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[Detachable Felix]

I would have so checked those out if I lived in the eastern states! *sigh*
Damn it Paul, next time tell your son that Adelaide's where the classical music scene's at 

[Welu]

I got a call at my second job asking me to cover a couple days so my last shifts must have gone okay!

[Papersatan]

Home from a very stressful 'vacation.'  We had to go to two weddings in one week, the first in Tennessee last sunday and the second in Rochester this past Sat.  I was in the second wedding and made the cake for it.  We were a day late gettng into Rochester from Tennessee because of flight issues, so I was a bit stressed about getting the cake done in time, but I managed:



The weddings themselves were both lovely.

We got bad news the day before the second wedding; Steve's grandmother died.  The service was yesterday, but we just didn't have the energy left to fly to Oklahoma and be away from home for three more days, so we didn't attend the funeral.

Also, I found out my dream job *is* recruiting other ppl for the position, which is not surprising, but makes me much less confident in my chances of actually getting it.  1-6 more weeks until I know.  :/

[tragic_pizza]

Holy balls, but that is a pretty cake.

[BeoPuppy]

In your professional opinion ... are there any holy balls?

And it is a pretty cake, to be sure!

[Lines]

Blessed donut holes?

[Papersatan]

(Thanks guys)

[Kugai]

Looks like the type of Cake my dad would have made years ago.

[Loki]

Was at a crush's birthday party. It went okay, as they say.

[Pilchard123]

So it’s like a bunk bed rack? Is that what it’s like? That’s weird.

[Barmymoo]

It's... a rack with two shelves? That's pretty normal?

[Pilchard123]

It's a LEGO Movie quote (ish).

[Barmymoo]

Aha! Now all is clear!

[jwhouk]

But where are the cupholders?

[Welu]

Talked to a lad in work because he seemed to be using the negging tactic on someone and I think I managed to get him to see he was being a bit of a jerk, even if it was unintentional. These are both coworkers with some kind of history and from the outside he just seems to be picking on her, even though I know he means well. I don't know what she thinks about it or if I should say anything to her about it. There's a line between playful teasing and outright insults and I'm not sure either of them see that line in the same place, especially when it seems to be so one-sided.

[Akima]

And neither teasing nor insults really have a place at work either way.

[GarandMarine]

You guys would hate a military environment. Verbal and physical abuse is how we communicate affection.

[Grognard]

I can attest to that.

[jwhouk]

It's how 90% of the communication is done at a juvie DT facility.

[GarandMarine]

I feel like that's less affectionate.

[hedgie]

Well, it's like the difference between S&M and a vicious beating.

[jwhouk]

The difference is GM and Grognard get shot at. I just get piss thrown at me.

[GarandMarine]

Well I was more aiming at the difference is I like and enjoy the company of my targets for verbal and physical abuse

A recent example between yours truly and one of my best friends. I'll leave you to figure out who's who.

[Welu]

It's not the ribbing. We regularly tell each other to fuck off and take the piss (when customers aren't around) and we know each other is just joking. It's that he clearly fancies this girl a lot and doesn't seem to know how to handle it, other than by insulting her and her boyfriend. Our work has a pretty casual environment but I'd think his behaviour would be inappropriate even outside work among friends.

[idontunderstand]

My summer allergies are finally wearing off. I haven't been able to sing as much as I like for three fucking months. I thought I was going to explode. Now I probably should see a vocal coach or something to get things started and hopefully get strong enough to make it through next summer without throwing my voice out again.

[GarandMarine]

Ah okay, misunderstood you.

[Patrick]

Welp. Been away a while. I've missed you all! Here's what I've been up to.

I've been babysitting my good friend's cat for the last 2 weeks or so. He broke his ankle in 3 places, as you may remember, and couldn't get upstairs to his apartment to take care of his darling little furbaby named Kitcheri. Said furbaby knocked over the bird's cage, so his parents came over and took it away and he's finding it a new home.

I've also started seeing someone. Initially we were just fuckbuddies, but out of the awesome and often hilarious pillowtalk, we got to know each other a bit more. So we started hanging out outside of sexin'. We've both done the "meet all my friends" thing, and I like her friends, and she likes mine. We do stuff together. We spend time with each other. I haven't had that in such a long time.

One of my favorite coworkers did get fired, on the downside, but he's not bummed. He already had a full time job elsewhere, and now he gets more sleep, and more free time. And I get his hours. It's actually pretty awesome for us both.

Life's fuckin awesome lately. This is my best year on record.

[BeoPuppy]

High five and atta boy.

[Thrillho]

Welp. Been away a while. I've missed you all! Here's what I've been up to.

I've been babysitting my good friend's cat for the last 2 weeks or so. He broke his ankle in 3 places, as you may remember, and couldn't get upstairs to his apartment to take care of his darling little furbaby named Kitcheri. Said furbaby knocked over the bird's cage, so his parents came over and took it away and he's finding it a new home.

I've also started seeing someone. Initially we were just fuckbuddies, but out of the awesome and often hilarious pillowtalk, we got to know each other a bit more. So we started hanging out outside of sexin'. We've both done the "meet all my friends" thing, and I like her friends, and she likes mine. We do stuff together. We spend time with each other. I haven't had that in such a long time.

One of my favorite coworkers did get fired, on the downside, but he's not bummed. He already had a full time job elsewhere, and now he gets more sleep, and more free time. And I get his hours. It's actually pretty awesome for us both.

Life's fuckin awesome lately. This is my best year on record.

[Grognard]

The difference is GM and Grognard get shot at. I just get piss thrown at me.

Negative. I don't get shot at. I have never worn the EGA.  I'm the REMF contractor that makes sure the comm networks WORK.

Just wanted to make that clear.  I'm 100% Citizen of the 1st CivDiv.

[GarandMarine]

So I think I want to go back to Japan. This financial cluster I'm in is just temporary, so I'm not too worried about it... even while I'm having panic attacks! I love my brain, I really do.

I'm booked solid for the next 14 months even in a perfect world because there are no summer breaks in an apprenticeship, but after that I think I'll either go in November/December time frame, or I'll get to work with my business partner to get our shop set up, and vanish for a month during cherry blossom season. Actually. Hmmm. Yeah. That'd give me a few months to TCB... oh well. The details don't matter much at this point. Time to start saving and brushing up on my Japanese.

It was us
Roaming the rainy roads, combing the gilded beaches
Waking up to a new gallery of wonders every morn
Bathing in places no-one`s seen before
Shipwrecked on some matt-painted island
Clad in nothing but the surf - beauty`s finest robe

Beyond all mortality we are, swinging in the breath of nature
In early air of the dawn of life
A sight to silence the heavens

I want to travel where life travels, following its permanent lead
Where the air tastes like snow music
Where grass smells like fresh-born Eden
I would pass no man, no stranger, no tragedy or rapture
I would bathe in a world of sensation
Love, Goodness, and Simplicity

[The Seldom Killer]

Today I had to call two partner agencies to notify them of a client death. It was a new client and the death, so far, isn't related to the service. There was no calmly waiting for an acceptable amount of time while balancing stoicism and sympathy. Just a simple call between professionals to advise them that they won't be working with the client, they don't even get to get out of the gate. Business concluded, call terminated, get back to taking care of the matters of the living.

It isn't easy though. This is the first time I've ever been officially responsible for telling one person about the death of another. I could happily wind back the clock and never cross this bridge again.

When you work in high risk domestic abuse, you immediately take on the very real likelihood that you will have to deal with death. It doesn't come with the territory, it is the territory. But this isn't how you expect it to occur. There's no prediction that things won't end well. You can't say you tried, you did everything right, you followed procedure, you did all you could. You didn't. You didn't even start, because there wasn't even the chance. Close the file, end proceedings and leave it to the next group of professionals to do what they do.

I'll be fine about it. Take on the new experience, rationalise the events as I understand them. Questions will get asked, I'll answer them. I'll continue to see the hope in the work we can do. Afterall, there's no shortage of clients in this business. Just for now though, it's a little bit bleak.

[GarandMarine]

I never had to do the direct notification, but you spend enough time on a funeral detail... it wears on you.

[Patrick]

Shit man. I've been pallbearer more times than I care to count. I really don't want to have to deal with the Let's Talk About Death thing as part of my job, ever.

[Barmymoo]

I have yet to experience either a neonatal or maternal death and I am not sure how I'd cope. I hope I would be able to rise to the occasion and keep my own emotions in check until I got home, so that I could support the family whose true grief it was, but it's one of those situations you simply can't know about. I did visit a woman who had had a very late miscarriage - I think about 37 weeks, which is incredibly rare, and that was a strange situation. Normally postnatal visits are happy occasions, where you get to cuddle the baby and congratulate the parents. The parents were still very obviously shocked, I don't think it had sunk in yet.

Death isn't easy to deal with, basically.

[The Seldom Killer]

Worth mentioning that while some public sector work is, at times, grim and distressing, it can also be tremendously rewarding.

[jwhouk]

And then there are the days when they throw piss on you.

(Looks at May briefly and nods - "a kid did it on Sunday. Not to me.")

[Barmymoo]

I'm a little surprised that I've made it several weeks without getting any bodily fluids on my clothes at all. I did have a baby's blood running all over my hands and down my wrists a few days ago, but I managed not to drip on anything. There are moment when I take a mental step back and realise how weird my job is...

[GarandMarine]

I hope you were wearing gloves and following proper bloods procedures >.>;

[BeoPuppy]

I'm a little surprised that I've made it several weeks without getting any bodily fluids on my clothes at all. I did have a baby's blood running all over my hands and down my wrists a few days ago, but I managed not to drip on anything. There are moment when I take a mental step back and realise how weird my job is...

I imagined this as a post by Gareth.

I'm sorry.

[Barmymoo]

I was not wearing gloves, and the only procedure I followed was washing my hands afterwards. I don't have any open wounds or cuts on my hands and it's a lot harder to collect blood in a tiny vial with gloves on, so I tend not to bother. Obviously if I knew the woman had some kind of blood-borne disease, I would wear gloves but otherwise I'm quite cavalier about it.

[BeoPuppy]

But do you know that she does not have anything bloodborne?

[Barmymoo]

We test all women for various blood-related ailments at booking and again at 28 weeks of pregnancy. For a needle-stick injury I would obviously follow the procedures which can involve prophylactic treatment for an exciting array of diseases. Anyway, I was taking blood for a five-day old baby rather than an adult, so the risks are a little lower - not completely eliminated but lower.

[GarandMarine]

That is and is not helping my perception of midwives at all. Good that you guys do the checks but any time I see a medical professional not wearing gloves outside of holding someone's guts in at the bottom of some shitty whadi in the middle of Fuckthatistan it strikes me as sketchy for some reason.

[Barmymoo]

I always wear gloves when not doing so could cause harm to the person I'm caring for - for instance, I would never, ever do a VE or catch a baby without ideally sterile and certainly some kind of gloves on. But when I'm weighing up a very small risk to myself against the inconvenience caused by a loss of dexterity and additionally the waste of resources by using disposable gloves, I tend to decide to risk it. If I knew the person was a drug user, or had a known history of serious illness, or was at a high risk of a blood-borne illness (a recent arrival from a country with very high HIV rates, for instance) then that'd affect my weighting of the risks.

Dunno. I've known for a while that I tend to not bother with using protection for things that would only harm me and are unlikely to do so. I don't wear a cycle helmet, I've not always insisted on condoms, I walk alone at night unarmed. Sometimes that's for my mere convenience, but in the case of PPE at work it's because I feel that wearing an apron, goggles and gloves (the "recommended" gear for a birth) would create a massive psychological barrier for the woman and unnecessarily medicalise the environment. Happily, it's mostly left to our own judgement.

[Thrillho]

Without being ridiculous, not using condoms can harm other people...

[Barmymoo]

Well yes, except that I am fairly frequently tested and know I don't have anything, and am on the Pill. I know I don't pose a risk to others, and I don't have sex with people I don't trust to tell me truthfully whether they pose a risk to me. But it is unquestionably risky behaviour. As is crossing the road, eating food prepared by someone else, leaving the house...

[Papersatan]

I don't think gloves are generally used in medical settings for the safety of the patient, but rather to reduce the medical practices liability.

When my father was in the hospital a couple years ago with an open seeping wound, with an active infection which had gone septic and left him in a coma fighting for his life (he made it), the nurses put gloves on when they entered the room, and then took them off when they left, they never changed them in the room.  I once watched a nurse pick up a paper off the floor, pick up the dressing and check his wound, touch the monitors, take a vile of blood and then adjust his breathing tube, all without changing gloves.  I was appalled. I feel like the practice of wearing gloves for all contact made her not think twice about what she was touching in what order, because she was safe through it all, in her mind her hands were 'clean' the whole time.

[Barmymoo]

That's definitely not how we practice, possibly partly because we don't have the same level of medical lawsuits as in the USA. We're told to wash our hands before and after every contact with the person we're caring for, their environment, any body fluid, any part of ourselves (like face or hair) and on entering a room. There are posters everywhere reminding us of the importance of Hand Hygiene, and gloves are single-use.

[Grognard]

I worked 4 years for the American Red Cross Blood Services doing blood drives.
Gloves + Gloves + More Gloves + all the time.
Load the Hemorrhoid (Blood Drive Bus) ... wear leather gloves.
work inside the Hemorrhoid = PPE gloves
do health histories = PPE, changed between donors
touch a donor in ANY way = PPE gloves
touch a donation bag = PPE gloves
processing the donation and sample tubes = head to toe PPE (face shield, apron, sleeves and gloves)
clean the Hemorrhoid = PPE gloves
unload packaged and processed donations and samples = PPE gloves
unload the Hemorrhoid = leather gloves.

on average, I used half a box of PPE gloves PER blood drive.