=)

My new job is going well. What a relief! No more hating my life and cursing my job...woohoo!

And here is a FO..my Poof:

I'm Free!

I look at the last post I wrote 16 months ago, and I am amazed. Yesterday was my last day at said Family Practice job. While I learned a lot in my 16 months there, and grew both as a person and as a practitioner, to say that I am so relieved and thrilled to leave the position would be an understatement. I never knew I could hate a job so much. 

Among the things I will miss about the job: the few wonderful coworkers, the free lunches, and the easy commute.

Among the many things I will NOT miss one bit about the job: the disorganization of the office due to a huge patient load and no office manager; the pager, including associated annoying pages at 2 in the morning, pages from patients with non-emergencies such as requesting a medication refill or asking for a damn appointment or asking for an antibiotic without being seen and because they know they need it or asking for advice on what they should do on a Sunday afternoon after they have cut themselves deeply with a knife and the bleeding might or might not have stopped; not having a true weekend, since my days off were Wednesdays and Sundays; doing pharmacy requests and prior authorizations for the entire office; the rude entitled patients; being yelled at by said patients; being yelled at by 1 rude pharmacist at the CVS on Bell and Northern for a mistake THEY made; patients consistently coming in 0.5-3 hours late for their appointment and not being able to turn them down or have them be penalized in any way; not having a scheduled lunch break; gaining weight due to scarfing down food in as little time as possible due to lack of said lunch break, because if you didn't make time to scarf it down, it was likely that you would not eat and would continue working straight through like a friggin robot; looking for old charts for 15 minutes or more and failing to find them, as they are often misplaced or not filed anymore; being behind on my schedule because there are 5 rooms and 3 practitioners, and occasionally only 4 rooms due to the boss doctor lending out rooms to colleagues; being behind on my schedule because the boss doctor doesn't finish up seeing his patients and often has 3 or more of the rooms and is upstairs doing some other stuff instead(1 time, I was without a room for ONE whole hour);  being given any random and annoying task by the doctor as if I have nothing better to do; doing work at home for 2+ hours consistently and not getting paid overtime; crazy patients requesting crazy things; crazy patients requesting annoying things and expecting them to be done as soon as they request it, and then subsequently calling every 2 hours to see if you have done it; always getting the short end of the stick since I didn't have seniority; being underappreciated while being overworked.


Needless to say, good riddance, and good luck. I am taking the whole month of December off to relax and recover, see family, craft to my heart's content, and then I start a dermatology position in the new year. Here's hoping that I have better luck with this new job!!

New Beginnings

Well, this is it. It's been a long journey. After deciding sometime in late 2005 or early 2006 to try to become a physician assistant, followed by 2 years of taking prereq courses while working full-time, followed by 2 very condensed years of PA school - nonstop studying, paper-writing, test-taking (I believe we took 100-120-something tests), rotations, and stressing about hurdle after hurdle - I have made it!

I accepted a position at a Family Practice office very close to home. Should be starting soon too, and I am excited, nervous, happy, and definitely looking forward to earning a paycheck again! It sure has been difficult feeding my crafting and spending addictions as a student!

And the Winner is...

Alyson V., I've emailed you! For everyone who entered, I am offering a 15% discount off regular price items in my shop. Remind me in the Etsy seller notes that you entered my contest, and I will verify and then refund you the discount. Offer expires on 8/7/2010. Thanks to everyone for playing!

A Contest!

Hello everyone! In celebration of finishing PA school, new beginnings, and just for fun, I am running a contest for my jewelry shop. The grand prize is a pair of my Golden Swirls earrings with Amethyst Swarovski drops, along with a surprise pair of earrings of my choosing! Here's how to enter: click the "like" button on my shop Facebook page. After you've done that, email me at spamme216@yahoo.com and let me know that you've entered the contest. And for an extra entry into the contest, tell me what your favorite piece of jewelry from my shop is and why. If you don't have a Facebook account yet, you can do the extra step instead to enter. I will close the contest at noon EST on July 7, 2010. Good luck! =)

Hi, I'm Still Alive!

Wow, I can't believe it's been more than a year since I've blogged. Here's an update on what I've been up to, if there's any more readers out there. I'm on my 2nd to last rotation of my PA program, and will be graduating May 20, assuming I pass everything. Rotations were kind of rough initially, but I got used to them, and they started passing really quickly, and before I knew it, boom! now there's less than 2 months left of my education! Yikes. I'm nervous about getting out and no longer being a student, but I am excited about working again and getting a friggin paycheck as well! I was initially thinking of going into a specialty, but I am currently leaning more towards general medicine, like ER, Family Practice, or Internal Medicine. However, if there's an opportunity in a specialty that is too good to pass up, I am open for that!

What else am I up to...I started the Isagenix nutritional program for weight loss almost a month ago. It consists of shake meal replacements daily and weekly cleanse days. It's all natural, with no stimulants or anything like that. The program was surprisingly not that difficult to do. I thought the cleanse days would be really tough (you drink 4 ounces of cleanse liquid every 4 hours, and only eat healthy snacks in between; no meals), but I got through them ok. They were definitely easier to do while I was busy. I would be fine during the work day, but then when I got home, I felt more like eating. On Monday, it will be 30 days on the program, and I've lost 12 pounds so far. I do feel better and less tired than I used to, but that could probably also be attributed to me doing some light exercise a few times a week and cutting coffee and diet soda out of my life. I think I will be sticking to the program for a little bit more - I am sick of all the weight I gained since high school. And I'm starting to see a little bit of a more defined chin again, haha. Of course, when I see my friends, I am not passing on eating all the good stuff I like. I'm too much of a foodie! But the everyday food management, I can deal with.

Craft-wise, I'm still knitting and yarn-hoarding. That will never change. I've been on a jewelry-making kick recently though, and actually opened another etsy shop for jewelry, called Sakurah. Here's a collage of some of my jewelry:I've also been making shawl pins, and made these lovelies today, which I adore. I especially love the hammered ones. I want to hammer everything now...and the ideas are just floating around in my head for what else I can make earring-wise with the hammered aluminum wire. But I have to take a break from all the crafting and actually study and do my paper. It was my intention to do some of that today, but the shawl pins took over, and now it's almost 10!

Till next time...I hope that won't be in another 13 months!

Some Crafting

It's my last semester of classes before a year of rotations, and I am feeling many shades of scared and excited. I know this semester will be over before I know it...and all the times in the previous last semesters where I consoled myself when I didn't know enough about something, that I still had till spring 2009 to learn it....are coming back to bite me in the ass. February has been a month of hell (we have 1 each semester), but it's starting to wind down a little, so I figured I should take some time to blog.

I did get some knitting and weaving done in January - hats and neckwear, which are always fun. Project details in my Ravelry, if you care to view.
As for February, not so much with the crafting, although I am hoping to get working on a latch-hook rug and my Aleita Shell after this madness. I did do some cheapo candlemaking yesterday, as a quick side project to satisfy the craftiness. I melted tealights in a pan I had used for melting beads, added some color, scent, and wicks from Michaels, and poured the wax into cups I scored from the thrift store near me.
Not too bad, although the bubbles kind of annoy me, and one of the cups I poured into sounded like it was cracking when I poured the wax in. I did come across a candlemaking video online afterwards, so now I know the "proper" way to do this. So of course, there is some real equipment and soy wax on its way to me.

My textbook and bed are both calling my name, so till next time!

Merry Christmas!

Hello blogreaders (if there's any left)! To say it's been a while would be an understatement. The fall semester was really rough, so that I barely had any time to myself. My schedule for the last 2 weeks of the semester can pretty much sum up how tiring it was...



So of course, after that hell, I had to get away. I just came back from sunny Mexico - Playa del Carmen to be exact. It was fun and much needed, and I'm definitely bummed to be back in the frigid cold.

Chichen Itza - one of the new 7 Wonders of the World

What else has happened in the 3 months since I last blogged...I got a new kitty companion for Nermal! Munchkin is such a cutie! Nermal was a little grumpy toward her at first, but now they are good friends. In fact, as I type this, Munchie is using Nermal's butt as a pillow while they sleep together.

the adorable pic that was Cute Overload worthy =)

Knitting-wise, I've been on a shawl kick...knitted another Woodland Shawl out of Smooshy since my last blog post, and started a Japanese Feather Stole. Which I had to frog because of getting my KP needles confiscated at the Cancun Airport (grumble grumble). Since I have no needles for that shawl now at home in NYC, I'm working on getting my Prismatic done. AND, I finally got a loom! Been pining for that for a while, and decided that I really really really want it now, and it would be great for using up random 1-skeiners in the stash. My bf bought it for me as an early birthday present (thanks again, hun!)...it's a 20" Schacht Flip rigid heddle loom. Can't wait to start playing with it!!

That's all for now. I hope it's not another 3 months or more before I blog again! Wishing everyone a safe and happy holidays! And Happy 2009!