Mr. Paperclip and Me

2003-04-03 - 11:45 a.m.

I already wrote an entry this morning. A rather long one, really. It was for Pieces of You and you can find it in the previous entry or just click here. But really, I have some stuff I want to talk about and I never seem to be in the mood for it in the evening. I'm basically hiding out here in the library because I'm a dork and I don't want to quit just yet.

Yesterday I received an e-mail from Tampon inviting me to interview for a real job here at this hospital. I'm trying to decide whether or not to accept. I'm thinking no. I don't want to ask my parents for advice because they will probably say I should just do it. So what if I don't want to work here, at least if I interview and get offered a job I will have a backup. But the thing is, I don't want to work here. I like this hospital. I really do. I just don't want to work here anymore. I feel too stupid here. I wonder if it would be hard to shake off the "resident" label and be thought of as a real pharmacist by the other pharmacists. I don't know. A lot of residents that come here end up staying. Even Scotch was a resident here 15 years ago. But I don't want to live in Sacramento anymore. More accurately, I don't want to live with my parents anymore. I never wanted to move back in with them, but it would be a slap in the face for them if I lived in Sacramento and didn't live with them. And I feel like I can never grow as long as I am living with them. I love them to pieces, don't get me wrong, but I sure don't want to live with my parents any longer. Sacramento is not a bad place. I wouldn't tell everyone that they should pack up their bags and move here, but if something were bringing you here, I would say this isn't a bad choice. Slick and Daisy will both be interviewing. I hear there will be two available positions. Slick and Daisy are both more ambitious than I am when it comes to pharmacy. They are also both more likable. When I saw the e-mail inviting me to interview I wondered if they are just inviting me as a courtesy. Don't want to offend the dorky one. But at the same time, they are willing to take the time to interview me, so maybe they do want me. I don't know. I also wonder why they bother with interviews at all. They already know us. Daisy has worked here for two years--they should know her pretty well. And Slick is so outgoing everyone knows her. But the point is I don't want to work here so why should I interview? If they asked me to interview as a courtesy, will they be offended if I turn them down? I was thinking about it and I realized that if I walked away from this place today and never came back, there isn't a single person I would miss. But then I continued thinking that if I walked away from all people entirely and became a hermit somewhere there are very few people anywhere I would miss. I'm so antisocial. But anyway, do you think it's ok if I turn down the interview? I never even expected to be offered that much.

Last night when I got home I was feeling really grouchy. I just wanted to be left alone because I felt like hurting anyone I saw. As I turned onto the street into my neighborhood, there was a police car parked on either side of the street. Then I turned onto my little cul-de-sac and there was another police car at our stop sign. I looked up and saw a police helicopter hovering above my house. I parked in the driveway and walked inside and asked my mom if she knew what was going on. She said the police were looking for someone who was apparently running through yards in our neighborhood. I looked nervously out the window into my backyard. But nobody was there. So I went back to being grouchy. Then my dad came home and wanted to go to the gym. I grumbled a lot, but went. I ran the whole 5k without walking and then walked the last nine minutes of my workout at 4.3mph (the highest speed I can set the treadmill to and walk without falling off the back) on a 3.5% slope. Then we went home and ate dinner. There was a two hour special of "As Time Goes By" on. I really like that show. The more I watch it the more I like it. It's just a sweet little British comedy that makes me laugh out loud which is quite an accomplishment. I couldn't watch the whole thing, though, because I had a game last night. The other team wasn't very good and we ended up winning pretty easily. I started out not playing so well, but I got warmed up and ended up doing ok. And I'm starting to fit in better with the team, too. I actually take part in some of the joking and teasing that goes on nowadays. We finished at about ten and the rest of the team stuck around to play around some more. I decided to go home and hit the hay because I had to be here bright and early�to do this.

I still haven't finished all the projects I was working on for Cheesecake on the management rotation. And today he's back from Hawaii. That could be part of the reason why I'm hiding out here in the library. Not that I think he would actually come looking for me or that if he wanted me he wouldn't page me. Part of the newest project I've been assigned to for med safety involves making up a database and using MS Access. I've never really used Access before. I generally consider myself to be pretty computer savvy. I mean, I don't do any programming and I only know rudimentary HTML, but I can find my way around a computer. But I knew nothing about Access. I spent most of the day yesterday learning about Access by messing around with it and using the help files. Me and Mr. Paperclip, the office assistant, really bonded yesterday. And I still didn't figure out how to do all the things I wanted to do. I took the results of my day's labor over to my preceptor, Pouches, in the afternoon and she easily and quickly showed me how to do one of the things I had been trying all day to do. But I had lots of ideas about how to do things more easily. I just didn't know how to do them. It reminded me of my calculus class in high school. Whenever we had group quizzes my group got the highest grade no matter which group I was in. But whenever we took individual tests I usually got one of the lowest grades. Why? Because I always knew how to solve the problems and just didn't know how. Wow, that made no sense. I mean, I could figure out all the logical stuff I just had trouble with the formulas and actually working out the problem. So I could tell the group what to do and they could do it. That's Pouches and me with Access. I never knew Access could do so much. I'm a little sick of it now, though.