see his wife, that I was actually making good with the guy. Contrary as it seems, I swear to you--with this guy, it was a total compliment, especially when he said, after awhile, "Well, Pest Number One [referring to himself] is leaving now."

And thus, Jamie scores another one for transplanted marginalized people everywhere, bridging the cultural gap between displaced diaspora adoptee and displaced diaspora New York City Jews once again.

It's good to know there's still something worth fighting for, after all.

Or something like that.

holy muddah of gawd.

I'm on my last shift this week--forty hours in four days.

This schedule doesn't feel like work, it feels like Sisyphean punishment.

Particularly brutal was the fact that I worked two twelve hour shifts, followed by two eights.

Luckily, the twelve hour shifts were manageable, and yesterday's eight hour felt like vacation--okay, so a vacation that entails wiping other people's butts and waiting on them hand and foot.

Meanwhile, back at the farm, there's nothing new or funny to report.

I'm hoping tonight is just busy enough to make the time go by, just chill enough that it's not a stressful hassle.

Well, more of a stressful hassle than nursing is ordinarily, any ways.

argosy

Behold, I give you Argosy, or I Lost The First F-ing Scarf I Made, Dammit, So I'm Knitting This One Now.

Particularly fitting that I am knitting an Argosy Scarf in Seattle, no?

The pattern is here, for the knittistes amongst us.

the sickness unto death

I've been out of commission.

So out of commission, my paycheck this week is going to be about four... wait... no... maybe five dollars. Maybe.

(Yes, one of the unfortunate thing about contract work is the fact that you have to pay for the privilege of being sick.)

Any way, after a rigorous course of double antibiotics (which have, ahem, created certain other problems which aren't generally discussed in civilized conversation) I'm back to feeling marginally normal. (At least the banana-upchuck-incident is a thing of the blighted past).

Oy.

I've definitely had better weeks.

the chosen people

JAMIE:
[noting multisyllabic, more-vowels-than-consonants-surname of patient]
So, what country are you from, originally?

PATIENT:
[brightly]
I come from Poland, after the war. But first, I was in Argentina, Chile and Brazil. Chile was very much like California.

JAMIE:
Oh, I see. Must have been... uh... very warm there...

PATIENT:
[suddenly inspired]"
Are you Jewish?

JAMIE:
[startled by question]
Uh, I don't think so, no.

PATIENT:
[squinting myopically at a point just shy of the left side of my head]
Oh... but, you look Jewish!

JAMIE:
[looking for, and then finding,the man's bifocals on his table]
No, I don't think so. I'm Korean.

PATIENT:
[chuckles]
Oh! Korean! Well then, I don't think you're Jewish. Korea... let's see... that's next to China! You know, I think those people are going to take over the world one day. So many people! But that's not really so bad a thing, is it? Nice people, those Chinese.

the babysitter

I'm getting bored with stepdown.

Yeah, I've made a lot of nice new friends on the floor, and it's practically Spa Nursing compared to other floors I've worked on.

But lately, I'm just kind of like, "Dude, this is it?"

Some days, it seems like spend more time managing whiny families and helping little old ladies to the commode than anything else.

I'm starting to think I belong in ICU, where patients are a lot sicker, and being sedated and intubated for the most part, can't talk to you.

Plus, you can kick the annoying family out of the room.

bring your dog to work day

If I didn't work in such a cruddy place (all hospitals are cruddy!), I'd like to implement a Bring Your Dog To Work Day.

And not just any dog, my dog.

Piper seems to be very well received out on the streets of Seattle. So well, in fact, that it would be great if I could train him up a little bit, and get him to be my Goodwill Ambassador at work. He seems to bring out the best in people, he's gentle with kids (of all ages!), and he's a great conversation-starter.

All of these traits I think I could use an upgrade on, skill-wise, but I'm too lazy and characterless to actually be nicer to people. Therefore, I've decided, I need a prop, and Piper would be the perfect dog for the job.

On second thought, he'd probably eat the patients' food.

Maybe not such a good idea.

sink or swim.

I didn't realize Piper would fit in my kitchen sink until today, but, as you can see by the above picture--he does!

So, he got a sink bath today, because he was smelling a little dodgy, plus, he had some unindentifiable pink goo stuck to his right ear. Mysterious little monkey, I have no idea where he picked up that crap, but, it's been washed away now, and good riddance.

Meanwhile, there's some really bad band playing outside, and I wish they'd stop, because one day of this crap is bad enough, and I want to take a nap before work tonight.

I'm kind of hyperventilating already about work, because it's been a rough few weeks, and I'm facing two back-to-back twelve hour shifts, which every one knows by now is the least favorite of all the varieties out there.

Any way, the ideal situation would be winning the lottery, and not having to work at all, as David, having bought a ticket himself, pointed out last night.

I said I wasn't sure what the hell I'd do if I won the lottery, but I certainly wouldn't work.

David knew instantly, though: "You'd go to school for the rest of your life."

Oh yeah. (Smacks forehead with copy of gratuitously purchased and curiously cinder block-likeThe ICU Book.)

I would.

Or, maybe I'd just stay home, giving my critters sink baths, and making tea with toast and jam, whilst writing angry missives to editorial sections of newspapers. That's kind of how school felt towards the end--lots of silly esoteric tasks, and no real learning or point.

And, ironically enough, that's currently how work feels, except the point is to make about five bucks a week, while the rest goes to funding pointless wars, and not fixing our transit systems, like major bridges, and stuff like that.

Oop (or, for non-Potter-philes who live under a rock: The Order of the Phoenix).

For those of you who have been living under the same kind of giant pop culture rock I did whilst going to graduate school (blissfully, circa 2001-2003, I thought in all seriousness that the term "Paris Hilton" referred to well,... a building of expensive, nightly rented rooms in Paris, France--and lo, it turns out the famous heiress is sort of like a building full of over-priced rented rooms)--be warned! For lo, we shall be venturing out of my beloved 18th-19th century (Kant and Hegel and Schleiermacher, oh my!)... and we shall now talk about how much I love the Harry Potter.

I know. It's pop culture. It's not Latin!

What can I say, fellow academic snobs: I slum with the masses on this one.

I unabashedly love the books and the movies.

I could probably do without the massive franchising and merchandising, but on the other hand, I confess, I have a Harry Potter mug, and a stuffed Scabbers rat.

And you know, all the books.

And... umm... the movies thus-far available on DVD.

And... err... Stephen Fry's recordings of six of the seven novels. (Hey! He's a thespian! It's like, art, or something!)

Therefore, my enthusiasm for the newest installment of the Potter flicks, David Yates' Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, is dear to me in that slavish written-on-my-heart-as-Calais-on-Mary-Tudor's/Hermione Granger's-love-of-books sort way.

In other words, I'm about as objective about the Harry Potter phenomenon as a Beatles fan is of, well... The Beatles.

So of course, I had to read the seventh book just like I did books one through four: in one day, cover-to-cover.

And, I've seen the movies a few times.

The fifth cinematic installment I just saw this today, and it's the darkest thus-far of the movies (and fittingly so). Director of photography Slowamir Idziak's vision of Harry Potter's world is a chilling, paranoid one. Dr. Caligari's cabinet--or Azkaban, the cheerless wizards' prison guarded by soul-sucking demons known as dementors--might be a shinier, happier place to dwell, in fact.

Idziak uses chilling desaturated blues and often-claustrophobic framing devices to drive home the message that the wizarding world's adolescent inhabitants--and Harry himself in particular--is growing up in times which have become not only one long Perpetual Dark And Stormy Night, but one of the famed teenage wizard's soul as well.

Gone from the screen are the those sunny, annoyingly festive Quidditch matches, whimsical animated candy and happy house-cup tournaments; instead, the viewer is catapulted into a dreary world about to be undone by Evil, made perhaps all the more horrifying by the attendant incompetence and reactionary fear-mongering of its leaders.

And, who better than David Yates, whose directing career is most notable, apparently, for topics of political intrigue and corruption (albeit of the British television making sort) to give credibility to the heavy-handed and dismally clueless--not to mention consistently cheerless--bureaucracy of the Potter universe.

To that end, the master villian, Voldemort, (a cackling, noseless Raph--or it Ralph?-- Fiennes) is less disturbing in all his venomous glory than the newest teacher at Harry's beloved school: the pathologically pedagogical professor-in-pink, Dolores Jane Umbridge (played by an absolutely captivating Imelda Staunton).

Installed as a kind of governmental professorial spy at Harry's school, her sadistic punishments and drearily pointless curriculum are executed in such an efficiently ruthless way it makes the former Soviet Union's pre-Gorbechev era state propaganda look like a sunny-day plea for some much-needed perestroika. Staunton plays Umbridge like a female version of Dick Cheney dressed in a fluffy pink cardigan and violently fuchsia tweed tailored skirts. She's a humorless, hardened bureaucrat who hates children, and even when she plays her nastiness for laughs--and there are plenty to be had what with her impeccable comic timing--she's still an uncomfortably accurate caricature of a politically blindsided governmental official at its worst.

Daniel Radcliffe, who entered our collective imagination and pop culture icon status in 2001 as the owlish, wide-eyed and round faced screen version of Potter, has hit his stride as an able actor who handles the arenas of both stewing teenage angst and chillingly brute physical torture scenes with touching credibility. (And, I think he's eighteen now, so I can say this without sounding like an icky, lecherous adult--he's gotten quite chiseled and handsome as he's come of age, so much so that it's hard to pretend he's the fifteen-year-old kid of the book version).

His redoutable side-kicks, Ron Wesley (played by Rupert Grint, who has gone from jug-eared, camera mugging charm to a much more nuanced performance) and teh bookish Hermione Granger (played by the very pretty and charming Emma Watson) unfortunately, have much less to do on-screen except flirt surreptitously with one another and act as a sympathetic, cheerleading squad for Potter.

And, we must now give kudos to newcomer Ms. Evana Lynch, who plays the deliriously dreamy Luna Lovegood. As a novice actress with no formal acting background, she gives a quite simply delightful, whimsical performance.

Movie-critics have both faulted and praised the movie's grown-up cast list--which looks like a who's-who cast of British thespians--for under-utilizing its brilliant melange of actors and actresses. But, there's a reason the book and films are titled Harry Potter not Brendan Glisson's and Michael Gambon's and David Thewlis 'and Dame Maggie Smith's and So-And-So Forth's Cameo Movie.

And, I say: for once, who cares about the critics?

It's kind of like taking A.S. Byatt seriously when she complains bitterly about J.K. Rowling's ultimate lack of talent and cultural viability as an author of substantial literary validity. Curiously, two novels of Byatt's have made it onscreen as Hollywood movies. (Rowling is the gajillionare author of the Potter series if any of you need clarification, and are amongst those who still think, as I did back in my innocent student years, that Paris Hilton is an actual hotel in France. In fact, coincidentally, I was introduced to the Harry Potter series by a fellow grad student alumna, who had graduated a year prior with the highest academic recognition possible.)

Yes, Byatt, as one counter-critic wrote of your sour-grapes sniping, you have a point, but a small one, about the cultural and phenomenological value of Rowling's contribution to High Literature, etc. etc.

The rest of us will be over here, happily oblivious little fools with our well-worn copies of Potter-lore, spell-bound and enchanted, if you will.

toker-light, i mean, torchlight, parade

I took about seventy pictures of the Seattle Torchlight Parade, which, while not the most polished parade by far, definitely has a lot of local pride and heart. However, at the risk of putting you into status epilecticus with all those pictures, I think this one, single picture capsulizes the sine qua non of the whole shabang.

and death shall have no dominion

I'm not trying to send any one into paroxysmal PTSD as they remember arduous hours of involved in memorizing Dylan Thomas poems in high school, or anything, but I took this picture weeks ago and wanted to comment on its poignancy.

(Sidebar: didn't they used to make kids memorize poems in high school? I used to think this was wrong, because one should memorize the poem because one likes the poem, not because some teacher is forcing you to memorize it. But then, I thought teachers were wrong for making us copying lines out of the dictionary as a popular punishment for school-related misbehavior. Dictionaries weren't punishment! They were fun! I used to read the dictionary, as a kid, which I know sounds like a lie, because I can't spell worth a damn today as an adult.)

Any hoo.

Lest you think I'm a very creepy person, snapping photos of senior citizens unaware, let me just say my camera is kind of a piece of crap, and the picture was cuter when they were holding hands, but the shutter speed on the camera is so slow, it didn't take the picture I wanted.

Plus, check out the guy's back pack and hiked up training socks! It's Old People Kitsch at its best! And, I love the woman's sun hat.

I can't remember what they were saying to one another, but I'm under the impression that the woman was doing the Wife Bit, and telling the Husband to put on some sunscreen, or something--like it matters now, with the age lines and everything--and he was doing the Husband Bit, and saying, 'Yes, dear."

I think the best thing about marriage at that age must be that you can turn off your hearing aid when your spouse starts yapping at you, and just smile, and nod every once in awhile, and it looks just as convincing as it did when you were younger, and could actually hear your partner (and even have sex with them!) without the use of assistive devices.

lost and not found.

Today I got the bright idea to post some of my latest knitting, including a scarf knit at approximately 7 stitches to the inch... which for you non-knitters out there translates to small, thin yarn and needles.

Like, if the yarn/needles were a person, they'd be Twiggy.

Any way, the point is, the scarf took a couple of months to complete, and I wore it like, maybe once or twice (hey, it's Seattle! I can wear a scarf in July).

But, I have no idea where it is now.

I'm hoping it's in the staff locker room at work, but I've searched my little apartment, and car, and I can't find it.

David's apparently bemused by my innate ability to lose objects in about one square meter of space (note: actual apartment is about 0.5 square meters), in broad daylight, and have no idea I've lost them until a couple of weeks later.

I'm very annoyed by the fact I can't find my scarf, and convinced it fell on the ground while I was out wandering around aimlessly, and I'm going to have to fight some toothless, homeless old person for it when I do find it.

a farewell to marms

I finally got around to visiting the interior of the Seattle Public Library today (main campus).

Talk about eight stories of Geek Filled Heaven! Eight stories of book/media filled goodness!

Even after being disappointed with the Plebian Fiction Section, I found myself flushed with indecent excitement whence I stumbled upon the philosophy section. Here, I rediscovered Simone Weil (and got all excited about this huge-ass book about her writings, until I realized I'd read it years and years ago for a paper I did in undergrad).

Then, my pulse quickened again to find an entire shelf devoted to Kierkegaard's journals and papers. I was then presented with A Dilemma: I had to make a decision as to whether I should read more of Kierkegaard, or fill in the huge gaps in my Fake Philosophy Knowledge with a little Nietzsche.

Finally, practicality and the fact that my book loan pile was nearly as tall as me made the decision: I realized, sadly, that I had to carry all my books home, and that I couldn't possibly read any real philosophy straight through in three weeks any way, at least not in my academically weakened and frail condition. I mean, even the hundreds of pages of reading we were assigned per week in div school amounted to a ridiculous wash half the time, and that was back when I was less of a mental sloth, and had slightly more philosophical acumen. Or at least, could write a paragraph without splitting my infinitives and improper use of the subjunctive, overuse of passive verb forms, and the like.

I even found a new primer on Kant's seminal works (by Paul Geyer, Routledge Press, 2006), which looks like no one has ever checked it out before--big surprise there. I hope this is a good piece of solid academia, and I'm not wasting my time staring at it all gooey eyed as it sits on my coffee table, because I seriously need some help in understand the basics of Kantian thought, even after years of thinking about what little Kant I can remember. Then, I realize I'm a Continental Philosophy Poseur, because I have no idea what this statement means:

Now the unity of the manifold in a subject is synthetic; pure apperception therefore yields a principle of the synthetic unity of the manifold in all possible intuition.

I'm all like, "Dude, huh?!"

And then I get worried, because maybe other people get this statement better than I do, and then I worry that some 18th century continental philosophy major is gonna come around and kick my ass for claiming to have read The Critique of Pure Reason in undergrad, when clearly, due to my lack of Kant Skillz, I couldn't have possibly read properly.

Any way, Public Library Happiness was tempered by a little twinge of Academic Snottiness, in which I lamented my non-student status, and loss of university library privileges (why, we have whole libraries devoted to one area of discipline!) Plus, I couldn't find Wheelock's Latin anywhere, and was totally disappointed by this, even though I didn't bother looking at the electronic card catalog, because God forbid I put down my precious Kant book, and someone steals it.

Unfortunately, many of my memories of Vanderbilt Divinity School's library revolve around me, standing at one of the two or three very ancient copiers, using my limited Rainy Day Crack Stash Funds to copy reams and reams and reams of very boring articles thoughtfully put on reserve by professors, who obviously believed there was no better reward for their snivelly little whiner students than to have to stand for hours and hours at Ye Olde Copy Machine, getting retinal cancer from the ominous green glow of the photocopying light.

I don't , however, remember reading much of these reserve articles, since I spent most of my would-be study-time watching my one, fuzzy, poor-reception television channel and procrastinating on writing mammoth twenty five page papers, which were then churned out furiously in my famed "all-nighters." Strangely, these frantic writing efforts often bore better results than papers which I actually a) proofread and b) wrote more than forty eight hours prior to their due date.

Worse still, I hardly ever studied for exams, which made my Reformation midterm results a very interesting exercise in complete pathetic academic awfulness.

Professor Johnson, who used to teach this course--and I believe shall until he joins the Martyrs of the Cause in the Great Beyond--used to make jokes about Muenster with this very peculiar brand of Midwestern Lutheran jocularity which Katy and I absolutely delighted in and made frequent amused reference to. In fact, one had the distinct feeling that the deliverance of his Muenster jokes--replete with one of his masterfully delivered, signature Power Point presentation slides--was the highlight of the entire semester for him. However, having thoroughly disgraced myself on a midterm, I then received a solemn but kind expression of the gentle professor's complete perturbation as to why my exam was such a piece of crap.

Of course, he was too genteel and learned to call my exam "a piece of crap"--but that's what it was, and I conceded this point with great remorse and embarrassment.

Alas, I have always thought I had performed so marginally during divinity school--despite always scraping by the GPA requisite to keeping my scholarship--that none of my professors bothered even to remember me as "that crappy mediocre student. " I mean, why would they? In my lame defense, I was getting burnt out on academia by that point, and tried to stay under the radar screen by being neither outstanding, nor--usually--totally piss poor, and for the most part, succeeded in this objective.

However, one professor--who Katy and I refer to as "PJ"--always pointed out what a piece of crap my essays for his classes were. I thought he loathed me, on principle, and promptly forgot about me after graduation. Lo and behold, however, years later, while touring the Academic Conference Circuit, Katy met up this teacher, who not only knew exactly who I was--completely horrifying and yet simultaneously gratifying to a Big Nerd like me--but also expressed genuine puzzlement as to why such a smart student always presented herself as such a delinquent crack ho.

Of course, he didn't say "delinquent crack ho," either, but, I'm sure if he was going to try to be "fashionably plebian" he would have.

My academic habits got even worse in nursing school, when the burn out became completely apparent. I stopped showing up to certain classes all together, and still managed to come in to test day and pass exams.

However, I thought this kind of academic work ethic was a poor showing for a would-be mid level practitioner... and well, the ugly fruits of that particular decision you see today in the Wurk version of Jamie, who instead of dwelling on the finer aspects of the fourth conjugation or Kant's metaphysical deduction, gets to chart about indwelling catheters and sputum consistency.

In conclusion, now that I'm a pithy little scutmonkey nobody (as opposed to a pithy little academic scutmonkey nobody) it's easier to conceal my sick academic lust for libraries.

And yet, sometimes, it does make me sad that I've lost my proclivity and talent for footnoting footnotes: "time it was, and what a time it was."