Desire only

2005-02-26 - 7:54 p.m.

So I'm currently obsessed with my guitar. Yes, I went out and bought one. I went to this little music store that Duke recommended (even though Duke knows nothing about guitars). I wasn't too impressed with the service there, but I bought a guitar anyway. It was a bit more expensive than I thought it would be after my online research and it's just a basic guitar, but for my needs it seems to be perfect. And I love it. I seem to be playing it (or should I say attempting to play it) during every free moment. I play it until I'm in pain and then I keep right on playing. Of course I've had it for five days now so I don't know how long this will last, but it's a lot of fun. I'm just doing the self-teach thing now--no lessons or anything. The guitar came with a book and a CD-ROM to teach me how to play classical guitar. So I've been working on that, but I've also found these beginning guitar lessons on about.com which I'm working through.

And I have another bit of exciting news. I think I may not have mentioned it here, but perhaps a month ago I went into work one afternoon and I was greeted by one of my boss-type people who told me that instead of working that afternoon I'd be taking a written examination to test my pharmacy knowledge. I had four hours to complete it. So I sat in the little back room and worked on it. It was tough, but I was allowed to use any resource that would normally be availabe to me in the pharmacy other than my co-workers. When I was done I gave it to another boss-type person and went back to work. I didn't hear anything more about it...until two days ago! A boss-type and a clinical lead took me back into one of their offices to "discuss the exam." It turns out I did really well on it and they were very impressed and they want to start training me to be a clinical pharmacist! I've always said my interest is critical care and they'll be starting me in med-surg and transplant because that's where they have openings, but whatever, this is awesome! It's only been three months! This new training won't start until April at the earliest because the schedule has already been done through March. Yesterday Blanche came up to me and said, "I hear you're going to be a part of our team, welcome!" Yeehaw!

I had Wednesday off from work so I took Duke with me and we went out and hiked the Dungeness Spit. It was about a two hour drive (including a ferry ride) to get there from here, but we didn't start until fairly late (since I'd worked til midnight the night before) and then Duke wanted to get breakfast in the nearby town of Sequim (pronounced "Squim" for those of you who want to sound like locals) so we didn't actually start hiking until a little after noon. We saw a sign on the park gate as we came in that said the gate would be closed at 5. The Dungeness Spit is about five and a half miles long and is the longest sand spit in the northern hemisphere. It's 50 feet wide at its narrowest point and at the tip (or what was the tip in 150 years ago but is now 3/4 mile from the tip) there is a lighthouse. We hiked all the way out to the lighthouse where there was a nice little tour and then ate lunch. By that time it was 3, so we had to sort of do a forced march back to the car to get there by 5. It was really tiring, especially because the tide was in so the whole walk was over loose rock and sand (there was no trail), but over all it was so beautiful! We had great weather for it with views of all the mountains, especially Mt. Baker.

Yesterday I called Magellan again. We decided that we would do something today after I got off of work. I hate the way he always says we'll do "something" but never what exactly. But anyway, today after I got off of work he called me and said that he can't get together today because he has to help a friend move. He told the story very convincingly and I believe that his friend sprung this on him at the last minute and he really should help, but I'm still annoyed. So we talked for a while and finally ended with him promising to call me tomorrow to let me know if his friend is finished moving or if he will need more help. If he's finished, then we'll "do something." Hmph.