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April 30, 2006 - Sunday | 1:46 pM, CST
Its been awhile.
Yeah, so, I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is Kelly and I have gotten engaged. I figured this was probably the best medium to inform everyone.
Friday night I fixed dinner. I used a grilled, Greek chicken recipe that Mom had given me. Unfortunately, I got the recipe a little off whack so it didn't quite turn out as I had expected, but it was good nonetheless. Also on the menu was brown rice with vegetables, butter beans, and potatoes that I sliced lengthwise and slapped on the grill. In all, I'd say it was most delicious.
I had gone outside and picked about two handfuls of violets from my yard, which I sprinkled on top of the dining room table, and lit candles about the house.
Afterwards, we took a cruise out in my truck to Memory Lane. The whole time, Kelly was saying how uncomfortable she was in the truck due to her seatbelt. Mind you she didn't have any idea what I was going to do, so I was a little nervous she would ask to be taken home and thus ruin my plans.
South of Memory Lane is a nine foot wide slab road built during the Great Depression. I parked on that road and told Kelly to get out of the truck. We danced on the slab in the glow of the truck's headlights, and I told her a story I'd heard from the History Channel. During the Great Depression, the federal government had given the states funding to build all these new roads. The plans for the roads called for a width of eighteen feet. Hoping to stretch the government funding for as much as they could, many states opted instead to build nine foot wide roads in hopes of constructing twice as many. The road out at Memory Lane is one of these roads.
The History Channel told how when the old Route 66 had been built through Oklahoma and Texas, the farmers that lived next to the road went out at night with wind-up record players and danced with their wives in the moonlight on the newly-made slabs. When I had watched this special on TV, I thought it would be a good romantic way to pop the question... so after telling Kelly the story, I pulled the ring from my pocket and asked her.
The ring is a white gold band with a bluish color stone called a "Rainbow Topaz." (Kelly isn't fond of diamonds) However, I chose a ring that had two tiny diamonds on the side of the topaz, which I think accentuates it well. We haven't set a date yet, but I believe it will most likely be next spring, probably around May or June, but we haven't left this fall out of the question either. We both want a very small ceremony with just our parents, but we will have a big reception so no one feels offended or left out because they didn't get to go to the wedding.
Speaking of weddings, my Dad got married last weekend. It was kind of a surprise, because he called me about two weeks before and told me the news. So now I have a step-mom, which is kind of wierd, but not in a bad sense.
And now for some bad news. I took my EMT-Intermediate test a little while back, and was sure that I had failed miserably. My fears were confirmed a few weeks ago when I got my results: a forty-nine percent! Now, you might think that because it was a while since I have taken my class, this would be the reason for my failure. I actually took two vacation days prior to the test in order to study (that doesn't include the normal studying I had been doing leading up to the test). I reviewed old tests and drilled with flash cards on drug dosages, indications and contraindications for different medicines. I reviewed how to use defibrillators, transcutaneous pacers, everything! But the test had nothing to do with any of that stuff!
One of the test questions went like this: "In the cardiac rhythm torsades de pointes, you would expect a Q-T interval of how many milliseconds?" Or maybe: "According to United Nations labeling guidelines, a container marked with the numeral '6' would indicate: A) An explosive, B) A radiological, C) A chemical, or D) A biological. Absolutely nothing on that test involved anything we covered in class. Hell, there were questions on the test regarding drugs that we weren't even allowed to administer! The most common response I've gotten when telling people of this news is "Well, your instructor should have taught you what would be on the test." But thats the catch twenty-two. If our instructors started teaching this stuff, we wouldn't know how to treat the patient! We'd be learning a lot of useless garbage that will have nothing to do with ensuring a patient's survival in the event of a car accident or heart attack.
You see, the reason its taken so long for me to take this test was due to an incident almost two years ago where some people were caught cheating. In order to prevent anything like that from happening again, the state of Illinois contracted the test design to an outside firm. Its taken this long to come up with the garbage that they put on that test.
There is a silver lining, however, which must be taken into account. I talked to another EMT who took the test with me, and of about a dozen people he knew, I had the highest grade! (The next highest was a 46%) So if you want to look on the bright side, I failed at the top of my class!
I've been busy this last week. And I mean really busy, not just the bullshit busy most people say when they haven't been around and you go to their house to catch them laying around watching television. I've been preparing to make a vegetable garden this year, which has resulted in about five hours of time spent on tilling the soil. Although I had a garden two years ago, and the previous owners of this house had a garden before me, the dirt was still tough to work. I had to go over the soil two and sometimes three times in a row to get the right consistency I wanted.
Its also been an interest of mine to try a more organic and hippie-style approach to gardening. Thus, I will not be using any artificial fertilizers this year. Last fall I dumped about a dozen bags of leaves on the garden that Jodie had raked from Bryan's yard. The remains of these leaves were tilled into the soil to help with nutrition. I still have about ten bags of leaves left from Bryan's yard, which I will use as a mulch once everything is planted. Also, I raked the grass from Mom's yard yesterday, and I now have five bags of grass clippings to add to the mix. This is a technique that I learned in Stelle a few years back when visiting the Earth Day celebration with Andy and Russell. I still need a lot more grass clippings, so if anyone has any laying around, I'd be happy to come take them off your hands.
Thats all for now.
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