Sunday, November 04, 2007

It's Not Them, It's Me

On Thursday I noticed that pretty much all of my patients were lovely, nice people. And then I started to think about it. Were they really all pleasant, or was it more that I was well-rested and not stressed out? I think that I am definitely guilty of letting stress influence my interactions with other people. Yes, there were constant interruptions all day long. I even had a secretary personally snip at me for not hearing her page me overhead. The difference was that I didn't let it get to me. Normally, I think I just let people dump their frustrations on me, and I end up internalizing it, and probably passing it on to others. I don't know how long it will be before cynicism returns, but hopefully I can keep it away for a while.

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Yesterday, I spent almost 11 hours with Army Guy. Last night we went to a comedy show, after just spending a day hanging out. We have been dating for a couple of months now, and it's going pretty well. Sure there are times when our schedules don't align (or he gets shipped to Georgia for two weeks for weird training stuff), but I still like him. He's smart, funny, polite and can even tolerate my teasing. I think that it helps that he has a career completely different than mine, so that I don't have to talk about work stuff, but he's always interested to hear about my work escapades. I have some rough scheduling ahead, and he has to run off to Ranger School in a few months, but for now, I am just enjoying having someone to go out and do things with.

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Today I worked at the basketball game downtown. We cover the first-aid station at the local University's football and basketball games. I was allowed to watch the game and have free range of the stadium, as long as I wore a headset and carried a walkie-talkie. It was an exhibition game, so the full crowd wasn't out today, and I didn't get ONE SINGLE CALL. The home team won (although they made us nervous for a bit), and the whole thing was over in two hours.

A funny thing happened during one of the breaks. The male cheerleaders each grabbed a large flag and together spelled out the home team's name. However, for some reason, the last guy wasn't a cheerleader, just some random band guy. Well, the cheerleaders took off at a sprint around the perimeter of the court, forming a parade of the team's name. Poor random band guy couldn't keep up with their pace. It was obvious he wasn't used to running with a large flag. The last letter was sadly a good court length behind the rest of the flags. Worse yet, as he turned the corner, random band guy slipped and fell. The mascot, who was keeping up with him, despite being in a full-costume grabbed his flag and finished off with the others. Guess you shouldn't expect to keep up with trained flag carriers.

It was a good day, and I think my game coverage (three hours total) replaced a full eight-hour shift! We don't get paid extra for covering, but you just can't beat a work day of eating nachos and watching basketball!

1 comment:

Chris said...

I thought the flag story was going to be horrific, like that Saturday Night Live sketch of a kid's show where the characters "Friendship", "Caring", and "Understanding" all have a blue sweater with the first letter of the name on said sweater. They mean a new friend, "Kindness" and the rest of the skit, the poor host is running around trying to keep them from spelling a certain word ;)