Today is the start of week 3 of nursing school. The days in the past few weeks have melted and blurred into one another, a combustion of activity fueled by caffeine. It feels so good just to sit down for a moment and have a chance to breathe.

Two major events happened in my life the past several weeks: the start of a job and the start of nursing school. So far, my decision to switch careers to nursing easily ranks up there in the best decisions I have ever made in life. The blend of intellectual discipline and physical dexterity in my future career fits my personality and skills perfectly. The program is also very academically challenging and interdisciplinary, which obliterates the problem of intolerable boredom I had with the slow pace of university classes when I was an engineering major. In the past few weeks, I've had to study how various pieces of political science, math, psychology, biology, along with countless other pieces come together to form the field of nursing. This upcoming Wednesday, we don the official school uniforms for the first time as new student nurses. I'm so excited to work at the hospital!

As far as the new job goes, quite frankly, I believe I'm locked in the hold of a ship of fools. I really miss my old job, bless my former managers' hearts. Too bad the hours were so terrible there. My new store has to be the most disorganized place I've ever seen. From the severe mismanagement of inventory, to the schedule availability mistakes, to the incessant politics localized to the tiny fief of my department, the issues are too many to count. About the only thing it has in its favor is the proximity to my hospital and the fact the high turnover means as many hours as I want. Oh, and the customers are usually very nice and understanding people. Other than that, I just enjoy the dance of the negotiation of a sale and use the job to whet my hunger and motivation to get someplace better...I'd love to get my LVN license to work as a nurse at the end of the year while I finish my RN.

Well back to studying...

Day before School and T of H Scottish Breakfast Tea

Tomorrow is the first big day of the Spring semester! For 3 classes, I have 15 very large textbooks and have been studying the logistics on how to best haul all that stuff around. God bless whoever invented those rolling bookbags! :-) Today is the big day I start working on the floor at my new job. I was obligated by the new store to leave my old job due to the non-compete requirements, although I think it's kind of silly being non-management and all. :-( However, before I left, I was sure to obtain some great souvenirs in the form of dirt cheap cashmere, some elegant new work clothes and other stuff coming in this week that I bought with my discount to get ready for my new job. I got a nice healthy raise at the new place I'm working and my pay is tied closer to my sales (still not a commission, but closer though), so I have the opportunity to make some very nice money by college student standards if I apply myself while I'm there. A gaping chasm still exists between my current wages and my old engineering job, but every bit helps, and due to my accelerated school curriculum and my long term plans for my nursing career, I know I will soon surpass the wages most any engineer could hope on making in my home state in this economy.

This past month, I have been enjoying some of the imported hard-to-find English tea my boyfriend got me as part of my Christmas gifts (very sweet as it makes me appreciate and think about him even more as I make breakfast each day). The first box I tried is the Taylors of Harrogate Scottish Breakfast tea. If your only experience with British breakfast tea is the Twinings brand packaged in North Carolina (not imported), well, this tea will open your eyes to what a crime it is that retailers label those Twinings bark shavings as any sort of tea. Opening the box reveals a fragrant, dark, uniform, crushed and shredded black tea. The flavor and color of the brewed tea is true to Blue Moon's description: a bright, strong, amber liquor with a very bold, smooth, and malty taste. The tea also has a pleasant, almost flowery fragrance that is quite uplifting in the morning. Unlike Twinings N.C. tea, a prerequisite to this tea, by design, is MILK. Without it, the strong taste WILL wrench off your tastebuds and leave your head spinning, as this is a tea that treads the fine line between tea and coffee. Another plus to this moderately priced tea is that the attractive metal caddy is reusable, so you can just order a considerably less expensive bag of your tea as a refill when you're down to the last cuppa.

Homeless Chic

Still counting down the days until school begins. This week, my supervisor let me know that my store wants to keep me on as "full-time" part time staff after the season ends. Since the clothing has such a nice discount, my tentative plans maybe keeping the job as a weekend gig and finding another part time position to get more reliable hours during the week.

There has been an interesting new fashion showing in the men's clothing appearing at my store. Apparently, extraordinarily worn and holey jeans are the in thing now. I never have really quite understood the whole Abercrombie "homeless chic" thrift store style. When I was leaving work, I looked in at their front display and saw a line of jeans with enormous holes and even paint stains(!) placed strategically on the pants. Now, I can understand the worn jeans thing as being maybe an expression of individuality since old jeans wear differently over time and tend to mold to the unique lumps and bumps of the person who wears them, but when you flip through the stack of these new "old" jeans, the paint stains and holes are IDENTICAL, like they used a template! Oh boy, I'm going to be an individual, just like everyone else! I told my boyfriend that if one really wanted to be unique and individual, it would be best to dress beautifully in formal tailored clothing like Cary Grant or Audrey Hepburn, have impeccable manners, and take an optimistic view of America, our culture, and the future of the nation. On the other hand, the scruffy fashion has made it easier and kind of fun to guess someone's economic status, as the less well off are more likely to be fresh faced, have immaculately clean and pressed clothing, and neatly trimmed hair than most of the middle or upper middle class customers. And, I can build on a sale of men's jeans by adding our really nice store boxers since the holes in the rear of the pants expose so much underwear.

German Advent Customs and French Presses

Happy New Years! First post of 2006! Hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday. Mine was certainly full of work and travel! Today I've been going through my room cleaning out old papers and getting stuff ready for the start of a new semester. I also purchased my advent candle for the next year since Christmas stuff is going on clearance. For those of you not familiar with Advent celebration, Advent is almost as important to those of European extraction as Christmas day itself. My mother's side is half-German and half-British, so everyone had Advent calendars and candles and seeing such things brings back fond memories of Christmases past. We also preserved the German custom of opening gifts on Christmas Eve so we could spend time as a family Christmas day.

If you never have seen an advent candle, they come in two different types. One type is a wreath containing 4 or 5 candles. Starting on the 4th sunday before Christmas, you light one candle each Sunday until you get to the final candle, which is either the Sunday before Christmas or Christmas day (like this year!). The fifth optional candle in the center of the wreath is lit on Christmas day. These types of advent candles are fairly common to find, although I haven't really seen them much here in America except for gorgeous nativity wreaths in churches where the candles are lit before the sermon starts. The other type of advent candle is a tall candle with 24 markings spaced down the candle. Starting with the 24th day before Christmas, you gather as a family each evening and burn down the candle 1 mark until you finish it off Christmas day. These candles are much more difficult to find as this custom tends to be more isolated to the Protestant German community, although some Danish or German import stores on the web have them. Here is what mine looks like. The basic idea of the candles and celebrating Advent is that when you light the candle, it not only marks down the days until Christmas, but, as imparted to me, is also a kind of a time-out to reflect on the meaning of the holiday and the upcoming end of the year. While some might criticize such a custom as keeping a calendar or burning a candle as silly or superstitious, I kind of like the idea of preserving Advent as it encourages family time and its meditative aspect kind of balances out what has turned into the big time capitalist part of Christmas of receiving gifts and being stressed out.

For my birthday next month, I'm the lucky recipient of a gorgeous Bodum Eileen French Press! This brewing method is supposed to make coffee so stout it will walk away from its cup. I can't wait for the big day so I can use it!