The stained glass windows in my mind

2005-05-06 - 11:53 a.m.

I wrote this journal entry during my last shift, which technically started yesterday. But it ended today and I have a hard enough time keeping track of what day it is anyway. It's so weird going to bed on one day and having it be that same day when I wake up. And it's weird to have the headlines on the newspapers in the boxes I pass on my way to work be different from the headlines I see on my way home. But anyway, here's the entry I wrote earlier:

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Even the most fun things, when put off for long and allowed to accumulate, can become chores, and no longer fun. Then you've got less fun and more work, so really it's a double-whammy.

One of the interesting things about working the graveyard shift here is that there are three hours per shift that I'm not supposed to do normal pharmacist duties. I have other duties to take care of. But I've discovered that these duties take me only about one hour to accomplish. So that leave me two hours of doing...what? And the thing is, I've done this shift two and a half times now. I'm probably significantly slower than the usual guys who work this shift--what do they do with their spare time? Or maybe there're other duties of this shift that they didn't bother to teach me to do just because it would be too much trouble. But in the mean time what do I do with myself? Hide out in the back room and write journal entries? I guess that's a possibility.

Yesterday after work (er...I guess that would be this morning after work), I went to Green Lake for a run. It's 3.2 miles around the outer loop around the lake and 2.8 miles around the inner loop. One of the reasons I like to run there is because these distances come pre-measured for me. The problem is that I'm trying to train for half-marathons--13.1 miles. How do you make 13.1 miles out of combinations of 3.2's and 2.8's? The answer is: you don't. But the other day I had a bit of an epiphany. There's a soccer field with a track around it just across the street from Green Lake. These tracks are a standard quarter mile, right? So if I park over there, run around the outer loop four times, then once around the track, that comes to 13.05 miles--which in my mind is close enough. Pretty cool, eh? Ok, so I've yet to actually do this, but I'm going to someday, preferably before I go to New York on Tuesday. Yesterday (er...this morning), I ran twice around the lake plus once around the track--6.65 miles. I did it average a 9:20 pace, which is within my goal of finishing the half-marathon at less than a ten-minute pace, but I'm not sure I could've kept that up for twice as long--I was pretty tired by the end. And what about my crazy sub-two-hour half-marathon goal? I can't remember what pace that works out to, but I'd really like to make that by mid-June.

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It's morning now and as my third graveyard shift draws to a close I have realized that I've been doing something incorrectly. I've been throwing some paperwork away that I'm supposed to be filing. There's no way to get it back. So far nobody has noticed. Hopefully nobody ever will. If anybody ever has need to look at that stuff, I'm really up a creek.

Other than that, and one other minor mishap that so far has had no consequences, everything went fairly well tonight. No codes, thank goodness. One of my techs' daughters got sick in the middle of the night and had to go to the ER so he left to be with her. After that we had a bit of trouble keeping up with the workload, but we managed. The poor remaining tech had a much harder time of it than I did, though.

It's so tempting not to go run today. If my tummy wasn't so huge it would be much easier to skip out on it. Banana called in sick for the 8am shift today. I'm sort of hoping Miko will ask me to stay extra to cover for her just so I will have an excuse not to run. Talk about lazy! He most likely won't, though. I feel fine and up for it--well no, actually I'm pretty tired.

A little while ago I splurged and bought season tickets to the local theater. The first play is called "Bach at Leipzig" or something like that. They wanted me to go this Sunday, but I'll be in the middle of graveyards then so I had to call to change the date. Only the ticket office is only open between noon and seven--right in the middle of my sleeping hours! So I had to stay up past my bedtime yesterday just to call them. I have to say, though, once I went to bed I had no trouble sleeping. I didn't even need my blindfold even though my room doesn't get very dark during the day even with the blinds pulled.

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And that's all that I wrote while at work. While I was typing this I received an e-mail from the company that took photos during the Vancouver Marathon. They sent me a link to all of the pictures with me in them. Annoyingly enough, they only sent thumbnails. What's up with that? They usually have links, at least, to slightly bigger versions of the pictures. What, they actually want me to purchase their product? Craziness! Anyway, just for fun, I thought I'd share their picture that shows me best. So now for something never seen here in this journal before, ladies and gentlemen, me: