Here Comes Johnny Yen Again...

The Transitional Friday Random Ten

2012-01-27T08:12:00.003-06:00

No call for work today-- they're trying, once again, to cut back on overtime. Nice to have a day off today, but I'll miss the dough in two weeks. Still, it'll be nice to get some things done today. In the meantime, I'm adding "update my resume" to that list of things to do.

1. Ah Leah!- Donnie Iris
2. Samba Pa Ti- Santana
3. Only Good For Conversation- Rodriquez
4. What Is Truth?- Johnny Cash
5. Who Loves You Pretty Baby?- Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons
6. It's All Over Now- The Rolling Stones
7. The Oldest Story In the World- The Plimsouls
8. Don't Let Me Down- The Beatles
9. Wild Horses- The Rolling Stones
10. Life Is Hard- Timbuk3

Notes:
1. Donnie Iris was part of three "one-hit wonders:" this one, "The Rapper" by the Jaggerz and "Play That Funky Music White Boy," by Wild Cherry.
2. From the great "Abraxas" album
3. Rodriguez put the album this one's from, "Cold Fact," out in 1969, but it could have been recorded last year.
4. Johnny Cash played this one when he was invited to perform at the White House by Richard Nixon
5. Frankie Valli's token disco song.
6. The original of this was done by The Valentinos, which was Bobby Womack and his brothers
7. This one and "A Million Miles Away," also by the Plimsouls, were standouts in a movie with a great soundtrack, "Valley Girl."
8. From the stripped down version of "Let It Be"
9. The Stones in a reflective mood
10. Timbuk3's big hit was "The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades," but this one's my favorite of theirs.

The Peeps

2012-01-26T19:01:00.002-06:00

Okay, so today I ended up having a day off; I was scheduled in our shitty schedule, but since Tuesdays and Thursdays are "low census days" typically (most dialysis is scheduled Monday, Wednesday and Friday), I had those two days off.

So that tops my list of gripes-- their inept attempts to come up with a schedule that will cut back on the overtime. It made my schedule a living hell the last two months and burned off whatever goodwill I had. The asinine staff meeting just infuriated us even more. Among the other gripes I have:

-- Their training program sucked. As a former educator, I give it a D+. The classroom material was uninspired, one of the instructors was one of the worst teachers I've ever dealt with. Some of the nurse preceptors I worked with were great, but couldn't do nearly as good a job as they might have, because instead of working with one nurse through the whole training, we worked with one on one day and another and another... There was a lot of stuff we never went over because they had no way of knowing whether it had been covered or not
--Massive disorganization. I know that acute care dialysis is bound to have a little chaos because you don't know how many patients you'll have from day to day, but at least one of the coordinators, the people who actually tell us which patient to dialyze at which hospital, has no idea what she's doing
--The paperwork. The paperwork is disorganized, chaotic and in many cases completely redundant. We put the start and stop times of treatment on no fewer than four different sheets. The machine logs-- the logs of tests of the water, disinfection, etc. of the dialysis machines-- were apparently designed by a drunk person. There is no rhyme or reason to them. They also moved recently from a timesheet we turn in once a week to a hyperdetailed timesheet we turn in every day. And of course they issued this timesheet with no instructions on how to fill it out properly.
-- Too many chiefs, not enough Indians. I think there is about one administrator for every four nurses. And all of those administrators except the two who actually do some work, the coordinators, are standing around trying to figure out how to make us more productive. Here's how to make the unit profitable: fire the head of the unit, "Lumbergh" and the person who is on "light duty" from injuring herself doing something stupid, and is now charged with "auditing" the other nurses, trying to catch them doing something wrong. She's a tech-- not even an RN. She has no business auditing RN's.

But with the bad, comes the good. The peeps-- the people I work with. I'll tell a little about some of them.

One of my favorite co-workers is Patrick. He's young-- about 25. His family moved from the Phillipines when he was about 13, so he's grown up in two worlds. He's very quiet, but when he opens his mouth, he shows a wide breadth of knowledge. He's also been one of the people who has helped me a lot. It could be very humiliating having to ask a kid half my age about how to do my job, but he has always been respectful, never showing a bit of condescension.

Another favorite is Saint. He's lived up to his name a couple of times, including yesterday, when I had a patient accidentally pull a needle out. I had to keep pressure in order to keep the patient from bleeding, and asked another nurse to see if someone was available to help me. It turned out he was right around the corner; he quickly and quietly helped me with the patient and the machine, and calmed me down afterward. He's helped me out in a couple of other situations. He's also Filipino (there are a lot of Filipinos in the unit). He's another guy who's always ready to help without making me feel stupid.

Ramon is a guy I always get a kick out of working with. I thought he was latino when I first met him, but he's also Filipino. Picture a Filipino guy who looks latino, but acts like a combination of Warren Beatty and Bill Murray. He's got two families, one with the ex-wife and one with the current one. He's by all accounts a great dad. He's also my hero in that he's openly contemptuous of the managers.

Yesterday, he and Manny, another guy who is openly contemptuous of the management were scheduled in the "acute room" together. The reason became obvious; the unit manager who is a nurse, and pretty competent, and the woman who's on "light duty" spent the day in the acute room with them auditing them. It was farcical. Ramon and Manny weren't intimidated in the least.

A couple of weeks ago, I was working at one of my hospitals and I had to find Fernando, one of the veterans, to get a key. The hospital has only one key for the dialysis storage room, and so if a second (or third) nurse is called to that hospital, he or she has to find the other nurse. This is usually no problem-- we have a list with all of one another's cell numbers on it.

I went to the room Fernando was working in and had a chance, for the first time, to chat with him. It turns out that he's a tech-- not an RN. He told me that until pretty recently, the unit was a great one to work for-- until they brought in "Lumbergh." He has been doing dialysis for about 20 years, he told me. He added that he was stuck there; not being an RN, he can't go anywhere but the other big dialysis corporation. If he were an RN, like me, he told me, he'd be looking for another job.

I've taken his advice under strong advisement.

There are other folks I work with who, for the time being, are making a situation that is becoming increasingly uncomfortable and stressful tolerable. Between that and knowing I'm helping folks, I think I can tough this out for a while. I'll write more about my terrific co-workers soon.

The Job

2012-01-24T21:39:00.002-06:00

Last night, my boss asked me if I would take on a third patient shift if needed (we do two patients or sets of patients a day, usually). Since I'm trying to get on top financially, I said yes. More on that later.

Today, we had a staff meeting. That meant I had to be in a suburb of Chicago that's about a 45 minute drive away at 7 a.m. Not a thrilling prospect. But since I have been bitching about a lot of things, I felt like I should go.

I'm glad I went, despite having worked a 17 hour day the day before (until midnight). Since the last meeting I've learned a little more about the unit I work for. I learned that it used to work a lot better than before-- until an accountant, rather than a nurse was put in charge of the unit.

That accountant, I've come to realize, is our Lumbergh. This was the boss in "Office Space" if you've forgotten, played to perfection by Gary Cole. He plays like he's a nice guy, but in the end is a corporate dick. He knows nothing about what we deal with day to day in our jobs. He announced today that we are trying yet another computerized system, with smart phones, that will start accounting, nearly to the minute, where we are and what we're doing.

One of the other nurses joked about using the GPS on the smart phones to track our movements. The accountant hesitated before answering, and we all realized that they had considered using the GPS on the phones.

This unit is about to become a lot less nice to work at-- and there are already problems. My plan is to try to work there a year-- the magic number for a first year nurse-- and then check out my options.

In the meantime, I'll be blogging about some of the people I work with, who are mostly wonderful. I'll be telling a little bit about my job-- as much as I can without compromising the privacy of my patients and my co-workers.

Which leads to my third shift last night. As I said, I jumped at the chance to work some extra hours-- not only for the extra dough, but because it was at a hospital I did two clinical rotations at, and know a lot of the staff at and am consequently quite fond of.

I was asked to call ahead to give an ETA. I called and was told to take my time-- the patient was having a central venous catheter installed at that moment, the catheter I was going to use to do the dialysis. Since I was close to home, I stopped there to have a quick dinner and then headed out to the hospital.

I got to the hospital and headed upstairs to assess my patient. My boss had gotten the machine ready for me already, saving me some time. When I got to the room in the ICU, I said hello to the patient's parent; my patient was only 23. She was suffering from a chronic disease that prevents the body from producing all kinds of blood cells.

As I looked at my patient, I could see my kids; my eldest is about five years younger than her. And as I looked at her mother, I could see myself. There is nothing more helpless feeling than having a sick kid. And having a kid who's got a cold, the flu, asthma, bronchitis-- is one thing. To have a kid in renal failure on top of a serious chronic condition-- I can't even imagine.

I set up and got my patient ready for treatment. As I did this, I explained to the patient's mother a little bit about how dialysis works. I could tell that it was allaying a lot of fear and anxiety. Later, she told me that she'd been hesitant to do treatment-- she knew little about dialysis. I told her that it's not surprising; I knew next to nothing about it until I was a dialysis nurse.

As I got treatment going, the mother, who lives in Virginia, fielded phone calls about her daughter from friends and relatives. The treatment was scheduled to be short-- only 2 hours. This is typical for someone new to dialysis, or someone who does not normally get dialysis treatment. Since there are frequently complications in early treatments, I asked the patient about those complications. She was fine. And so was the mother; I could tell that it comforted her to know that I knew at least a little bit about what I was doing.

About 40 minutes into treatment, my patient started looking better and became more responsive. As the toxins in her blood-- toxins that affected her level of lucidity-- were pulled from her blood, her condition rapidly improved. I could feel her mother's relief as she began answering questions, something she hadn't been able to do that morning.

My patient's mother asked my patient if she wanted some diet ginger ale. I checked with the primary nurse to make sure she wasn't on fluid restrictions, and her mother helped her sip it as she quietly chatted with her, telling her about her friends, her boyfriend and her relatives asking about her.

Toward the end of treatment, the mother thanked me for taking on the extra shift to treat her daughter. It was not a problem, I told her, and I meant it.

I worked hard to finish nursing school. I was lucky enough to get a job quickly, and am happy that after four years of sacrifice-- time given up with family, financial sacrifice-- that I've got a job that's paying me pretty good money. On the other hand, I've had this job long enough to hate aspects of it.

But last night, seeing my patient improve because of my treatment, and seeing the relief in a fellow parent's face as she saw her daughter's condition improve-- that is what it is all about. All the past sacrifice and current aggravation are worth it in spades.

RIP Anne Keegan, a Chicago Original

2012-01-21T13:32:00.010-06:00

A few weeks ago, I stopped into the restaurant I worked my way through nursing school at to say hello to some of my old co-workers. I discovered, talking to them, that one of my favorite regulars, reporter and author Anne Keegan, passed away last May.

For a long time, I waited on Ms. Keegan not knowing who she was; I'd read her articles in the Chicago Tribune since I was a kid, but I had no idea what she looked like. In reading her obit, I discovered that there was a reason for this: she refused to create a "personna" for herself, much to the frustration of the Tribune.

I originally ended up waiting on Ms. Keegan for the simple fact that I was the only one who wasn't afraid of her. She intimidated the other servers. Having worked as a teacher on the tough West Side of Chicago, I wasn't easily intimidated. I suspect this may have endeared me to Ms. Keegan. Once she lowered her guard, she was a fascinating, warm and charming person.

Ms. Keegan spent her career writing about the regular Joes and Janes of the world. In a blog post, an old Tribune co-worker captures her duality-- a lady who was very charming, but the next minute could outswear a trucker.

She also authored two books. These also showed her dichotomy. Her first was "On the Street Doing Life," about a tough-as-nails Chicago cop. The other, published just a few years ago, was a children's book about a cat that she wrote for her granddaughter.

I remember my last couple of encounters with Ms. Keegan, at the restaurant. She liked sitting in front of the restaurant so that she could pop outside to smoke a cigarette. She had her usual drink-- she loved that I remembered it-- and usually something light to eat. The last couple of times I saw her, it was late, so the restaurant wasn't very busy and I got a chance to chat with her. She was, as always, interesting and gracious. She was a Chicago original, and I'm glad I got the opportunity to know her. She will be missed.

"All's Well That Ends Well" Friday Random Ten

2012-01-20T21:59:00.005-06:00

I was relieved today when I got my assignment; it was the hospital closest to my home. A snowstorm was expected here in Chicago, and I was glad to know that when I came out to a "winter wonderland" I'd have only a short drive home.

As my day wound down, I was closely watching one of my patients, who showed signs of instability. My other patient (we do dialysis on two patients at once in the "acute room") was stable-- or so I thought. With no warning, his eyes glazed over, his blood pressure dropped precipitously and his breathing stopped.

My mind raced, remembering what we'd been told to do in this scenario. I opened up the saline line he was attached to and poured saline into him and shouted to the other nurse in the room to call a code. She got on the phone and called it while the respiratory therapist, who miraculously happened to be in the room because we'd called him because the other three patients in the room kept having respiratory alarms, and my friend Jojo, a very, very experienced dialysis nurse was also miraculously in the room. The respiratory therapist started CPR while Jojo and I set about returning his blood and disconnecting him from the dialysis machine. The crash team was there nearly instantly, along with the house doctor. They "bagged" the patient-- put a vent bag on him, continued the CPR and gave him epinephrine.

Several minutes later, he was breathing on his own and his blood pressure was normal.

My heart was racing a thousand miles an hour. I still had my other patient to take care of, and needed to make sure all my ducks were in a row with documentation.

My patient was taken to the HAU (High Acuity Unit, which is what we call the ICU now), where he'd been taken out of only a day or so before. Obviously he was taken out too soon.

I had to call the patient's nephrologist, which wasn't so bad-- and then my boss. I didn't know until after I called her, but Jojo had had a patient code as well this week. His patient didn't make it.

At the end of it, I still had to go find my patient in the HAU and flush his dialysis ports with saline and dwell a med that keeps them from clotting. I kept my cool and did my job.

After I got everything documented, charted, cleaned and put away, I grabbed the form I need to fill out for the company and headed out the door. I stopped at Trader Joe's on the way home and grabbed something for dinner and some wine. I'm enjoying a much-needed glass right now. It all ended well. My patient's still alive.

1. Absolutely Sweet Marie- Bob Dylan
2. Accidents Will Happen- Elvis Costello & the Attractions
3. Ace of Spades- Motörhead
4. Across the River- Bruce Hornsby and the Range
5. Across the Universe- The Beatles
6. Adam Raised a Cain- Bruce Springsteen
7. Add It Up- The Violent Femmes
8. Adult Books- X
9. AEIOU Sometimes Y- EBN-OZN
10. After the Gold Rush- Neil Young

Notes:
1. Jason and the Scorchers do a great cover of this one.
2. Still miss the angry Elvis Costello
3. Motörhead singing about the death card
4. Love this song, about a woman having to admit defeat-- temporarily
5. This is the version from the "Let It Be Naked" version, where Phil Spector's silly strings and heavenly choruses that were added without the Beatles got taken out.
6. A blistering song from the great "Darkness On the Edge of Town" album.
7. Even frat boys discovering this song couldn't ruin it for me.
8. Just replaced my copy of "The Unheard Music," the great documentary about X. It's one of those things you lend out and never get back because it gets lent out again.
9. Love this synthy, quirkly one-hit wonder from the eighties.
10. The band "Prelude" had a one-hit wonder with a cover of this song, in 1974

Book Review: "A Man On the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts," by Andrew Chaikin

2012-01-19T22:12:00.004-06:00

Full disclosure: I'm a bona fide space geek.

That being said, Andrew Chaikin's book is basically a biography of the Apollo space program, the program that allowed a dozen human beings to walk the surface of the moon. It's also about not only the physical journey the men (in the less enlightened all-male early NASA days) took, but the intellectual, life and spritual journeys the men took. It was also largely the basis of the great HBO mini-series "From the Earth to the Moon."

In May, 1961, the month I was born, the United States' new president, John F. Kennedy, spoke before a joint session of Congress and proposed something that must have seemed preposterous at the time: to land a man on the moon and return him safely before the end of the decade. Earlier that month, Alan Shepard had become-- just barely-- the first American to fly into space with a fifteen minute flight that did not even orbit the earth.

The journey to fulfilling that promise, on July 20, 1969, was a fascinating one that involved scientific and engineering ingenuity, political wrangling, personal sacrifice-- including lives-- and the dedication of many thousands of men and women. The men who were at the point of the spear that was pointed at the heavens and the moon, the astronauts, were, on the surface, very similar: white, male military (or former military) officers who were in their late thirties and early to late forties. Beneath the surface, however, they were remarkably different in background, interests, temperment, and even politics. The paths they took to becoming part of the select few who made the journey to the moon and back were diverse, but the paths they took afterward were just as diverse. Some, like Frank Borman, who headed the now-defunct Eastern Airlines, became businessmen. Others took less worldly paths: Al Bean became an artist, recreating his memories of the moon on canvas. Jim Irwin, who had never been particularly spiritual before becoming the eighth human being to walk on the moon, was profoundly moved by his experience, and spent the rest of his life as a minister after returning to earth.

Chaikin's book lays out the history of the Apollo program beautifully, putting it in the context of the times and avoiding overly technical jargon. He humanizes the astronauts, who were often placed on pedestals, and in the process making them much more interesting. He recognizes the contributions of the many people of many talents who brought about one of the United States' greatest triumphs. In doing so, the book makes a compelling argument for why we should once again reach for the stars.

When Did That Happen?

2012-01-12T20:24:00.003-06:00

The other day, I was running round doing errands on a rare day off and I happened to drive past the park where my son spent six wonderful years playing little league.

As I looked over, I remember dozens of days watching him play baseball, chatting with the other parents. I remembered how as each season progressed, he became closer to his teammates and, while happy my ex and I were there watching the games, it was more and more his own thing; he and his teammates talked about the bats they used, stances and other fine points of the game.

In a few weeks, he turns 18-- a legal adult. A few months after that, he's going off to college.

I remember being the most scared guy in the world the first time I picked him up after his birth. I couldn't believe I was responsible for this little guy for the next 18 years. That time seemed a million years away. And now it's nearly here.

When did that happen?

The New Job, Three Months In

2011-12-18T11:46:00.002-06:00

So my blogging has been scarce, lately, largely due to my being exhausted, working insane hours. We'd lost a couple of people on our team-- one moved to Nevada and one went back to his old job. This week, I worked a more normal schedule-- only about 40 hours. A couple of people who were training came online this week, easing our workload a bit. I'll miss the overtime, but love catching up on sleep.

Where do I begin? My first couple of weeks were terrifying. No matter how many situations arose while I was training, there were bound to be things that came up that I hadn't seen yet. Fortunately, they are wise enough to make sure to schedule us "newbies" with a veteran dialysis nurse nearby for the first couple of months so that we can get some help if needed.

The first patient I did dialysis on my own was a bit eerie; he was born the exact same day as I was, May 11, 1961. It was strange thinking about the paths our lives took since that day-- here he was in an ICU with renal failure and a bunch of other problems, and I was the one treating him. It made me glad I have taken pretty good care of myself healthwise.

Since then, I have learned a ton. Things that were difficult or made me nervous have become routine. Problems that pop up have solutions-- I've seen them before. On Friday, I found myself helping out one of the new "newbies." Still, I've still got a lot to learn-- I'm still trying to master "cannulating" a patient when I have to use a needle to do the dialysis, rather than a catheter. One of the veterans, Jojo, gave me the advice that I'll feel fairly comfortable doing this when I'm six months in. I'm looking forward to it.

A month ago, something happened that I knew was going to happen sometime-- I just thought it would happen later, rather than sooner. I was called on my "call" night to do an emergency dialysis. I got there to discover that they had come close to cancelling the treatment. The patient was extremely unstable. Most of the family members wanted to forego any more treatment; only one, the woman's oldest child, a daughter, wanted to go ahead with treatment. I huddled with the primary nurse and a the physician. The physician had done a consult with a neurologist. The woman, who was only 48 years old, was brain dead. I asked the primary nurse, and experienced ICU nurse, if he believed that the patient was stable enough to undergo dialysis. He said he did.

The primary nurse gave the patient some meds to raise her blood pressure temporarily for treatment. I proceeded with treatment, but was still having trouble keeping her blood pressure up. The primary nurse, who was training someone, was in and out of the room a lot. About an hour in, I started having a lot of trouble with the blood pressure. The primary nurse popped in and looked at the cardiac telemetry and told me that the patient had "coded" the last two times she had shown the cardiac pattern she was presenting. I decided to take her off treatment. I hurriedly returned her blood, and as I disconnected her from the dialysis machine, the "crash team" descended on her. She "flat-lined"-- after I got her off the machine, fortunately. They got her heart going for about 20 minutes, but they knew she was dying. Family members were called in. I left the room to allow them in, and to go notify the night supervisor of what was going on. He reminded me to make sure all the paperwork was filled out to the nines.

The woman died right in front of me and 8 or 9 other medical professionals, and a dozen family members.

Later, as I filled out the paperwork, I had to find out the admitting diagnosis-- abdominal pain. It sounded to me like she might have had a ruptured aortic aneurysm. If that was the case, dialysis-- or almost any other thing any medical professional-- was not going to help her.

I was pretty shaken, but when the night supervisor asked if I would come out to where he was and finish a treatment for him, I jumped at the chance. This is what I do. I'm a nurse.

A lot of my patients are in bad, bad shape-- they have "co-morbidities;" other things wrong with them medically. For a lot of my patients, the dialysis I'm doing is only managing the end. Sometimes, though, something happens that makes you realize that you're doing some good.

About two months ago, not long after I finished training, I got called out to a hospital that's about 40 miles away-- the same hospital as my patient who died. It was a "stat" treatment-- one that needed to be done right away. I got there and assessed my patient. He was in "fluid overload." His kidneys, ruined by diabetes, could not take water out of his body. He was gasping for breath-- when someone is in fluid overload, the fluid backs up into their lungs. He was miserable. His family stood around his bed, obviously very worried. As I got set up, the family said good-bye and told him they'd come to see him tomorrow.

I'd only been in the hospital once before, while training, so it took me a little time to figure out where everything was. I finally got my patient on and treatment proceeded. About two hours into the treatment, I could hear he was breathing much easier. I was astonished at how much fluid I was able to pull from him. Toward the end of the treatment, he started chatting-- he was delighted to find out that I speak Spanish pretty well (he was latino). He even managed to crack a smile and laugh a couple of times.

Later that night, as I drove home, I remembered how irritated I'd been I'd been called from the hospital I'd been at, which was five blocks from my home, to a hospital 40 miles away. I thought of the family-- how happy they were going to be in the morning when they visit my patient and discover him to be feeling much, much better. And I realized that I was pretty happy to be in my profession.

The "Christmas Approaches" Friday Random Ten

2011-12-17T10:03:00.004-06:00

Been busy as hell at work; worked 65 hours last week, 55 the week before. This week I came in at a more modest just-under-40. It's good to rest this weekend.

Got the last of my Christmas gifts ordered yesterday. It'll be nice to be sharing the overtime I'm earning with my family, who had to tighten the belt along with me while I went to nursing school.

1. Back On The Chain Gang- The Pretenders
2. You're a Big Girl Now- Bob Dylan
3. Cities In Dust- Siouxie and the Banshees
4. Hey, St. Peter- Flash and the Pan
5. Red House- The Jimi Hendrix Experience
6. Ain't That A Kick In the Head?- Dean Martin
7. Memories Can't Wait- Living Color
8. Kitty's Back- Bruce Springsteen
9. Fisherman's Blues- The Waterboys
10. California Girls- The Beach Boys

Notes:
1. Imagine being a member of the Pretenders in the eighties-- they had a 50% death rate
2. From "Blood On the Tracks," Bob Dylan's divorce album.
3. Oh to be 25 again and in 1986 again and have this one blasting at the Exit...
4. Seventies New Wavy one-hit wonder by a couple of former members of the Easybeats ("Friday On My Mind")
5. I'm pretty sure this song got played by the band at every party I was at in high school in the seventies.
6. How I somehow missed this song until a few years ago is beyond me. Love this one.
7. A great Talking Heads cover by one of my favorite bands from the nineties.
8. From Springsteen's second record.
9. Title track from one of my favorite records of the nineties.
10. Just heard today that the surviving Beach Boys are reuniting for a tour.

To the Goalpost Friday Random Ten

2011-11-11T11:23:00.002-06:00

I know I've been ~~threatening~~ promising to post more often, but as a guy with a kid about to go off to college, it's hard to say no to extra work shifts, especially when they go into overtime-- and time and a half pay. Just got a text asking me to come in, and am still deciding; I'm already working doubles tomorrow, Sunday and Monday.

But the work news is good. I had my 90 day evaluation a couple of days ago. I had forgotten about it, or I'd have been nervous; at the 90 day evaluation, they decide whether to keep you or not. They don't have to have any reason in particular to let you go. I think it's their way of being able to get rid of people who may be competent, but have personality problems or something. In any event, my phone conference with my boss was short and sweet. She told me I was doing a great job. It was nice to hear that.

After dealing with the crap I did when I was a teacher-- a principal who was openly hostile toward me for unknown reasons-- it is nice to be appreciated for taking my work seriously and constantly trying to improve. And after four years of horrendous financial stress, it's been nice to be able to do little things, like treat me family to Chinese take-out, go to dinner with my wife, give my daughter a few bucks when she's going out with her friends or take my son to a museum. Every day I'm reminded that I made the right decision-- and an investment-- when I made the decision to go to nursing school. With my positive 90 day evaluation, I've passed the last goalpost in that journey. I'm where I set out to be four years ago.

1. Pleasant Street- Tim Buckley
2. Long May You Run- Stills Young Band
3. Make Your Own Kind of Music- Mama Cass Elliot
4. Superstition- Stevie Wonder
5. Lean On Me- Bill Withers
6. Nebraska- Bruce Springsteen
7. You Can't Be Too Strong- Graham Parker & the Rumour
8. Mastercharge- Albert Collins
9. Always Something (There To Remind Me)- Naked Eyes
10. One Last Kiss- J. Geils Band

Notes:
1. Jeff Buckley's father. Like his son, he has attained cult status and had an early death. Great book about them, David Brown's "Dream Brother: The Lives and Music of Jeff and Tim Buckley"
2. On the Decade collection, Neil Young dedicated this song to his first car and last girlfriend.
3. Got a soft spot in my heart for the Mamas and Papas.
4. Pre "I Just Called To Say I Love You" Stevie Wonder
5. One of R and B's great voices.
6. Title track from an album that is tied with "Born To Run" as my favorite Springsteen album.
7. From "Squeezing Out Sparks," one of my favorite albums of the seventies.
8. I was lucky enough to see Mr. Collins perform a couple of times while he was still alive.
9. Still love this song. It's on my daughter's ipod too these days.
10. One of the great break-up songs. Ever.

The Two Weeks in and a Day Late Saturday Random Ten

2011-10-29T11:02:00.004-05:00

I just finished my second week as an official working nurse. I've got some reflections on that coming. But for now, I've got to get my Friday Random Ten posted, a day late.

1. Telstar- The Tornadoes
2. Welfare Mothers- Neil Young
3. Deep Purple- Nino Tempo and April Stevens
4. Baby Love- The Supremes
5. Yellow Submarine- The Beatles
6. 1969- The Stooges
7. All-American Alien Boy- Ian Hunter
8. Hejira- Joni Mitchell
9. Come On Eileen- Dexy's Midnight Runners
10. Right Place Wrong Time- Dr. John

Notes:
1. I heard on the radio a few months ago that the Beatles were not the first British group to have a #1 hit in the United States; it was this group with this one-hit wonder.
2. Love this rocker from "Rust Never Sleeps."
3. A sweet little one hit wonder from a brother and sister duo.
4. One of the many great Motown hits written by the fabled Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting team.
5. Hey, they had to let Ringo sing sometimes, right?
6. Is 1969 okay, all across the USA?
7. Gotta add seeing Ian Hunter in concert to my bucket list.
8. The title track to one of my desert-island albums
9. This one-hit wonder might have been followed by other hits if singer Kevin Rowland wasn't such a dick.
10. One of many great songs put to good use on the "Dazed and Confused" soundtrack.

Johnny Yen's One-Hit Wonders: "Pillow Talk" by Sylvia

2011-10-17T10:56:00.003-05:00

I'm apologizing for maybe the dozenth time for my dearth of blogging the last year or so. You've heard all the excuses already-- the second and final year of nursing school, now having two kids in high school, the unexpected move and the exhaustion from learning my new nursing job. No excuses today. I finished with my training on Friday-- on the floor by myself tomorrow. I'm in the last day of a three-day weekend. It's a beautiful, cold, sunny October day here in Chicago. I've got Little Steven's Underground Garage streaming on the computer, playing great tunes. No more excuses. Back to blogging.

Just to remind about the "One-Hit Wonders:" speaking of Little Steven, he once pointed out that it's harder to create an immortal three-minute song than to create an elaborate orchestra piece. Rock and roll One-hit wonders have fascinating stories; the stars align for just a moment in the universe, the elements come together, and a rock and roll gem is created.

I keep a list of future "One-Hit wonders" on my computer. The little Mac Powerbook that got me through two years of nursing school prerequisites and two years of nursing school itself crapped out just after the move. Fortunately, my friend Greg had shown me how to use "Time Machine," and I was recently able to retrieve my list. I decided my next one would be either Sylvia's "Pillow Talk" or the Kingsmen's "Louie, Louie." Recent events prompted me to do the former.

Sylvia Robinson's "Pillow Talk" was her only solo hit, but not the only hit song she was involved with. Born Sylvia Vanderpool, her first brush with the Top 40 was at the dawn of the rock and roll era, 1956, as half of "Mickey and Sylvia," with the song "Love Is Strange," which was written by rock and roll legend Bo Diddley, along with Jody Williams. Ms. Robinson continued until 1959 as half of the duo, when she went solo and married Joe Robinson.

She wrote the song "Pillow Talk" for Al Green who passed on it for "religious reasons," and ended up doing the song herself, releasing it in 1973. It hit Number 3 in the Billboard pop chart and #1 in the Soul charts. In retrospect, it seems like a no-brainer; Ms. Robinson's smoky, sexy voice was made for the song. The "climactic finish" anticipated Donna Summers' "Love To Love You" a few years later. The song is also cited as one of the first disco hits.

Robinson never had another chart hit of her own, but was hugely influential in the record business. She continued to write and produce music, founding Sugar Hill Records in the 1970's; Sugar Hill was a pioneer in hip-hop music. Working with Nile Rodgers and the Sugarhill Gang, she released "Rapper's Delight," the first big rap record. She also co-wrote and produced the socially aware rap song "The Message," by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.

Ms. Robinson eventually divorced Joe Robinson, but remained in the record business. After Sugar Hill Records folded, she formed Bon Ami records, which had success with the group "Naughty By Nature."

Sylvia Robinson passed away recently, dying of congestive heart failure in Seacaucus, New Jersey at the age of 75.

The Payoff Friday Random Ten

2011-10-14T21:01:00.003-05:00

The last 48 hours have been some of the most hard-working, exhausting-- and rewarding-- two days of my life.

Yesterday, I worked 16 hours. Two patients, two different hospitals. Lots of problems, a good preceptor helping me deal with them and learn for future patients. I worked from 7 am to 11 pm. I had to go home and grab a few hours of sleep-- I had to be back at 7 am for my last day of training, and a test-- working with two patients at once. Since dialysis is pretty much like working in an Intensive Care Unit (in fact we work bedside with a lot of ICU patients), it's intense. But things that were difficult to do are now effortless. The voluminous paperwork and charting is now easy. And physical skills like changing a dressing or putting a needle in a patient to do dialysis are getting easier and easier every time I do them. Things that terrified me are run-in-the-mill now. At the end of today-- only a twelve and a half hour day-- I felt like "Wow-- I can do this."

I feel really good for not only having overcome fear, anxiety, money problems, out and out exhaustion at times, but have come to realize that this was great for my kids to see: that if you set a goal, and don't let difficulties stop you, that you can reach your goals, goals that bring great rewards-- financial, self-respect and just discovering just what you're capable of. And that is the payoff.

1. Shoot Out the Lights- Richard Thompson
2. Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment- The Ramones
3. I Keep On Dancing- The Gentrys
4. Norman- Sue Thompson
5 Play That Funky Music White Boy- Wild Cherry
6. Willpower- The Replacements
7. Louie, Louie- Motorhead
8. Can't Stop the Rain- The Washington Squares
9. Sausalito Summernight- Diesel
10. With God On Our Side- Bob Dylan and Joan Baez

Notes:
1. One of the most brilliant, harrowing songs about a marital breakup. I also have a brilliant live cover of this one by Bob Mould.
2. Most groups would be happy to write one song as great as this one. The Ramones wrote about 25 of them. And they can all fit on one cd.
3. Rock Critic Dave Marsh listed this one in the "Rock Book of Lists" in "Songs That Have a False Ending."
4. A weird little one-hit wonder
5. One of the great one-hit wonders of the seventies.
6. From the great "Hootenanny" album.
7. I think I have about ten versions of "Louie, Louie" on my Ipod.
8. The Washington Squares were three people from the New York punk rock scene who formed a "Peter, Paul and Mary" politically-oriented group in the eighties. Their first album is wonderful.
9. Lots of one-hit wonders. This was from 1981 by the Dutch group Diesel.
10. Steve Jobs' obits mentioned that Steve Jobs had dated Joan Baez when he was young; remember reading that years ago, but had forgotten about it.

The "Overdue Day Off" Friday Random Ten

2011-09-30T08:13:00.004-05:00

I was working yesterday-- in the midst of my third double of the week-- when I realized that I'm not actually done with my training despite the fact that I'm pretty much working as a dialysis nurse at this point. My unit is so short of people that they're trying really hard to accelerate training so they can get us on the floor working. Not a bad spot to be in. I like the job a lot; it's interesting and I work with a lot of nice people. And it sure is nice knowing I'm helping people in the process of making a living.

I was on overtime after about five o'clock yesterday, so I got a day off today. I used some of the time to catch up with an old friend on the phone, some of it to catch up on my errands and some of it to rest. It wasn't until I actually rested that I realized how exhausted I'd been; new job, tons of new skills, lots of hours. I still have a bunch of stuff to learn and skills to master. But I was showing a co-worker/trainee (who has himself shown me better ways to do things on many occasions) an easier way to put a tagaderm dressing over a catheter and had a moment where I suddenly realized what I'd done. I realized that I was doing things that I never would have believed I could have done just four years ago. I am trusted to set up a complicated and expensive machine and attach peoples lifeline-- their blood vessels-- to that machine and give them treatment that they would otherwise die without. It kind of blew my mind. And made me feel like I'd done something beyond making sure that I'd get a nice paycheck next Friday. And damn that's a good feeling.

And I have to admit that the financial aspect is something that's been satisfying. I have a nice little pile of debts that'll need to be taken care of in the next six months or so, and it'll get taken care of. But today I actually felt confident enough of my financial future to add internet listening-- at the cost of $2.99 a month over the cost of the basic service (which is $12.95 a month) to my Sirius/XM satellite radio. I got even crazier and signed up for the free trial of the New York Times on my Kindle; I anticipate being able to spring for the $19.99 a month for the service after the free trial is done in two weeks (it also allows me to have unlimited access to it on the computer). After four years of sweating about money, it's nice to be able to ease up a bit. And after 17 years of worrying about where my son's college money will come from, it's nice to stop worrying about that.

1. Twistin' the Night Away- Sam Cooke
2. Why Me?- The Planet P Project
3. It Isn't Gonna Be That Way- Steve Forbert
4. No Feelings- The Sex Pistols
5. TSOP- MFSB
6. Golden Slumbers- The Beatles
7. Time To Kill- The Band
8. I Hate Rock and Roll- The Jesus and Mary Chain
9. Pack Up Your Sorrows- Richard and Mimi Farina
10. Door Number 3- Steve Goodman

Notes:
1. This song always makes me think of the movie "Animal House."
2. A nugget from the early eighties
3. Forbert had a hit with "Romeo's Tune," but has a bunch of other great songs, including this one.
4. God, that one and only Sex Pistols album still sounds great, doesn't it?
5. Great almost-instrumental from 1974 (there's a chorus by The Three Degrees at the end). "TSOP" is "The Sound of Philadelphia," and "MFSB" is "Mother Father Sister Brother." The Three Degrees would later have their own hit with "When Will I See You Again?"
6. From "Abbey Road," the last Beatles album (Though "Let It Be" had been recorded earlier and shelved, it was released later)
7. From the great "Stagefright" record
8. I always have to crank this song to "11" whenever I hear it.
9. Mimi was Joan Baez' sister. Her husband Richard was killed in a motorcycle accident on the way home from the party to celebrate the publication of his book "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me."
10. Goodman wrote this comic take on "Let's Make a Deal" with his friend Jimmy Buffett.

Seriously, Let's Get A Grip, People

2011-09-19T21:02:00.003-05:00

In the last couple of weeks, there's been a big hullabaloo over Netflix raising its prices. Let's put it all in perspective.

First off, to continue the plan I've been using, the ten buck "one disc out, unlimited streaming," will go up to 16 bucks. Okay, yes, that is a 60 percent increase. But let's put in perspective. I went out running tonight and ran 40% further than I ran last time. This meant, in reality, that this fifty-year-old ran 16 blocks instead of twelve. Sounds like a lot more when you say "40 percent," but in reality not much more. The fact of the matter is that at 16 bucks, my plan is still a great deal. My kids stream their South Park and scary movies and I stream my documentaries (many of which are only available this way), old television shows and artsy movies. And I can get my one disc at a time-- usually classics and more arty movies. And we can watch different shows at once, on our big tv connected to the Wii, on most of the household computers and even on our ipods.

I've followed Netflix-- and been a customer (as well as getting my folks started on it) for 6 or 7 years now. They've taken a daring business model and improved on it, as technology has changed. And they've actually been able to turn a well-deserved profit; according to Wikipedia, they turned a $283 million profit on a $2.17 billion gross, a healthy 13% profit. As they expand the percentage of their offerings as streaming, they'll absolutely have to pay more. That's the way the world works, kiddies; if they're offering more service, they'll have to pay a little more for it and so shall we. I still consider the sixteen bucks a month I pay for Netflix a bargain.

The "Quiet Night In" Friday Random Ten

2011-09-16T21:59:00.004-05:00

I'm in my second month of training to be a dialysis nurse. In the last week, my preceptors have been letting me do most of the treatment. I've finally gotten the hang of setting the dialysis machine up, and connecting the patients up to it. Since most of my patients are "acute care," most of them have venous catheters, but some have "fistulas" or grafts, which entails putting needles in. I've gotten to do that twice in the last week. I don't find it terrifying anymore. I'm realizing that a lot of what I do would make a lot of people faint. It comes with the job.

They've been trying to rotate me through the hospitals I'll be working at so that I can know where equipment is, who I'll have to talk to and work with, etc. I've still got a couple of hospitals to go. Ironically, they're two of the ones closest to my home.

There was a lot of work this week. I had to leave work by 1:30 today, because I'd hit 40 hours; my manager doesn't want us to go into overtime while we're training. After we're done training, overtime will be no problem; we can work as much as we want or can handle. With a kid going off to college in less than a year and a ton of bills left over from nursing school, I'm okay with that.

It wasn't all work, though, this week. My old friend Larry was in town. We met when we were next-door neighbors in a dorm at Eastern Illinois University in 1982. I watched the last episode of MASH in his dorm room (he had a then-coveted color tv in his room). I found myself wishing that I didn't have to get up at 5am the next morning, and that I had about 20 more hours to talk to him. He lives in Connecticut these days and is hoping to move back here to Chicago, where he's from. I, for one, can't wait. He's proof that great friendships are like fine wine, improving with age.

In the meantime, as this week draws to an end, I find a bit of humor. I never thought that an eight hour workday would seem short. I never thought that being able to run a couple of miles without my knee screaming would be so thrilling. And I never thought a quiet night in some good tunes, a glass of Merlot and blogging would be my idea of a great night. But here it is.

1. Magical Misery Tour- National Lampoon
2. White Rabbit- The Jefferson Airplane
3. Breaking Us In Two- Joe Jackson
4. Gut Feeling/Slap Your Mammy- Devo
5. Senor- Bob Dylan
6. Chemistry Class- Elvis Costello
7. Long Time Gone- Crosby, Stills and Nash
8. The Stripper- David Rose
9. I Believe- Joe Satriani
10. I Got You (I Feel Good)- James Brown

Notes:
1. A spoof of John Lennon composed of actual (and outrageous) John Lennon quotes that was performed by Tony Hedra, who is best known as Spinal Tap's road manager and his best-selling book "Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul."
2. My son and I were just discussing this song last weekend. Love the scene with Benecio Del Toro in "Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas" revolving around this song.
3. This song takes me right back to my life in 1982.
4. From the first Devo record, which still blows me away when I hear it.
5. From 1978's "Street Legal." Not Dylan's best album by any stretch, but it has its moments, including this haunting song.
6. Man, "Armed Forces" still sounds great.
7. David Crosby wrote this after Bobby Kennedy's assassination.
8. I've actually got the 45 of this, which I got from my aunt in a big batch of 45's she gave me years ago. That seems very, very wrong, somehow.
9. Rock critic Dave Marsh, who I generally respect, called Joe Satriani one of the top ten stupidest rockers in his 1981 book "The Rock Book of Lists," but I love this song.
10. One of my earliest memories was being about four years old, at my neighbor's house, watching James Brown sing this song on the television. I was hooked for life.

The "One Month In" Friday Random Ten

2011-09-02T18:32:00.004-05:00

Today marked the end of my first month as a nurse. We had three days of classroom training, ending with a final on Wednesday. I got a 93%, well above the minimum 85% I needed to get. I was happy to finally get into the field and work a couple of days as a nurse. I'll be working with a preceptor for the next month.

Yesterday, I had an experience that made me realize I'm beginning to know what I'm doing. My patient was doing well, then suddenly her blood pressure started dropping fast (we monitor the blood pressure constantly). She told my preceptor and I that she had a headache (a common side-effect of dialysis), and then I noticed a change in her demeanor and pallor. My preceptor, who obviously had a lot more experience than I, noticed it too. We tried a couple of interventions without result, and quickly decided to end the treatment. She quickly recovered. I was happy to realize that I had recognized this event that up until now had been just something we talked about in the classroom.

Today I was working with my first patient of the day, who had only recently discovered he had renal failure; this was only his third dialysis session.

When a patient is either new to dialysis or a temporary patient, we use a catheter to gain access to their veins; it's similar to an iv, but has two lines and is placed in one of the big veins in the neck or upper chest. We try to limit their use because they are prone to infections. This can be a real problem because they can spread infections throughout the body since they're placed in big veins. If someone will be getting dialysis for a long time-- even the rest of their life-- surgeons create a thing called an arterio-venous fistula or an arterio-venous graft. In the first, a surgeon connects a big vein and a big artery in the upper or lower arm, creating a place we can access for dialysis. In the latter, a surgeon uses either a donor vein or an artifical tube to connect an artery or vein. It doesn't look pretty, but it's way safer for the patient, with only 1/7 th infection rate of a catheter.

In any event, my patient was clearly scared and confused. My preceptor and I answered a few questions he had. Later, a young resident walked in and told him that he would go later for an ultrasound to map out his veins for a fistula or graft. As she blabbered, I could see the anxiety and fear level in his eyes rise. I tried as politely as I could, trying not to step on her toes, to suggest that a little "patient education" might help. She completely missed the cue. She walked out, and so I explained to my patient what fistulas and grafts were and why they were beneficial. His anxiety level dropped notedly.

I helped my preceptor set up the last patient of the day. He was obviously diabetic, and had lost a leg to the disease. A son and a daughter. who were in their forties, were there caring for him. The son had to leave for a while. As we were getting ready for the dialysis, it became clear that our patient needed his adult diaper changed. His daughter struggled to change it, and was going to call the nurse's aide. I told her I would help, and showed her how a little easier way to do it. She was very, very grateful. I realized later that she had appreciated not only the help but that I'd helped her father preserve his dignity. Between this moment and the others in the last couple of days, I realized that I was in the right profession.

1. Soul Survivor- The Rolling Stones
2. Baby, I Love Your Way- Peter Frampton
3. Crystal Ship- The Doors
4. Low- Cracker
5. Just Got Lucky- The Joboxers
6. Livin' In a Fool's Paradise- Mose Allison
7. Theme From Shaft- Isaac Hayes
8 You're On My Mind- The Dirtbombs
9. Morning Sky- Chris Hillman
10. Incense and Peppermint- The Strawberry Alarm Clock

Notes:
1. The closing track on "Exile On Main Street," the greatest rock album ever recorded.
2. Was never crazy about this song, but reconsidered it after hearing Lisa Bonet singing it in "High Fidelity."
3. My son was telling me a year or so ago that he was surprised to discover that the Doors' self-titled first album was not a "greatest hits" package. A phenomenal debut.
4. Just have to crank this one when it comes up on the radio or shuffle. Got one of my top ten favorite lines in a song ever, "Don't you wanna go down/Like a junkie Cosmonaut?"
5. This snappy little single stood out, even in a year full of snappy little singles, 1983.
6. Heard this song a lot as a young guy, but didn't know who did the version I heard. Thanks to Youtube, I was able to figure out it was Mose Allison.
7. Issac Hayes had written lots of hits for others before he finally had one with this smash hit. This song was on the jukebox at the Gingerman Tavern in Chicago in the late eighties through the early nintie; it was played 25-30 times a night, and every single time, every patron (myself included) would shout "Shut yo mouth" at the appropriate time.
8. This was originally done by Ronnie Wood's old band The Birds (not to be confused with Chris Hillman's old band, The Byrds).
9. Hillman's a founding member of the Byrds (not to be confused with Ronnie Wood's old band, The Birds)
10. I never get tired of hearing this big hunk of psychedelic cheese.

The Progress Report

2011-08-24T20:44:00.003-05:00

Facebook has had a new feature-- either that or I never noticed it until recently-- in which it puts up a couple of posts from the same date a year or two ago. Today, one of the old posts was from two years ago; two years ago today, I started nursing school.

On Monday, my nursing license number was finally posted on the Illinois state website, meaning that it's officially official-- I'm a nurse.

A couple of funny things have happened in the last week. First, I was sent to a hospital in Evanston, Illinois, just north of Chicago. As I walked into the hospital, I looked at the pictures they always post of the big honchos at the hospital. I had a good chuckle as a I saw the picture and name of the chief of surgery at the hospital. It was Michael P., my high school nemesis.

Actually, he and I had run into one another in 1999 at our 20th high school reunion. It seemed like everybody at my high school had become either an architect or a physician (one high school friend, Fritz, had become an architect, then a physician, no joke.) I ran into Michael P., who was now a physician. He had, for reasons known only to him, deemed it his life's work in our freshman year of high school, to make my life miserable. At the reunion, he was polite and contrite. I imagine I'll run into him at some point. I'm glad we buried the hatchet more than a decade ago.

Running in to old enemies seemed to be a theme recently. In nursing school, I got on fine with almost everybody there. Okay, everybody but one person. "S." had some kind of chip on her shoulder about me. I never figured it out. But we just did not mix well. And of course, we always ended up in clinicals together, and were always stuck with one another, unwilling partners.

Yesterday, I was at St. J's, a hospital I love working at. As I was walking in, S. and I ran into one another. Turns out that she works there now, on the same floor that the dialysis "acutes" room I'll be working at when I'm at that hospital is. I had a good chuckle. We made our polite hellos, but I had to fight a smirk. Whatever her problem is, it's her problem, not mine. She's got to deal with me.

In any event, I'm digging the work. Dialysis is a whole bunch of problem solving. I'm a problem-solver by nature. It appeals to me a lot. I think that eventually I'll want to try other areas of nursing, but for now, this one is suiting me just fine.

A Good Exhaustion Friday Random Ten

2011-08-19T19:38:00.005-05:00

I've just finished my second week of training as a dialysis nurse. The dialysis machines, which looked impossibly complicated two weeks ago are beginning to make sense. I'm starting to understand the medical difficulties of dialysis (more on that another time) and the management difficulties.

I'm working the last few weeks of the waitering job I worked through school. I was supposed to work tonight. I was not looking forward to it; I'm exhausted from my nursing job this week. It would be merely tiring as it were, but the huge amount of stuff to learn is making it even more exhausting-- but a good exhausting. Fortunately for me-- unfortunately for my co-workers who don't have another full-time job like I do-- it was dead. Not a good sign in a restaurant that was packed to the rafters on Friday nights before the change in ownership. I was glad to turn around, run home and take care of things that I didn't have a chance to do this week-- like laundry, post to my blog and relax over a glass of red wine.

I did make time this week to do something fun-- a parent always makes time for what's important for their kids. There was a revival of the musical "Grease" in it's original incarnation-- it was originally about "greasers" in the late fifties in Chicago's Norwood Park neighborhood. This was a resurrection of the original down and dirty non-Hollywood-sanitized stage version that played at the Kingston Mines, which is normally a Blues club, in the early seventies. I knew my daughter, who loves theater (she's entering high school in a drama program in a couple of weeks) would love it; it was a once-in-a lifetime experience. She did.

1. Cruisin'- Smokey Robinson
2. Then Came You- The Spinners (with Dionne Warwick)
3. Up On The Roof- The Drifters
4. Living In Hard Times- Wendy Waldman
5. 3/4" Drill Bit- Killdozer
6. (Cross the) Heartland- Pat Metheny Group
7. The Message- Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
8. Our Love Is Drifting- The Paul Butterfield Blues Band
9. Find Somebody- The Young Rascals
10. In the Flat Field- Bauhaus

Notes:
1. I somehow never heard this 1979 gem until the mid eighties when my friend Eddie played it at a party. I admit, I stole the record a few months later, but returned it to him as a wedding present a year later.
2. Might be a top ten song for me.
3. One of many, many incredibly good songs Carole King and Gerry Coffin wrote for many singers and groups.
4. Ms. Waldman's wrote a lot of songs for others, but this one, a favorite from the mid-eighties, is all hers.
5. Saw these guys live in a long-gone club, Crosscurrents, in 1986 with Scratch Acid and Big Black. We were hanging with our buddies Jeff Pezzoti, John Haggerty, and Pierre Kezcy (also known as Naked Raygun). I remember that the guitar player for Killdozer was wearing a Motorhead t-shirt. For pants.
6. I'm not a big jazz fan, but I love Pat Metheny's American Garage album.
7. I'm not a big rap fan, but I love this song.
8. Mike Bloomfield was busy in 1965, playing lead guitar on two iconic albums, Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited and The Paul Butterfield Blues Band's self-titled debut album
9. The Young Rascals taking a slightly psychedlic turn.
10. My friend Ron was already one of my best friends, but turning me on to Bauhaus was a bonus.

The Return

2011-08-17T21:20:00.006-05:00

Yesterday I had a "field day" at work; when I was in school, we called them "clinical days:" a day in the hospital rather than the classroom.

When I was in school, I was terrified of clinical days. It meant doing a bunch of new-- and terrifiying-- things. Giving shots, hooking up IV's, giving a med through a JG tube (a tube that goes directly into the patient's GI tract). All of them were new to me at one time. But I survived them all, and more, and here I am now, a Registered Nurse.

I had been told that SJ's would be one of the hospitals that my company is contracted to provide dialysis care for. SJ's was my favorite place to have clinicals at. For one, it was where I had two med-surg clinical rotations with Ms. Beaumard, my favorite clinical instructor. She rode us hard, but it was for a purpose: to make us better nurses. It was also where I liked working with the staff. No matter how busy they were, they were always able to answer our questions. They seemed to remember that they were once nursing students too. And on top of that, it was also a beautiful location-- see the picture at the top of the post. When they built the hospital in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood in the 1960's, it was probably because the land was dirt cheap; Lincoln Park was then a fairly rough neighborhood. Nearly fifty years later, it's almost laughable; the view the patients get in the lobby/sunrooms that are on each floor are views that Chicagoans now pay a premium for. The sunrooms overlook Lake Michigan, the now-tony Lincoln Park and Belmont Harbor, where the richest of the rich pay to dock their yachts.

I was told to get to the hospital at 8 am. I parked, and went to the desk in the downstairs lobby to get my employee parking pass. The lady at the desk, who remembered me-- and remembered that I always bought the candy bars that she was hawking for her daughter's school fundraiser-- gave me the free "courtesy pass," rather than the already heavily-discounted employee's pass. I was reminded of my reminder to my kids to always be nice to everybody-- you never know who will return that to you. She was delighted to see me returning as a full-fledged nurse, and I was delighted to be returning as a full-fledged nurse. She told me that my friend-- my friend Alina, who I'd shared rides with there when I was in clinicals-- was working there. I told her that I knew that, and hoped I'd run into her that day.

I went up to the 11th floor ("Mine goes to 11..."), where the Acute Care Dialysis Room was, and waited for my preceptor. It turned out that she'd overslept (very likely she'd worked an 11 or 12 hour day the day before) so I hung out while I waited for her. While hanging around the floor, I discovered something I'd heard about while I was in clinicals at the hospital, but had never seen before: the beautiful chapel. Later in the day, someone told me that when the hospital was sold to a major hospital chain, one of the quid pro quos was that the chapel would remain.

My preceptor finally arrived and we got to work. We had two patients. One had an "AV fistula" and the other had a catheter-- two different means of hooking up the dialysis machinery. My preceptor was great, answering the many questions I had, and let me do as much as I was comfortable with.

My first patient was on the 8th floor, which was the cardiac telemetry floor; I had done a clinical rotation with my friend Alina on that floor, and knew she now worked on that floor. When we ran into one another, we were both delighted. Every time I run into her lately, it has been followed with good news. I had run into her last month when I got of the el when coming home from the NCLEX test (and passed it), and then had run into her a coupe of weeks later on the way home from my interview with this company (I got the job). It was cool to be running into one another on the floor we'd worked on as students.

And do you think it was cool to be working on that floor, running into nurses I'd pumped for information as a student, being able to tell them I was back, but this time as a nurse? Oh hell yeah!

The King and I

2011-08-16T21:21:00.004-05:00

I had a busy day-- another day of on-the-job training, with a triumphant return to a hospital I had clinical training at. Post to follow.

Today, though, I was reminded, on the television and radio, of the fact that it was the anniversary of the death (or disappearance) of Elvis Presley.

On August 16, 1977, I was working a shift at my very first job, as a stock clerk at a Walgreen's, when a woman woman walked in and said that she'd heard that the King was dead. Since the tabloids (readily available near the check-outs at the Walgreen's) had nearly daily stories about the death-- or alien abduction-- of Mr. Presley, at first I dismissed the story. Soon, more customers came into the store with the same story. Alvina, our bookkeeper, turned the radio in her little office in the corner of the store to the news station and we gathered and listened. The King was, indeed, dead.

I have always been and will always be an unabashed Elvis Presley fan. His fusion of gospel, country, blues and of course good old rock and roll is irresistible. His magnetism, his kindness, the stories about him-- he'll always be a favorite. And of course, the infamous road trip some friends and I took to Graceland in the Spring of 1985 will always remain one of the highlights of my life. A couple of years ago, I reconnected with my friend Alan, who was the driver on the road trip. Recently, I mentioned that trip to him, and he commented that it was one of the favorite memories of his life. Mine as well.

There is one other memory of that date, in 1997, exactly twenty years after we lost Elvis. August 16, 1997 was supposed to be the date of my first wedding.

In the Spring of 1997, I was preparing to do my student teaching. I'd had to apply for it two years earlier. I was dating someone seriously, and embroiled in an ugly custody fight for my son, who was then four. I had asked the woman I was dating to marry me. I was crazy about her. My friends, I later discovered, were not so much. Maybe they saw things I didn't. She and I had planned to marry on August 16, 1997, specifically because it was the 20th anniversary of Elvis' death. With the custody fight and my preparations for student-teaching, we decided to move the wedding date up to April 19th. Had we known that it was the anniversary of the Branch Davidian fire and the Oklahoma City bombing, we might have reconsidered. It turned out that April 19 was a day of disasters.

As my custody fight got more heated and ugly, my wife decided that she didn't want to be a stepmom any more, and that she didn't want to be married any more. She asked for a divorce on July 4th, 1997. This led, of course, to one of my most infamous stories, and a life-long standing joke, "It's all fun and games until someone gets an eye put out... and then it's REALLY funny..."

But the irony was that it was on August 16, 1997, the day we had originally chosen for our wedding day, that I moved out.

I was to begin student-teaching, the last step to becoming a teacher, in a few short weeks. I had little time and even less money. And that's when people stepped up to the plate.

First was my lifelong friend Viktor Zeitgeist, my partner-in-crime in the July 4th story. He Fed-Ex'd me a check to cover the deposit for an apartment so that my son and I were not homeless. And then there was Mike.

Mike was my friend Tas' boyfriend. I had met Tas when I was working at a racetrack one summer. She was half British and half Pakistani, but had grown up in a suburb of Chicago. She's full of the proverbial "piss and vinegar," and is one of my favorite people in the world. Her boyfriend at the time (she's now married to a Chicago cop) was Mike, a Korean immigrant who defied easy categorization. He was a tech geek, stoner and the best rock guitarist this side of Hendrix. And he was the sole volunteer to help me move that day.

The only place I was able to rent a truck that day, at the last minute, only had trucks with manual transmissions. This was no problem. I learned to drive with a stick shift.

Mike and I loaded up the truck at the apartment I'd shared with my wife. As we finished, I noticed storm clouds brewing in the distance. As we raced to my new place, I looked in the side mirrors of the truck and they seemed to be following me. I parked the truck, and Mike and I furiously unloaded my stuff into the bottom of the covered back porch of the building. Just as we got the last boxes in, an epic deluge poured forth. I hugged and thanked Mike, who had to run off to a band practice.

Looking back to that day-- and the incredibly difficult days that were to follow-- I see that the storm clouds were foreshadowing. But that day, between Viktor and Mike, I had enough to get me through the travails of that day. Today, as I was driving home from my day of work, "Suspicious Minds," a song we played repeatedly on that infamous road trip, and a song that's been a favorite since I was a kid, came on. For a moment I thought about the long trip of this life. I remember back in 2003 when I turned 42, the age Mr. Presley had died. I'd always thought I'd die young. I passed his age, then made it to 50 this year. I feel like everything from here out is bonus. I feel like I've lived long enough to discover what I most love and am really good at, being a parent. I've lived long enough to find a career I really like and will allow me to provide for my family well.

In the course of the move, I've had a chance to re-organize my stuff. I've found things that got buried with old bills and other miscellania. One of the things I came across was the paper copy of a thing I started maybe 8 or 9 years ago. I've alluded to it before in this blog. It was inspired by a story I'd read in the New York Times about a woman who had been killed in the World Trade Center in 2001. Her parents, who were farmers, brought the stuff from her apartment home, they'd looked at the contents of her laptop and discovered a "bucket" list. I was fascinated-- and inspired-- by this. I've been looking over the list and starting to take some concrete steps to fulfill the wishes on it.

So remembering Mr. Presley this day, I think about the enjoyment his music has given me over the years, and will for life. I consider the fact that my genetics and dietary and exercise choices I've made over my lifetime have given me more years than he got, despite the fact that there were some hard miles in my case. I don't even dream that I'll ever sing "Kentucky Rain" remotely as wonderfully as he covered the Eddie Rabbit/Dick Heard composition. But I'll sing it nearly every time I pick up a guitar. I'll always dance a little when I hear "Burnin' Love" or "That's All Right Mama." He packed a lot into those short 42 years. His art and life give me joy and inspiration every day. He reminds me with both his life and death that you've got to dream like you'll live forever and live like you might die tomorrow. Thanks, Elvis.

The "One Week In" Friday Random Ten

2011-08-12T18:39:00.003-05:00

Finished my first week as a nurse. It's all training right now, but yesterday, I was in a hospital, in scrubs, helping another nurse with dialysis. Today I got to hook up a dialysis machine, but it was just in the training offices. It'll be a bit before I will hook a person to one.

I have to admit that I was thinking a little about money. Things were so bad the last two months at my restaurant job, it was a relief knowing that there'll be a good paycheck soon. I don't feel bad about it at all. I worked hard to get here, and realize that dialysis nursing will be hard work.

Normally I would have picked my son up on the way home from work, but he's going with his mother to check out a college in Buffalo, New York. Hard to believe he'll be 18 in a just under seven months. Hard to believe I'll have two kids high school. Lots of transitions.

1. Lucky Man- Emerson, Lake and Palmer
2. Driving With Your Eyes Closed- Don Henley
3. Green Tamborine- The Lemon Pipers
4. Imagine a Man- The Who
5. Stubborn Kind of Fellow- Marvin Gaye
6. Theme From Valley of the Dolls- Dionne Warwick
7. Why Can't We Live Together?- Timmy Thomas
8. I Will Survive- Gloria Gaynor
9. Hashish- The Hair Soundtrack
10. The Ballad of Spider John- Jimmy Buffett

Notes:
1. A subtle anti-war song.
2. From "Building the Perfect Beast," one of my favorite albums of the eighties.
3. I know, it's just bubble gum, but I like it.
4. "The Who By Numbers" was not only one of my favorite Who records, but had a great cover.
5. I never, ever get tired of hearing Marvin Gaye's music.
6. I love me some Dionne Warwick
7. Great little one-hit wonder
8. This song got lost in the disco shuffle, but I came to love it over the years.
9. Finally bought the original Hair soundtrack on CD a while back. It still stands up great.
10. Written by Willis Alan Ramsey, who only had one album. This bittersweet, heartbreaking song is one of my favorites, especially as done by Mr. Buffett. It's so good, in fact, that I can almost forgive Ramsey for also writing "Muskrat Love." Almost.

A Dream We Dreamed...

2011-08-07T16:02:00.004-05:00

For this is all a dream we dreamed one afternoon so long ago.... -- "Box of Rain," The Grateful Dead

Saturday morning, I got a message from my friend Cyd that she'd found out that she passed the NCLEX, the test that officially made her a nurse. That meant the the Three Musketeers-- Karen, Cyd and I, who frequently studied together, had all passed it. It made the fact that I started as a nurse today even sweeter. Karen is the second from the left in the top row of the picture and Cyd is seated far left.

Looking back to that picture, it's hard to believe it was only two years ago. I remember walking into that hospital for clinicals. It was, ironically, the hospital I was taken to after my motorcycle accident in 1988, when I was a younger guy. Three of the people in the picture dropped out the first year, but returned to repeat it-- successfully-- this past year. My friend Bisrat, seated just below me, far right, dropped out this past year in the first semester of the second year, but is returning to finish up this year. He dropped by my home one day last week so I could return his Ob-Gyn book, which he'd lent me, and so I could lend him some books that had helped me succeed in the program. We talked about how difficult the third semester, the semester he dropped out in, was-- it was the only semester I got a "C" and not a "B" in-- and I realized it helped him to know not to drop out if things were a little rough.

Today, I spent a day hearing about policy, OSHA, insurance, etc. It wasn't exciting, but I was excited nonetheless. I'd worked hard to get there. I ran into a school friend, Monika, who had worked as a tech for the same company, and was now going to be a nurse like I was. I asked her about her license; she told me that I should get an official notice that I'd passed the NCLEX along with an application for the license. I hadn't received it yet, I told her.

When I got home, it had arrived in the mail; it had taken the post office two weeks to forward it to my new home. I filled it out, including the "change-of-address" part, wrote out the fifty dollar check and walked it to the mailbox.

This is going to be a month of transitions. I've taken my first baby steps to being a nurse. About the same time I finish my training for my new job, I'll be working my last days at the restaurant I've worked at for 11 years. It's very bittersweet. At 50 years of age, I'm ready to not be a waiter any more. But there are many, many good memories there. There are couples who I remember coming in there on dates. Now they're married and bring their kids in. I remember when Joe and Don, who have been together since 1978, came in for their anniversary, and told me the sweet story of how they met. I'll miss Jim and Marybeth, who gave me a card when I graduated. I'll miss Steve and Margaret, and their son Richard; I remember when Richard first arrived-- they brought him into the restaurant. Now Richard is a fine young man. And there are my co-workers. I remember nights hanging out, probably a little too long, talking, drinking. That'll soon be done.

I remember when I got into nursing school-- I got the letter in April of 2009. We sat the kids down and told them what the deal was. I was going to be very, very busy for the next two years. But at the end of that was going to be a degree that would assure a job for me, and a lot more financial security for the family. I remember back to when I made the decision to leave teaching and enter the health care field. It was a huge leap of faith-- faith that I could pull it off financially (and that was no mean feat-- financial resources appeared out of nowhere to help that). Faith that I could handle the material. And faith in myself. That was, maybe, besides the financial security this will provide my family, the biggest deal. I did stuff that terrified me, stuff that I never believed I'd be able to do. I realize that I had been suffering a crisis in confidence back when I decided to change careers. In seeing this dream I dreamed so long ago come true, I feel really damned good.

End of the Rainbow Friday Random Ten

2011-08-05T09:52:00.003-05:00

I got up this morning, checked my bank account and realized that when my rent check clears, there will be a little over 12 bucks in it. I dropped my daughter off at her Girls Rock camp and put some of what I made last night in the bank.

The changeover in ownership at the restaurant I work at has been a complete clusterfuck. We've lost about 75% of our regulars without anybody new to replace them. The money has been pitable. My friends Karol and Lauren have quit. My friend Aaron is turning in his notice soon. And I've turned mine in... because I got the first nursing job I applied for!

I had really gone on the interview just to get the experience. I didn't think they'd offer a job-- or offer a job with pay about 20% higher than I expected, plus great benefits. When the lady I interviewed with told me the pay, I jumped at it. Worse case scenario, I don't like it, I tough it out for a year, and I can put a year of being a dialysis nurse on my resume. I'll be providing acute care dialysis in a handful of hospitals near my home. I start training (paid training) on Monday.

So we have another few weeks of financial stress, yes. My training is 9 to 5, Monday through Friday for the next two months. Therefore, I'm going to work weekend for the next few weeks, through the end of August, to have some cash flow and to say goodbye to the many lovely regulars we have at the restaurant. And then it's off to the next phase of my working life.

1. Jeepster- T. Rex
2. I'd Like To Teach the World- The New Seekers
3. Takin' It To The Streets- The Doobie Brothers
4. I Go To Rio- Pablo Cruise
5. It's My Party- Leslie Gore
6. Don't Fence Me In- Willie Nelson and Leon Russell
7. That's Amore- Dean Martin
8. Let's Hang On- Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons
9. My Eyes Adored You- Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons
10. The Waiting- Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

1. "I need TV/But I got T. Rex..."- All The Young Dudes, Mott the Hoople
2. This became popular for being in a Coke commercial
3. Saw the Doobie Brothers at Chicagofest in 1982-- their supposed "Goodbye" tour
4. Also saw these guys at Chicagofest.
5. Ms. Gore has grown on me in recent years
6. Cole Porter never sounded better.
7. Dino's another artist who's grown on me in recent years.
8. I'm hoping that "Jersey Boys," the musical about these guys returns to Chicago, now that I'll actually be able to buy tickets.
9. Sappy, but I like it
10. Saw Tom Petty live in 1990. Hoping to see him at least one more time.

The Cool and Rainy Friday Random Ten

2011-07-22T10:59:00.003-05:00

This week's been a heat-fest here in Chicago. I've braved it in order to get our attic, which is a finished attic, and get it habitable. I'll actually be able to have my books out on shelves and not in boxes in the basement.

This morning, a brief storm front blew in and cooled things off-- it's very welcome.

Today, I put in my first application for a nursing job, at a dialysis center. A couple of nursing school friends work at dialysis companies and said they're always hiring. Since I'm a brand new nurse, I need to get my foot in the door somewhere.

In the meantime, I'm eager to move on from the waitering job that got me through nursing school. Not only do I not want to be working as a server at the age of fifty, things are getting weird with the new owners. Business has dropped off drastically, and they don't seem to be doing anything about it. I'm ready to move on.

1. Gomez- Nothing Is Wrong
2. The Call-Up- The Clash
3. Forgotten Years- Midnight Oil
4. In The Summertime- Mungo Jerry
5. They're Coming To Take Me Away- Napolean Bonaparte XIV
6. Just a Song Before I Go- Crosby, Stills and Nash
7. Nights In White Satin- The Dickies
8. Here Comes the Weekend- Dave Edmunds
9. Reason To Believe- Rod Stewart
10. Beginning- The Bubble Puppy

Notes:
1. These guys had a hit with this one a few years back. Their record company rewarded them by dropping them. Fortunately, they signed with another and are still putting out fine records.
2. From the sprawling "Sandinista!" album.
3. Singer Peter Garrett is a member of the Australian Parliament these days
4. Great 1970 one-hit wonder
5. The ultimate novelty tune.
6. I think this song pretty much invented Adult Contemporary. I still like it.
7. Yes, THAT "Nights In White Satin." I may be the only one on the planet that's seen both the Moody Blues and the Dickies perform this one.
8. Rhino Records should win a Nobel Prize in something, if only for issuing a Dave Edmunds box set, which I got this one from.
9. A nice cover of a Tim Hardin classic. Back when Rod was still a rocker.
10. Discovered this little beauty thanks to Little Steven's Underground Garage

End of One Journey, Start of Another Friday Random Ten

2011-07-15T18:17:00.005-05:00

This morning, while I was shopping and trying to distract myself from wondering about the NXCLEX (the test I took Wednesday), I ran into my old counselor, Tom W., at Trader Joe's. Tom figured in this old post about the terrible Our Lady Of Angels fire here in Chicago in 1958. I had seen him for a while in trying to deal with the double whammy of a divorce and the frustration I was feeling trying to get a teaching job. Now I was running into him as I was getting ready to start a new career-- a response to dealing with the fact that teaching jobs were becoming scarce. I felt it was a good omen.

At 2 pm, exactly 48 hours after I started the test (you can get your "unofficial" results 48 business hours after you test-- for a $7.95 fee), I checked the website of the company that administered the test, and it told me that my results were available. I paid my $7.95 and got my results: Pass.

I felt a little lightheaded. I texted my son (he can't get phone calls at work) and called my parents. I joked about my brother's layabout ex-wife, who somehow never finished her nursing degree that she started long before I started mine. They were, needless to say, delighted, as was my wife, who I called next. And then, of course, I posted on Facebook.

It stands as a tribute to the program I was in that so far everybody I graduated with who tested has passed. The program was a ballbuster, but we know our shit.

So now, time to find a job, and start a new journey.

1. Green Shirt- Elvis Costello and the Attractions
2. Castles Made of Sand- Jimi Hendrix
3. Take Me Home, Country Roads- Toots and the Maytalls
4. Sorry (I Ran All the Way Home)- The Impalas
5. Situation- Yaz
6. Jet Set- Joe Jackson
7. Rednecks- Randy Newman
8. It's a Long Way To the Top- AC/DC
9. Personality Crisis- The New York Dolls
10. Cruisin' For A Love- The J. Geils Band

Notes:
1. Back when Elvis Costello was angry. A disco spoof.
2. A Hendrix song of dreams lost and found. Perfect for today.
3. A lovely reggae cover of the John Denver classic.
4. This was the song the boys kept singing in "Stand By Me."
5. Love this eighties classic.
6. Joe Jackson seems to come out with a great album about every five years.
7. An ironic song, frequently mistaken as racist.
8. First grew to love this song after hearing it at the end of "School of Rock."
9. This was the first Dolls song I ever heard.
10. The J. Geils Band was one of the first bands I ever saw, at the "Superbowl of Rock" at Soldier's Field in 1977. Still love them.

Here It Is

2011-07-12T22:00:00.003-05:00

I've spent the day alternating between running the last errands from the move and studying from a couple books to help with the NCLEX-- the National Council Licensure Examination. If I pass this test, I will be an RN. I take it at 2 PM tomorrow, July 13.

Over the last month, my classmates who are my Facebook friends have reported that they passed. It's been very cool. My class was fascinating-- amazingly diverse in every regard-- ethnicity, background, age. We studied together, sweated test results, discussed which teachers to take. And in the end, it comes down to passing this test.

It was funny studying-- I stayed focused on content, but each question brought back memories of the people, the times.

Tonight, as I was approaching my limit in studying, my old friend Tim U. from when I got my first college degree, in Political Science, popped up on my Facebook chat. (okay, probably should have had that off). Tim and I were the Ebony and Ivory of Eastern Illinois University's Political Science department around 1984. He was a delegate for Reagan at the Republican National Convention in 1984. I have an FBI file for lefty activities from that very same time. Tim was a good ol' boy from a small town not far from my college town. I was from Chicago. Yet, we became great friends. We talked about politics. We had huge disagreements, but always kept it friendly. It was hard not to like Tim, and hard to be angry at him, even when you wholly disagreed with him.

We got back in touch through Facebook about a year ago. He's just about my age (I'm 50), but has just married for the first time, to a woman from China, and became a father for the first time just about a year ago. I love when he posts pictures of his new family; he clearly loves his wife and is clearly loving fatherhood. Thinking about it all, I had to laugh. For all the differences in our background, we've got a lot in common. Both of us got our degrees in Political Science together at Eastern so many years ago, but ended up in fields completely different-- video production in his case, and nursing in mine. We both parented kids who are half Asian. And both of us completely enjoy fatherhood.

So much work has gone into this, and it comes down to this test tomorrow. I've been pretty good about it-- my classmates have told me that in the end, given the rigor of our program, the test ended up feeling almost easy. Still, having Tim pop up on chat on Facebook was reassuring, as well as his promise to send a prayer my way. I'm an atheist, but I like to hedge my bets. It's funny how life is. If someone told me 25 years ago that I'd be enjoying being a dad to two kids, getting ready to take the nursing exam and still friends with Tim, I'd have laughed in their face. But here it is. Sometimes you have to go where the winds carry you.

The Last Piece Friday Random Ten

2011-07-08T18:59:00.004-05:00

I finally found that piece I'd been looking for-- the last piece. I moved my old clunker bicycle that got me to and from both nursing school and work for the last few years, from my old place to my new place this afternoon, officially completing the move.

Remember that scene toward the end of "The Blues Brothers" when the Bluesmobile finally gives up the ghost? That's the way I feel about things. That clunker bike is in need of repair. And last night, my little Apple Powerbook that I hoped and prayed would get me through nursing school finally crapped out (though I may be able to revive it by restoring some software).

So tonight I'm up at in my attic office space, at a desk that my great-grandfather owned (and purportedly built) on a hand-me-down laptop. Despite herculean efforts, I still have a ton of unpacking to do, and then after that, I have to move a ton of stuff from the storage space I used to transition the move (books, dvd's, musical instruments, etc.)

I was a little wistful as I pulled away from the old place today. I raised two kids there. But on the way from running one of the bicycles from the old place to the new place, I ran into an old, old friend. My friend Lois, who was my lab partner in high school chemistry class, was out chatting with a friend. She and her husband come into the restaurant once in a while and I knew she lived in the area. I think that it was a good omen. I think my kids are going to love this new place. And I think I am already getting to really like it.

1. Smokin' In the Boy's Room- Brownsville Station
2. We're a Happy Family- The Ramones
3. Just the Way It Is Baby- The Rembrandts
4. Hold On- Santana
5. Lover's Concerto- The Toys
6. Bop 'Til You Drop- The Ramones
7. Hawaiian Island World- World Party
8. Back In '72- Bob Seger
9. Why Me?- The Planet P Project
10. The Girl With the Far Away Eyes- The Rolling Stones

Notes:
1. Great seventies one-hit wonder
2. "Sittin' here in Queens/Eatin' refried beans..."
3. Hard to believe this song is over 20 years old.
4. Written by Ian Thomas, who had a one-hit wonder in the seventies with "Painted Ladies." He's also the brother of SCTV's Bob Thomas.
5. The melody for this song is based on a classical piece.
6. What's the only thing better than a Ramones song in your Random Ten? Two Ramones songs!
7. World Party was pretty much Karl Wallinger. The self-titled debut album is now 25 years old, and one of my "desert-island" albums.
8. Seger's on my "Bucket List" of performers I still need to see live. He played here in Chicago recently, but it was on the night of my "Turned 50/Graduated Nursing School on the Same Day" party. Maybe next year.
9. The Planet P Project was a solo project by Rainbow keyboardist Tony Carey. A while back, I heard the song on my shuffle and I was thinking about the lines:
The last man to be here was never heard from again
He won't be back this way till 2010
It sounded really futuristic back in 1983, but it was now last year.
10. I wasn't crazy about the "Some Girls" album when it came out 33 years ago, but it's grown on me over the years.

At Last...

2011-06-25T15:04:00.004-05:00

So yesterday, less than an hour after posting about waiting for my "ATT" (Authorization to Test) letter, that gives me the final go-ahead to take the NCLEX, the test that will allow me to become a nurse, the letter arrived via email. For the last month and a half, since graduating, I've felt like the main character, Joseph, in Saul Bellow's book "Dangling Man". I'm tired of being broke, tired of working as a waiter and ready to start working as a nurse. I felt like a thousand pounds was lifted off my chest.

I've scheduled the test for July 13 at 2 pm, at a testing center in downtown Chicago. For a small fee, I will be able to get the "unofficial" results from the testing company after two working days; I should, therefore, know by the end of that week. Two school friends who took-- and passed-- the test recently described the test as "easy," confirming what we'd heard about the nursing program we were in; that it's so rigorous that the test seems easy by comparison. I'm feeling confident that I'll do fine. I'm just glad I've got the go-ahead-- at last...

One Week Countdown Friday Random Ten

2011-06-24T11:23:00.005-05:00

Today begins the one week countdown to the move. Yesterday, I was in the new place taking measurements for various things-- counters, a dish hutch we have, etc.

The original plan was to move our refrigerator, which I got as a family Christmas gift in 2007. It was actually as much a gift to me as them-- they got a bigger, cleaner more modern refrigerator that had an icemaker. I got an electric bill that was cut in half. The old refrigerator, of seventies vintage, was inefficient in its better days, and had not improved with age. It ran 24/7, greatly increasing my electricity bill. We talked to the new landlady about putting the refrigerator in the unit, which was pretty modern, up into the attic storage area and moving ours in. I talked to my old landlord, who offered to purchase our refrigerator (and washer and dryer, which we can't bring with us-- there's no hook-up for them in the new building, which has coin-op units), and we made the decision to leave the old frig. Even with the movers we're hiring, it's a headache to move. I figured out that I saved the cost of the refrigerator after a little over a year in electricity costs. The rest has been gravy.

So today I'll be packing up a few more odds and ends, but am nearly done. I'll be able to move some boxes in beginning Wednesday next week.

I'm still awaiting my "ATT" letter-- Authorization To Test. Most of my classmates waited a week after actually paying for the test, but some waited longer. It's been a little over a week; I may call later today to see if there are any problems. I'm eager to take the test and start looking for a nursing job.

Update: Got the ATT letter about an hour ago! NCLEX, here I come!

1. I Wanna Be Your Man- The Beatles
2. It's My Life- The Animals
3. The River- Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
4. Sixteen Blue- The Replacements
5. Penny Evans- Steve Goodman
6. She Has Funny Cars- The Jefferson Airplane
7. Stargazer- Rainbow
8. That's All Right Mama- Elvis Presley
9. I Can Dream About You- Dan Hill
10. Masters of War- Bob Dylan

Notes:
1. Written by Lennon and McCartney, but a big hit for the Rolling Stones.
2. Our local prog-rock station used to play a great live Springsteen and the E-Street band version of this, with a long spoken intro by Springsteen, telling an angry story about his father. Wish I could get my hands on it today.
3. Greatly saddened by the recent passing of Springsteen saxophonist Clarence Clemons-- "The Big Man."
4. From "Let It Be," which is tied with "Hootenanny" as my favorite Replacements album.
5. A beautiful, melancholy accapella song about a woman widowed by the Vietnam War.
6. From the great "Surrealistic Pillow" album.
7. This song sounds like it could have been written for Spinal Tap's "Stonehenge" album.
8. Elvis' first record. And it still sounds pretty damned good to me still.
9. A great song from a terrible movie ("Streets of Fire").
10. Written around the most heated part of the Cold War-- Berlin Wall, Cuban Missle Crisis, etc. Still stands, nearly 50 years later, as one of the most powerful anti-war songs.

The Final Stretch Friday Random Ten

2011-06-17T09:52:00.003-05:00

I finally got the second-to-last "okay" to take the NCLEX (the final nursing test); I'm on the "approved" list to take the test. I paid for it, and am now just awaiting the "ATT" (Authorization To Test) letter to be emailed to me. Should happen in the next week or so.

In the meantime, I'm still filling boxes, getting rid of stuff and getting ready for the big move.

My ex- must be getting reasonable in her old age; she allowed my son to rearrange the custody schedule so he could be with me the whole weekend, rather than just Father's Day. Looking forward to it.

1. Gary's Got A Boner- The Replacements
2. We're Desperate- X
3. The Rapper- The Jaggerz
4. Don't Think Twice, It's All Right- Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons
5. A Strange Boy- Joni Mitchell
6. 1969- The Stooges
7. Esther Be the One- ZZ Top
8. Friday On My Mind- The Easybeats
9. We Can Work It Out- The Beatles
10. A Slow Song- Joe Jackson

Notes:
1. My friend Dan used to play this one to annoy our friend Gary.
2. X played this one a couple of years ago when I saw them at the Double Door.
3. Jaggerz singer/guitarist Donnie Iris had one more hit with "Ah Leah" in 1981. He was also a member of Wild Cherry ("Play That Funky Music White Boy")
4. Yes, that "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," and that Frankie Vallie and the Four Seasons. Recorded mostly as a joke, with an exaggerated falsetto, it actually hit the charts.
5. From the fabulous "Hejira" album.
6. My son, who's become a big fan of Iggy and the Stooges, has pointed out how the first couple of Stooges albums were way ahead of their time; they don't sound like something from 1969 and 1970.
7. Saw ZZ Top on the tour supporting this album, "Deguello," in 1980, at the Aragon Ballroom. When they played their second song, "Waiting for a Bus/Jesus Just Left Chicago," the place went up for grabs.
8. Great Australian One-Hit Wonders. One of the guys in the band was the brother of Angus Young of AC/DC.
9. I love Stevie Wonder's cover of this one.
10. The closing song on the great "Night and Day" album.

I'm Having Trouble Letting You Go

2011-06-14T18:17:00.005-05:00

"It's a restless world, uncertain times
You said hope was getting hard to find
But time rolls on, days roll by...

I'm having trouble letting you go..."
--"Letting You Go," Tom Petty

Today I got some great news-- I checked online and discovered that I've been cleared by the state of Illinois to take the NCLEX, the last test I must pass to become a nurse. I got on the phone and paid for the test. When I get my "ATT"-- Authorization To Test-- I can schedule in the test just as soon as I get that email.

In the meantime, the move is proceeding. I got most of the basement packed and stored and we've all been packing the rest of the apartment.

When I moved in here nearly 13 years ago with my four year old son and a girlfriend, my son wasn't reading yet-- he hadn't been to kindergarten. He hadn't yet learned to ride a bike. His favorite movie was "Them," movie about giant ants attacking Los Angeles.

Now he's 17 years old. He'll be a senior in high school and he's looking at colleges. He can ride a bike and drive a car. And his favorite movie is "The Big Lebowski."

He spent a lot of time this weekend packing, separating his stuff into boxes to move and boxes to take to the Salvation Army. I popped in on him a couple of times to see how he was doing and realized that I was having a harder time with it than he was. I had to restrain myself from waylaying "Ten Apples On Top" and "Frog and Toad Are Friends" from the "Salvation Army" box. I knew in my head that the books should go to the Salvation Army so that some other parent could get them for their young kid, but my heart wanted to keep them so that I could hang on to a little bit of his childhood.

He was smart enough to tape the boxes shut-- I think he knew I might fish some things out if he didn't. Yesterday, as I drove the boxes to the Salvation Army, I had a tightness in my chest. I realized that I'd felt the feeling before: the day before he started high school, nearly three years ago.

The "Everything Changes" Friday Random Ten

2011-06-10T18:11:00.002-05:00

The last couple of weeks have been days of transition, and some of the busiest of my life.

First, the ownership of the restaurant I've worked at for the last 11 years changed owners recently. Despite herculean efforts on the part of the new owners, the first week was rough. The computer system had all kinds of problems. And of course, I took the patio on the first night. It was a beautiful night, and of course it was packed. I had a throbbing headache by the end of the night.

Last night was much smoother, and pretty lucrative. I'm going to need it-- I have to pay for the NCLEX, the big test to get my nursing license, for part of the move and of course the rent in the new place is significantly more than what we've been paying.

In the meantime, I'm busy packing and moving stuff in to the storage unit I rented. On moving day, July 1, we'll pay the moving guys to move the big stuff, and we'll move the smaller stuff out of the storage unit into the new place in fits and spurts. It'll turn a $1500 move into a $400 move.

In the meantime, I'm waiting to get the email from the state that I can take the NCLEX. A bunch of people in my class have gotten the notice, but a bunch, including myself, have not gotten it yet. I'm still waiting-- it's just one more thing that's changing in my life. I'll only have a few more nights sitting on the back porch I've sat on for 13 years, unwinding at the end of long day, enjoying a glass of wine. In a few weeks, there'll be a new one to sit on and do the same.

1. Groove Is In the Heart- Dee-Lite
2. Early Morning Rain- Gordon Lightfoot
3. The Bells- Phil Ochs
4. Country Bumpkin- Don Williams
5. Spindrifter- Quicksilver Messenger Service
6. Little Bit 'o Soul- The Music Explosion
7. Southern Nights- Glen Campbell
8. The Ballad of Jerry Curlin- The Angry Samoans
9. The Perfect Kiss- New Order
10. Human Fly- The Cramps

Notes:
1. One-hit wonder from the nineties-- still love this one!
2. Been a couple of good covers of this one by Peter, Paul and Mary and Ian and Sylvia, but the original still is my favorite.
3. Phil Ochs was best known for his political songs, but he occasionally did things like this song, based on an Edgar Allen Poe poem.
4. Don Williams wrote a bunch of hits for others before he finally scored on his own this one.
5. Written by sometime Rolling Stone Nicky Hopkins, who played on this album.
6. Great sixties one-hit wonder
7. Love Glen Campbell generally, but this one took a long time to grow on me.
8. A punk band at my college co-wrote this one to rip on a hypocritical student government member.
9. This one always brings me back to the couple of years after I got out of college, when I hung around the kind of clubs they played this song at.
10. Anyone remember when Danny's in Bucktown had a jukebox and had this song on it?

Bubs and Johnny Go to Taqueria El Asadero

2011-05-30T13:39:00.006-05:00

A few weeks ago, I was riding my bike home from my final test of nursing school, and I thought to snap a picture of this little taqueria by my home, and thought back to a moment just about three years ago.

Back then, I was still planning on getting a pharmacy degree-- my friend Leslie had just started working on me to consider nursing. If I had known that I would switch to nursing, I might have taken the easier 100 level Chemistry class. Instead, I was taking the much-more-difficult Chemistry 201, with, as I discovered, a notoriously tough teacher.

I walked out of the final knowing that I'd done well (I thought I had a "B" for the class, but it turned out I'd earned a rare "A" from this instructor). As I walked out the door of my school to where my bicycle was locked up, my cell phone buzzed. It was my friend Bubs. He and I had become friends in the previous couple of years; we'd been reading one another's blogs and realized that we had lots in common. We'd run in a lot of the same circles when we were younger (old Chicago punk rock scene) and were now settling happily into our middle age roles as husbands and fathers.

It turns out that Bubs, who is a policeman in a town near Chicago, had been at a law enforcement seminar in downtown Chicago, and had gotten out of the seminar early. He figured that since he was down here already, maybe he and I could grab lunch together and catch up, a rare treat for two very busy guys. I told him to meet me at my home, and we could walk to one of the many good restaurants near my home.

Less than hour later, we walked over to the Taqueria El Asadero, a terrific little taqueria near my home, across the street from Welles Park, where my son played little league. In the hour or so we had lunch, we caught up with what was going on in our personal and professional lives and delved into the sociological insights his and my jobs as cop and teacher, respectively, had given us.

When we parted ways later, I thought about the previous couple of years. Back then, my grief for my friend Mark, who had been murdered about two years before, was still very fresh. I'd started this blog in part to deal with that grief. In the end, though, this blog had done more than provide a means to channel my grief and frustration-- it had also provided with me a friend who I realized, as he took a moment out of his day to grab lunch with me, was going to be a lifelong friend. I was very, very happy, then, when he and his wife were able to make it to my recent "50th Birthday/Graduated From Nursing School" celebration. The bottle of Eagle Rare single barrel bourbon he got me was a big bonus too-- that and the fact that he's blogging again after about a year layoff. Welcome back Bubs!

"The Waiting Is the Hardest Part" Friday Random Ten

2011-05-27T10:09:00.005-05:00

So I've got all my ducks in a row for taking the nursing boards. I'm just waiting to hear from the state that I'm okay. There may be one wrinkle, but some unexpected resources may take care of that. More on that later.

As if I didn't have enough on my plate, as I've mentioned before, we discovered we have to move by August 1. Having just finished nursing school (while my wife was unemployed for six months of that), we were not really in a good financial position to be putting down a security deposit and having our credit checked. Fortunately, my parents lent us the money for the security deposit for the place pictured at top. It's a building built in 1914, in the next neighborhood over from us, Lincoln Square. It's completely updated, with lots of big pluses. For starters, we'll have the second floor AND the attic, which is finished. The place is enormous-- 2,500 square feet. And there's two bathrooms. There's a nice backyard and plenty of street parking. The Lincoln Avenue bus has a stop right around the corner and there's an el stop a couple of blocks away-- my daughter will be able to take either one of them when she starts high school next year. The attic space will be just great-- we're putting the big LCD tv I got the family for Christmas up there, along with the Wii, Nintendo, etc. And I will be able to take my books out of storage and onto a shelf finally. It's almost perfect. The only thing we're missing is a washer and dryer hookup; there's a pay washer and dryer downstairs. I'll have to figure out what I'm doing with my ten year old washer/dryer set that still works perfectly. I'll probably try to sell them. I have until July 1 to figure it all out.

When I moved into this place, it was me, my four year old son and a girlfriend. 13 years later, it's me, another woman (my current wife), a 17 year old son and a 14 year old stepdaughter. As nice as this place is, we're ready for more space. This new place will deliver that in spades. It's all coming together, but sometimes the waiting is the hardest part.

1. Something In The Night- Bruce Springsteen
2. Your Saving Grace- The Steve Miller Band
3. Heroes- David Bowie
4. Wooden Ships- Crosby, Stills and Nash
5. It's Not Easy- The Rolling Stones
6. Self Control- Raf
7. I'm a Believer- The Monkees
8. Too Much Information- The Police
9. What's On My Mind- Kansas
10. Give Me An Inch- Robert Palmer

Notes:
1. "When we found the things we loved, they were crushed and dying in the dirt."
2. The title track from a 1970 album
3. Co-written by Brian Eno
4. A tale of the post-apocalypse
5. From the great "Aftermath" album.
6. The dark, brooding original-- not the white-bread Laura Brannigan cover that was a hit in the US
7. Written by Neil Diamond
8. Even more appropriate in these internet days
9. A big hunk o' seventies cheese-- not that that's a bad thing...
10. From the late, great Robert Palmer

Bringing It All Back Home Friday Random Ten

2011-05-20T18:14:00.006-05:00

So it turned out that the surprise that my wife had for me at my "Turned 50/Graduated nursing school on the same day" party last Saturday was that my friend Viktor Zeitgeist, who was my partner-in-crime in the infamous "It's all fun and games until someone gets their eye put out" story, flew in on the redeye from Seattle and was sitting on my couch when I woke up-- my wife had run to O'Hare to pick him up, using some excuse about going to a farmer's market as cover. He's the middle guy in the picture. The other guy is my friend Jamie, who I found a couple of years ago, after having lost touch with him for about ten years.

Most of the people I wanted to be there were there. My friend Larry had planned to attend photography seminar in New Mexico, so couldn't be there. Dobie, another old friend, just moved to Singapore and couldn't be there. And my friend Tasneem, who lives only a few blocks from me had to beg off at the last minute because her two-year-old son was sick. Other than that, just about everybody who is important to me, including Bubs and his bride (pictured here talking to my wife).

It occurred to me that the picture at the top was the 20 year reunion of the "Olympic Beer-Drinking Team." We were dubbed that by Dobie. One night in 1991, we-- Jamie, Andreas, Dobie and I-- were in our favorite tavern, the Gingerman. Dobie was my roommate at the time. We were drinking pitchers of Guinness when Dobie suddenly called it a night. Later he explained: "When you guys ordered the fourth pitcher of Guinness, I suddenly realized that I was with the Gold, Silver and Bronze medalists of the Olympic Beer-Drinking team, and I was but a San Diego Padre."

So now that the fun stuff is done, there's a lot on my plate in the next few months. First, I have to take and pass the NCLEX, the state nursing board. Yesterday I set that in motion. I'm hoping to take the test within the next couple of weeks. Then, on May 31st, the ownership of the restaurant I work at changes. The new guys seem like good guys, and most of the changes they are making seem to be good ones. Then the big one: we have to move by August 1. My landlord is moving his elderly mother-in-law into this apartment-- the apartment I've lived in for 13 years. Kim and I looked at an apartment yesterday that is damned near perfect-- much bigger than what we have, not far from where we are now, in our price range and available a few days before August 1st. We're keeping our fingers crossed.

1. Sexy Sadie- The Beatles
2. Tulsa Time- Don Williams
3. Down To The Waterline- Dire Straits
4. Sunshine- Jonathan Edwards
5. Please Come To Boston- Dave Loggins
6. Color My World- Chicago
7. Subterranean Homesick Blues- Bob Dylan
8. Ain't Got No- Hair
9. You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory- Johnny Thunders
10. Hey Joe- The Leaves

Notes:
1. From "The Beatles," aka "The White Album." I'm reading David Quantick's "Revolution: The Making of the Beatles' White Album" right now.
2. Eric Clapton had the hit with this, but I love Don Williams' original.
3. Might be tied with "The Man's Too Strong" for my favorite Dire Straits song.
4. Seventies one-hit wonder.
5. Another seventies one-hit wonder. I remember hearing a radio interview with Kenny Loggins, who said that he was frequently mistaken for Dave Loggins after he split from Loggins and Messina, and that people would request this song.
6. One of the guys from Chicago went to my son's high school.
7. Was just talking to a friend about INXS' homage to the card scene in the documentary "Don't Look Back" done to this song.
8. Finally got the CD of Hair, though I still have the vinyl copy I grew up listening to.
9. From the late, great Johnny Thunders.
10. One of many versions of this song-- the Byrds, Love, Jimi Hendrix among them.

Finally Finished Friday Random Ten

2011-05-13T21:57:00.009-05:00

About a year ago, I bought a set of postcards at Uncle Fun's, the coolest shop in the world. The postcards were a hodgepodge of goofy images: Yassir Arafat eating noodles; Leonard Bernstein in casual clothes directing an orchestra, looking over at the camera; Nelson Mandela with the Spice Girls and Prince Charles. And of course the postcard pictured here of Kurt Vonnegut.

My co-best friend Andreas (a job he shares with my friend Jim) had been telling me how much he missed me, and asking me to come out to visit him in Seattle. The fact of the matter was that I hadn't seen my parents or in-laws for two years-- I'd been to busy or broke to travel to see them, and my priority was finishing nursing school. Achieving that goal was going to open up a lot of doors and ease my money woes. So I told him that I'd mail him one of these postcards every couple of months with an update-- and that the last postcard I'd hand deliver. I mailed the Vonnegut postcard-- the second to last one-- on Wednesday, the day I finished nursing school and turned fifty.

So on Wednesday, I passed through two milestones. I turned 50 and finished nursing school. There were significant obstacles involved with both. With nursing school, it was a variety of things: my wife getting laid off when I was in my first semester; a recession that affected my own income; the unexpected rigor of the program-- my associate's degree in nursing was way harder to get than my Master's degree in Political Science. And of course, I was going to nursing school in a gang-ridden neighborhood; the corner I took this picture from has seen five gang-related shootings in the last year, several of them fatal, some of them during school hours.

And of course, my journey to fifty was filled with hazards that were mostly self-inflicted. I was an angry wild-ass and smartass when I was younger. At my thirtieth birthday 20 years ago, my friend Larry got up and announced that the turnout was so good because most of the people there (including two ex-girlfriends) didn't really think I'd make it to 30.

It's funny then that my lowest degree-- an Associate's degree-- is my most valued and hardest-earned. That middle shelf of books-- that's been my life for the past two years. Well, not completely. The friends I made in the classroom and in clinicals were too. They will be lifetime friends. We will be following one another's career progress, and sometimes contacting one another when there's a good job opportunity. These people who I studied with, commiserated with, sweated test scores with, people who came from every background, every age, even different countries sometimes-- we were bonded by this experience.

Nearly two years ago, on the first day of nursing school, my beloved Nursing 101 teacher, Mrs. Murphy, suggested we do something: to make a little nameplate that had our name, with the title "RN" on it, to help us keep out eyes on the prize. I took her suggestion that night. And through it all, sometimes it seemed like if it was going to happen, it would be a hundred years in the future. I put my little "RN" nameplate away for a while, but as the end of nursing school approached, as it became clear that I was going to succeed in this journey, I brought it back out and put it near my little work area in the kitchen. I am one test (the state nursing board) from the sign becoming a reality.

I worried a lot about working full time and going to school full time-- that I would miss out on time with my kids. I realize now that they were totally ready for whatever sacrifices they had to make. They wanted to see me in a job and career I liked. And as they approach college age, it wasn't the worst thing in the world for them to see me getting a college degree, and to see that sometimes you have to persevere even when things don't go perfectly.

In the end, it was almost all good. There was one casualty-- albeit a temporary one. My beat-up old Schwinn that got me to class for the last few years finally became inoperable this week, when a spoke broke. Of course, it broke next to the spoke that was already broken, making a wheel that was already wobbly wobble to the point that the bike couldn't be ridden. I plan on getting the wheel fixed. But next week. This weekend, on Saturday, my wife and kids are throwing me a "turned 50 the day he graduated from nursing school" party.

They keep hinting around about some kind of surprise. I'm curious. Already, most of my favorite people in the world will be there-- my mother, my kids, my wife and most of my closest friends. And I'm curious about the gift my old friend Matt sent-- apparently he collaborated with my son on it via Facebook. I'm not sure entirely what will go on tomorrow. I do have one thing I've planned, though. One of the traditions in nursing is for a new nurse to be "pinned" with a nursing pin by another nurse. I talked to my friend and neighbor Jane who is a nurse. I've asked that she participate in the pinning ceremony at the party. But I'm going to have my mother, who came to town for the celebration, to do the pinning. You see, between her three sons, we have seven college degrees. The mother (and father) who bought her kids a set of encyclopedias before they could read, set the stage to value education. My mother never got to go to college. She was busy raising three boys and working. This accomplishment is as much of hers (and my father's) as mine, and I want her to do the pinning.

1. Eleanor Rigby- Joe Jackson
2. Birdland- Patti Smith
3. Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head- B.J. Thomas
4. Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues- Bob Dylan
5. Crystal Ship- The Doors
6. Mother Of The Bride- Billy Bragg
7. Color My World- Chicago
8. Hold Back The Tears- Neil Young
9. Beep, Beep- The Playmates
10. Tracy- The Cufflinks

Notes:
1. One of my favorite covers of a song.
2. Patti Smith is on my "bucket list"-- favorite artists I have to see in my lifetime.
3. Guilty pleasure
4. From "Highway 61 Revisted," a tri-generational album in my family-- loved by my 72 year old father, 50 year old me and my 17 year old son. Yeah, it's that good.
5. My son was recently telling me how he just discovered that the Doors' eponymous first album was not, as he first believed, a "Best-Of" album. It's great bumper to bumper.
6. Love this song. I'm no longer bitter about the woman it reminds me of.
7. One of the guys from Chicago went to my son's high school
8. From "American Stars and Bars," an underrated album.
9. My brothers and I thought this was the greatest and funniest song ever when we were kids.
10. Seventies one-hit wonder.

The "Wrapping It Up" Friday Random Ten

2011-05-06T15:54:00.004-05:00

I had one of my last tests of nursing school today-- one of three HESI's (standardized nursing tests) that I have to take to finish up. It was my Gerontology specialty exam. I had to get an 850 to get the full 2.5 percent of the grade it would add. I got a 1047.

Each contributes a small portion to my grades in one of my two classes. At this point, though, it doesn't matter-- no matter how well or poorly I do on the HESI's, I have enough points to pass. I'm going to graduate nursing school this coming Wednesday, the day I also turn 50. Hot damn.

The picture at the top is of my last clinical group-- my last of the program. As I said when I posted it on my Facebook page, "Yes, they are as fun as they look. And yes, I am as tired as I look." I had driven my daughter and her friend to the airport at 3:30 a.m. for their 8th grade trip to Washington, D.C., then run home, changed and run to my 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. clinical. This last one was phenomenal. My teacher, Mrs. Johnson (back, far left) was great and I was trusted to give meds, including hanging IV bags, without my instructor looking over my shoulder. My last patient, an 81 year old Polish lady who'd lost a leg in World War II as a child, was very sweet and on two dozen different medicines. As I gave her nearly 20 between her eight and nine o'clock meds, I realized that I was completely confident in it, despite the fact that she spoke almost no English.

The picture is, though, tinged with a little sadness for me. One of that group, Hannah, a very nice girl from the Ukraine, dropped out just a few days before. Her grade was right on the edge, and she wanted to drop before the grade would count on her GPA. The good news is that she plans on taking summer school and completing the program.

I'll have a post on that group soon. Remarkable group.

After the test, we all hung out and talked. I was happy to see my friend Bisrat, who I became friends with when we took Nursing 101 together. He passed the first year with me, but dropped out at the end of the first semester this year. Students who drop out are guaranteed a slot back in the next year, one of the many great things about the program. He was there to make arrangements for that. I double-checked that he had my cell phone number and reminded him that he was welcome to any of my books he needed.

I know I've said it before, but it bears repeating. Recently, I finished a book I'd wanted to read for a long time, Andrew Chaikin's "A Man On the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts." The Apollo program, landing human beings on the moon, inspired and awed me. Chaikin's book tells the personal odysseys of the dozen men who walked the moons surface, and the stories of those who served with them and who supported them. One story that really moved me was that of Al Bean. He had given up hope of going to the moon-- he'd been relegated to the Skylab program, a program that would not come to fruition until years later. Bean did not know that Apollo 12 commander Pete Conrad had been lobbying for him. Conrad and Command Module pilot trained for Apollo 12, the second mission to the moon, with C.C. Williams, a Marine pilot. In 1967, Williams was killed in an air crash, and Conrad lobbied NASA again-- this time successfully-- to bring Bean on board. Bean had been one of Conrad's students in flight school in 1960, and had impressed Conrad with the tenacity with which he approached problems, refusing to give up until the problem was solved.

While Dick Gordon circled the moon in the Command Module, Pete Conrad and Al Bean became the third and fourth people to walk the moon's surface. Later, Bean would remember that on the way home, he had a sense of accomplishment, but that a feeling of camaraderie and friendship with Conrad and Gordon-- friendships that lasted a lifetime-- was the strongest feeling.

These people whom I've accomplished this over the last few years-- sweated test results, overcome our fears to do things we never thought we were capable of, surviving personal, professional and financial crises together-- I know that I've bonded with them. I know that years after I start my nursing career, I'll still be friends with some, and always think fondly of all of them.

1. Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go- Soft Cell
2. Ring Of Fire- Johnny Cash
3. Texas Pulka- Jon Wayne Texas Funeral
4. Rats In the Cellar- Aerosmith
5. Carol- Chuck Berry
6. Flying Sorcery- Al Stewart
7. Hey Nineteen- Steely Dan
8. Dance Hall Days- Wang Chung
9. Blltzkreig Bop- The Ramones
10. We're An American Band- Grand Funk Railroad

Notes:
1. Can you believe this one is 30 years old?
2.I saw a "Johnny Cash: Live At San Quentin" t-shirt at Target yesterday. Just a reminder that I have a birthday and graduation coming up, and that I wear size "large."
3. From the funniest album that came out in the eighties.
4. Love me some old Aerosmith
5. Still wonder how Chuck Berry felt about "Back To The Future;" Chuck learns all his licks from a suburban white boy.
6. From the wonderful "Year of the Cat" album.
7. This song's really grown on me over the years. I was 19 when it was a hit.
8. When this was first a hit in the mid-eighties, I thought the line "we was cool on craze" was "we was cool on Christ."
9. This song was used in "Detroit Rock City," one of my favorite movies.
10. A big hunk 'o seventies cheese-- and I like it.

The "Dotting the i's and Crossing the T's" Friday Random Ten

2011-04-29T17:24:00.004-05:00

It turned out that I had a pretty low-key week. My 12-hour, 7 am to 7 pm clinical I was supposed to have yesterday was cancelled due to the instructor's illness. We're supposed to have a six hour one on Tuesday, but that's up in the air. In the meantime, we doubled up on classroom work on Wednesday, meaning I don't have class on Monday. I have a test on Gerontology Wednesday, which is very likely going to be the least difficult test of the whole program; it's on diabetes, heart disease, hypothyroidism, and such-- all things we've covered before-- but applied to older adults. Toward the end of the unit, barely half the class was bothering to show up, since it was, essentially, a review.

I have a couple of assignments, already done, to turn in, and I have to do a quick rework of my resume, also to be turned in, and I'm done. I have three HESI tests to take, one next Friday and two on the following Monday. And then graduation on May 11th. Oh, and I also become eligible to join the AARP.

I wasn't going to get a nursing pin, but my friend and neighbor Jane, who is a nurse, convinced me to get one. She pointed out that I'm going to want to wear it to honor other nurses-- at retirement ceremonies, etc. And my feeling is that I'd rather have it and not want it than to later decide I wanted it, but not have it.

One thing I wanted for sure was to have my picture in the class composite picture (the picture at the top of the post was everybody's overwhelming choice out of the four shots I had). I know I'll stay in touch with a good number of my classmates, and I've become good friends with some. This last few years, especially the last two, have been intense. I'm very fond of the people who were by my side in that time.

So this last week or so is going to be tying off loose ends. I'd pretty much have to not show up for the last test in order not to graduate. It's a good spot to be in as I finish.

1. La Dolce Vita- Peter Gabriel
2. Hymn 43- Jethro Tull
3. Here Comes My Girl- Tom Petty
4. Sunspot Baby- Bob Seger
5. One Tree Hill- U2
6. Love Has Brought Me Around- James Taylor
7. So Far Away- David Gilmour
8. Time In A Bottle- Jim Croce
9. One Step Ahead- Split Enz
10. You've Got Another Thing Coming- Pat Boone

Notes:
1. From Peter Gabriel's first post-Genesis solo album.
2. Not a big Tull fan, but love this anti-religion song.
3. Saw Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers perform in 1990, so they're not on my "bucket" list (performers to see before they or I kick the bucket-- Tony Bennett, Bob Seger, Tom Jones, Los Lobos are some of who are on that list), but I'd gladly see them again.
4. Speaking of my "bucket" list. Just a reminder-- Seger performing May 14 here in Chicago, and if anyone's looking for a birthday/graduation gift for me...
5. A song of grief and healing. I turned to it often after my friend Mark's murder.
6. An old favorite.
7. From a great solo album Pink Floyd guitarist Gilmour did in 1978.
8. A sadly prophetic song for Mr. Croce
9. These guys are best known for "I Got You," but this one is also great. And they mutated into another great eighties band, Crowded House.
10. Yes, THAT Pat Boone, and THAT song (originally by Judas Priest). From "In A Metal Mood," a tongue in cheek metal album Boone did in the late nineties. The deeply religious singer took grief from the funamentalists for it, showing he's got a sense of humor and fundamentalists are dicks.

A Return To Life

2011-04-26T22:49:00.002-05:00

It's a chilly late April night here in Chicago. We pretty much had all four seasons today. Just a typical Spring day here in Chicago.

I got most of the stuff I wanted done today-- didn't find the travel mug I looked for so that my wife doesn't steal mine-- getting her a pink one so that she can distinguish it from the earth brown one I use.

I even got a little schoolwork done. Very little. I have one last small project to turn in for my clincals, a "medications interview." I'm going to Skype my father tomorrow to do it. I had to get the interview questions ready, using the meds list my mother sent me.

Sitting here, with the Allman Brothers' "Dreams" playing over my shuffle, through the little battery powered speaker, sipping a glass of red wine, I had a lot of thoughts running through my head.

One thought was of disbelief. The obstacles I ran across through this journey were considerable. First off, I started out with the idea of going to pharmacy school. And with the idea that I'd work at a particular fancy downtown restaurant while I was in school. As my old friend Michael says, "You want to see God laugh? Show him your plans." First off, I was fired from the downtown restaurant after walking in on the manager doing cocaine in a washroom. He was apparently afraid I'd tell the owner, who thought he'd recovered from a bad addiction (his previous addiction-- not so previous apparently-- was public knowledge there). As I plugged away at the prerequisites, I took classes with my friend Leslie, who was also a co-worker in my other restaurant job, one I'd kept just in case. The place we worked at is a family place, and a pretty nice place to work. Nobody ever leaves. But just when I needed to go to full time there, two people left-- one finished college and moved back to his home country to run the family business, and the other moved to Vegas. This was serendipitous for me. And Leslie convinced me to consider nursing, a degree I could get in two years, rather than the 4 (plus two more years of prerequisites than I'd already done).

Last night I was waiting on one of my long-time regulars. I discovered for the first time that she's a nurse who works at a hospital that's on my short list of hospitals I'd like to work at. She asked where I was going to school and when I told her, she asked how many times I had applied. Once. She told me-- and I've heard this from others-- that there's a long waiting list to get in there. Many people apply three times before they get in, if at all. Again, a little disbelief that I was that lucky.

I was also lucky in having a fine bunch of classmates who have made this journey wonderful, even as grueling as it was. I can say the same about my instructors. I know that I will have lifelong friends among both groups.

In the midst of it all, my wife got laid off twice due to the recession. She managed to find jobs in a tough, tough job market; I considered dropping out of the program so I could work another job, but thanks to her persistence in finding a job, we didn't have to go that route.

And then there are my kids. I tried as hard as I could to make sure they got enough of me, both in terms of quantity and quality of time, but I know that they sacrificed. They are mature enough to understand how important this is to me-- that it will enable me to make sure they have the resources to go to college, and to follow their dreams in general.

This last week and a half, I started doing something I had mostly put off for ages: reading for pleasure. I'll write about both of the books I finished in the last week. And there will also be one other thing I'll be continuing-- blogging, and reading blogs.

In June, it will be five years since the worst week of my life. In the space of a week, I got laid off of a teaching job I loved and planned to work until I retired, discovered my dad had cancer, and discovered that one of my oldest, closest friends was murdered. I remember the weeks and months after that week-- mostly through a haze. I felt numb, dead even. Five years down the line, I feel good-- alive. I feel like my decisions-- to think outside the box, and to stick with my plan to change careers-- have paid off.

In the last five or six months or so, I've developed the habit of keeping a little notebook of blog post ideas. I'll be utilizing that soon. And I've been running some ideas about what I'll be doing besides working. I've got at least two book ideas. I'm also really hankering to travel-- there are some old friendships on the west coast that have had to wait because of school. I'm looking forward to getting out to bicycle more. To take my kids out to movies and plays. To having a glass of wine with an old friend. To watching movies. To return to life.

Spring Break Random Ten

2011-04-24T00:40:00.004-05:00

I missed Friday. I'll explain. I had my spring break this week. It wasn't until about Wednesday that I realized how exhausted I'd been. This week, I caught up on the sleep I'd missed this semester, cooked, ate enough, tried to do a little less substituting caffeine for sleep.

I also took an always-lucrative Saturday night off of work last week; it was just Adam and I, and so we hung out, popped popcorn (in my old iron skillet) and watched "North By Northwest." He finally realized why I'd been trying to get he and my daughter to watch it with me for the last couple of years.

So in between all that and everything else, Friday floated on past me. No problem. I did a lot this week (besides catch up on my sleep). I caught up on my reading. I finally finished a book I'd wanted to read for years, Andrew Chaikin's "A Man On the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts." And started re-reading a book I haven't read since 1986, Rob Serling's "The President's Plane Is Missing." Rob was Rod Serling's brother, and a damned good writer. Last time I read it, I checked it out of the Sulzer Library, my local library since 1986. It's long-gone there; had to buy a copy on www.half.com.

Hard to believe, after this four year journey, that I'm heading into the last couple of weeks. Lots to do then-- fingerprints, the state nursing board, find a job, then start working. I think I'm ready.

In the meantime, I've still been taking notes in my little green notebook-- ideas for future posts. I hope somebody will still be reading by the time I have the time and energy to post regularly again.

1. Idiot Wind- Bob Dylan
2. Get Your Rocks Off- Primal Scream
3. Godzilla- Blue Oyster Cult
4. Hot House- X
5. Radio Free Europe- REM
6. No Home For You Here- The White Stripes
7. Old John Robertson- The Byrds
8. Whole Lotta Love- The Temple City Kazoo Orchestra
9. Ferry Cross The Mersey- Gerry and the Pacemakers
10. That's No Way To Say Goodbye- Leonard Cohen

Notes:

1. I heard a couple of lines form this song in a Hootie and the Blowfish song years ago and wondered "WTF?" Turned out they'd taken the line out wholesale and Dylan's people sued and won.
2. These guys are amazing. Span a couple of decades and always come up with something amazing.
3. Not as big a hit as "Don't Fear the Reaper," and has no cowbell. But still awesome.
4. God, I love "X."
5. REM's first single, which pretty much created college radio.
6. These guys split up at the right time, recently, after having turned out an insane amount of great music.
7. My song reloaded his Itunes recently; I was pleased to see that he added a bunch of Byrds tunes.
8. Yes, the Zeppelin "Whole Lotta Love." All on kazoo. This was Rhino Records' first record.
9. I never, ever get tired of hearing this little gem.
10. I pity people who haven't discovered Leonard Cohen.

The "One Month Warning" Friday Random Ten

2011-04-08T19:09:00.004-05:00

As of today, I have about four weeks left to nursing school. I had my first clinical day of my last rotation, Gerontology, yesterday.

I had taken the bus to the hospital in the morning, but my friend Alina offered me a ride home-- she lives a few blocks up the road from me. She also gave two others in the group, Shirley and Shazia, a ride to an el stop. As the four of us rode toward home, I thought about the work I've put into this, and about the friendships I've made. I've been reading Andrew Chaikin's book "A Man On The Moon," the book the mini-series "From The Earth To The Moon" is based on, in the minute amount of spare time I have. In it, the voyage of Apollo 12, which carried the third and fourth men to walk on the moon, Pete Conrad and Al Bean, to the moon. Bean later talked about how the marvel at the journey ended up secondary to the friendships he made with Conrad and the Command Module Pilot Dick Gordon. You form a bond with the people who shared the journey with you. My life came together for two years with these three friends, who hail from three countries, Romania, Pakistan and Ghana and three continents, Europe, Asia and Africa, to sweat this training, this degree, which will define the rest of our lives. It was cool, after an exhausting twelve hour clinical day, to have this moment of joy, camraderie and bliss.

It's hard to believe after these last two ball-busting years that I'm nearly done with school. I was telling one of my friends at school that though this degree is my lowest one-- it's an associate's degree, and I also have two bachelor's degrees and a master's-- that it was the hardest one. And ironically it's also the most marketable one.

There are a lot of changes coming up. My wife and I have talked of moving later in the year. For a while it looked like we might have to move; my landlord was considering moving his mother-in-law into this apartment. We had thought about moving as it were because we've simply outgrown the apartment. We now basically have four adults living here. It looks like the changes may either take longer or not happen at all. I'm hoping for some time. I need to finish school, get a job and then get cash together for a move.

Also, some work changes. The owners of the restaurant had been trying to sell for some time, and finally did a few weeks ago. The transition to the new owners is supposed to happen about the time I graduate. The new owners seem like stand-up guys and are claiming they won't change anything, but in 31 years of working in the restaurant business off and on, I've never once seen new managers or owners come in without changing a bunch of stuff. I'd hoped that the ownership wouldn't change until I was done with school. I guess I got my wish.

One last thing. I got a message yesterday, through the list-serve I set up nearly five years ago when my friend Mark was murdered, that the first Mark Evans Memorial Art Scholarship was awarded at Eastern Illinois University recently, to a senior art student from downstate. It made me happy. It's been nearly five years, but I still miss the hell out of Mark. It's nice to know that every year, a person like him, an art student at Eastern Illinois University, will be helped in his name. In honor of that, I lit a candle in the ashtray that's in the picture at the top of the post. He made it at Eastern, and it was always near his art table-- he used it when he smoked his pot. It was something I associated with him, and when his parents told us to take anything that had sentimental value to us, I took it. If you notice, it's cracked-- there's a funny story, involving me, of course, for why it's cracked. I'll tell it another time.

1. Cry, Baby Cry- The Beatles
2. Saturday Night In The City of the Dead- Ultravox
3. All I'm Thinkin' About- Bruce Springsteen
4. Run, Run Rudolph- Chuck Berry
5. Louie, Louie- The Kingsmen
6. Cherry Bomb- The Runaways
7. If The Kids Are United- Sham 69
8. All The Voices- INXS
9. Isis- Bob Dylan
10. Monday, Monday- The Mamas and the Papas

Notes:
1. A gem from the great White Album.
2. From the "No Thanks" set of seventies punk and new wave.
3. Love this little number.
4. Great Christmas song. Keith Richards did a nice cover.
5. I was just reading about this song on Cracked Magazine online. I'll devote a post to it.
6. Got my daughter the Runaways movie for Christmas. Thumbs up all around.
7. More seventies punk.
8. From "The Swing," an album I bought and just about wore out the summer of '84.
9. On the live "Rolling Thunder Revue" version of this song on the "Biograph" collection, Dylan introduces this song with "This is a song about marriage." One of my favorites.
10. I grew up listening to my dad's copy of the Mamas and the Papas "best-of" album. Still love them.

Double Friday Random Ten

2011-03-25T18:22:00.002-05:00

Since I did my Friday Random Ten last week, but never had time to post it, I'm posting this week's and last week's.

This has been two of the busiest-- and most rewarding-- couple of weeks of my life. I mentioned before that a week ago Monday, I had my first Med-Surg exam of the two I'll have this rotation. It's generally considered to be the most difficult test of the second year. I was happy that I got a B-- especially after finding out that most of the class got C's, D's and F's on it. A lot of people are at the edge of dropping out of the program.

Last Friday, we had the HESI exam-- a practice for the NCLEX, the state nursing board I have to pass when I'm done with school in order to get my license. It was one of five I'll take this semester, but the most important one. It's comprehensive, covering everything we learned in the whole program, and counts for a percentage of the grade in one of my classes. It's probably a good thing that I didn't know, until right before the test, that it counted for 15% of the grade, not 1.5% like the other HESI's, which are in specific content areas, count.

I whipped through the 160-question test in a little under two hours, and got the score immediately. I needed to get at least an 850 to get the full 15%. I got an 1007. About a third of the class did not get the 850. The average score was in the high 800's.

I had one more test this week-- the clinical test for my Med-Surg rotation. The instructor, Ms. Beaumard, is one of the favorite teachers I've ever had. She's rigorous and demanding, but knows just when to back off when you're nervous. She inspired us to be better nurses.

Thanks to her and other instructors, I've felt different this semester. I used to walk into clinical days scared to death. Each time I was doing something new and terrifying. I'm still doing new stuff, but I approach it with a new attitude. I'm eager and excited to learn a new skill.

I passed my clinical test with flying colors. Yesterday, the last day of that rotation, Ms. Beaumard did evaluations. Mine was short and sweet. Ms. Beaumard told me that I'd done a great job this semester, and that she didn't have any concerns about my abilities as a nurse-- unlike some of the other people in the program. She praised my critical thinking skills, and that I was going to be a good nurse. Having her tell me that was like having Willie Mays tell me I was going to be a good baseball player.

I have my second and last Med-Surg test on Monday. Then I start my final rotation, Gerontology. Six more weeks to graduation.

1. Mastercharge- Albert Collins
2. I've Been Loving You Too Long- Otis Redding
3. Run Through the Jungle- Creedence Clearwater Revival
4. Gimme Shelter- The Rolling Stones
5. Hold Me Tight- The Beatles
6. Tattooed Love Boys- The Pretenders
7. Car On A Hill- Joni Mitchell
8. I'll Be Around- The Spinners
9. Bastards of Young- The Replacements
10. Roll Over Beethoven- Chuck Berry

Notes:
1. I was fortunate to see Mr. Collins while he was still with us. Great performer.
2. A classic from a guy who was taken from us way too soon.
3. CCR commenting on the Vietnam War.
4. From the great "Let It Bleed" record.
5. Some older Beatles
6. "I shot my mouth off and you showed me what that hole was for..."
7. Read about this song in "Girls Like Us," which was about Ms. Mitchell, Carly Simon and Carole King.
8. Great break-up song.
9. I saw their last show nearly 20 years ago.
10. I saw Chuck Berry at a show in Grant Park in 1986. Left and discovered that Keith Richards joined him on stage shortly after I left.

And last week's...

1. Hotel Illness- The Black Crowes
2. Love Too Good- The Jefferson Starship
3. Bohemian Like You- The Dandy Warhols
4. If We Make It Through December- Merle Haggard
5. Baby, I Love Your Way- Peter Frampton
6. Rock Me On the Water- Jackson Browne
7. There's a Moon in the Sky (Called The Moon)- The B-52's
8. Your Gold Teeth, Part II- Steely Dan
9. A Girl Like You- The Rascals
10. She- The Monkees

Notes:
1. This is my current favorite song.
2. Gracie Slick voicing some past relationship regret. I can relate.
3. Love, love, love this song!
4. Maybe the perfect country song.
5. I love Lisa Bonet's version of this in "High Fidelity."
6. Jackson Browne taking a spiritual turn.
7. This one was fitting for the "biggest moon" that turned out to be a bust here in Chicago-- overcast that night.
8. A lot of people missed how damned funny Steely Dan was, including this song.
9. Love the Rascals/Young Rascals!
10. For a prefab band, these guys were awesome.

The "Better Late Than Never Tuesday Friday Random Ten"

2011-03-15T21:06:00.005-05:00

Completely missed last Friday's Random Ten, since I was busy with school and work. We had a test coming up that is generally considered to be the most difficult of the year, covering coronary problems, AIDS, tuberculosis and lung cancer.

I got together Saturday with a handful of classmates to get ready for the test. One of those people is pretty damned annoying, but worked as a paramedic and understands the coronary stuff, which includes reading EKG's, something the rest of us struggled with.

The study session must have worked; a test I would have been thrilled just to get a "C" on, I got a "B." I kept my mouth shut about it though, because I found out most of the rest of the class (including the annoying former paramedic) got C's, D's and F's.

Going in to clinical today, I had the realization that something has changed. First, knowing that I got through the toughest portion of the program yesterday, I know that I can do this. Secondly, I realized that I'm no longer terrified going into a clinical day. I look forward to learning new skills and perfecting ones I've already learned. I had a moment today when I realized how much I've learned. On clinical days, we team up; one person is the "lead" and the other is the "team member," who is basically serving as a CNA (certified nursing assistant). I was the team member, so I set about getting sets of vital signs, changing linens and witnessing while my partner gave meds.

Toward the end of the day, my "lead" was about to give a heparin shot-- something that we do a lot in the hospital (it's an anti-clotting agent-- people who are bed-ridden are more prone to blood clots). My partner asked me to do it, but I'd given a lot of heparin shots and so thought it best for her to do it, especially since she was the lead. As she started giving the shot, I realized she was doing it wrong, though it was too late to stop her. She gave the shot at a 90 degree angle, like you'd give an insulin shot. A heparin shot is "subcutaneous;" you give it just under the skin, at about a 30 degree angle.

Fortunately, where she gave the shot, on the underside of the patient's arm, was okay-- there's enough fatty tissue there so that it was okay. But I was mortified that just a few weeks before graduating, she did not know that this was how to give heparin. I found myself wishing I'd have gone ahead and given the shot.

I was not the only person mortified. A resident who was in the room took her outside and politely but firmly told her what she'd done wrong. I was glad the resident did it and I didn't have to. But I learned a couple of valuable lessons. First, if I see someone about to do something wrong, go ahead and stop them. Secondly, to have confidence in what I've learned.

On Friday, we have the comprehensive "HESI," a practice for the NCLEX, a big nursing board I take at the end of this program that I have to pass in order to officially become a nurse.

I've got a lot coming up. One of my kids starts his last year of high school this year as the other is starting it. I'll be starting a new career, and may have to move out of the place I've called home for the last nearly-13 years. Oh, yeah-- and I'm turning 50 in a few weeks. It's all good.

1. Ruby Tuesday- The Rolling Stones
2. Turn That Heartbeat Over Again- Steely Dan
3. In the Heat of the Summer- Phil Ochs
4. Fade Into Me- Mazzy Star
5. Are You Gonna Be My Girl- Jet
6. Painting By Numbers- James McMurtry
7. I Hear You Knocking- Dave Edmunds
8. Walkin' After Midnight- Patsy Cline
9. Ever Fallen In Love?- The Buzzcocks
10. She's So Modern- The Boomtown Rats

1. I've always found this to be one of the Stones' more lovely songs.
2. From "Can't Buy A Thrill," one of the greatest debut albums ever.
3. The late, great Phil Ochs, singing about the riots that racked the ghettos of America's cities in the mid to late sixties.
4. This song is haunting and achingly beautiful.
5. Love this nasty little song from a few years back.
6. The son of "Lonesome Dove" author Larry McMurtry. He just did a couple of shows at the Old Town School of Folk Music, just a few blocks from my home.
7. Dave Edmunds had a hit with this back in 1970.
8. Spent many a night in college walking home-- alone-- drunkenly singing this song.
9. A new wave classic.
10. The Boomtown Rats at their snottiest.

The "How Did I Get This Old" Friday Random Ten

2011-03-04T21:30:00.005-06:00

Had a hell of a week at school. I'm waiting for the whole cardiac thing to fall in place in my head. SA nodes, V-Tach, Atrial Flutter, etc. I expect it to happen sometime Monday afternoon or so.

I'm enjoying this clinical rotation, despite the fact that it's causing me to be even more sleep-deprived than usual because of the combination of work and clinical schedule-- close the restaurant late, then up at 5:30 am. Have Ms. B., one of the best teachers I've ever had (I had her last semester, and was fortunate to be able to choose my schedule to get her again.) Yesterday was annoying; had to work with the most annoying classmate ever in history, and a nurse who was high-strung beyond belief. Still, it's all good. Thanks, Ms. B, and thanks to the other classmates.

In the meantime, my son's turning 17 on Monday. Trying to get my head around that, and also the fact that I'm done with nursing school in 9 weeks.

We celebrated my son's birthday by going down to a favorite restaurant down in Chinatown, then coming home and watching "Napoleon Dynamite." I was reminded of the day, nearly 17 years ago, that the most terrified guy in the world drove his girlfriend's car home from the hospital with a girlfriend he hardly knew, and a day old baby in a car seat in the back. And I'm reminded of Bill Murray's line Lost In Translation, as the character "Bob Harris," who says

"The most terrifying day of your life is the day the first one is born...Your life, as you know it... is gone. Never to return. But they learn how to walk, and they learn how to talk... and you want to be with them. And they turn out to be the most delightful people you will ever meet in your life."

And they have.

1. Stratford-On-Guy-- Liz Phair
2. Mean Mr. Mustard- The Beatles
3. Wild Horses- The Rolling Stones
4. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds- The Beatles
5. The Mansion On The Hill- Bruce Springsteen
6. The Scorpion Departs But Never Returns- Phil Ochs
7. Born In Chicago- The Paul Butterfield Blues Band
8. The Stripper- David Rose
9. No Feelings- The Sex Pistols
10. That's Entertainment- The Jam

Notes:
1. From "Exile On Guyville." Liz must have been in my social circle, from everything I've read about this record, but I don't remember meeting her, let alone dating her. So I can't be one of the asshole ex-boyfriends she's singing about on this album. Not that I wasn't an asshole then.
2. From the great second side of the "Abbey Road" album. Back when there were second sides, or records, for that matter.
3. One of my favorite songs to play on guitar. The Sundays, who are best known for "Where The Story Ends" did a lovely version of this one.
4. Love the story of this song; everybody thought it was about drugs because of the initials. It was just about a picture John Lennon's son drew of his friend Lucy at school.
5. From Mr. Springsteen's "Nebraska" album. If there was a more beautiful song than this one ever written, I have yet to hear it.
6. Ochs was best known for his political songs, but wrote some power songs about tragedies that moved him. This one was written from the point of view of a sailor on the Scorpion, a US nuclear sub that was lost in the Atlantic in 1968.
7. My parents used to go see the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in the mid-sixties at Big John's, in the Old Town neighborhood, where we lived. Love this song and album.
8. Anybody around my age remember the shaving cream commercial this one was used in?
9. The Sex Pistols only recorded one album. But why record another when you got the first one right?
10. Rumor has it that The Jam were who the Clash were making fun of in "White Man In Hammersmith Palais" ("They've got new suits and Burton suits....")

2011-02-25T21:08:00.005-06:00

Had a crushing last few weeks. Finished my Pediatrics rotation, which was very productive. I've begun my second Med-Surg rotation. Since I got a very low lottery number in registration, I was able to get the instructor I wanted, Ms. B., a very funny, strong-willed French lady who is one of the best teachers of any subject I've had in my life. As I'm fond of saying that she rides you like a five dollar burro, but you learn a ton. She understands that time management is going to be one of our big issues when we're nurses, but also wants to make sure we can think critically.

Last weekend, Kim and Mel went out of town, and it was just Adam and I. I took a rare Saturday night off-- an expensive proposition, but needed, I thought, to spend some time with him. He's missed the most time with me of everybody. Last Saturday, we hung out together, and my best friend Jim came by. We watched an old movie, "Start The Revolution Without Me," which I used to watch with my father whenever it was on television. Neither Jim nor Adam had ever seen it, so it was really fun to watch it with them.

My son and I got to talk a lot. I'd been concerned about him. At the end of last summer, his cousin, my ex's nephew, died at the age of 28. He was more like a brother to my son-- a really nice kid. I came to the conclusion, at the end of the weekend, that he's dealing with it as well as one could expect.

Over the weekend, we had a bunch of great talks. He amazes me sometimes. He's dealt with so much-- he has to deal with my ex- way more than I have to. And yet, he thrives-- he's just unbelievably smart. He talks about history, economics, philosophy and understands Game Theory way better than I ever did when I studied it in Grad school. He's got an incredible intellectual curiousity; we walked over to our local little bookstore and I gave him some money to buy any book he wanted. He chose a book about the famine in China that was caused by Chairman Mao's disastrous policies. How may sixteen year olds do you know who would choose to read about this? He's fascinated by economics and government policy. But above all of that stuff, he is just a genuinely nice person. I couldn't be prouder of him.

In less than two weeks, he turns 17. I'm having trouble getting my head around that. There are times where I feel like it's been only six months since I was holding him on my lap feeding him. I know that he is going to love college, but I can't believe he's almost there.

In other news, my daughter's school basketball team went to the playoffs. They won the first round, but were knocked out in the next round, in a game this evening. I was really proud of my daughter; she played aggressively and well. I hope that this summer we can find some time to play together.

I spent some time tonight doing some online case studies for the Pediatrics HESI test (a preparation for the nursing boards) that I'm taking Monday morning. It's a little staggering to know that I'm so close to finishing this all-- ten weeks left. I'm amazed at how much I have learned, and I'm amazed at how much I have to learn. I've come to the realization that I'm entering a field that I can spend a lifetime learning in. And I'm pretty damned good with that.

1. The Times They Are A'Changin'- Bob Dylan
2. Queen Jane Approximately- Bob Dylan
3. Will The Circle Be Unbroken- Asleep At The Wheel
4. To Be Young- Ryan Adams
5. Car Jamming- The Clash
6. Don't Take Your Guns To Town- Johnny Cash
7. Dock Of the Bay- Otis Redding
8. I Think It Was the Wine- Corky Seigel
9. The Needle And The Spoon- Lynnrd Skynnrd
10. Blues With A Feeling- The Paul Butterfield Blues Band

Notes:
1. One of the hallmark songs of the sixties. Also at the beginning of the movie "Watchmen," which I got for Christmas.
2. From "Highway 61 Revisited," one of my "desert island" albums.
3. A great old standard served up by Asleep At the Wheel on the great album "Served Live."
4. Love this song. If you've ever seen "Old School," it's the song played at the beginning of the movie.
5. From "Combat Rock," and album that came out 29 years ago. Can you believe it?
6. Some classic Cash
7. I never, ever get tired of hearing this song, or singing it and playing it on guitar. A post-humous number 1 for the immensely talented Mr. Redding.
8. I friggin' love this song, which sums up a lot of my younger years. My parents used to see Seigel at Big John's, a club in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighorhood back in the late sixties.
9. Skynnrd warning about dope.
10. Another band my folks used to see at Big John's in the sixties.

A Few of My Favorite Things: My Toronto Blue Jays Mug

2011-02-13T23:41:00.003-06:00

I had a twelve hour clinical shift today. I've adapted to the twelve hour days pretty well-- that's the kind of shift I'll be working in nursing, in all likelihood-- but I had to work last night, so ended up getting less than four hours of sleep. This is my last long clinical of the semester, indeed of nursing school. Life goes on.

I'd been promising (or threatening) a new feature, "A Few Of My Favorite Things." I haven't been blogging nearly enough, and since I crashed for a couple of hours after coming home from clinicals and having dinner, I've got a little energy to blog.

With full time school, full time work and parenting two teenagers, coffee has become the elixir of life to me. I tend to drink coffee in the late afternoon and early evening to extend a day that by then has become long, and frequently after a nap. I acquired the treasured Toronto Blue Jays cup through a job. Larry T. a guy I have worked for on and off over the years is one of the more remarkable people I've ever known. I first worked for him in the late eighties in a deli he co-owned. I continued to work for him at a barbecue joint he owned.

Larry, an African-American guy from the south side of Chicago, is intelligent, funny and gregarious. On a trip to Toronto, a city he loves as much as I do, he met a couple of other restauranteurs, who sent him home with a bunch of little gifts, including a Toronto Blue Jays coffee cup-- the one pictured above.

The 1993 World Series, between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Toronto Blue Jays, was one of my favorites. One of my favorite-ever baseball players, Joe Carter, who had at one time played for my beloved Cubs, was the hero of that series, a moment I recounted in this post a couple of years ago. In fact, I was working at Larry's barbecue joint watching it on television.

The mug sat around the restaurant for ages before I realized that it was eventually just going to get broken or lost. I took it home to make sure it had a good home.

In my post about the Joe Carter World Series game, I recounted how at the time of that game, I was awaiting the birth of my son and an uncertain fate, and that how that moment was my favorite moment in a World Series until seeing that son pitch in a little league world series over a decade later. When I have a simple cup of coffee (always black, no sugar) from that cup, it's a reminder of my son, a reminder of my friend Larry, whom I'm still friends with, and a reminder of how great a game baseball can be.

Last week I got on Ebay to get one more thing to go along with the mug: a 1993 Joe Carter Toronto Blue Jays baseball card, which I will frame and put in a place of honor.

The "Three Months To Go" Friday Random Ten

2011-02-11T18:47:00.005-06:00

Today marks three months to go to two milestones: graduation from nursing school and my 50th birthday. Today I thought a lot back to a time two years ago when I was waiting to find out whether I got into Truman College's nursing program. Lots of things seemed a long time away-- hearing about nursing school, my 50th birthday and my son's 18th birthday. Now the first two are a quarter of a year away, and the last one is just a little over a year away. The last one means that my son--and I-- no longer have to deal with the decisions of an angry, capricious and emotionally stunted person, my ex.

In the meantime, I had my first test of my final semester on Monday. I was nervous as hell about it, but it turned out well-- after thinking it was going to be a "throwaway" test that I'd have to do better on another test to make up for, I got an "A." It was the lowest possible A, but an A nonetheless.

I had another good moment in school last Sunday. For all the things I've done in this life, I had zero experience in the medical field. Everything I've done, from cleaning up an adult to giving a shot (or 60 or 70 one day when I gave a bunch of people flu shots), to giving a heparin shot with a tiny needle or an Accucheck blood sugar test, it's all been outside of my comfort zone. I've taken some pride in being able to do that, to step outside of my comfort zone, but often found myself relieved when I was able to avoid some new skill for a while. This last Sunday, during clinical, our patient (we had a low "census" so my partner and I had to "share" a patient) was being discharged, and so we had to discontinue the IV on our patient, a 42 day old baby. I jumped at the chance to do it. It was one more skill I could add to my bag of tricks. My instructor supervised, and I removed the IV. For the first time, I wasn't nervous at all. I'd come to the realization that with the right instruction and instructor, I can master each skill. It was a nice moment.

I've got a couple more weeks in my Pediatric rotation, and one more test. I'm looking forward to my next one, my second Med-Surg rotation, with one of my favorite clinical instructors, a crazy French lady who is rigorous, humorous and inspiring.

In one of my favorite movies-- a mini-series, actually, "From the Earth to the Moon," there is a scene in which the crew of Apollo 9, a mission that was to test the Lunar Module, a piece of equipment that had huge difficulties in the development, rattled off all the "firsts" that their mission would have. They would have difficulty finishing half of the things, let alone all of them. Yet, the commander of the mission enthusiastically says "I can't wait!"

These last two clinical days, I came to a several realizations. One was that the nurses who were actually responsible for the patients we were working with had complete confidence in us. We checked in with them, told them what we were doing, asked them relevant questions and all, but in the end, we went in and gave care to those patients. Secondly, the patients' parents had complete confidence in us. They asked us questions, and when we told them things-- things to watch for after discharge, etc.-- they listened and took note.

The last was that I have confidence in myself. Nearly five years ago, I was told that I was not going to be retained in the teaching job I loved and thought I'd work until I retired. My confidence was shaken to the core. I felt pretty shitty about it. Now, five years later, I'm feeling pretty damned good. The asshole in me wants to send a card to my old principal, the one who made the decision not to retain me, when I graduate.

1. Funky Kingston- Toots and the Maytalls
2. Find Somebody- The Rascals
3. Dancing in Heaven- Q-Feel
4. Just a Closer Walk With Thee- Joan Baez
5. Everything Is Beautiful- Ray Stevens
6. I Believe- Don Williams
7. School Days- Chuck Berry
8. What's On My Mind- Kansas
9. I'm Gonna Make Me Love You- Diana Ross and the Supremes with the Temptations
10. Five Feet High and Rising- Johnny Cash

Notes:
1. I find this song hard not to dance around to. Infectious.
2. Not one of their better-known songs, but a great one. Discovered it through Little Steven's Underground Garage.
3. An eighties one-hit wonder
4. Joan taking a walk down the gospel lane
5. Mr. Stevens was known for his humorous song, but his one was serious and with a lovely message.
6. Mr. Williams wrote hits for other, including Eric Clapton's "Living On Tulsa Time," but this beauty was a hit for him.
7. A solid classic from Chuck.
8. First heard this one when I started listening to FM radio in high school in the mid seventies. Still a favorite.
9. The Supremes with the Temptations? There was no way they were gonna miss!
10. Johnny Cash singing about a flood or train crash or prison? Go figure.

The "Snow Up The Yin-Yang" Friday Random Ten

2011-02-04T20:19:00.005-06:00

Sorry for the long absence from posting; I've been keeping up with my favorite bloggers, but haven't had the energy, given the circumstances, to post much.

As most people know, we got socked by a blizzard here in Chicago. It's made life a little more crazy than normal. I'm sore head to toe-- not only from shoveling snow, but from a spill I took down the back porch steps-- ironically while going to the basement to get a bottle of wine.

I am partaking in the infamous Chicago "dibsing;" the placing of lawn chairs, brooms, garbage cans, etc. to stake out a space you spent hours digging out for you car, and in my case, my wife's car as well. Above is my neighbor's "dibs," which scores high in every area of classic dibs: variety of material, ugliness and overkill. He also scored points for clearly being drunk when I saw him with his nephews digging out the space at 11:30 in the morning.

Tonight is a night in with my kids and two of their friends. My wife and her friend (the mother of one of the kids) are going to a meet and greet with Rahm Emanuel, who's the likely next mayor of Chicago (she just posted this picture of herself with him on Facebook). Besides spending time with the kids, I'll also been hitting the books; I'm assuming that although my school was closed on Wednesday that our test will go as planned on Monday, since the material on Wednesday wasn't going to be on the test. I've realized lately how bloody exhausted I am, but keep reminding myself that there's only about three months left to this journey. Plus, I got a little added incentive. This week they announced graduation day: May 11. It happens to be my 50th birthday. Finishing this program would be the best 50th birthday present I could give myself.

1. Real Man- Todd Rundgren
2. Beautiful Brother of Mind- Curtis Mayfield
3. Silver, Blue and Gold- Bad Company
4. Joker Went Wild- Bryan Hyland
5. Valley of the Dolls- Dionne Warwick
6. I Can't Tell You Why- The Eagles
7. Sean Flynn- The Clash
8. Mississippi- Bob Dylan
9. Talkin' About You- The Rolling Stones
10. Lady Madonna- The Beatles

Notes:
1. First heard this one on WXRT, our local "Prog Rock" station in the late seventies. Still one of my favorites.
2. This guy, who grew up in the projects here in Chicago was amazing. His son roomed with a friend of mine at Eastern Illinois University.
3. A guilty seventies pleasure; I love these guys. They wrote a ton of great songs.
4. One of many hits Mr. Hyland had.
5. Love Ms. Warwick's voice, especially when she's singing the songs of Burt Bacharach and Hal David.
6. The one hit of theirs sung by newcomer Timothy B. Schmidt.
7. About the combat photographer Sean Flynn, who happened to be the son of the actor Errol Flynn. He disappeared with another photographer near the Cambodian border while covering the Vietnam War, and is widely assumed to have been murdered by the Khmer Rouge. I read a New York Times article about a year ago about a friend of his, a fellow combat photographer, who is still trying to solve the mystery of his disappearance.
8. From the great "Love & Theft" album.
9. From "December's Children."
10; One of the songs Paul penned. A few years back, I saw Yoko refered to Paul as "Solieri to John's Mozart." Not only was this an ungracious thing to say, it's wrong. Paul is a phenomenal songwriter.

The Depths of Winter Friday Random Ten

2011-01-21T15:47:00.004-06:00

Yesterday I had an epiphany: it's right around now, the third week of January every year, that I begin to really hate winter. It arrived right on schedule yesterday.

Had a busy, busy week. I went back to school this week. It was great seeing all the friends I've made over the last few years there. I ran into a couple of friends who dropped out last year who are trying it again, successfully, it would appear, this time.

In the meantime, I'm waiting; waiting for a supplementary textbook I ordered a few days ago, and mainly waiting for a couple of pairs of glasses I ordered. I had realized that I pretty much had a headache all the time. I thought that it was because of the stress of juggling full time school, full time work, kids and a marriage. I realized a couple of weeks ago that it may have had to do more with an outdated glasses prescription. I thought about waiting until I was done with school, but thought better of it. I went in for an exam and discovered that my last exam was in August of 2007. No wonder I was getting headaches. This prescription was my first bifocal one. Both my reading and distance had changed significantly. I got a good deal on a two pairs. No bells or whistles except for the bifocals being lines-free, which was included in the special deal they had. I'll have to wait until after school to get the thinner lenses, non-glare, etc.

1. Living In Hard Times- Wendy Waldman
2. Rock and Roll Niggah- Patti Smith
3. Hello Stranger- Barbara Lewis
4. Things Have Changed- Bob Dylan
5. Queen of Hearts- Gregg Allman
6. Sugar Man- Rodriguez
7. Althea- The Grateful Dead
8. C'est La Vie- Robbie Nevil
9. 30 Days- Chuck Berry
10. Understand Your Man- Johnny Cash

Notes:
1. Ms. Waldman's written hits for other people, but I loved this song of hers performed by her that came out in the mid-eighties.
2. Patti Smith deconstructs and redefines the "n-word" brilliantly in this song.
3. Ms. Lewis is a Chicago native.
4. Dylan at his dourest.
5. A beautiful smoky song.
6. Rodriguez has been a pretty recent discovery for me. Great political singer-songwriter who's being rediscovered these days.
7. From the "Go To Heaven" album.
8. This guy was one of my one-hit-wonders. Didn't know he was white until I bought the single back in the day.
9. I'm hoping Mr. Berry is doing better; he collapsed onstage here in Chicago about a month ago.
10. Listening to this one, I realized that musically and thematically, Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" is nearly a rewrite.
7.

Some Random Thoughts

2011-01-11T20:43:00.003-06:00

I had some random thoughts, none of which were enough for a stand-alone post.

Regarding the Wikileaks...

I had mixed feelings on this, particularly as someone old enough to have grown up with the Watergate scandal brewing. I absolutely want as much transparency in government as possible. On the other hand, there is a need for some secrecy; there are some bad people and bad governments out there in the world. But the thing I find a little funny is the shock that American diplomacy involved secret meetings, dealing with some allies that are neither good nor reliable, backdoor deals-- isn't this pretty much how diplomacy has always worked?

Regarding the horrific event in Tuscon this last weekend...

When the behavior and words of the alleged perpetrator became public, I knew right away the guy was a paranoid schizophrenic. When I did the psychiatric leg of my clinicals last semester, I worked with a number of paranoid schizophrenics, and the behavior is remarkably similar in paranoid schizophrenics: delusions of grandeur, paranoia, jumbled ideas, the idea that the government and others are spying on them, increasing isolation, etc. The only unusual thing is the violence; people suffering from that particular mental illness are rarely violent. They generally just start avoiding contact with others.

The family should have gotten him started on some kind of treatment for two reasons. One, he needed it; there are effective treatments for what he probably has. Secondly, if they'd had him in treatment at any point, he wouldn't have been able to purchase a weapon. His family dropped the ball, and a bunch of people paid the price.

Lastly, regarding Fred Phelps and the Westboro Church...

The Arizona State Legislature passed emergency legislation to prevent demonstrations within a certain distance of a funeral. The jagoff Phelps and his whack-job church plans on circumventing this by tying up a nearby intersection. I'd throw this thought out. Some years back, my son's mother for some reason lived in a really bad neighborhood-- I think she was trying to show me that despite being a rich girl who grew up in the suburbs, she could be "urban." So when ghetto people started sitting on her stoop drinking "40's," she asked me what she should do. I don't remember where I read or heard this, but I gave her a suggestion that ended up working. You pour ammonia all over the steps. The ammonia makes it unbearable for an hour or two, and they end up moving somewhere else. The ammonia evaporates, and is therefore relatively innocuous environmentally in the long term. Just a thought...

The "Getting Ready For The Final Sprint" Friday Random Ten

2011-01-07T17:47:00.004-06:00

For being on vacation, I've been insanely busy, both at home and work. I'm still trying to finish off some big projects here, and the restaurant seems to be reflecting the general upturn in the economy; it's been good and busy, easing some of my money worries.

I found out on Wednesday that David, who, along with his wife Kathy, was one of my favorite regulars, passed away on December 22nd. He was someone who was an absolute delight. He was retired, and would come in, despite a bad hip and congestive heart failure, and take the bus to meet his wife, who was a teacher, at the restaurant. He drank his vodka rocks with a splash of diet Coke, and was witty and warm. Kathy came and had dinner with her sister on Wednesday and told me that David had finally lost his struggle with his health problems. I was sad, but told Kathy that David was a guy who didn't waste a day of the life he was given. I will miss him. I kept thinking of the Red Hot Chili Peppers tribute to their late guitarist, Hillal Slovak on the bloodsugarsexmagic album, "My Lovely Man." I hope I'm wrong about my atheism, and that I'm good enough to get to where he's at.

"I'll see you later, my lovely man, If I can..."

In happier news, my friend and co-worker Leslie, who was the person who talked me into going to nursing school instead of Pharmacy school, found out yesterday that she passed her state nursing boards. I'm hoping that I can repeat that. I've ordered my book for my first rotation, Pediatrics, and plan to get ahead of the reading next week before classes resume (a week from Tuesday), and to get to the nursing computer lab to take some practice NCLEX (nursing board) tests.

1. Quinto Regimento- Jamie O'Reilly and Michael Smith
2. Holly Holy- Neil Diamond
3. All Tomorrow's Parties- The Velvet Undergroung
4. Absolutely Sweet Marie- Bob Dylan
5. Flowers On the Wall- The Statler Brothers
6. Cyprus Avenue- Van Morrison
7. The Living Years- Mike and the Mechanics
8. One Piece At A Time- Johnny Cash
9. Roll Over Beethoven- Chuck Berry
10. Itchycoo Park- The Small Faces

Notes:
1. From "Pasiones," a play about the Lincoln Brigade. Michael Smith also wrote "The Dutchman," which Steve Goodman covered.
2. Neil Diamond's music has grown on me over the years.
3. I remember John Cale saying something to the effect that the reason Nico got to sing in the Velvet Underground was that it was your basic "the guitar player's girlfriend gets to sing" situation.
4. From the fabulous "Blonde On Blonde" album.
5. Looked the Statler Brothers up a while back and discovered that they weren't actually brothers. Kurt Vonnegut cited this song as his favorite in an interview I read in the Rolling Stone years ago.
6. Every once in a while, I'll discover a Van Morrison song that I somehow missed. This was one of those.
7. From Genesis alum Mike Rutherford.
8. Johnny Cash in a comical turn.
9. Two good covers of this song-- by the Beatles and by, of all bands, ELO.
10. A big hunk of psychedelia from the mid sixties.

Johnny Yen's One-Hit Wonders: "Walk Away Renee" by the Lefte Banke

2011-01-04T11:45:00.004-06:00

My schedule is making a liar of me; I'd promised myself to blog more often, especially since I have a five week Christmas break. I've been trying to get some big projects done that will make my day-to-day life a little more easy, a little more streamlined. I've plowed through a clean-up of my closet, a clean-up of my son's room (a lot of the stuff in there was mine) and a clean-up of the basement. I've also been working a lot-- trying to get ahead of finances, since it looks like my first clinical rotation will be Sundays, 7 am to 7 pm, which will mean I'll miss a day of work a week for about five weeks. There's been a big uptick in business at the restaurant I work at-- I think the economy is finally recovering. New Year's Eve was just insane-- I made as much money as I typically make in four shifts.

Somewhere in there, I've kept my promise to get some reading done. I've been plowing through Dan Epstein's "Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the '70's." I grew up watching baseball in the seventies, so the book is like a trip down memory lane, but with peeks behind the curtain to see the seamier side of the sport. I can't recommend the book enough.

Today is no exception schedule-wise. I'm trying to get a carload ready to run to the Salvation Army, but first I have to run my daughter to an audition at a performing arts high school she's applied to. And I can't tell you how much it means to me that she asked me, rather than her birth father (my wife's ex-husband) to bring her.

In any event, I decided I had time today to do a "One-Hit Wonder," The Left Banke's "Walk Away Renee."

The Left Banke was formed in New York City in 1965. According to Wikipedia, consisted of keyboard player/songwriter Michael Brown, guitarist George Cameron, bass guitarist Tom Finn, drummer Warren David and singer Steve Martin, who also used the name Steve Martin Caro. Brown's dad, Harry Lookofsky, a prominent session violin player, became the band's producer, manager and publisher (and was undoubtedly responsible for the prominence of the violin in "Walk Away Renee" and their other songs).

In true rock and roll fashion, personnel changes and problems began even before "Renee" was a hit. Drummer Warren David was kicked out of the band and guitarist George Cameron took over the drum slot and Jeff Winfield was brought in to play guitar.

"Walk Away Renee" was sold to Smash Records, a subsidiary of Chicago-based Mercury Records, and was, appropriately, a smash hit in 1966. By then, though, there were problems. Despite the fact that The Left Banke had a subsequent, though much smaller hit, "Pretty Ballerina," Michael Brown bolted, using the name of the group for himself. The other members of the group ("Holy Pink Floyd, Batman!") hired lawyers to try to keep Brown from using the name for himself. In the meantime, Brown continued to record and release records as "The Left Banke," using session musicians, including, very appropriately, future Spinal Tappper Michael McKean. The other band members, who still controlled the band's fan club, urged fans to boycott the Brown version of the band.

In 1967, the band members settled their differences (no doubt the money coming in from their hit singles influenced this), but there was still confusion over their status, and they were never able to capitalize on their success much.

Eventually Brown left the and ended up in the group The Stories, who had a huge hit in the early seventies with a cover of Hot Chocolate's song of interracial love, "Brother Louie," (a future "One-Hit Wonder) But again showing his abysmal timing, Brown had left the group by the time of the hit single.

Apparently "Renee" was a real person, and seemed to be Brown's muse; not only was "Walk Away Renee" about her, but so was their follow-up hit "Pretty Ballerina," as well as the lovely, but not-so-big-selling "She May Call You Up Tonight." "Walk Away Renee" stands as one of the most lovely hit singles of an era rich in great music.

Season's Cheers

2010-12-29T10:28:00.005-06:00

A few days ago, one of my classmates posted on Facebook that she was ready to see 2010 go. Putting aside how funny it is that she "friended" me a few weeks ago-- this was the same classmate I'd had issues with in clinicals all semester-- I had to agree with her. It was an exhausting and sometimes trying year. But it did have its moments.

We had a number of deaths in the family this year. In August, my son's cousin (my ex's nephew), who was more like an older brother to him, died of a heart attack. He was only 28. We also had three deaths recently in my wife's family. The most awful was the death of her cousin's four-year-old daughter, who died of complications from the bone marrow transplant she received two years ago to treat the leukemia she'd been diagnosed with before she was a year old. Her Uncle Paul, her father's brother, died a couple of months ago, and we just learned that her aunt Nancy, her mother's sister, died a few days ago.

All through the year we struggled with money problems. My wife's job is advertising related, and this is, of course, the first thing cut when the economy tanks. She had three different jobs this year. Finally, it seems that she's in a job that is in no danger of going away. Through a couple of loans from my parents and dipping into my retirement account, it appears that I'll have the financial resources to finish nursing school.

One other little blessing was that the restaurant I work at, which was put on the market over a year ago, has not been sold, and will probably not be sold before I finish school. It would be a pain to be looking for a job while I'm trying to finish school.

Thanks to some planning ahead on my part, and some good Black Friday deals, we were able to cobble together a nice Christmas for the kids. My son seemed to really enjoy the Kindle I got him. Thanks to a gift card from my in-laws and my wife, he was able to start downloading some books right away. His selections were interesting: Marx's "Communist Manifesto" and "Das Kapital," the key works on communism, and Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations," the key work on capitalism. Not surprisingly, he's thinking of studying business and economics. Oh, and he downloaded Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

I was feeling a little too exhausted to feel super Christmasy myself until I saw the sight that is pictured at the top of the post. It happened a few days before Christmas. One of the two owners was hosting at the restaurant. Of the two owners, Dan is the most gregarious and friendly. You'd never know he's survived two bouts of cancer, a coronary bypass and the death of his wife. He takes every day of his life with cheer and gusto. A few nights ago, a young couple had a baby who would not stop crying. After a while, Dan asked to take the baby. Within seconds the baby stopped crying. I had to grab my Blackberry and snap a picture of this-- a guy who never had kids who is great with kids. Later, Dan told me that this always happened; that whenever there's a baby at a family event who won't stop crying, they say "Give it to Dan!" and it never fails; the baby stops crying.

When my son was a baby, I observed that he seemed to have a sense for who was a good person and who was bad; there were people he warmed up to immediately, and those he couldn't get away from quickly enough. And nearly 100% of the time, he was right about their character. And in this case, the baby Dan held was right. If there's a nicer guy on this planet than Dan, I have yet to find him or her. Even the Grinch's heart would have warmed up.

So as this year closes, my wife and I are getting ready to once again celebrate our anniversary apart; it's tomorrow, and she's taking off to Minneapolis to see her family as she usually does for the New Year. I may be going out tomorrow night with my buddy Joe, whose anniversary is also tomorrow (I was actually out with him on New Year's Eve 17 years ago when he met his wife). It's all just as well-- I'm working New Year's Eve and New Year's Day-- hopefully my last ones as a waiter.

So, to all, we made it through this year! Have a Happy New Year's!

The Tale of "The Inner Light"

2010-12-20T12:10:00.012-06:00

I'm a little over a week into my holiday break and have ~~threatened~~ promised to blog more often; I've even been carrying around a little notebook to write down ideas when they pop in my head.

One of the things I made time for was to have brunch yesterday morning with my best friend Jim, who I met nearly 30 years ago when we attended Eastern Illinois University together. As always, we had a great and far-ranging talk. And of course, being the big Trekkie dorks that we are, we talked about Star Trek, including Jim's favorite episode, "The Inner Light." It reminded me of something that happened about 7 or 8 years ago.

When I was still a teacher, and not a nursing student, I took advantage of the 1/2 price teacher rate on the New York Times (for now, I have to settle for reading it online). One day, I read of a huge auction of props from Star Trek-- a couple of the movies, but mostly from the series "Star Trek: The Next Generation." And included in the auction, according to the article, was a specific prop from "The Inner Light;" the flute that is the "Macguffin" of the episode.

Spoiler Warning!
In the episode, the Enterprise comes upon a small object, obviously built by someone, in the middle of nowhere in space. The object has only electronics and a single item: a flute.

The object is beamed aboard for examination, and suddenly the commander, Captain Piccard is striken unconcious. He awakes-- or so he thinks-- on a planet called "Kataan." The people around him think that he is Kamin, a fellow inhabitant. At first, he is confused, but as time goes on, he begins living his life as Kamin, living with his wife Eline, and eventually their children.

As Picard settles into his life and work as Kamin, he begins to accept the life among the inhabitants, who are peaceful, intelligent and resourceful. He even pursues a hobby, playing a flute, composing a song as he becomes more and more proficient.

Over the decades, a sad fact becomes clear, something he is the first to discover; the star that is Kataan's sun is growing, and will eventually make life uninhabitable on the planet. As it becomes apparent that the people of Kataan do not have the resources or knowledge to save the planet, they do the next best thing-- create a spacecraft that will save, for some future space traveller, the knowledge of the enlightened life that the soon-to-be-extinct beautiful people led. As the probe is launched, Kamin is very, very old. The people in his life reveal what this has been. PIccard awakes and discovers that he's only been unconcious for less than an hour. He has lived this lifetime in moments. He also discovers that the flute he has been playing in his fugue state was in the probe-- and that he can now play the tune he learned in his dream. He realizes that he has become the receptacle of the knowledge, sweat and dreams-- and end-- of an entire doomed civilization.

When I read the New York Times article, and discovered that the flute prop used in the episode was one of the things that was being auctioned-- and expected to sell for about $400-- I began furiously trying to figure out how I was going to get to the auction. I had figured out how I was going to come up with the dough-- picking up a couple of extra shifts at my second job as a waiter. But in the end, I couldn't work out a way to get to the auction. I felt bad-- it would have made the best Christmas or birthday present ever for Jim.

I didn't feel as bad a few years ago when I saw a television program on that auction. It turned out that the prop flute-- which Patrick Stewart, the actor who portrayed Piccard/Kamin pointed out, was not even a functional flute, but a prop-- was one of the most sought-after props in the auction; "The Inner Light" is the favorite episode of many of the show's fans. It had sold for about $40,000. There would have been no way I could have gotten the prop. It may be just as well-- the story has become one more story in a friendship that is playing out in real life and real time, a friendship that, as it approaches thirty years, is better than ever. And that is something that even $40,000 can't buy.

The "One Week In" Friday Random Ten

2010-12-17T16:04:00.005-06:00

One week into my five-week holiday break. I've haven't actually been standing still much; I'm trying to use the break to catch up on some stuff, including reviewing some of last semester's school content-- I did well on some of it, not so well on other stuff. I will see it again in June or so when I take the nursing boards, so I need to know it.

In the meantime, I've gotten a couple of things out of the way-- big one was cleaning out my closet. I had a lot of stuff I didn't need, or at least didn't need to be there. I had a big housecleaning, in preparation for my in-laws visiting from Minnesota. I'm going to try to tackle the basement a little and the pantry a lot. Big plans.

I'm also going to try to get some reading done. I've got two books out from the library, one fun and one serious. The fun book is Dan Epstein's "Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging '70's." I've mentioned this one before-- my son and I went to a reading Mr. Epstein did this summer at the Book Cellar, our local indy bookstore. I bought two copies of the book-- one for my son and one for my buddy Jamie. I had to get a library copy out so I could read it myself. The serious book is one I've wanted to read for some time, Dan T. Carter's "The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics." The book was published in 1995, and was amazingly prescient, predicting the bizarre politics of hate and fear that is bringing imbeciles like Sarah Palin political sway.

Oh, yeah-- I plan on blogging some too. I mean it this time.

Today I was running around trying to get my last few things done, but took some time to run to my daughter's school and see her perform with her class. They did a nice rendition of Paul McCartney's "Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime." (she's the one on the far right in the picture at the top) It's hard to believe that this is her last year at her grade school; she's been there since Kindergarten. On to high school next year.

On my way home, I was trying to get a few things done. It seemed like every idiot who couldn't drive was in front of me, and I was steadily getting more and more pissy. I stopped by the library to drop off two dvd's I'd forgotten to return yesterday, and expected to pay a $4 fine. I got to the desk, told the lady they were late, and had the money in hand. She checked them in, smiled and said "Don't worry-- no fine." My little holiday gift from the Chicago Public Library system. I grabbed a couple of cd's and a book, checked them out and walked outside. A guy pulled over, opened his car window and asked for directions to a location a couple of miles away. I was able to help him out and he went on his way with a thank you.

As I walked to my car I reflected how a kindness received and a kindness given had quickly improved my disposition. Maybe something to think about this season, or any season, for that matter.

1. Give My Love To Rose- Johnny Cash
2. Tall Cool One- The Wailers
3. Shine A Light- The Rolling Stones
4. Fallout- The Police
5. Domino- The Uptown Rulers
6. People Get Ready- Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions
7. Hickory Wind- Joan Baez
8. Looking For Lewis and Clark- The Long Ryders
9. The Goodbye Look- Donald Fagen
10. Elusive Butterfly- Bob Lind

Notes:
1. The perfect country song-- a guy finds a guy dying who just got out of prison by the railroad tracks and the dying guy makes the guy promise to bring his money to his wife and kid.
2. Little-known fact-- the Wailers recorded "Louie, Louie" before fellow Pacific Northwestern bar bands the Kingsmen or the Sonics. But I love all three versions.
3. A lot of people argue that this song, the second-to-last on "Exile On Main Street," should have been the closing track, but I love "Soul Survivor" as a closing track.
4. A great, obscure early Police single.
5. The Uptown Rulers were a great ska band from my college town in the early to mid eighties. Me and my old friend Dan digitized both of their EP's from vinyl years ago. This is a great ska version of the great Van Morrison song.
7. Mr. Mayfield grew up in the infamous Cabrini-Green housing projects, where I taught my first year. They were in the news lately when the last highrise in the "Greens" was vacated, in order for it to be demolished.
8. You've got to love a song that namechecks Tim Hardin.
9. From "The NIghtfly," one of my favorite albums of the eighties. The first post-Steely Dan record for Mr. Fagen.
10. A lovely little one-hit-wonder.

The Christmas Break Friday Random Ten

2010-12-10T18:22:00.005-06:00

I went today to Wrigley Field to pay my respects to Ron Santo, who was my favorite Cubs player when I was a kid. I'll post about that soon.

I finished my semester. I was a bit pissed that I missed a B-- the last rotation was brutal. But when I discovered that more friends had dropped out, and that a few more were only barely able to stay in the program, barely squeaking out a C, because of the final and the standardized test we took, I stopped my bitching. I'm sad for the ones who dropped out, and glad for the ones who stayed in. And I'm glad that I'm heading into my last semester.

On the good side-- my folks called today and offered me the money to finish school. They discovered that they needed to start drawing from their 401k, since my dad turned 72 this year, or they would start paying penalties. I agreed to accept the money as a loan.

I had a wonderful evening with my kids, who have been troopers about the time they've missed with me for the last two years. My wife didn't seem to quite understand why it's important to do the annual gingerbread house with them. But we did it, and the Christmas tree as well. I've come to realize that for a guy who was dead set on not having kids as a young guy, I've thoroughly enjoyed being a parent.

So I have five weeks off of school. I need to start hitting the books to get ready for the NCLEX, the nursing boards. I need to spend some time with some old friends who I've missed time with. I need to spend some time with my kids. And I need to blog. To that end, I've started using a little present I got from my med-surg clinical instructor, Ms. B. (the crazy French lady who is a great teacher, and who I was able to get again for this semester's med-surg rotation)-- she handed out little presents like these for good critical thinking, getting good scores on quizzes, etc. I carry this little notebook around with me all the time and now write down topics for blog posts when they pop in my head. And god willing and the creek don't rise, I'll make time to post, because I've sure missed it.

1. He Can't Love You- The Michael Stanley Band
2. Madame George- Van Morrison
3. You'll Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)- Bob Dylan
4. My Conviction- The Soundtrack From Hair
5. Simple Twist of Fate- Bob Dylan
6. Both Sides Now- Judy Collins
7. Hail! Hail!- Ike Reilly
8. Use Me- Bill Withers
9. A Pirate Looks At Forty- Jimmy Buffett
10. New Gun In Town- The dB's

Notes:
1. I never noticed this one-hit wonder back in the eighties, but heard it on satellite radio a couple of months ago and loved it.
2. There's a story about Phil Ochs drunkenly tearing a sink out of the wall of the Troubador in LA when Van Morrison didn't play this song, a favorite of his.
3. In the Dylan "Biograph" box set, Dylan is quoted about this song something along the lines of "About a relationship where you're lucky to come out without a broken nose."
4. I finally treated myself to the cd of the Broadway soundtrack to Hair, an album I grew up listening to (my dad's copy) on vinyl. I love this song, rationalizing the gaudy stylings of male hippies, pointing out that the males of most species are more flamboyant than the females.
5. A haunting song from Dylan's post-marriage-breakup album, "Blood On the Tracks."
6. This one repeated from last week-- not that it's a bad thing. One of my favorites.
7. A great song from some hometown guys who namecheck some other hometown heroes.
8. One of those songs that reminds me of an old lover.
9. Jimmy Buffett gets written off as a party guy, but this song is bittersweet and introspective. And as this pirate looks at fifty (the same week as I finish nursing school), I think about this song a lot.
10. From "Like This," one of the great albums of the eighties.

The "Finish Line" Friday Random Ten

2010-12-03T11:45:00.004-06:00

I woke this morning to discover that Ron Santo, the Cubs third baseman who was my favorite player as a kid, had passed away. I'll do a post on him soon, but for now, RIP Mr. Santo, and thanks for the memories.

This picture is probably the most famous of him. It was taken at The Mets' Shea Stadium in 1969. The black cat turned out to be an omen of the season. The Cubs dropped from a 14 game lead in first in August to falling behind the Mets by 13 games by the end of the season. The Mets went on to win the World Series.

I've got a busy next few days coming up. I need to wrap up a couple of care plans for school, to turn in on my last day of clinicals on Sunday. Happily, the teacher is cutting the day short, knowing we have a final on Monday. On Wednesday, I take the HESI, a standardized exam for nursing students. On Thursday, I register for my last semester of school. The good news about this is that I drew number 8 in the lottery, meaning I will be the eighth person choosing my schedule. This virtually assures that I'll get my first choice for instructors and clinical times.

And then, beginning next Friday, five fabulous weeks of break. Of course, since I will be taking the nursing boards in late May or early June, I'll probably be hitting the books getting ready for that. Can't believe the finish line is in sight.

One other bit of sadness-- I found out this week that my friend Bisrat, who I met when we had Nursing 101 together (he's the guy lower right, right next to me in this picture) has dropped out of the program. I have to talk to him to return his Maternity Nursing textbook, which he allowed me to borrow (he'd already finished that rotation, and was in the difficult Med-Surg rotation that I struggled with too), so I'll find out if he's planning to try again next year. I certainly hope so.

1. Galveston- Glenn Campbell
2. Old John Robertson- The Byrds
3. Feel the Benefit- 10cc
4. Rumble- Link Wray and His Raymen
5. Ruby Room- The Foxboro Hottubs
6. Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds- The Beatles
7. The Peter Gunn Theme- Henry Mancini
8. Walt Whitman's Niece- Billy Bragg and Wilco
9. Get Off Of My Cloud- The Rolling Stones
10. Both Sides Now- Judy Collins

Notes:
1. One of many fine songs Jimmy Webb wrote and Glenn Campbell performed.
2. The Byrds' Roger McGuinn, a Chicago native, cut his teeth at the Old Town School of Folk Music, which moved from Lincoln Park to my neighborhood a few years back.
3. From "Deceptive Bends," a favorite of mine from the seventies.
4. This wonderful old instrumental was on the jukebox at Danny's tavern, on Damen and Dickens here in Chicago back in the day, and I never, ever got tired of playing it.
5. The Foxboro Hottubs are a side project of Berkeley's Green Day. The Ruby Room is next door to Berkeley, in Oakland, and one of my favorite places in the world. I posted some time ago about the song and about nearly being thrown out of the Ruby Room.
6. One of my great delights in life is that my kids love the Beatles nearly as much as I do.
7. This one came up on my shuffle about a week ago, and my son, hearing it, identified it with the Blues Brothers. It was indeed played, in one of the scenes where Carrie Fisher is trying to kill Jake Elwood (John Belushi).
8. This album, "Mermaid Avenue," keeps coming up on shuffle. Not that it's a bad thing...
9. I've read and heard nothing but good reviews about the new Keith Richards autobiography. I'll wait until after I'm finished with school. Hopefully it'll be on Kindle by then.
10. Miss Collins' version of the wonderful Joni Mitchell song.

Giving Thanks, 2010

2010-11-25T11:06:00.008-06:00

I finally got a picture of myself in scrubs, which I get to wear this rotation instead of my hideous nursing school uniform. Took the picture in the mirror of the men's locker room at Mercy Hospital in Chicago.

My clinical group completely lucked out. Not only did we get a clinical instructor who is one of the finest teachers I've had the privelege to work with, but we are actually getting to do a lot of stuff. The other clinical groups, who are in other hospitals have been complaining-- justifiably-- that they're not getting to do anything. One group is in a hospital that is getting recertified, so they're hiding the students. They're watching movies, listening to lectures-- but not even going on the floor. My group each helped deliver a baby-- or two, in the case of me and one of my classmates-- on the very first shift we worked.

We've continued to rock on our rotation. I have finally mastered a bunch of skills I'd been struggling with, including taking a blood pressure. I can even get the pulse on a baby-- no mean feat, since their heartrates run between 110 to 160 beats per minute.

There was, though, one skill that terrified me, and I hadn't done it yet-- taking a blood draw.

A couple of Sundays ago, I watched up close while the person I was partnered up with, Denise, did one. She did a marvelous job, particularly considering that the patient had very small veins.

Last Sunday, as we prepared to hit the floor, my instructor rattled off room numbers and what we would do that day. And when she said "Johnny-- you've got a blood draw for a CBC (Complete Blood Count) at 10 am," I was at once excited and nervous.

My partner and I went and checked on our patient, a Chinese woman (our hospital is near Chicago's Chinatown) who'd given birth just after midnight. We split the assessments; I took the vitals on the mom, while my partner took the vitals on the baby. I told my patient that we'd do a blood draw in a couple of hours.

The mother and baby were both doing well, so my partner and I took a caffeine break. My partner that day was a woman I'd had run-in's with before. We'd not always gotten along well. Earlier that morning, I'd done her a favor that saved her from being late to the shift. I think it was the moment that she realized two things: that you've got to choose your battles, and that you never know who's going to help you out at some point. We had a good day together.

As 10 am arrived and passed, I reminded my instructor of the blood draw. She let me know she'd be there soon (she was showing a couple of other students how to give a newborn its shots, something I've already done).

About 10:15, she arrived. I'd already gathered up what I needed, with the help of David and Denise, who helped me scour the floor for the supplies I needed. I practiced tying a tourniquet on an arm on my instructor and two classmates-- not as easy as it seems. And then I grabbed my supplies and entered the room.

I struggled a little with the tourniquet, and my instructor quietly guided me through it. We looked at-- and palpated-- the two "good" veins on my patient's arm. The vein that was most visible was not the most palpable. She asked me which vein I thought was better; I told her the one less visible that you could feel more. "Okay, then, go ahead." I checked that the bevel was up and quickly guided the needle into my patient's arm. I saw the blood rise up slightly into the tube, I attached the vial and the blood quickly filled it. (Unlike the person in the picture I have here, I wore gloves-- Mediums, a size smaller than what I usually wear, so that I could get a good grip on the needle, tube, etc.) I remembered to take the tourniquet off before I withdrew the needle-- you could get a spurt of blood otherwise. I put a piece of gauze where the needle was, clicked on the little button and the needle withdrew, safely covered. My partner grabbed the needle for me and put it in the "sharps" container. I held down the gauze and put a bandage over it.

And it was done.

My instructor told me I'd done a good job, and helped me clean up the bits and pieces of paper and debris left over.

It was the thing I'd had the most anxiety, a fear, even, of doing. I'd done it quickly and flawlessly, with minimal pain to my patient. I put a label on the vial, put it in a "biohazard" bag, put it in the tube and sent it on to the lab.

Afterward, I talked to my instructor. I told her that it was like that old Peggy Lee song, "Is That All There Is." I'd had months of anxiety bordering on fear about that moment. And in the end, I'd quickly and quietly added it to my skill set. After all that anxiety, my thought was "Is that all there is? Is that all there is to a blood draw?"

I know that they're not all going to be that easy, but I know that I'll be able to do them.

Yesterday, while I was on campus taking care of some odds and ends, I ran into my 102 instructor, who was yet another great instructor I've had. And mentally, I began counting my blessings. I've had mostly great instructors, beginning with my wonderful 101 instructor, who's in this picture. I thought of the great friends I've made-- people I know I'll stay in touch with. People I've worked with, sweated tests with, people who have been there while I've crossed milestones in the program. and I realized how thankful I am not only for what finishing this program will give me regarding finances, but how it's changed me.

I thought back to the worst week of my life, over four years ago. In a single week, I got laid off a teaching job I loved, discovered my dad had a potentially terminal cancer and Mark, one of my oldest and closest friends, was murdered. I compared where I was that week, how low I was, and I reflected on this semester. This semester, we'd heard, was the "make or break" semester; most of the people who dropped out of the program would drop out this semester. They were entirely correct. Class this semester has been like "Ten Little Indians." Every day we come to class and another person or two has dropped out. My current clinical group, pictured here, has thinned out; two have dropped and rumor has one or two might drop too after this last test, which was a tough one. I didn't do as well as I wanted, but I didn't flunk it. And I'm still clinging to my "B" in the class overall. When I run into people I know from various classes, and they ask how I'm doing, I tell them: "I'm still in the program." And I'm feeling pretty damned good about it.

So on this Thanksgiving, I give thanks for many things. I am thankful that I got into this nursing program. I'm hearing that hospitals employ students from this school over some bigger "name" schools because we tend to have more skills walking onto the job than the other programs, and have a better work ethic. I'm thankful that I had the financial resources, thanks to a decision I made years ago (to start a retirement account, which I was able to tap into), to finish the program.

I'm thankful for two happy, healthy, wonderful kids who have moved into teenagehood and are still a blast to be around. They're approaching adulthood frightenly fast. I'm thankful that my son, who has missed the most time with me because of the decision to go back to school has been terrific about this. He understands how important it is to me-- particularly that it's important to me have the financial resources to make sure he doesn't have to worry about the money for college.

I'm thankful that my wife and I are employed. I'm thankful that we have an intelligent, wise and compassionate person as President. I'm thankful for the magnificent group of friends I've managed to acquire over the years. Best wishes to all of you for Thanksgiving!

The "Leap of Faith" Friday Random Ten

2010-11-19T18:04:00.004-06:00

Big week. I'm studying for one of the hardest tests I'll take this year-- test is on Monday. I've got care plans to do-- want to turn those in Sunday. And I took a bunch of money out of my 403b retirement account to pay some back bills and for the rest of school. Now I definitely have to finish school. I've taken a big financial leap of faith.

Had a good, if not long enough talk tonight with old friend Jamie. Made plans to get together with him over my very long holiday break (from about Dec 10 or 11th to around January 19th or so). Looking forward to both the break and to hanging out with him.

1. Flake- Jack Johnson
2. Cool Metro- David Johansen
3. All The Young Punks (New Boots and Contracts)- The Clash
4. More Than A Name On A Wall- The Statler Brothers
5. I'm Only Sleeping- The Beatles
6. Coyote- Joni Mitchell
7. Long Train Runnin'- The Doobie Brothers
8. Just Like A Woman- Bob Dylan
9. Will To Love- Neil Young
10. She Came Along to Me- Billy Bragg and Wilco

1. When this song was a hit in 2002, I had just separated from wife #2, and had fallen in a relationship with an ex-girlfriend that this song pretty much summed up. I love the line "It seems to me that maybe/Pretty much always means 'no.'" Still one of my favorite songs.
2. From David Johansen's first post-New York Dolls solo album. And a good one it was.
3. From their second album, a rip on the "punk" posers emerging from the London Scene.
4. A really powerful song from the guys who did one of my favorites, "The Class of '57"
5. From the great "Revolver" album.
6. From "Hejira," one of my "Desert Island" albums. I just read "Girls Like Us" a few months ago; it's about songstresses Joni Mitchell, Carole King and Carly Simon. The author revealed that the song is about Joni's ex-boyfriend Sam Sheppard, the playwright and actor.
7. Managed to see the Doobie Brothers on their last tour, in 1982.
8. From another of my "Desert Island" albums. The song is supposedly about Warhol hanger-on Edie Sedgewick, but Dylan's denied it.
9. From "American Stars and Bars," which is, IMHO, an underrated and underappreciated album.
10. From "Mermaid Avenue," an album Billy and Wilco did of unrecorded Woody Guthrie songs. My old friend Dan had a heads-up about this album when the airline he works for shipped Wilco's equipment from Chicago to Dublin for recording sessions.

These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things: My Cast-Iron Cookware

2010-11-13T15:07:00.007-06:00

I've been mulling beginning this feature for some time. In Tom Robbins' book "Still Life With Woodpecker," (which will be a future "My Favorite Thing"), Robbins discusses objects. He points out that a dime-store philosopher would say that your stuff owns you-- that you orient your life toward keeping stuff-- but our stuff has the magic we impart to it. For example, the piece of the Berlin Wall that I have safely stashed away has value to me not only because it's a piece of history, but the fact that my friend Mark, who was murdered four years ago, broke the piece off for me during a back-packing trip through Europe in 1990, only months after the wall came down. It's cool to have a piece of history, and it's a keepsake of one of the best and most important friendships I've had in my life.

This new feature is also based on a conceit: that people who read this blog give a shit about my life. I think that this is pretty much an assumption between the bloggers who read one anothers' blogs.

One of the things I've thought about for my future is the possibility of purchasing an Airstream, maybe renovating and updating an old one, vacationing in it, and maybe even living in it as I get older. This would, of course, entail condensing my life, my stuff in particular, down to a minimum. I've frequently thought of how I would do this. If you had to essentially reduce your belongings to one or one and a half rooms, what would you do?

A computer, with a large hard drive would enable one to bring along tons of movies. An internet connection would increase it further. A Kindle would knock the number of books down considerably-- maybe 30 or so physical books (I'd have to have a copy of "Still Life," being as much as a totem or talisman as a book to me).

What about cookware? In "Kitchen Confidential," Anthony Bourdain correctly points out that a cook really only needs a couple of good knives. A decent set of pans, and of course plates, bowls and flatware. But one of the things I will not do without, despite it's weight and bulk, is my cast-iron cookware.

Cast-iron cookware is one of those things in life that is rare: it actually improves with increased use. You "season" it-- basically burning oil onto it in order to fill the spaces between the iron molecules with carbon molecules-- and with each time you use it, being careful to clean it with little or no soap, in order to keep from washing the seasoning off-- it becomes better. Each layer of carbon you cook onto it makes it stick less. The cast iron spreads the heat, making anything you cook on it cook evenly-- the heat is not concentrated right over the flame like in lesser cookware (aluminum-- I'm talking to you!).

The pan that is right and front has a history. I remember seeing the three-pan set for only ten bucks in the Ace Hardware on Lincoln and Diversey (despite the gentrification that overran it, it's still there, right by Delilah's, one of Chicago's only remaining punk clubs). It had to be right around 1992. I had no car, so I had it on the bus, along with a couple of picture frames-- the kind with the clips on it. I remember oiling and heating the pan, along with the other two pans in the set, which were smaller. I had to open the window in my kitchen, since the burning oil was billowing out of the stove.

That pan is one of my favorites; it has a nice thick handle that doesn't heat up too much. It's also large, making it perfect for cooking up a couple of turkey burgers, making hash browns or cooking up turkey bacon, all without burning the food.

The set is a Wagner set. The company went out of business since I bought the set, but another company has begun manufacturing it again. I plan on buying a set for my son after I finish nursing school; this will let us get it reasonably seasoned before he takes them off to college.

The pan to the right and back was from a co-worker, who'd bought a set a while back. I seasoned the set and have used the big pan a lot. I'm not crazy about it though; the handle is thin, and heats up a lot. I don't think this one will make it to the Airstream.

The big griddle probably will. I had another one that my mother had sent me, but it's been missing since our kitchen renovation a couple of years ago. It's possible it went to Goodwill by mistake. It's also possible it's in a box, buried in my basement. In any event, a while back, Aldi's had them on sale for only $14.99. They're awesome-- a flat griddle on one side, for pancakes, burgers, etc. The other side has ridges, so you can cook a steak to perfection. I bought two of them, and alternate using them. This way, when my son goes off to college, I'll have a one perfectly seasoned griddle for me, and one for him, along with the Revereware pans I grew up cooking with-- given to me by my mother and like all well-made stuff still in perfect condition.

The "Dash For The Finish" Friday Random Ten

2010-11-12T10:03:00.003-06:00

More schoolwork today. Clinical all day Sunday, but at the end of the day, I'll be half way done with the clinicals. In three weeks I'll be done with the semester, and one semester later I'll be done with nursing school-- or at least this leg of it. I'll have to start work on my bachelor's in nursing, probably online, almost immediately after I finish. But for now, the finish line is in sight.

Looking forward to my son being here, and to a visit from our friends Robin and Phil on Saturday night. And looking forward, in a little over three weeks, to five weeks off school.

1. Hallelujah- Jeff Buckley
2. Flowers of Evil- Mountain
3. Amarillo By Morning- George Strait
4. Country Pie- Bob Dylan
5. Long Tall Sally- Little Richard
6. Isn't It a Pity- George Harrison
7. My Best Friend's Girl- The Cars
8. Pretty Boy Floyd- Bob Dylan
9. Door Number Three- Steve Goodman
10. My Sister- Juliana Hatfield

1. This song did more to spread the gospel of Leonard Cohen, it's author, than anything. And as a long-time Cohen fan, I'm delighted by that.
2. Mountain was best-known for the "classic-rock" song "Mississippi Queen," but I love this one, about a guy who comes back from Vietnam as a heroin addict, but re-enlists to go back to feed his habit.
3. A lovely song about a struggling rodeo rider.
4. From "Nashville Skyline," essentially Bob Dylan's country album.
5. I love the scene in "Predator" where they play this song in the helicopter.
6. This one was the b-side of "My Sweet Lord" in the US release.
7. From the first Cars album, which came out in 1978, 32 years ago.
8. Great cover of the Woody Guthrie classic, seems really appropriate lately: "And it's through this world of ramble/I seen lots of funny men/Some will rob you with a six-gun/And some with a fountain pen/And it's through this world you'll ramble, it's through this world you'll roam/You won't never see an outlaw drive a family from its home"
9. The late, great Steve Goodman taking a comic country turn, about an appearance on "Let's Make A Deal." Co-written with Jimmy Buffett.
10. One of my favorite songs of the '90's, by Blake Babies alum Juliana Hatfield.

Reflections On An Autumn Night

2010-11-11T22:49:00.004-06:00

It's one of those perfect autumn nights here in Chicago-- they kind that makes us put up with the summers that are too hot and winters that are too cold.

The last two days I've plowed through a staggering amount of school work. Tomorrow I'll plow through some more. It was quite a week. It began Sunday with the first day of my new clinical rotation, OB. The teacher had tried to moderate our expectations; the last rotation, fewer than half the clinical students got to participate in a birth. Furthermore, she told us, because it was a Sunday (7 am to 7 pm), there was less chance-- the hospital typically didn't schedule induced births on Sundays.

It was, therefore, pretty humorous when all seven of us (two more of my clinical group have dropped out of the program) assisted in births. I assisted in two. The second one, I got to do just about everything but cut the cord. I helped with the mother during contractions and birth, did the "Apgar" assessment-- the one and five minute assessments of the newborn's well-being-- dried the baby off, checked her vital signs, weighed her, then took her to the nursery, gave her her hepatitis b and Vitamin K shots, put the erythomycin gel in her eyes, cleaning her and brought her to her parents.

Because of various circumstances, I was not at my son's birth; these were the first births I've been at. I don't know how one can see a human being draw its first breath and not be awed and humbled. It was life-changing.

In the meantime, various things have brought me some peace of mind. One of the biggest ones was a few weeks ago when Larry, one of my closest and oldest friends, finally found a journalism job, after over a year of hustling to make a living since being laid off by a major east-coast newspaper (along with most of the rest of the staff). I was also relieved to know another friend, who is prone to negativity, has a more positive outlook than he'd had recently and a plan. I was also relieved to find out that my son is addressing a major health issue that he'd ignored for a long time.

I also made a tough decision, but one that I think is right. I was faced with not having enough money to finish school, with only a little over a semester to go. I decided to pull some money out of a retirement account I'd set up about five years ago. I had long hesitated to do it, but realized that it was an investment in my future-- I can't tell you how many people, including my clinical instructor last rotation, who, like me, got into nursing later in life-- told me that I was making one of the best moves I could have made in getting this nursing degree. It means my kids not having to worry about where college money is coming from. It means not being able to retire at a reasonable age. It means being able to take vacations again. It means not living in fear every day that a car breakdown is going to throw my finances all to hell. It means being able to go out for dinner once in a while. In the end, the sum I took out is going to be trivial compared to the benefits of finishing school. And I'll be able to replenish the money pretty fast once I am working.

One other decision I made was to stop drinking entirely until I'm done with school. I had come to the realization that what I considered "normal" drinking was pretty excessive. The crowd I went to school with and hung out with when I was done drank a lot. I'd come to realize that what I considered moderate was not all that moderate, and that it was interfering with the grueling pace I've got to keep for the next six months. When I'm done with it all (god willing and the creek don't rise), I'll have a glass of champagne or red wine to celebrate and assess whether I can drink moderately.

So tonight, I'm here on the back porch on this chilly November sipping grape juice out of a wine glass. It's begun to rain a little bit. I'm feeling pretty exhausted after studying most of the day. But I'm also feeling pretty satisfied.

Doonesbury

2010-11-05T22:10:00.003-05:00

I started reading Garry Trudeau's "Doonebury" in 1972, when I was 11 years old. Nearly 40 years later, as I approach 50 (Mr. Trudeau is now 62), I'm still reading and enjoying the comic. Doonesbury is still smart, relevant and funny. Yesterday's cartoon was no exception (click on the comic to make it bigger).

It is astonishing to me that when I started reading Doonesbury, the comic centered around the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War. Here we are nearly 40 years later, and we're involved in two wars in Asia. So many of the bad guys from that time-- Cheney, Rumsfeld and such are still around. The more things change...

The Bad News/Good News Friday Random Ten

2010-11-05T20:48:00.005-05:00

Interesting week. Monday was a total bad news/good news day-- and that was just the beginning of the day. As I mentioned before, on the way to a very important test, a guy opened a car door in front of me and my bicycle. I was bruised and cut up a little, but otherwise okay. I got an A on the test. Anything that you can walk away from...

I was mildly annoyed by the election results, but being a student of history, I'm reminded of this: the Dems lost seats in both houses in the 1962 elections (though though they kept control of both houses). The Republicans got hammered in the 1982 midterms, when Reagan was President. And the Dems got taken to the cleaners in the 1994 election-- the "Contract With America" nonsense with Newt Gingrich. The American voting public mostly has a short memory. The GOP now owns the economic disaster they created. And there are a bunch of out-and-out nuts in that party. It's one thing to get elected, another to produce for your constituents. 2012 will be interesting indeed. Like I said, anything you can walk away from...

1. Long Train Runnin'- The Doobie Brothers
2. Back In The USA- Chuck Berry
3. Working Girl- The Members
4. Eli's Coming- Laura Nyro
5. I'm Straight- Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers
6. Nobody But Me- The Human Beinz
7. Gommorah (A Nursery Rhyme)- Rodriguez
8. I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)- Aretha Franklin
9. Candy Man- Roy Orbison
10. SWLABR- Cream

Notes:
1. "The Best of the Doobie Brothers" was one of the first albums I ever bought.
2. I've loved some Linda Rondstadt songs, but her cover of this one wasn't one of them.
3. Loved this vid back in the eighties.
4. One of many great songs Laura Nyro wrote; I'm working on a post just about her.
5. From Richman's first and best album; many people consider it to be the first New Wave album.
6. Dave Marsh' "Rock Book of Lists" actually lists how many "no's" are in this song-- around 100, I think.
7. Discovered this guy within the last year; imagine if Donovan, Santana and Dylan had written Marvin Gaye's "Inner City Blues." This album, "Cold Fact" is a classic.
8. Read yesterday the Ms. Franklin had to cancel part of her tour for health reasons. Hope she gets better; she's a national treasure.
9. I love me some Roy Orbison. One of my great regrets is that I didn't see him perform while he was still alive.
10. The title is an acronym for one of the lines in the song-- "She walks like a bearded rainbow."

Close Calls

2010-11-01T15:04:00.004-05:00

I had a test this morning, my second and last in the Med-Surg (Medical/Surgical) rotation for this semester. I needed to do well on the second one, because I tanked the first one-- barely eking out a C in our ridiculous grading scale (you can get a 76% and get a "D"). I hit the books and notes all week and into the weekend. I was fortunate that my son had a debate tournament on Saturday, so I didn't feel like I took too much time away from him. I found it humorous that I rode my bike to The Book Cellar to study, while he drove.

The extra studying paid off. I got a 47/50 on the test this morning, a solid "A," even by the inflated grade scale. It was not without a detour, though. On the way to school, a guy opened a car door in front of me. He saw it coming and so did I; I swerved, he tried to get the door closed, but the right pedal of my bike still caught his door. I was swung around and ended up coming down on my right side. Oddly, my two concerns were my bike and getting to the test. I stood up and did a quick self-assessment. The guy ran over to check on me-- he was profusely apologetic; he's a bicyclist too. He'd been watching for cars, not bikes, though. For my part, I'm usually more observant on that stretch. I was thinking more about the test and about the fact that there'd been a murder Halloween night about 100 feet from where I was riding. I realized that but for a couple of bruises and scrapes, I was all right. The bike was fine. I talked for another minute with the guy, hopped on my bike and went to school.

This last week has been a flurry of putting out fires. I'd had to run to the University of Illinois-Chicago student medical center to get a titer to check to see if the mumps part of my second MMR (Measles/Mumps/Rubella) vaccination had taken. It had apparently not the first time. Fortunately, this time the vaccination worked. Had it not, there was the possibility of me not being able to start my next clinical, my OB leg, on time. Oddly, the blood draw, last Thursday, left a far bigger mark on me than bashing into a car door. This happens every time I have an IV or a blood draw. It looks horrible, but it doesn't hurt at all.

Perhaps the closest calls in the last week were financial. I got a nasty email from my ex- about a medical bill for my son that I didn't know about. Because it was unpaid, she couldn't book a doctor's appointment for him. I didn't bother to remind her that she's supposed to have been paying half of all the parts of the bills that insurance didn't cover. A quick phone call, while observing under my breath what an asshole she is, took care of that. That day I also got a notice that our electricity was going to be cut off by today if a past-due bill wasn't paid. On top of all this, my last auto-pay for this semester's tuition is coming due. Fortunately, between a loan from my best friend Jim and a very good Saturday night at work, I was able to pay the electric bill and should have enough left over for the tuition payment.

Today in class, I noted that two more people, both of them young, were not there for the test; in all likelihood, it meant that they're dropping out of the program. It saddened me a little; I liked both of them. As of November 11th or 12th, I'll have exactly six months left in this program. I've had some close calls-- academically, physically, medically, financially, and may have a couple of more (hopefully no more physically, though!), but I've come this far. I'm too close to the cheese to not finish.

The "Eyes On the Prize" Friday Random Ten

2010-10-22T07:44:00.004-05:00

Had yet another exhausting week. Have a bunch of stuff to do for school and otherwise today. Keeping my eyes on the prize-- and on the five week Christmas vacation.

1. End of the Night- The Doors
2. Baby That's Me- The Cake
3. Here Comes My Girl- Tom Petty
4. A Sort of Homecoming- U2
5. Your Love Is Lifting Me Higher- Jackie Wilson
6. Radar Love- Golden Earring
7. Thunder On The Mountain- Bob Dylan
8. Mister Malcontent- Lloyd Cole
9. The Ballad of Spider John- Jimmy Buffett
10. Can't Live- Harry Nillsson

Notes:
1. That first Doors album still sounds great to me. I'm excited to hear that their music is going to be available on the Rock Band game soon.
2. This group was a great anachronism-- a girl group that formed in the sixties when psychedelia, the Beatles and Stones were all the rage.
3. Tom Petty once described his music as "disposible pop crap." Maybe, but it's indispensible to me.
4. From "The Unforgettable Fire," one of my favorite eighties albums.
5. R and B great Wilson has been kind of forgotten these days-- but not by me.
6. One of the greatest driving songs ever.
7. From the great "Modern Times" album.
8. Lloyd Cole without his Commotions
9. Mr. Buffett's cover of Wesley Allan Willis' heartbreaking tale of a bad man who reforms too late to save love. I like this song so much that I can almost forgive Willis for also having written "Muskrat Love." Almost.
10. One of a handful of hits Nillsson, one of John Lennon's drinking buddies, had.

Stepping Outside of Your Comfort Zone, Part 2

2010-10-19T18:06:00.003-05:00

As I've mentioned before, this year, my second and final year of nursing school, the pedal is to the metal. Lots of work and lots of new things.

We had a test yesterday on pancreatitis, hepatitis and several other subjects. I got news from my friend Ricky that he had not gotten a good grade. I was surprised; I know he'd been struggling, but he'd really been working hard. I went online and checked my grade; I'd gotten the same grade as he did. I was a little shocked-- I thought I'd done well. Tomorrow, we'll go over the test and I'll see what happened.

Today, I had clinical-- the picture at the top of this post is the view from the lobby of the tenth floor, where I work. That's Lincoln Park and Lake Michigan. In any event, I had a patient with pancreatitis, which is one of the things we're studying. He had a huge incision in his abdomen from a recent surgery and tubes coming out of everywhere. He's on total parenteral nutrition, has an iv for fluids (he's "NPO"-- nothing per oral-- because of his surgery). He also had two drainage tubes in his abdomen.

I was paired with a classmate I've known since the beginning of the program-- we had 101 together. She had a reputation as being a little prickly, though I'd always been able to get along with her. She demonstrated why she had her reputation; she had a chip on her shoulder big-time. I had a lot to do, so I left her to do her stuff-- nursing assistant stuff-- and I did my stuff. I don't have time to deal with her bullshit, for it is, after all, her bullshit. In the long run, she'll have to deal with it as she discovers that she has to work with other people.

One of the things I've mentioned frequently in this blog is my love of the mini-series "From The Earth To The Moon," about the American Space program. There was an episode called "Spider," about the difficulties in developing the lunar lander. In it, there's a scene in which three astronauts discussed their upcoming mission, in which they were to launch the massive Apollo spacecraft and practice separating the command module and lunar lander, fly the lunar lander around, then dock back together. There was a laundry list of things that were firsts for the space program. I felt that way today. I'd never dealt with iv drug administration, mixing a drug with water, flushing a saline lock or a heparin shot (I'd given a bunch of flu shots, which are intra-muscular, a couple of weeks ago; heparin shots are "subq"-- subcutaneous).

My patient was in a lot of pain from a huge incision, and was quickly coming due for a PRN ("as needed") pain shot, so I had to hurry. I was aggravated when I made a dumb mistake-- I injected water into a vial of mixable med, then tossed the whole rig into the "sharps" container, rather than just the needle. My instructor was okay-- she realized I was nervous and that I had, because of various circumstances, not done any of this before. I grabbed another hypo and needle and filled it up.

I wanted to get my patient's pain meds running so he'd get some relief, so we hurried. In the process, I managed to spill the cup of liquid antibiotic. I got the pain med in, flushed the lock, and got the other meds going. We went back and got another dose of the antibiotic.

I came away liking my clinical instructor a lot. She rides our asses like we're ten dollar burros, but knows when we're scared to death and to back off a little. She understands what it takes to make us good nurses, but is also generous with her praise. I know that she's one of those teachers who I'll always remember. At the end of the day, as we were leaving, she stopped me and told me I did a good job. It was much appreciated.

As I went home, I thought about it all and realized that there was a family history that greatly increased my anxiety when doing something new. Getting past that anxiety was liberating not just academically, but personally.

I came home from clinical, ate a nice lunch and took a badly-needed nap. I woke up feeling really good, looking forward to the next challenge that this program will bring me. I keep thinking about that saying about doing something that scares you to death every day. I did about four of them today. I've come to realize that in order to make the big changes in my life I desire-- a new career, and it's consequent financial security, being able to pay for my kids' college, being able to pursue some other dreams, and maybe someday being able to retire comfortably, I've got to keep stepping outside of my comfort zone. I've got so many things, so many skills to develop ahead of me-- putting in an iv, putting in a catheter, suctioning an airway-- but each time I do it and succeed, I feel a little more alive, a little more happy that I went this route. And I also keep coming back to a line in one of my favorite songs, Bob Dylan's "It's All Right Ma (I'm Only Bleeding"):

"He who is not busy being born is busy dying."

Transitions Friday Random Ten

2010-10-15T18:41:00.004-05:00

I'm actually writing this on Saturday morning; after running my random ten on my Itunes last night, my old friend Jamie called me. His job is probably going to go away, and he wants to be ready for it. He had an idea for the future, and wanted to run the idea by me. My experience in the front-of-the-house in restaurants, including management, would allow me to consult on his project. That's all I can say for now. His idea is, like all great ideas, brilliant and simple.

In the meantime, I've got the place to myself this morning; my son is busy taking the PSAT (I'm running to pick him up at his school in a while) and my daughter is with my wife at a high school open house. Next year at this time, I'll have two kids in high school, one a freshman, the other a senior, I'll hopefully be a nurse-- and I'll be 50 years old. Lots of transitions.

1. The Rain, The Park and Other Things- The Cowsills
2. Traces- Classics IV
3. Walking Slow- Jackson Browne
4. Hey Mr. Tamborine Man- Bob Dylan
5. I'm In A Phone Booth, Baby- Robert Cray
6. Cry Like A Baby- The Boxtops
7. Hey Lord, Don't Ask Me Questions- Graham Parker and Rumor
8. She Is Beyond Good and Evil- The Pop Group
9. Phil Ochs, Bob Dylan, Steve Goodman, David Blue and Me- John Wesley Harding
10. Here Comes the Parade- Phil Ochs

Notes:

1. I always thought the Cowsills was an invented name; there really was a Cowsill family.
2. These soft-rock guys had a bunch of hits. The singer died just a couple of years ago.
3. From Browne's great, introspective "Late For the Sky" album.
4. The late, great Hunter S. Thompson dedicated his classic "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" in part to Dylan for having written this song.
5. Next time you watch Animal House, see if you can spot Robert Cray; he's the bass player in "Otis Day and the Knights."
6. The singer for the Boxtops was Alex Chilton, who we lost earlier this year.
7. Graham Parker at his best-- and angriest.
8. From the great "No Thanks" collection of '70's punk and new wave.
9. Gotta love a song that mentions two of my favorite singer-songwriters: Steve Goodman and John Prine.
10. IMHO the best anti-war song ever written-- and there have been many good ones. I've thought about this one a lot recently-- it has the line "A few years ago, their guns were only toys..." There are 18 and 19 year olds dying in Afghanistan who were 9 and 10 when that war began.

Johnny Yen's One-Hit Wonders: "Closing Time," by Semisonic

2010-10-12T20:31:00.003-05:00

Remember in the movie "The Shining," when Shelley Duvall's character realizes that her husband's fervid typing, hundreds of pages long, consisted solely of him writing "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy?" Well, I came to the realization that I was feeling that way lately. In an attempt to get caught up financially, I worked 2 doubles this weekend, picked up an extra shift on Friday and of course have been plowing through schoolwork. After coming home from a great, rigorous and productive nursing clincal-- I had 2 patients rather than one for the first time today-- I took a short nap, then spent a couple of hours doing online case studies in the content area for the next test-- pancreatitis, hepatitis, etc., and cooked dinner for my family. Done. I'm sitting down on my back porch on this beautiful October night with a glass of Malbec and blogging, something I really enjoy.

In any event, most of my "one-hit wonders" were older-- sixties and seventies. I thought I'd do one from the last couple of decades, Semisonic's 1998 hit "Closing Time."

Semisonic was formed out of the ashes of the fabled Minneapolis band Trip Shakespeare in 1993. After an indie label release, they put out a record on major label MCA. They found chart success with "Closing Time, from their second major label release, "Feeling Strangely Fine."

I can't tell you how much I love this song. While I was never into picking up people at bars, I did love the social life I had-- great times, great conversations. And I did meet a couple of the great loves of my life in bars. This song brings me back to those times and places-- places that are mostly gone, and some people who are gone. Also, this song holds a special place in my heart for bringing me a moment of much-needed levity the summer of 1998.

Marathon Friday Random Ten

2010-10-08T21:41:00.003-05:00

Another grueling week. I'm not complaining. Had a good talk tonight with my old friend Jamie, my friend who I got back in touch with last year after losing track of him for over ten years. He reminded me that going to nursing school was one of the best things I've ever done, and that when it's all done, it'll be pretty satisfying.

Yesterday in clinicals, my patient was a 92 year old woman who had survived the holocaust. She was hard of hearing, and initially not very cooperative. After a little coaxing, she warmed up to my partner and I, and we were able to care for her. I came away from it really realizing I'd made the right decision in going to nursing school. It sure is a good feeling to know that I can help people and make a living with it.

In the meantime, I'm working two doubles this weekend. Since I added a shift a week onto my schedule, I'm hoping that by the end of this month I can be somewhat caught up financially. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

1. Flower Lady- Phil Ochs
2. Burn On- Randy Newman
3. I Dreamed I Saw Phil Ochs Last Night- Billy Bragg
4. You Drive Me Ape- The Dickies
5. I'm Not Angry- Elvis Costello
6. Links On The Chain- Phil Ochs
7. Can't Buy Me Love- The Beatles
8. Tossin' and Turnin'- Bobby Lewis
9. Pusher Man- Pete Shelley
10. La Vie En Rose- Edith Piaf

Notes:
1. Phil Ochs came out of the early sixties Greenwich Village scene, and stood out among peers who included Bob Dylan, Richie Havens, Peter, Paul and Mary, Jose Feliciano and many others.
2. A song about Cleveland's Cuyahoga River burning in the late sixties due to pollution. A true story.
3. Wow-- Billy Bragg's lovely tribute to Phil Ochs, from his great "Internationale" EP. A rewrite of "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night."
4. Saw the Dickies in 1988, with Iggy Pop and the Ramones. The Dickies were awesome.
5. From Elvis' first album-- a really angry album. Little known fact: Costello's backup band on this album was Clover-- now known as Huey Lewis' "News."
6. Okay, seriously-- I really did set my Itunes to shuffle. Two songs by Phil Ochs and one about him. Is Itunes trying to tell me something?
7. Tomorrow would have been John Lennon's 70th birthday. Can't believe it was nearly 30 years ago that we lost him. Still miss him.
8. Love the scene in "Animal House" where this song is playing-- when they're making the "Deathmobile."
9. From Buzzcocks singer Pete Shelley's first solo album, in 1981.
10. An old girlfriend turned me on to Edith Piaf about 20 years ago. Nice to see a renewed interesting in Piaf's work in the last few years.

The Long Haul

2010-10-04T15:40:00.006-05:00

Once in a blue moon, my best friend Jim likes to tell the story not of when we first met, but his first memory of me. He hated me.

He swears it was the summer of 1983, and I think it was the summer of 1984. Regardless, I do remember the incident. It was at a party thrown by a couple of friends of ours, Kevin and Jim (another Jim, not my best friend Jim), who were both journalism students and were renting a house together. They had a party on a Thursday night; since there were no classes on Fridays in summer school, the party was well-attended.

Now to fully explain what happened, I have to put things in context. In 1984, it seems like just about every third celebrity was "coming out" as gay, whether they were actually gay or not.

In any event, I got up on a chair, made Kevin and Jim shut the music off and told everybody that I had an announcement: that I was straight!

I discovered later that my future best friend Jim turned to his friend Dan, who like Jim is gay, and is also still a close friend now, and said "Who is THAT asshole?"

Not long after that, I met Jim through Dan, who was already a friend, and we've been close friends since then. Jim later realized, when he told me about his memory, that he'd assumed I was making a homophobic statement.

After that, Jim and I were inseparable. We'd go out together, each others' "wingmen;" if there was a woman I wanted to chat up, he'd be the icebreaker, and I did the same with guys he wanted to meet. We roomed together the next summer while I was finishing up my graduate work.

We stayed in touch after college. He lived in Champaign, Illinois for years, and when he decided to move to Chicago, he took me up on my standing offer to stay with me and my now-ex while he was finding a job and an apartment. He witnessed my ex's abuse-- there's a long-standing joke we have about him not having heard her frequent bouts of screaming at me because he slept through it. He's babysat my son, and was the best man at my wedding to Kim. We've counseled one another through relationships, breakups, job losses and just about any other crisis a guy can have.

This last week was slow at work. I went to bed last night worried; I had a tuition autopay that was due to hit Tuesday morning. I was going to come up about $80 short. I'm working tonight, Tuesday and Wednesday, but by then, the autopay would hit and cost me money either through an overdraft or a penalty for having the autopay turned away. We are so broke now that even the $28 overdraft fee will cause problems.

Right before I left for class, I texted Jim this morning, asking me to call me. Despite the fact that he works nights, he was up already and called immediately (he likes to run to the gym and work out in the mornings.) I told him my situation and he stopped me; "A hundred dollars? Is that all you're worried about? For you to finish nursing school and you to be able to pay for your kids' college? That's no problem."

Since I had to run off to class and he was going to the gym and then to work, he got my checking account number and put the money into my account.

I thanked him profusely and he pointed out that he hates my ex after having witnessed how abusive she was to me, and how she still never misses a chance to be an asshole. He considered his aid to me to be a big "F*ck You" to her.

But for my part, I feel blessed that I've found some people who are in my life for the long haul. I keep coming back to a line from Elton John's song "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters:"

And I thank the Lord for the people I have found,
I thank the Lord for the people I have found.

A Quick Breather Friday Random Ten

2010-10-01T16:14:00.002-05:00

I've mentioned before a woman I know who was a year ahead of me in the program. Right before I started, she was finishing her first year, and was able to give some good advice as far as instructors and which books to get. It was very helpful.

As my first year wore on, I would run into her. She told me that as much work as the first year was, the second year was even more grueling. I took mental note. It was good advice. The workload is much bigger than last year's. We're moving into specific content area, and it's assumed that you know your stuff from last year.

This week was exhausting, but both productive and full of good news. First, the first exam we had in psychiatric nursing had a change. When we finally had a chance to go over the first test with the instructor, the last question on the exam had the wrong answer. We had talked the entire rotation about therapeutic communication skills, and it was obviously the correct answer to the question of "What is the most important skill a psychiatric nurse can have." It turned out that all but one person had chosen "Therapeutic communication skills" as the answer. The instructor called the textbook publisher and they agreed that we were right. She dropped the question, giving me a 42 out of 49 rather than 50, and I squeaked out a B on that exam.

We had an exam on Monday, the second and last for our psychiatric nursing rotation. I got a 45 out of 50, a high B on our grading scale. On Wednesday, we took the HESI (Health Education Systems, Inc.) for psychiatric nursing. I needed to get an 850 to get all my class points that went along with it. I got an 1120.

My clinical was a lot of work, but good. My instructor is a French lady who is very funny, very thorough and very rigorous. She's the kind of teacher who expects a lot of you, but will help me become a better nurse. It was all good this week.

Tonight, my son is here. I'm whipping up a dinner of chicken and mashed potatoes, and then, I imagine, a game of "Settlers of Cataan" with my kids, and then we're watching "Pirate Radio." My kind of Friday night.

1. Song of the American Consul/Quartermaster Son- Jamie O'Reilly and Michael Smith
2. Brown-Eyed Girl- Van Morrison
3. Early Morning Rain- Peter, Paul and Mary
4. Dead Set On Destruction- Husker Du
5. It's All Right- J.J. Jackson
6. One After 909- The Beatles
7. My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys- Willie Nelson
8. I'm Shakin'- The Blasters
9. I Found Out About You- The Gin Blossoms
10. I Zimbra- The Talking Heads

Notes:
1. I know both of the musicians. Michael wrote one of my favorite songs, "The Dutchman," which Steve Goodman covered wonderfully.
2. I remember hearing this song as a young kid in 1967. I never, ever get tired of it.
3. A Gordon Lightfoot classic covered by the Monkees of the folk world-- a band that was manufactured, but was still great.
4. From "Candy Apple Grey," my favorite Husker Du record.
5. I always wondered if this guy was the same J.J. Jackson who was a VJ on MTV in its first years-- same name and sound a lot alike. He wasn't.
6. From the "Let It Be Naked" record-- the "Let It Be" album with Phil Spector's schlocky orchestration and choruses removed.
7. I love me some Willie Nelson.
8. From the great self-titled first Blasters album that came out 29 years ago.
9. These guys were so awesome-- New Miserable Experience was a great record. Then they threw out the guy who wrote all their best songs because he was a drunk (gee-- a guy in the Gin Blossoms was a drunk?) and he killed himself. They reformed a few years ago, but have never matched their early stuff-- this song, Mrs. Rita, etc.
10. From the great "Fear Of Music" album. All nonsense lyrics.

Perfect Autumn Night Friday Random Ten

2010-09-24T20:15:00.003-05:00

I know I've been scarce; I picked up an extra shift a week at the restaurant-- a financial godsend-- and my school schedule has remained grueling. I've got another exam coming up Monday on all kinds of fun subjects-- alcohol and drug abuse, depression, bipolar disorder, suicide, etc. I've been hitting the books and online quizzes like a fiend all week.

Last Sunday, my son and I took a walk through Graceland Cemetery, a cemetery many historical figures are buried in. I'll post about that soon.

Like I mentioned, I have an exam on Monday on Psychiatric Nursing and then on Tuesday I start my new rotation, Med-Surg-- basic overall medical stuff. I'm nervous and excited. In the meantime, I'm out on the back porch sipping some Malbec, good tunes playing on my Itunes and enjoying this picture-perfect autumn night.

1. Cuts You Up- Peter Murphy
2. Yesterday's Not Here- Peter Shelley
3. The New Frontier- Donald Fagen
4. No More, No More- Aerosmith
5. Lose This Skin- The Clash
6. Wild Horses- The Flying Burrito Brothers
7. Rock'n Me- Steve Miller
8. Montego Bay- Bobby Bloom
9. Femme Fatale- The Velvet Underground
10. She Belongs To Me- Rick Nelson

Notes:
1. It's funny how certain songs can bring you right back to a time in your life. This hit from Bauhaus alum Peter Murphy brings me back to a time I can hardly believe was 20 years ago.
2. The first solo album by Buzzcocks singer Peter Shelley, "Homosapien." I just got ahold of three songs that were on the vinyl edition, but not the cd-- thanks Itunes, and thanks Ron (my friend who is the biggest Bauhaus fan I know).
3. I sense a theme going here-- solo songs from members of famous bands. Steely Dan alum Donald Fagen's first solo album "Nightfly" was brilliant, and this song bore one of my favorite videos of the eighties.
4. Hands down my favorite Aerosmith song.
5. From the great "Sandinista" album.
6. I think I have five versions of this song. Was there ever a bad version? This one is sung by the late, great Gram Parsons.
7. Remember how huge the "Fly Like An Eagle" album was in 1976?
8. Great 1970 one-hit wonder, though I discovered when looking him up that he co-wrote Tommy James' hit single "Mony Mony."
9. Brian Eno, who produced the first VU album said "The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band"
10. Great country-tinged cover of a very funny (and deliberately ironic) Bob Dylan song sung by former teen idol Rick Nelson.

I'm Still Here!

2010-09-15T15:18:00.005-05:00

This last couple of weeks have been busy beyond belief. We had our first exam in my nursing class. Since I had just gotten my textbook a couple of Fridays ago, I had a huge amount of reading to do to prep for the exam and had to get online and do a bunch of case studies. It all paid off; I got an 84% on the exam. Under the grading scale we have, it missed a B by one point. Turns out, though, that it was one of the highest grades in the class; nearly the whole nursing class-- by that, I mean every second year nursing student. Nearly the whole sophmore class tanked the exam. The average was 78%. I'm not concerned about the C; generally, my first exam of the semester is my lowest. As I get to know the teacher and the material better, my grades tend to improve.

In the meantime, I have a bunch of work to do in the next couple of days for my first clinical rotation, psychiatric nursing, which is almost over. Somewhere in there, I had some work to do to prepare for my wife's birthday, which is today. A few weeks ago, she dropped her Iphone and cracked the faceplate. Since she couldn't afford to have the faceplate fixed, she talked ATT into giving her a Blackberry to replace it. However, she was very, very unhappy with the Blackberry. Fortunately, I was able to find a place to fix the faceplate for a reasonable cost, and I seripticiously had it fixed. We gave it to her this morning, and she was delighted. The bonus is that she's going to give me the Blackberry, which I think I'll find very handy-- I frequently have to send long text-messages to classmates. We're going to switch the phones over tomorrow.

Friday, I'm hoping to have a real post. In the meantime, I'm just posting a picture of the Green Mill, a tavern just a couple of blocks from my school, in the Uptown neighborhood. It was was once owned by Al Capone, who also hung out there; if you peek inside, you'll see the booth he held court in. It's the only booth that faces toward the door.

The Green Mill has been in at least two movies. In Michael Mann's 1981 movie "Thief," it is the tavern that the lead character, portrayed by James Caan, hangs out at. In Stephen Frears' 2000 movie "High Fidelity," there's a scene where John Cusack's character Rob has a drink with his sister, portrayed by his real-life sister Joan.

And in my real life, it was where I had my first date with Cynthia, in 1992, who eventually became my second wife.

Anxieties and Goals

2010-09-07T21:26:00.005-05:00

This weekend, things slowly returned to normal around here. My mother-in-law returned to Minneapolis, to a husband with a new knee.

The week preceding it had been a little stressful. My son's insurance autopay hits at the beginning of the month-- as does my tuition payment and rent. Somehow I pulled more than a thousand bucks out of my ass-- some good shifts, and a couple of picked-up shifts helped a great deal. As the final week of my mother-in-law's stay coincided with my second week back to school, I felt the grind.

Kim and Mel drove my mother-in-law back to Minneapolis, leaving Adam and I to have a guy's weekend here. I switched shifts with a friend of mine, so I worked Friday instead of Saturday, so that we had a rare Saturday night together. Adam had mentioned how it was in the old days, when it was just he and I; I'd buy cheese pizzas at Aldi's and we'd make our own pizzas, custom-topping it with our chosen ingredients. I got him a cheese pizza, and got myself the gluten-free pizza crusts that the Jewel's grocery store near our home now sells, and we went to town, topping our pizzas with turkey italian sausage, turkey pepperoni, veggies and a bunch of other healthy goodies; we've made an agreement to both lose weight, and I have to get my blood pressure down, before my doctor carries out her threat to put me on blood pressure meds. We ate our dinner and then streamed a Netflix movie we'd chosen.

He went back to his mother's house on Sunday, and on Monday I had something I hadn't had in ages: a day to myself.

I knew I should have been studying-- my textbook finally arrived on Friday, but I took a little time to kick back, get some stuff done around here and indulge a little in watching "Pawn Stars" (or, as my son calls it, "White Trash Antiques Road Show") on the History Channel.

As I got ready to finally sit down and study last night, I recognized the I had a pretty high level of anxiety. I took a half-hour walk in the lovely, cool Chicago evening, musing about the changes in the neighborhood in the last 24 years I've mostly lived here, and in the changes in my life. Fatherhood, unexpected career paths, old friendships that have grown stronger, new friendships, relationships, marriages. As I count down the months to my 50th birthday, which will coincide with finishing nursing school-- the same damned week, can you believe it?-- I'm alternately amazed and amused at the path my life has taken. I've quoted my old friend Michael before on this, and it bears repeating: "You want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans."

When I got home, I cracked my textbook, looking in the syllabus to see what I needed to read for Wednesday's class. I had to laugh out loud; it was the chapter on anxiety and anxiety meds.

A couple of years ago, when Cubs great Ryne Sandberg was inducted to the hall of fame, he was interviewed. He talked about a period of a couple of years when he left the game because of marital problems. He talked about how through his whole career, he would get butterflies in his stomach before each game. When that stopped, he knew his passion for the game had left. He took the time off, straightened out his situation and came back. The butterflies returned.

After I read and synthesized the material, I realized that I felt this way at the start of every class, and when cracking open every textbook. I have the irrational fear that I'm going to read it and not get it. And of course I always get the material in the end. And I know that it'll keep happening through the end of school.

Today, I had clinicals. I worked with a severely mentally ill patient, who I'll be working with for the next few weeks. On the way home, I talked to a classmate whom I catch a ride with every day about it all. We talked about the financial stresses this has caused each of us, what we sacrificed in time with our respective spouses and our kids, and sleep and everything else. And we both realized that we had no regrets whatsoever. In every regard, we had made the right decision to do this, from the standpoint of job satisfaction, economic future, job security, passion for what we do.

This journey, this path I've chosen, this decision I made over three years ago to get into the medical field is now within sight. A little over 29 weeks of school; 9 months of time. There are going to be some more months of pulling off financial miracles, some more time lost with my family, more lost sleep, more anxiety. But in the end, I"m confident I'll pull it off. In the end, there's a career in a field that not only fascinates me, but will give me the financial resources to fulfill the life goals that will require financial resources, and give me the peace of mind to pursue the ones that don't. And in the end, I realize that the sacrifices I made to do it will make it mean that much more to me.

Johnny Yen's Chicago Stories: A Tale of Two Robbers

2010-08-31T20:07:00.005-05:00

One of the best books I've read in a long time is Bryan Burroughs' "Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34." Not only was it, as Time Magazine said, "Ludicrously entertaining," it was fascinating, particularly since so many of the events depicted took place in and around Chicago.

In 1933, John Dillinger was living in an apartment at 4310 North Clarendon, about two blocks from where my nursing school is. Dillinger did not know that one of his acquiantences, Art McGinnis, was a paid snitch. When Dillinger developed a scalp problem (either "barber's itch," an inflammation of the hair follicles, or ringworm, a fungal infection of the skin), he sought medical help. McGinnis arranged for Dillinger to visit a doctor on Keeler Avenue, just south of Irving Park Road, this intersection, which is now right by where the Kennedy Expressway crosses Irving Park Road.

Indiana State Police detective Matt Leach was informed. Since Dillinger's escape from an Indiana jail cell, Leach was hot to capture (or kill) Dillinger. Private Detective Forrest Huntington, who worked for one of the banks that Dillinger and his gang had robbed wanted to wait and try to get Dillinger's whole gang. Indiana State Police detective Matt Leach had driven in from Indianapolis, also wanted Dillinger captured or dead that day. Refereeing this all was Chicago Police Lieutenant John Howe, head of the Chicago Police Department's Secret Squad.

He argued that Dillinger should pay for the death of Lima, Ohio Sheriff Jess Sarber. Dillinger had engineered a mass escape at a prison in Michigan City, Indiana in order to spring a prison friend, Pete Pierpoint, who had been his mentor in the finer points of bank robbing during the nine-year stint he served for for the ill-conceived grocery store robbery that had imprisoned him to begin with. With the new knowledge he'd gained in prison, he'd started robbing banks, but was fingered for the robbery of a bank in Blufton, Ohio, near Lima. To return the favor for springing him, Pierpoint sprang Dillinger from the Lima jail, murdering Sheriff Sarber in cold blood in the process.

Finally, the "kill or capture" Dillinger contingent won out after a Lima, Ohio officer walked into Lt. Howe's office and pursuaded them that Sheriff Sarber's murder needed to be avenged.

The group, accompanied by three cars of Chicago cops, staked out the offices of Dr. Charles Eye for several hours. At 7:25 PM, Dillinger drove up and parked on Irving Park Road, with his girlfriend Billie Frechette in the car. Dillinger walked into the doctor's office, leaving Frechette in the car. A while later, Dillinger walked out of the physician's office and apparently noticed that several of the cars were parked the wrong way. Sensing danger, Dillinger slipped quickly into the car and warned Frechette to hang on. He floored the car, backing directly into traffic on Irving.

Several of the various police cars gave chase as Dillinger yelled to Frechette to get down and gunned the car eastbound down Irving Park Road. With Chicago detective John Artery behind the wheel, Indianapolis State Police officer Art Keller started firing wildly, emptying his .38 revolver.

Dillinger swung south, to the right, at this intersection onto Elston Avenue with Artery continuing to pursue and Keller continuing to fire.

The melee continued down Elston until Dillinger pulled into a dead-end street. Artery followed him, but Dillinger rocketed the car in reverse past him and escaped. He and Frechette abandoned the car on the north side of Chicago and took a cab to another gang member's apartment, where an impromptou party was taking place. Dillinger would live to continue his crime spree until his death the next year, on Sunday, July 22, when he was shot to death in front of the Biograph Theater, which still stands today on Lincoln Avenue in Chicago.

Unlike John Dillinger, who avoided killing if at all possible, Lester Gillis, aka "Baby Face Nelson" loved killing. He killed a number of policemen, bank employees, civilians and people who just happened to get in his way. Yet, he was, oddly, a family man, a devoted husband and loving father.

Dillinger worked for a short while with Nelson, but was horrified at Nelson's stupid violence; Nelson would shoot up banks and streets for no reason. The two robbers parted ways.

On April 22, 1934, Nelson gunned down FBI Special Agent W.Carter Baum near Spider Lake, Wisconsin. Despite a massive manhunt, Nelson escaped.

Nelson hid out in Iowa and then California. He was in California when he heard of Dillinger's demise. The psychotic Nelson had always resented that Dillinger was Public Enemy #1 and had a higher bounty on his head, despite the fact that he was much less violent.

In November of that year, the FBI received a tip that Nelson and his wife were scouting out a place near the Illinois-Wisconsin border for a place to hole up for the winter, The FBI prepared to hunt down Nelson in the area. The first two agents two arrive in the area were veteran agent Bill Ryan and rookie Tom McDade. The head of Chicago's FBI office, Samuel Cowley grabbed agent Ed Hollis and also set out for Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

As they drove toward the Wisconsin border, agents Ryan and McDade had a tip that Nelson was driving a car with Illinois license plate 639578. As they passed through the town Fox River Grove, they passed a black Ford that was barrelling in the other direction. The agents realized it had the plate they were looking for.

As the FBI agents turned their car around, Nelson, also turned his car around. After a series of maneuvers, Nelson's car was pursuing the FBI agents' car!

A wild running gunfight ensued. Nelson's car began losing speed; an FBI shot had hit the engine of his car.

Just then, Sam Cowley and Ed Hollis, in a Hudson sedan, passed by the gunfight. Hollis, driving, did a U-turn. In the meantime, Ryan and McDade had lost Nelson's car. They pulled their car off into a field and lay down, waiting to ambush Nelson.

Seeing Cowley and Hollis approaching, Nelson pulled his dying car off the road and ordered everybody (Nelson's accomplice John Chase and Nelson's wife Helen) out of the car.

Cowley and Hollis did not see Nelson's car until they were almost on top of it. Hollis slammed on the brakes about 150 feet away from where Nelson and Chase were waiting in ambush with rifles.

Nelson and Chase began firing their rifles. Nelson's rifle jammed, and he threw it to Chase, yelling at him to reload it. Nelson grabbed a powerful Thompson submachine gun and began firing it at the two agents. Cowley returned fire with his own Thompson, hitting Nelson in the stomach and chest, shredding his intestines.

Nelson, in pain, but fired up with adrenline, continued firing, hitting Cowley twice, once in the chest, once in the stomach. Hollis jumped out of the car firing a shotgun, hitting Nelson in both legs. Nelson staggered forward, firing at Hollis, who tried to get cover behind a telephone pole. Hollis emptied his shotgun, and then retreated firing his pistol. Nelson fired a volley from his Thompson; one shot hit Hollis in the forehead.

As onlookers from two nearby gas stations looked on in astonishment, Nelson, who it was later discovered was hit 17 times, staggered over to the FBI agents' Hudson and drove it over to his now-dead car. Tossing all the guns he could grab into the Hudson, Nelson let Chase take over the driving.

The first policeman on the scene, Illinois state policeman William Gallagher found Agent Cowley still alive. Hollis insisted that Gallagher help Hollis first. Hollis died before he reached the hospital.

Agent Cowley was picked up by an ambulance shortly thereafter. He was taken to Elgin Hospital, where he was able to report what happened to Agent Melvin Purvis. He died the next day. He is the most senior FBI agent to die in the line of duty.

Chase drove Nelson, who was clearly dying, to the tony northern suburb of Wilmette, Illinois, and took him to the home of a friend of a friend. He died shortly after, in the arms of his wife.

Chase and Helen Nelson undressed Nelson's body and wrapped it in a blanket, later explaining that Nelson was always complaining about being cold. They dumped the body near here, the gate of St. Peter's Cemetery, in what is now Skokie, Illinois. It was certainly the only gate of St. Peter that the homicidal sociopath was going to get near after his death.

Richard Lindberg's "Return to the Scene of the Crime: A Guide to Infamous Places in Chicago" was also a valuble resource in writing this post.

Johnny Yen's One-Hit Wonders: Albert Hammond, "It Never Rains In Southern California"

2010-08-30T19:29:00.005-05:00

Up until the early sixties, most hit songs were written by writers and sung by singers. In the early sixties, that changed-- the day of the singer/songwriter arrived. Dylan, Donovan, Joni Mitchell, Phil Ochs and others paved the way.

As the sixties rolled into the seventies, the political stridency of the music began to wane, but new group of singer/songwriters emerged. Don Maclean had a huge hit with his musical history of rock and roll, "American Pie," Carly Simon had hits with "You're So Vain" and "Anticipation," and her soon-to-be husband James Taylor had a bunch of hits.

From this army of singer/songwriters emerged Albert Hammond. Hammond was born in London, England, where his parents, natives of Gilbraltar, the British-held island off of Spain in the Straits of Gilbraltar, had evacuated to for the duration of World War II. Hammond returned with his family shortly after the war. He began playing in bands, including The Diamond Boys, a band that never had any hits, but played a role in bringing rock music to Spain as the Franco dictatorship began to wane and Spain modernized. With the group The Family Dogg, he had a top ten hit in Britain with "A Way of Life" in 1969.

His biggest hit came in 1972 with the folk-tinged "It Never Rains In Southern California." The song tells the story of a guy who makes his way to Southern California trying to make it (presumably) as an actor. He runs into a friend of his family, who sees that he's down and out, and he begs them not to tell his family, and to lie to them, to tell them he's "got offers but don't know which one to take."

The song is apparently partly autobiographical, though it took place in Spain, not Southern California. In Hammond's words:

"It never rains... was written in London, before we (Albert and Michael Hazelwood, the song's co-author) came to Los Angeles, and we knew we were coming, and I've been telling Mike the story of me in Spain when I started and how I was asking for money outside of the train stations because I had no money to eat and I didn't want to tell my parents. My cousin was on honeymoon then, and he came out of the train station and saw me, and I didn't even know it was him... I just asked him for some money, too. And he said "you should be ashamed, I'm gonna tell your father," and I said "please, don't tell him, he'll go crazy and and stop me doing this!" And then he took me back into the hotel, I had a bath, he gave me some clean clothes and some money. I moved on, but he did tell my father, you know. All these things like "will you tell the folks back home I nearly made it" and all that stuff came from that era of my life when I was struggling, trying to make it, trying to get from Morocco to Spain, from Spain to England, from England to America... That struggle you go through, that's It never rains in Southern California, the story of my life."

"It Never Rains In Southern California" reached #5 on the US Billboard charts, and was a worldwide smash. Hammond never reached those heights again himself, but wrote other big hits, all with Mike Hazelwood, who died in 2001. The Pipkins had a hit with "Gimme Dat Ding" in 1970 and the Hollies had their final hit in 1974 with "The Air That Breath." He co-wrote the Starship's #1 1987 hit "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now," Chicago's 1988 hit "I Don't Wanna Live Without Your Love" with Diane Warren, and wrote the 1984 Willie Nelson/Julio Iglesias hit "To All The Girls I Loved Before," as well as the theme song for the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics, which was performed by Whitney Houston. He's had a number of top ten hits performed by other artists-- ironic for a guy who rode the crest of the singer/songwriter wave.

Full Moon Week Friday Random Ten

2010-08-27T17:52:00.004-05:00

I'm not a big believer in the whole thing about craziness during full moon-- statistics have shown that there are no more births, arrests, etc. on the average when there's a full moon than other weeks. However, I've been tempted to attribute the general craziness of this week to the full moon.

As I've mention, we lost two young family members this week, my son's cousin Jason and my wife's cousin Peyton. Today, I got an email from my mother that one of her beloved Tibetan terriers, Sophie, died after a two month fight with thyroid cancer.

On top of this, we're waiting for news of my wife's Uncle Paulie, who is a delightful guy. His body has stopped producing blood cells and the doctors have run out of tricks. And I'm waiting to hear from my friend Julie, whose husband has inoperable cancer in his salivary glands, tongue and throat; though he quit smoking over twenty years ago, it's apparently caught up to him. Julie was the person who got me my interview for my teaching job in Cicero back in 2002, and might possibly be the nicest person I've ever known.

The icing on the crazy cake was on Wednesday, when a regular who's always been pretty odd, erupted screaming at me when he felt his meal had taken too long. After he called me "the worst waiter ever," "an awful person" and "despicable" (as his wife cringed, mortified), my boss finally had to throw him out.

I guess the amusing thing about it all is that I started my nursing clinicals yesterday-- at one of the biggest long-term mental health care facilities in the state of Illinois.

Tonight, we're having our good friend Robin, and looking forward to the end of this week.

1. Sweet Seasons- Carole King
2. Victim of Love- The Eagles
3. Sweet Thing- Van Morrison
4. I Wouldn't Want To Be Like You- Alan Parsons Project
5. Dancing Machine- The Jackson 5
6. Pretty Ballerina- The Left Banke
7. John, I'm Only Dancing- David Bowie
8. Morning Girl - Neon Philharmonic
9. Don't All The Girls Get Prettier At Closing Time- Mickey Gilley
10. Don't Fence Me In- Willie Nelson and Leon Russell

Notes:
1. Thought to d/l this old favorite while reading "Girls Like Us," which was about Ms. King, Carly Simon and Joni Mitchell.
2. Hotel California was one of the first albums I ever bought.
3. From the great "Astral Weeks" album. The Waterboys did a nice cover of this one on "Fisherman's Blues."
4. Alan Parsons was a recording engineer who recorded some great albums, including Pink Floyd's masterpiece "Dark Side of the Moon." Most of his hits were in the eighties; this was from the late seventies.
5. Hard to remember in all the craziness of Michael Jackson's life that he was an immensely talented musician.
6. The Left Banke were one-hit-wonders with their love "Walk Away Renee," but this was a beauty too.
7. Bowie shares a birthday with Elvis Presley
8. A psychedelic one-hit-wonder from 1969
9. A country hit from the late seventies.
10. Cole Porter, as interpreted by Willie and Leon

The Home Stretch, A Week In

2010-08-26T14:14:00.004-05:00

Today, I had my clinical orientation for my Psych rotation, at a major public mental health facitlity, finishing a really good week, very welcome in a week that held some bad family news.

On Monday, the entire sophomore class met in a huge auditorium. It was truly joyous to see people I'd become close to over the last year. The class met the new Nursing Department head-- we'd gone our whole freshman year without a department head-- and met some of our instructors for the year.

I noticed some people who were gone-- Eric, Nancy and Joe. I remembered the picture I took in my first nursing clinical, and was once again reminded of the picture in the movie "The Untouchables," when Kevin Costner's Elliot Ness looks mourningly at the picture, having lost two of the friends in the picture.

Later, Monday night, I ran out to get some things-- I still needed a notebook and also needed a new watch for clinical (we have to have a watch with a second hand so we can take heart rates), and ran out to a couple of stores. At Target, I ran into Eric, who had dropped out at the end of the year last year. I told him that we missed him, and then got the happy news: he had re-entered the program, as a freshman. I was very happy about this.

The next day I heard that Nancy and Joe had done the same thing. More happiness.

More good news was that since we were all now officially full-time, with 12 semester hours, we were all now eligible for a "U-Pass," a free public transit pass that we can use any time. I picked mine up after class Tuesday.

Tuesday was the longest, coldest day of my life. My class met in the same big lecture hall, and the air conditioning was set unbelievably low-- it had to be under 60 degrees. It had been pretty cool the day before, so most of us wore long pants, despite it being a nice Chicago day. Some had even worn sweat jackets. And we still froze our asses off. Fortunately, our instructor, Mrs. Corbett, made a call down to physical services and was able to get them to fix the temperature. By the end of the six hour class (we had a long class, rather than a clinical that day), they managed to get the temperature up to a tolerable one.

My initial impressions of Mrs. Corbett were good. She's got a good balance of rigor and humor. In our regular class yesterday, she mentioned having been a Peace Corps volunteer when she was younger. She's taught at the school for nearly 40 years, and seems to have a wealth of good stories.

As I mentioned, we had our first clinical today. We're at a state run mental health facility. I got a good vibe from our instructor, Dr. Donarad, who had come out of retirement to teach the class when the original instructor broke her hip in a fall. She seems calm and fair-- far different from my clinical instructor last semester, who was unclear with directions and hostile. Talking to another member of my group, I discovered that I wasn't the only one who had these issues with last semester's instructor. I'm looking forward to a better experience. My great school week was in contrast to the bad news we got at home. In addition to the unexpected death of my son's 28-year-old cousin, who, we discovered, died of a massive coronary on Saturday, my wife's four-year-old second cousin Peyton passed away yesterday evening of cancer, which was first diagnosed when she was only six months old. It was remarkable to see this little girl fight her illness with incredible spirit and humor, and I'm relieved that she's found some peace.

Last night at work, I was talking to a friend about it all. It was hard to believe that I started this journey three years ago, when I took a prerequisite Biology class. It's hard to believe that I'm only nine months from the end of this journey, and the start of a new one as a nurse. I can't wait.

Book Review: "Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon-- and the Journey of a Generation"

2010-08-23T16:55:00.004-05:00

One of my summer reads, another Kindle book, was Sheila Weller's "Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon-- and the Journey of a Generation." It had sparked my interest since I read the reviews upon its release a couple of years ago. All three women have written and performed songs I love dearly.

Weller's chief accomplishments in writing this book were two-fold. First, she kept a rather complicated narrative comprehensible-- the women's lives, and loves, overlapped and diverged, and Weller does a terrific job keeping the three sometimes intertwining stories clear. Secondly, she does an admirable job relating the three women's personal stories to their art and vice versa.

Along the way, there are fascinating little tidbits. I won't give too many spoilers, but I loved discovering that one of my favorite Joni Mitchell songs, "Coyote," was about playwright/actor Sam Shepard. I also had never known that Ms. Mitchell paired off with Leonard Cohen and Jackson Browne at different times in the sixties, or that she had dated James Taylor, attending one of Carly Simon's first solo shows with him.

Ms. Weller discusses Carly Simon's song "You're So Vain" at length, and who it could be about. Amusingly, Warren Beatty, who Simon had had a fling with (as had Joni Mitchell), was actually so vain that he did think the song was about him. Recent speculation is that the song is about music mogul David Geffen, who reportedly ignored Ms. Simon at a show in favor of Ms. Mitchell. Mitchell did write a song about Geffen-- it's public knowledge that "Free Man In Paris" is about him.

Carole King's journey is fascinating and sometimes painful to read about. King starts out young in the game with her husband and song-writing partner Gerry Coffin, producing a breath-taking list of songs that are considered rock and roll classics, and of course her own amazing "Tapestry" album. In her personal life, she endured Coffin's mental illness and brazen infidelity-- he had an affair with and fathered a child with Cookies singer Jeanie McCrea at a time when interracial relationships were very uncommon-- and some disastrous relationships and marriages. Eventually, though, King out came up on top, continuing to produce great music and even collaborating with her ex-husband.

"Girls Like Us" worked for me on every level-- as a music lover, a lover of history and a plain old gossip-hound. I suspect the book really was written for other women, but as a guy, particularly a guy who adores the music produced by these three women, I loved it too. Highly recommended.

A Loss

2010-08-22T13:44:00.002-05:00

Years ago, when my son was very young, he came to me and told me that he'd made a very important decision: that he had decided he wanted a brother. An older brother.

I had a good chuckle, and figured he'd eventually figure out that space-time continuum stuff, and why he couldn't have an older brother.

I eventually realized that he actually kind of had a big brother. His cousin Jason, who was 12 years older than he, filled that role admirably. I didn't have much contact with Adam's mother's family after I split with her, but I knew that Jason spent a lot of time with Adam, taking him fishing, playing football with him, all kinds of things.

Yesterday, right after I got to work, I got a call from Adam's mother. She was hysterical. Jason, she told me, was dead. All she knew was that he had been taken to an Emergency Room and was not alive. She asked if I could go back to my house and be with her when she told our son what had happened. I told her I would meet her. Fortunately, my boss was good with it-- he's always been great in letting his employees deal with family issues-- and a co-worker agreed to skip a break in between double shifts and take the handful of tables I had.

I got home and waited for my ex. Adam was curious as to why I was home and his mother had called earlier. She arrived, we all sat down at the dining room table, and she told him, in between sobs, what she knew.

Adam was, of course, stunned. He had thought she was going to tell him news about her mother, who just had cancer surgery. She and I had decided to let him go with her so that he could see Jason and have some closure.

I went back to work, and later Adam called and told me what he knew. Jason and an old friend of his had been having an enjoyable Saturday at a local race track, and that Jason had suddenly felt very hot. He drank water, but collapsed suddenly. Paramedics arrived almost immediately, but were not able to revive him.

There are a lot of possible causes-- an aneurysm, potassium depletion, many things. They will hopefully find out in the autopsy.

I feel a sense of loss-- Jason was a great, great person. But the big loss if for my son. I can tell him a little about what to expect, having lost a close friend a few years ago suddenly, what to expect-- that you lose the person without realizing that the last conversation you had with them was going to be the last conversation you'd ever have with them. That you'll wake up some mornings thinking that you dreamt that they had died, and that everything was going to be okay. Anger, sadness-- a whole bunch of things. It'll be a long road for him.

For my part, I have one regret: that I never got a chance to thank Jason for being so good to my son, for being what amounted to being his big brother. I wish I could have let him know that.

"A Summer Song" Friday Random Ten

2010-08-20T11:28:00.002-05:00

I really meant to post a bunch this week-- I'm working on a post about two infamous gangsters and their Chicago connections. But time slips away-- not only am I getting ready to go back to school Monday, but my mother-in-law is staying with us while my father-in-law recuperates from his knee-replacement surgery. And on top of it, we're having a big "end of summer" bash tonight. And guess who's doing all the cooking...

In the meantime, while I prepare the coleslaw and tomato/broccoli/feta salad, I still have time to do my Friday Random Ten.

1. Girl From the North Country- Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash
2. Angie- The Rolling Stones
3. Mercy, Mercy, Mercy- The Buckinghams
4. We're All Alone- Boz Scaggs
5. Million Dollar Bash- Bob Dylan
6. Lonely Is (As Lonely Does)
7. Blue Moon- The Marcels
8. Memo To My Son- Randy Newman
9. It's All Right- Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions
10. Summer Days- Bob Dylan

Notes:
1. A lovely duet from the "Nashville Skyline" album.
2. Supposedly about Angela Bowie, David Bowie's now-ex-wife.
3. Chicago treasures The Buckinghams with their version of a great Cannonball Adderley hit.
4. The closing track to "Silk Degrees," one of my desert island albums. Anne Murray had a hit with this one.
5. I have this one on the great "Biograph" set.
6. From "Like This," one of the great records of the eighties.
7. One of many hit versions of this song.
8. Randy Newman's homage to the joys of parenting a toddler.
9. From the late, great Curtis Mayfield and Jerry "The Iceman" Butler, who is a Cook County Commissioner these days.
10. Perfect ending to my last random ten of the summer-- Bob Dylan singing about summer. From the "Love and Theft" album.

All Summer Long Friday Random Ten

2010-08-13T10:15:00.003-05:00

As a relaxing and productive summer comes to an end and I get ready to go back to school, I feel like Merle Haggard's "If We Make It Through December." The recession greatly affected both Kim and I, and we are busy putting out financial fires. This will be the case for a while to come.

In the meantime, this next year will almost certainly be the busiest of my life. The second year of nursing school is even more intense than the first. I also may work a second job. What the hell-- I can sleep when I'm done with nursing school.

Today's big task is to wait for the delivery of the oxygen equipment for my mother-in-law, whom my wife and I are taking care of for three weeks while my father-in-law has surgery and recuperates.

1. I'm Going To Say It Now- Phil Ochs
2. Holding Back The Tears- Simply Red
3. You're Gonna Miss Me- Roky Erikson
4. More Than This- Roxy Music
5. Sky High- Jigsaw
6. Neighborhood Bully- Bob Dylan
7. Hong Kong Garden- Siouxie and the Banshees
8. Shake Your Hips- The Rolling Stones
9. Miss You- The Rolling Stones
10. Funk #49- The James Gang

Notes:
1. Phil Ochs' homage to the Berkeley Free Speech Movement.
2. One of those songs that brings me back to the place I heard it-- a downtown Chicago restaurant I worked at right when I got out of college in the mid eighties.
3. Learned to play this one in a guitar class at the Old Town School of Folk Music. I now associate it with the movie "High Fidelity;" it's the song at the beginning of that movie.
4. Another song I now associate with a movie-- this is the song Bill Murray karoakes to in "Lost In Translation."
5. A seventies one-hit wonder
6. Dylan's ironic take on Mideast politics, from the terrific "Infidels" album.
7. A seventies hit for Siouxie and crew.
8. From "Exile On Main Street," the greatest rock and roll record ever produced.
9. One good Stones song deserves another. This song brings me right back to the summer of 1978, which I'm trying not to think was 32 years ago.
10. The James Gang formed at Kent State University (yes, that Kent State University) in the late sixties. Its most famous alumnus is Joe Walsh.