Update on the new job

So I have completed my first week working at CareFlite. It has been all classroom, which is kinda boring, and my butt hurts at the end of the day, but I really am digging the 8a-5p thing. I have had plenty of time in the evening to hang out with Jeremy and relax at home. I feel like I have a life. Its great. And it's nice having a little refresher. The classes are really good, and I'm getting CE hours that I can apply to my recertification. We also did a bit of driving, and I had to sit through Defensive Driving with videos that are 15-30 years old. Boooring. We also got to play with sheep guts on Thursday. They had a complete sheep airway, epiglottis, trachea, lungs, and also the heart. So we "intubated" the trachea and got to watch the lungs reinflate. It was cool. Lung tissue is incredibly lighter that it looks like it should be for it's size. I got to perform a crichothyrotomy on the trachea. It was interesting, but I wasn't feeling well that day and the plastic gowns and smelly guts didn't help much.

The guys in my orientation are pretty cool too. Most of them are 21-24 years old, and they are hilarious. They sit through the entire day, talking shit to each other and making snide comments to each other. It's great.

Next week we start what is called 'boot camp.' It is all day classroom stuff to make sure we know how to do stuff, and then tests. We have standing orders for Rapid Sequence Induction. It's cool, but if they test us over it and we don't get 100% on the test, or random retests while we are working, then our primary status gets pulled. I'm not too worried about it, though.

I think I am going to like working here. They have several 24 hour shifts, and one of them is in Irving, about half a mile from my apartment. Acutally, they have an apartment rented in a complex on the same street as my complex, that they use for their 24 hour station. Shannon, the guy who hired me, says that because I am a paramedic, I have a good shot at getting a 24 hour shift because my seniority will rise quickly and there aren't enough paramedics yet. That would be so cool to have a 24 hour shift right next to my apartment.

Anyways, I am happy.

I have been emailing my dad since I have had a hard time communicating with him by phone due to weird schedules/business. I sent him the pic of me and my honey that I just posted, and he sent this one back. I think I was 10 or 11 or something. But notice the t-shirt I'm wearing is New Kids on the Block. Awesome! And, of course, I am with my dad. This was taken on July 4th when we had gone to see the fireworks and were eagerly awaiting their start time. I think I have his nose and chin. What do you think? Wasn't I a cute kid? My hair was crappy, but I think everyone says that. Besides, this is from when my mom used to cut it for me. So it does not necessarily reflect on my taste. I am much more fashionalbe now. My dad asked me when I started to look grown up. It's a good question.

Hey look! It worked! This is Jeremy! Isn't he cute? I think it's a rather fabulous picture. This was taken at Jeremy's brother Jared's wedding. Notice my hair is brown. It has faded a bit since this picture, but it is still darker than any of you have seen.





And this is the fabulous ring he got me. It's huge. Neither of these pics is really clear, but you get the point about what it looks like. Here's the specs in case you are interested: the sapphire is just under 3 carats and it has 14 diamonds around it totaling just under 1 carat, with white gold. Ain't it special...





Well, I finally managed to post a picture to my blog. It's actually really easy, once you get past the website screwing up and being uncooperative. I will be posting more pics of us and of other things. I have no more excuses.

I have tried to post this picture that I have of Jeremy and me for the last 30 minutes. I have gotten the picture shrinked down to 211MB, and when I try to upload it to the Blogger server, I keep getting an error saying that the server has timed out before it can be uploaded. After three times, I am giving up for the night. I also have pictures of the ring. Albeit, they are bad pics that I took with my camera phone, but they get the point across. That is, if I can get the stupid pics posted. Any suggestions? Have any of you encountered this problem and know a possible fix? I am going to try again tomorrow and see if it works better then. Maybe there are just too many people online trying to do things. Eh, at least I tried.

I have a really good picture of Jeremy and me that we took at his brother's wedding, but I downloaded it onto my desktop computer, and it so happens that I always update my blog from my new used laptop. So I don't have the pic with me to post. But I have one. So I will try to post it
when I get home. I just have to figure out how. And I will post the crummy pic of my ring that I took with my camera phone. I still have not gotten around to getting Mitch to take a pic of it with his super cool professional camera.

I have had the last two and a half weeks off from work, since getting fired from MedStar. It has been wonderful. I like not working. But, alas, I have to return to work at my new job this Monday. My hiatus has come to an end. I have one more full weekend off, and then I have two weeks of 8-5 work before going back to shift work. I have no idea what the training and orientation will be like. But it should be more fun than at MedStar, which was a bunch of sitting in a classroom for two weeks. I am looking forward to the helicopter ride out.

Joey's Bar Mitzvah is coming up at the end of this month. My parents are spending more on Joey's Bar Mitzvah than I plan on spending on my wedding. It is supposed to be a rather big shin dig. I get to read a torah portion at the Saturday services for his Bar Mitzvah. I'm rather excited. It is one of the few areas where everyone appreciates my over-preparedness and perfectionism.

Oh, random: I am a brunette now. It was not intended, but when I told Stacy that I wanted to go back to my natural hair color after my excapades as a blonde, she took it a little too far. She says it should fade down to my normal dark blonde, but it is still definitely brown. You shall see in the pics I will post from the wedding. It looks really good. I like it a lot, but I don't think Jeremy does. He likes me blonde.

So I update last with the good news of my engagement. Well, the emotional event rollercoaster continues. Last Tuesday I got fired from my job. MedStar has these wacko attendarnce and tardy policies. They put a new tardy policy into effect on June 1, without telling us what it was going to be, then they made it retroactive to the beginning of the year. It is basically a no-tolerance tardy policy, for whatever individual reasons we have. So by the time the new policy went into effect I already had 4 tardies; one for oversleeping, a couple for bad weather, and one for traffic problems enroute to work. Then the Thursday I got engaged, I was late for work because I was exhausted and completely slept through my alarm. My bad. Then last Tuesday I was late again because I got stuck on the freeway in the aftermath of a fatality auto-ped accident. They had the freeway shut down to one lane so they could do their investigation into why this lady got creamed on the freeway, and I got stuck with no exit to take. I was 15 minutes late to work. But that was my fault because I should have known that that lady was going to be killed that morning when I was trying to get to work, and I should have jumped the concrete barrier, or whatever, so that I could get on time. So I got fired for tardies. Oh, well. I didn't cry. MedStar is the one who cant make it's response times to calls and is 23 paramedics short of being staffed. Not me. I had another job by Thursday. I'm just glad
that I had two weeks of vacation banked. And I'm glad that I had almost a full paycheck coming to me anyways. So my last check was big. And I get two and a half weeks of vacation before I start my new job at CareFlite. And I'm excited about my new job. It sounds like they really care about their employees, and I should hopefully be making more money than I was at MedStar. So it's all good. I'm still happy. And all of this came at the perfect time to hang out with all of Jeremys family that are coming into town for his brothers wedding this weekend. So it worked out better than I even thought it could have. Yay for me.

I was just re-reading the last post I made just after my birthday. Remember how I said that the turquoise ring was a test ring? Well, I guess I won't say I told you so, because it's tacky. But I will say that I am ENGAGED! Jeremy proposed to me last Thursday, the 13th! Wow, crazy, I know. Now, the story, in great detail so I can remember it and tell it to my grandchildren:

I had suggested last Wednesday that we go out to dinner on Thursday after I got off of my overtime shift, since we had not had much alone time with all the preparations for his brother's wedding going on. On Thursday, Jeremy called me while I was at work and asked me where I wanted to go. Then, he suggested this Brazilian restaurant in Grapevine, Boi Na Braza, that we love so much for it's totally delicious vegetable bar. I immediately agreed and went on with my shift. After work, which I got out of late, I scrambled to wash MedStar off of me and put on something cute, then we flew out the door, because apparently he had made reservations. I noticed on the drive over there that he was nervous about being late because he thought they would give his table away, even though we were only about 10 minutes behind schedule. When we walked in, the seated us at a table (the one he had reserved, so all the worrying for nothing, I thought, not realizing the real reason for the nervousness). This table was in a side room with the wine racks, and no one else was seated there. There was a crystal vase on the table with huge, fragrant lilies. I thought, "Hmm, when did they start putting flowers on the table?" I'm dense sometimes and don't pick up on things right away. We then jumped all over the veggie bar and made googley eyes at each other between kisses and bites of artichoke hearts. It was a very romantic dinner, and after we had finished eating he reached into his pocket and pulled out a little leather box. He handed it to me and said, "I got you a gift." Inside I found a plastic gumball ring; a silver star and a large blue plastic stone. He knew that I wanted a sapphire engagement ring because I had jokingly mentioned it sometime in the first month of dating, and then we had been looking at engagement rings online a few weeks before, so he could see what I wanted. He said, "I couldn't afford much because I am saving up for the real thing." And I excitedly exclaimed "You got me a star sapphire! How beautiful!" I simply took this as affirmation that he really wanted to marry me, and he was working hard toward that goal, fully expected an engagement ring by December. The waiter came and took our plates and asked if we wanted dessert now, and Jeremy said yes. When he returned, instead of having the dessert cart, he had a cake, which he set down in front of me, along with a sterling cake server. I recognized the cake as one coming from the favorite cake-maker of the family, which we had been using heavily recently, with all of the weddings, birthdays, and parent's days stuff that had gone on in the last six month. I though, "Geez, his mom will come up with any excuse to buy a cake." See how dense I am? Jeremy suggested I cut the cake, and I when I did, the server would only go halfway into the cake. Confused, I said to Jeremy, "I can't cut it, it won't cut!" He told me to try again, in a different spot. Same results. So he tells me to take the top off the piece of cake and see why it won't cut. After digging, I see a box, in the middle of the cake. I pull it out, wrapped in plastic wrap, and I unwrap it, with my hands shaking. At this point, I think, This is weird, but surely it couldn't be a ring, it's too soon. That won't be until December. That's when everyone gets engaged. It was a porcelain box. With tissue paper inside. Then, shaking, I pulled out the ring from the tissue paper, and Jeremy took it from me. He got down on one knee, and he said, "I love you more than anyone else in the world. You make me so happy, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. You are every beat of my heart, and every breath in my lungs. Will you marry me?" Somewhere in the hyperventilating and crying I said yes and hugged him for several minutes. Sometimes it's hard to let go of a hug and move even a few inches away from someone you love that much. I had no idea, until the end. I didn't believe it was happening until I had the ring in my hand. He did a good job. I couldn't have had a better proposal if I had planned it out myself.

The ring:
Is frickin huge. It's 14K white gold, an almost 3 carat oval sapphire, perfect color and opacity, surrounded by 14 diamonds, totaling just under a carat. And it fits my finger perfectly. It was made for me. And God made sure Jeremy found it and that he got it for a reasonable price. The thing takes up almost my entire knuckle. I have a doorknob. I was not expecting it to be anywhere near that size. I will post pictures of the ring, and of the newly engaged couple as soon as I can get a clear, up close pic of the ring. Mitch will have to do it next time I see him, probably on Thursday. Ug, and I guess I actually have to learn how to post pictures on this blog now. I hear it's easy, but not when you don't know how.

Isn't that crazy? I'm engaged!