walks, work and hockey magic...

today was a wonderful day. not alot of sleep, but yesterday i slept all day so i was good to go by 11:30 am after just 3 hours sleep. the monday dog walk was a success today. we had 8 humans and 6 dogs. i think everyone had a good time. tanya came late so she walked the opposite way and met up with us. she has a new puppy, an alaskan malamute. who doesn't love a puppy. he's pretty big already...so cute...only 11 weeks old. so fun to see them out there. julie came and so did gail, lena, tiffany, melissa and sandra from the peds world. just a pretty day and pleasant walk for all. we went to the coffee shop nearby after to just chat...looks like that will be commonplace.

above is julie with the new puppy. not sure what the name is gonna land on. tanya seemed undecided. below is julie, sandra and tanya admiring the puppy!! the rest of the crew got a bit ahead of us as we admired the pup.

tonight i met up with val and tiffany for some anchorage aces hockey. the aces won. after the 2nd period a big brawl broke out. they all mixed it up, loads of penalties were handed out and in the end gloves, hats and sticks were scattered about the ice. i love hockey, the game the brawls and i love to watch those incredibly flexible goal tenders do thier stretches before periods. hehe!!

below is the big brawl. we had alot of fun at the game. i've never had a bad time at a hockey game. such a great game!!

have been watching the now classic "fields of dreams". i love baseball too. baseball is better live though. i really need to get to the minor league games here this summer. should be fun. football i could care less about and basketball is cool, but it's not something i really have kept into...maybe i just got worn out from all the basketball overload of my childhood.

as always i got my share of walks in. the dog park was hit a few times. i generally go there when i am in a zone between shifts. i know lots of people there which is nice...even nicer i think as none of them are related to work. not that i don't totally appreciate my work friends, just sometimes it's nice to have a different place where the conversation is never work and pretty much just weather and dogs. rio got a bit bent once. she even sorta snapped. there are people with treats and she knows them and then gets super focused on the treat....another dog came along and rio didn't want to risk the competition. she ended up in doggy time out...at an off-leash park, that means she goes on leash. this was made more difficult by the fact that the zoned out owner had forgotten to put her collar on. weather has been nice. no snow and it's all brown in preparation. above is dog park.

after a bog walk last week, i headed with the pups to potter marsh to see if the swans were still there. there were several. i guess the greyish ones are the young birds. they are prepping for the long flight. i just always find them to be such beautiful birds. i read in the paper today that there was also a great heron there this past week or so, but i never saw that bird. it's not a usual bird for this area i guess. i used to see them occasionally in ketchikan...they are awesome birds as well. just cool looking. a bit pre-historic.

there is a road that runs along behind the marsh. there were several people out there with these cross country ski rollar blade things. i had no idea that this road was some known training ground. crazy. people in the anchorage area love thier cross country/skake skiing. the town is set up for skiing. apparently, those who came before me loved the outdoors and so the trail system is amazing. many miles of trails have lighting so you can ski in the dark days of winter. pretty cool.

i still have loads to do still on my continual "to do" list. the tires are in the car, but i haven't gotten down to get them changed over...the packages need to be mailed, toilets to be purchased...i think i've decided to just make my desire to drive to deadhorse the big trip for next year. now i'll just start with some planning...it'll be slated for mid to late august. i'd like to go to glacier bay kayaking but it looks pretty pricey. dutch was pricey this year so it's probably better to find a less expensive adventure. north....north to alaska i guess. hopefully, i have several more years to plan more trips. next summer i also am planning another road trip with kelly out to mc carthy and kennicot mines. i've not made it out there yet either. i wouldn't mind catching the ferry to cordova when it's a different time of year. i've only been there in early spring and didn't have much chance to check out cordova.

work was pretty good again this week. i can't complain. my first night was kinda funny as work apparently forgot to put me on the schedule or accidently took me off...i wouldn't have minded an unplanned day off, but nobody told me. so the peds and adult units fought for me and i ended up in peds. i guess it was busy. i was put in the annex...an area that they occasionally open up for peds when it's nuts. i ended up with 5 patients over there. the next two nights i was back to the adult icu for 2 nights of sledd/oscillator work. both machines are very noisy and the oscillator ventilator is like a metronome in some ways...it just makes you start dancing. the guy was pretty sick and continues so. we had another guy on the oscillator. h1n1. he passed away last night. young. scarey. happy i didn't have the young guy. i did get a pretty good headache from the noise of the machinery. i still have a knot. it's got a big bruise from all my attempts to break it up. ouch!!

my last night i was put back in peds icu. haven't been there for a long time. i was almost fired by the one mom within minutes of meeting her. she is at a high level of anxiety, has some medical training and is a bit uptight to say the least. they had reason...their kid had coded a few times i guess up in fairbanks...her breathing did look like crap the second i walked in the room. retracting everywhere. the mom wanted to know what the pathophysiology was and why she was having such difficulty...blah, blah, blah. i wanted to say..."her lungs are crap and she's breathing through a straw". instead i told her she needed to chill as all this stress and anxiety wasn't good for the kid who was already dyspneic. i also mentioned that thier other child running around in a hospital filled with h1n1 and other contagious bugs was probably not a good idea. lucky for me the respiratory therapist calmed her down and told her i was actually a very good nurse (i think he said one of the best in the unit which was very sweet). by the morning i had worked hard, made calls, kept on top of it and she looked a bit better and the parents adored me. :-) at one point her chest was sucking in so much that it looked like she was giving herself the chest compressions. my co-worker laughed when i used this description to convince the doc that steroids may be helpful. so work went well...another week...no harm done.