Juneau day 1

Juneau Hostel

Juneau hostel—check. Heritage coffee company—check. Juneau library (on top of a parking garage, with the most fabulous view out the front windows except when the damn behemoth cruise ship is parked in the way…)—check! Mt. Roberts trail up, tram down—check. Twisted Fish restaurant for blackened salmon Caesar salad—triple check, two thumbs way up! I’m working my way down Molly Dutton’s must-see list in Juneau, and tomorrow I’ll take on the glacier.

I had to take an expensive taxi to the hostel, but at $10/night there you can afford a couple taxi rides. It is very clean, well run and congenial, although having to vacate the place between 9 AM and 5 PM makes me feel a little bit homeless.



Tlingit dancer




Littlest Tlingit dancer





waterfront from the tram, halfway down

Juneau is really interesting; a capital city of 31,000 that feels like a small town. A small TOURIST town. I feel sorry for the year round residents. I can see what it must be like to have several hugemongous cruise ships a day tie up and disgorge hoards of tourists onto your streets. I know this is probably elitist, but I think I’d much prefer to snack on ground glass and poke both my eyes with lit sparklers than to go on one of those behemoth cruise ships…there’s just something distasteful about being a tourist anyway, and being associated with one of those stereotypical ugly American icons is just too much. Of course I AM a tourist right now, but I waste no time correcting people who ask what cruise ship I’m on and letting then know that I was here WORKING (sort of). Juneau reminds me a lot of Sandpoint, Idaho, but with a waterfront like a miniature Seattle or San Francisco. And glaciers, although you can’t quite see them from town proper. There is a narrow strip of land between the water of the Gastineau Channel and the almost vertical mountains, and the streets rise up like Seattle’s and turn into stairways without much warning.




Very old Russian Orthodox church just a block or 2 from the hostel




Tlingit (pronounced like "klinkit") totem pole





Another Tlingit totem pole




Capitol building






I just liked the building

But I have had a great day here, had a real bacon and eggs grease fest for breakfast in the Capitol Cafe, did a photographic walk-about of the downtown and waterfront, and then took these chubby little dachshund legs on a steep hike up to the Tram site way above the waterfront. It was so nice to hike along through lush huckle- and salmonberry vines, devil’s club (ok not so nice, but pretty from a distance) and other plants that forced my overly-health-care-saturated brain to go into the back filing cabinets and drag out the Latin names of the aforementioned plants. There’s something about knowing the plants and their Latin names that just feels like a big pile of treasure; not the kind you hoard but the kind that you just love giving away to whoever wants and needs it. The Latin just rolls off my tongue with a truly sensual pleasure—who couldn’t enjoy saying things like “Arctostaphylos uva-ursi”? OK, I know lots of people who enjoy it and their names are Molly, Laurie and I’m sure there’s someone else.

Anyway, I’m out of shape! As if I didn’t already know that! 5 weeks of eating stuff I NEVER eat at home, like French fries, deep fried egg rolls, CAKE for crying out loud! have added about 7 pounds to the 7 pounds I already accumulated last year when I quit Holy Family. I was sweating in the extreme 62 degree heat. There’s a new leaf that will be turned over when I get home, a new and improved leaf. I can’t STAND to be this out of shape and this fat!

View from the beginning of the Mt. Roberts trail; I started back of the hostel at the top of the 6th street stairs, and climbed up many switch backs to reach the top



View from the tram

The ravens are everywhere, whooping it up like a grade school classroom, but I haven’t seen as many eagles as in Sand Point. I do have a good picture of one perched on a tree outside the tram station up top. Stay tuned for day 2…

There's an eagle on the left; no really; its head is that white speck perched on the tree



From the tram, almost down


Tlingit drummer

Sand Point in the rearview mirror...

Dianna photographing the morel on the cliffs above the beach


FINALLY--the sun for a few hours after work--Zoe's point--just a small breeze by Aleutian standards...


my camera just doesn't capture the plethora of wildflowers in this grassy tundra above the beach
Laura and Dianna along the flats heading for Zoe's point

The time has come to change locations for this Alaskan adventure, and I will be sad to leave all my new friends and go off to Juneau tomorrow. I have had the privilege of working with some of the best folks in the world here! There are patients that I want to know the rest of the story on, and all those developments in the lives of the community here. There is no doubt in my mind that I'm meant to do primary care, not specialist work in some hospital.

So tonight I'm going to dinner at Dianna's--she's the Australian health aid who has been working in the Aleutians for 20+ years, was married to an Aleut and has a daughter with him, has helped write the CHAM (the bible of health aids in Alaska) and has been my delightful office mate for the last week or so here in the clinic. She's working as an itinerant right now, but also works and lives in Australia in the ICU as an RN (I don't think she actually LIVES in the ICU), and is a diabetic educator. Laura will join us and I'll hand off my food leftovers and pack and hopefully get on the plane around noon tomorrow.

My friend Molly has given me a list of things to do and see in Juneau that will take me at least 2 weeks to accomplish properly, so if I get time I'll post from there.

New Travel Plans

So, now that I've finalized my flight reservations (and spent $200 to do it...) to leave the island on Saturday instead of Monday, thus hoping to ensure that I CAN get off the island and beat the weather...it's sunny out for the first time in weeks!

I hope to be able to get into the hostel for $10 a night. It will be fun to spend some time in Alaska's capitol city...still on target to take the ferry, Alaska Marine Highway's The Columbia, to Bellingham, WA through the inside passage and then to Seattle and then to Walla Walla and then to Spokane and ultimately home by the 4th or 5th of July.

Summer Solstice Edition

Boats waiting to unload at the cannery on Sunday

Happy summer solstice! I actually was awake much of the shortest night of the year (as long as I’m not confused and it was the night of Sunday/Monday; otherwise I was awake for most of the next-to-shortest night of the year).

My fortune cookie today from the Aleutian China lunch I had was, “Your life will be peaceful and happy.” OK by me! Peaceful sounds good, probably for the first time in my life. But only if punctuated on a regular basis with adventures and challenges…

I’m still enjoying this adventure…and I’ll be ready to be home when I get there. I miss my family, my dogs and cat, my friends and my own bed. Sounds like I haven’t missed a thing, weather-wise, though, since summer still hasn’t started at home yet either.

The motel I moved down to is pretty clean and has all the basics, including a small kitchenette, and it is very generous of EAT to pay for it for me. And it does have some interesting features, mostly due to the difficulty in getting parts and things, all of which have to be flown or barged in. Apparently that includes tape measures, since the freestanding sink/cabinet was installed so that you can’t close the bedroom door because the door was open when the sink was put in and the sink overlaps the edge of the door. Hey, that’s better than having the door permanently closed…the mini blinds open and close via a flattened coat hanger, but it does match the blinds, colorwise…and I suppose it’s testimony to the cold, rainy weather that we’ve been having, that this morning I picked a mushroom out of the interface between the shower stall and the wall…minor things, and I’m glad to have a place where I can cook and not impose on anyone too much. Laura, bless her heart, was willing to put me in her spare bedroom when the other NP came back to the apartment I’d been living in, but I really didn’t think it was fair to her to impose on her for TWO weeks at home along with imposing on her at work too. So, since EAT was willing to put me up in the motel, I thought that was the better course.

So now I have access to TV, a real novelty for me. I saw Deadliest Catch for the first time last week and had a hard time sleeping after that! I kept wanting to tell them to get down off that slippery stack of crab pots! Watch out for that falling ice! Watch out for that 800 pound crab pot loose on the deck! I tell you it was nerve wracking. They are crabbing all around the Bering Sea and going into ports that are around here and many people here have met them. My new fisherman friends say it’s not an inaccurate portrayal of winter time crabbing, but of course the hair raising stuff and drama doesn’t go on non-stop like it appears to in the show. This new world of fishing is fascinating to me; there is so much to it. I’ve never been remotely interested in motorized boats for recreation, but have always been intrigued by working boats and the whole lifestyle that revolves around using the ocean and rivers for a livelihood and transportation. One lifetime is just not nearly enough to explore all the interesting things in the world!

The Canadian halibut research boat, the Free to Wander out of Pender Harbour, British Columbia


Skipper David Adams (center) (husband of our case manager), his son Marcus at right, and crew member at left of the Buldaro out of Sand Point, AK

Mending the net; a whale went through another net last week and tore a panel in half

The most exciting thing that happened last week was a medivac to Anchorage that we had to take care of in the ER for about 18 hours until the weather cooperated enough to get the jet in here. I can’t talk about what the condition was that required medivac, but I can say that things turned out well eventually. To add insult to injury (literally) the power went out on the whole island (except the cannery which has its own power generator) while the jet was circling, trying to get enough of a visual to be able to land. That meant no runway lights and no radios. Even though it only gets truly dark for an hour or so right now around 2:00 or 3:00 AM, the skies were so low and the fog so thick that the lights were really needed. So the jet had to return to ANC and try again later, and we turned the ER into a hospital room, kept IVs going and kept our patient stable. They came in again around midnight, and the visibility was much better—and a good thing too, since the power went out AGAIN about 2 minutes before they landed!

Obviously, Alaska Girls are tough!


Community Health Aid Lou tends to a young fisherman with a swollen elbow

The plants are just JUMPING out of the ground and into flower with all the light, but since it’s been in the 40’s and below most of the last three weeks, the alders are still not leafed out all the way and the locals tell me that the wildflowers are slow in showing this spring. Some of the plants are very familiar species that we have at home, but many are completely new to me. I’ve been meaning to go up to the school library, which is open to the public in the evening, and look for books on plants and wildlife specific to the Aleutians, but haven’t made it yet. There is a bird that I haven’t been able to identify, that has a very unique call, but no one has been able to tell me what it is and none of the likely candidates on the bird ID sites on the web have the same call.

wooley lousewort

I mentioned last time that my advisor, Lorna Schumann, and her husband David were coming out so that Lorna could do my site visit, which consists of watching me see patients for a couple of days and talking with Laura to see how she thinks I’m doing. It was a good visit with Lorna, but unfortunately the weather wasn’t very cooperative so David didn’t get much fishing or 4-wheeling in. We did have a break in the weather on Saturday and walked out to the far breakwater where the ferry and the cargo barges dock and watched them load containers of fish onto a barge. Lorna and I asked the young men, who were dangling on cables above the containers with zero safety equipment, if their moms knew what they were doing! They laughed, said NO, and we don’t want them to! We told them that as both mothers and nurse practitioners, they were scaring us half to death and we hoped that we would NOT see them again at the clinic later. Laura also took us out to the end of the New Dump Road, to a rock formation reported to be an old volcano vent, which we climbed up on and got a view of Red Cove Lake and the other side of the island.

ancient volcano vent above Red Cove Lake (Laura's picture)



me, Lorna and David Schumann with Red Cove Lake and the ocean in the background on the other side of the island from town (Laura's picture)


Sand Point cemetery with some Russian Orthodox crosses


purple mystery plant

chocolate lily in bud


wild geranium



How far?


Eagle in the mast of the Dominator

All-weather patio


short cut

I’ve been mulling over what I said in the last post about it being tiring to be in an environment where everyone knows so much more than I do. And I realized that the thing that is stressful about walking away from a career that you’re good at is not the loss of status, or the tediousness of starting at the bottom again, or giving up the income, or even giving up the reputation and the colleagues; the hard part is no longer being able to do something that you’re good at. There’s a real satisfaction in doing something that you excel at, and it’s the same satisfaction that comes from playing a sport for the love of the game. It just feels GOOD to knock in that goal, stack a tight load of hay, or write a good forest management plan. I gave up just about everything I was good at to start over again and try to master a whole vast new body of information. I don’t regret it, but I’m seeing the subtle ways that it can take its toll, and I’m getting tired of being in the minimally-competent stage. Like just about everything else, the only way out is through, and I’m hanging in there.

I have one more weekend here, then if the weather cooperates I’ll be flying out to Juneau to get on the ferry early on the 29^th. But I’ve been looking at the weather forecasts for the next week, and I’m thinking seriously about hedging my bets and getting out to Juneau early, like on Sunday if possible, just because the weather promises to be cloudy and rainy forever. I guess that the only real downside of that is having to pay for a motel in Juneau, not cheap. Then it will be 3 days through the inside passage to Bellingham, then to Seattle, then to Walla Walla for a wedding, then home on the 4^th of July. There are a lot of places where the timing is very tight to pull off this itinerary, so it’s all subject to change, especially where the weather controls the flying. So stay tuned and I’ll see many of you in July.

The Health Ferry (Fairy?)

10 PM rainbow



My lovely apartment at 10:30 PM



It's not hard to sleep with this much light, it's hard to GO TO BED!

I said in a brief Facebook entry on my birthday that my best present was a handsome Canadian fisherman with a big laceration on his wrist. I got a few witty responses to that—like “if you can’t take your present home with you maybe you can enjoy it while you’re here” and similar quips. Sadly, I didn’t get to do the suturing on his laceration because we also have an Australian Community Health Aid that needs to be recertified to work here after being in Australia for over 6 months, so she needed to do it. So I had to just hold his hand, so to speak, and do ancillary things. I was offered the chance to fill in every other suture after she got it basically closed, but I didn’t think it was fair to him to draw out the process any longer than necessary. Maybe that’s one of the differences between nurse training and physician training—first, last, and always we are supposed to take care of the needs of the patient before our own. And after all, he was supposed to be watching game 6 of the Stanley Cup hockey playoffs! So I have some outdated suture material and am practicing at home on placemats and such, biding my time until I get my chance.

You’d think with all the ambulance calls for drunks in distress that I’d get ONE that had fallen down and cut themselves, but so far not so. The ambulance here almost seems like Triple A for alcohoholics…AA would be a great way to prevent the need for AAA, but unfortunately the person who was the center of meetings here on the island died a year ago and I guess the meetings just fell apart.

I really am not being facetious about it…it’s a heartbreaking tragedy to see the waste of good people and the destruction that goes along with alcohol and drug addiction, and although it sure isn’t unique to Alaska, it is a problem in native communities that has decimated untold families. One of the many terrible gifts of the white man, the legacy of which still repeats itself in so many ways…Sand Point is a little different in some ways because its population has so much mixed blood and cultural influence, unlike so many of the more isolated communities in the Pribilofs, the Interior and the far north. But alcohol and drugs are a problem here, just like at home. Last night I was at the clinic attending an EMT refresher training so I could get familiar with some of the toys like the splints, inflatable pants, etc. (I don’t have any EMT training yet), and since it was being taught by the head of the EMS, when the dispatcher called for the ambulance class ended abruptly and I went along on the call.

Fortunately it was not way out in the tundra where you can only get there by 4 wheeler, so it was a short trip. Because of the public nature of this blog, I can’t say much about the call, but it was alcohol related. So I helped as best as I could in the ambulance and then worked on him in the clinic with the on-call PA and the Australian CHP until we got him stabilized. It’s all good learning for me, but heartbreaking nonetheless.

I left at 9:30 PM to hitch a ride with Laura down to the harbor, where the twice-monthy ferry, the Tustamena, was coming in at 10:30 with health care people from the main EATs office. We set up a health fair in the net shed at the city dock, staffed by traveling health fair folks who brought lots of goodies and handouts. The community was invited, and a few turned out to learn about nutrition, diabetes, safe sex, etc. It stays light so long in the summer that when there’s no school the kids routinely stay up until midnight, so I have pictures of even some little guys at that hour.

Laura photographing the ferry coming in


Here comes the ferry!


Alaska Marine Highway's The Tustamena--now running twice a month down the Aleutian Chain



Some of Sandpoint's Finest--Shane in the middle (remember the gasoline on the bonfire incident?) and our receptionist extraordinaire Melissa at the health fair

One little cutie spotted me and stopped dead, stared at me and decided that he couldn’t quite place me, but he didn’t have good memories of wherever it was we’d met last. I’d been one of the people in the exam room that held him down to look in his ears the week before. He did let me take his picture with his mardi gras beads, though.

Laura and our fabulous case manager, Cathy with her new berry bucket



Laura, Shane and my little friend

So the handsome blue-eyed Canadian skipper of the big long-line boat came back to the clinic the next day so we could take a look at his wrist and pronounce him fit to go off and fish. He’s supposed to come back and let us take out the sutures in about 10 days or so. So I don’t get to keep him, but I do get to see him again!

Sometimes I really have to take myself in hand and try to remember that I have successfully mastered other large bodies of information and been successful in using that information to accomplish complex projects. This really isn’t any different except that the body of information is not only pretty big, but people’s lives literally depend on being able to not only learn the information but think clearly in using it. I get discouraged sometimes, and think that I really should have learned more by this time…aside from trying to be a good mother, this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Not as important as being a good mom, but close. I try to remind myself that I have other skills and qualities that I bring to bear on this profession that are also critical to being successful, and that it just takes time and practice to put it all together. It can get tiring to work in an environment where everyone knows way more than you do! They are all really good about helping me learn—I don’t feel a bit like anyone looks down on me or is patronizing. I just feel like I’m not meeting my OWN expectations very well, and champing at the bit to get in there and do more than I’ve been able to do. My adviser, Lorna, is here this weekend and for two days next week to evaluate me and I’m a little nervous about that. But she is always very supportive and I need to remember it’s all about the learning and feedback and not so much about the grade.

I got a phone call Friday night from my son Blake, who has been fighting fire with his hot shot crew up above the Arctic Circle. He’s back in Fairbanks with his crew, now with a 2^nd degree chemical burn on his back from a leaking dolmar. He’s a sawyer, so has to pack a saw and gas when they hike in, and it saturated his shirt and burned him pretty good by the time they got where they were going. He’ll have more scar stories to tell his grandchildren. He loved his time up there as much as I did when I went out on fire, and we shared some good laughs and stories. I can’t wait to see his pictures and hear more about his time up there. He flies back to Missoula in a chartered NIC jet on Monday, so sounds like they might have Sunday in Fairbanks to see the town a bit. They are camped on Ft. Wainwright where the jumper base and all the fire offices and dispatch are located, and are supposed to do some kind of project work tomorrow.

On Sunday I have to move out of this nice apartment and will be in the local motel until I fly out on the 28^th. But EAT is very generous and will be paying for it. They have been very good to me—just goes to show how difficult it is to get people to come here and stay that they are spending a fair amount on recruiting. So I won’t have the same phone number and will have to find out what the number is at the motel. If it's urgent, you can still get me at the clinic at 907-383-5131.

More anon...

Happy FIshing Season

The harbor mid day June 7, first day of the fishing season



Tender just outside the harbor

June 7—first day of salmon season!

They tell me that the small boats started fishing at 0600 today, but the reason you still see a bunch of boats in the harbor is because the big purse seiners are standing down for awhile voluntarily to keep from catching a bunch of “dog salmon”.

Apparently the dogs are running strong out in the deeper open waters where the seiners fish, and so they’re waiting to let them get through before going out to try to catch the sockeye that are also supposed to be running now. The smaller boats, which are gill netters—both set nets and I forget what the other type is—fish closer to shore, so they aren’t as likely to catch the dog salmon. The dog salmon are actually chum salmon, but they are at the bottom of the barrel for Alaskans, so they traditionally are dried and fed to the sled dogs—thus the somewhat pejorative term “dog salmon”. Most of the women working in the clinic have husbands, sons, brothers, uncles, grandparents involved in fishing, most for quite a few generations, so I’m getting fishing lessons.

The gill nets have larger openings than the seiner nets, so the fishermen spread them out in the water, either anchoring one end to the beach or to an anchor buoy, and then pull the net out as far as it goes. Then every so often they pull up the net and “pick” the fish out of the net by hand because they get caught by the gills when they try to swim through (the fish, not the men). That’s why they call it gill netting! But the purse seiners spread out an enormous small-opening net in a circle, then draw it up at the bottom like a purse and raise up the whole thing with a giant crane, and swing it onto the boat.

Then when the boats get full, they go over to one of the REALLY giant tenders that cruise around and unload onto the tender, which then unloads at the cannery when it gets full. My picture really doesn’t do justice to just how big the tenders are! That’s a medium size fishing boat unloading or doing something alongside the tender.

I guess this part of the season will only be open for 3 ½ days, then close for 36 hours. Then it will open again, but apparently how long it stays open each time depends on how many fish are reaching their spawning streams and going up (I think). It’s really fascinating, and I so wish I could go out on a boat and watch, but I would be in the way, and when they go out and the fish are there, they work until they have to stop because time runs out or something breaks and they have to come in to fix it.

Laura had arranged for us to go out this last weekend on the boat of the husband of one of the women that works at the clinic, but apparently when she boarded the boat for the first time in a few months, it was (in her opinion, anyway) FILTHY! So there was no way that she was letting anyone see it like that, and we didn’t go. Let that be a lesson to all you crappy housekeepers as to just how far a dirty place can affect people downstream, so to speak.

When I was in Alaska on fire duty, the long, long hours of daylight didn’t seem to bother me, and I slept just fine. But I have to admit that I haven’t slept well since I’ve been here. I think it’s only partly the light; it’s also the unfamiliar noises of the young men next door who get off shift about 2 AM, the apartment building itself that makes odd noises, and the adrenalin rush of having ambulance calls in the middle of the night to have to come home from and try to go back to sleep. So I moved into a different bedroom farther from the cops next door, covered the window with aluminum foil, and started using my earplugs with the faith that the ambulance tones on the radio would wake me up when we had a call. So far on the two nights that we haven’t had any calls I have slept much better, but the hot flashes are still waking me up about every 1 ½ to 2 hours. But at least I’m falling asleep much easier and going back to sleep after any variety of wake up call more easily too.

We have two new mid-levels here now, both PAs, and I miss Thai dreadfully! Not that I don’t like the two new ones, but Thai is really someone special—very patient, very dedicated to teaching, very quietly calm and good natured, and just a great person to have around. It doesn’t hurt that he’s almost preternaturally good looking in a unique and very striking way. I wish I had a daughter so I could have Thai as a son-in-law!

I hesitate to say this, because I know Laura reads my blog and I don’t want her to think I’m kissing ass, but she is the best preceptor I’ve had! She really knows her stuff, is very well-respected by the community and her co-workers, and a wonderful, patient teacher. She is great with all ages of patient—direct when the situation calls for it, tactful and calm when that’s what’s needed, and the little kids love her! I have learned so much from her.

I would like to be able to see more patients—our goal at the end of our Nurse Practitioner program is to be seeing 16 patients a day including charting and paperwork—but that just isn’t the way things work here. This is a very different environment from a private clinic or a community clinic in a city. Not only is the population smaller, but with each provider having to do most, if not all, of their own lab work, x-rays, pulling medication, doing referrals, staffing the ER—you just can’t schedule very many patients a day. Add to that all the bureaucracy inherent in any governmental organization (and the Eastern Aleutian Tribes is a governmental agency), and the pace and rhythm and even the overall goals of the clinic are different from most of what we have in the lower 48, especially when it comes to making money. Staying afloat is important, but making money is not even on the radar screen—it’s not the purpose of the clinic at all. EAT’s vision is that “the Eastern Aleutian Tribe’s people are the healthiest in the nation.” That overarching goal is a noble one that really contrasts with for-profit health care in so many ways. I don’t think anyone could begin to be prepared for what they will encounter practicing in most places in Alaska without getting the experience I’m getting right now, and I am so glad that I’m able to do this! It has strengthened my desire to work in Alaska when I get finished with my degree.

Speaking of which, I will probably go another semester and not finish until May of 2011, for several reasons. One, I don’t know if I can get my master’s project finished by the deadline in December, especially because I really need to work more hours and make a little more money. Two, I can see now that I REALLY need some ER experience, and I don’t think I can get enough just with a one credit internship next fall. And it will be easier to deal with moving, etc., next summer than it would be next winter. I have been picking everyone’s brain about different tribal organizations and places in Alaska, and have gotten a couple of new people to contact about places on the south central mainland and in the interior. I think I could live here in Sand Point, and would love the opportunity to continue to learn from Laura. But just in terms of weather and geography I think I’d prefer to be in the interior. Most important though is being able to be somewhere, at least for the first year, where I can work with another mid-level that is willing to mentor me and help me get up to speed before I get put in a situation where I’m the lone ranger somewhere. So we will see where I end up, but I definitely plan for that to be in Alaska.

Bob Elliott, this is for you: so far no one I’ve talked to on the island has ever heard of the hot springs across the bay from Port Moller. But I talked to a fisherman from Nelson Lagoon, which is kind of NW of there, who knows exactly what I was talking about. He says that he’s never actually been there, though. He made it sound like there is a working resort around there now. He also said it was a 38 hour boat trip from Nelson Lagoon to Sand Point, so I don’t think I’ll be going there by boat anytime soon!

I still don’t know exactly where in Alaska my baby boy, I mean my manly hot shot son, is except that he’s somewhere in the very wide vicinity of Fairbanks, reportedly manning a heliport or helitack base or something. I hope he has as many good tales to tell as I did when I was there—I sure do miss the fire world! Maybe in Alaska I can figure out how to do both health care and fire…

This week I’ll be sitting in on a little bit of EMT training, the parts where they put on the C-collars (C for cervical) and the compression pants, since I don’t have any experience with that. I’m still keeping up, more or less, with my homework, but it doesn’t leave me much time to do much else. I haven’t even been playing my dulcimer, which I so carefully hand carried up here. Hopefully I’ll get a chance on my three-day ferry trip. OK, off to bed—it’s rainy here, so I can’t actually see that the sun is still close to the noon position at almost 8 PM.