Week in Review.

This week has been most noticeable for learning a new trick at work, which included giving me permission electronically to do it. As I am receiving faxes and putting those documents in the charts next to everything should have a physician signature on it. If I received it and it doesn't, I now have the ability to mark it as deficient and electronically let the physician know it needs to be signed. As opposed to the nurses printing out the documents, getting a signature and re-scanning it into the chart. The process isn't all that impressive, but it does have a fairly large effect on efficiency and the completeness of the chart. So that's kinda of exciting... makes me feel important when I do it. (Which, I've only had to like, 4 times this week..)

Everything else is going well. I'm running for help much less often with the phone, usually now it's either a new problem I haven't encountered yet or I'm just double checking before I do something. I am now starting to keep track of what I do each day. How many phone calls, how many faxes, how many people walk in, how many QA's I do, etc. I'm also supposed to keep track of how long it takes me to do those things..but that's kinda hard to keep track of my day minute by minute. So I've come up with an excel chart with each of my job duties and I've divided it up from 7:30-10 10-12:30 and 1-4. While that's not exactly minute by minute, it still shows what I'm focusing on most during those hours, I may not have done a lot of QA in the afternoon, but their were a lot of phone calls and faxes, etc. I was asked to do this so the manager can justify keeping my position a position. I'm not worried about my status as an employee so much as I'm sure I could easily change to a new position, but this is for the position itself.

Valentine's Day was fun this year, Ed came to surprised me at work with flowers and chocolate. It was the first time he'd been in and seen my office at work since I started so it was fun having him there. He got to meet a couple of coworkers who were very impressed with him. After he left I was sitting there thinking "I should at least get him a card or something..." and came up with getting him a card and one of his favorite big bags of jerky and grabbed a soda for him too. Jerky is to guys as chocolate is to women, right? Nothing fancy, but still fun. I took it to him at work as well.

Speaking of his work, I've started going in to swim in the evenings and Ed is attempting to teach me proper strokes. I've only gotten the chance to go in twice so far, but hopefully this coming week I will be able to get in the pool more. I'm not so great at it. I can't breath and perform a some-what proper stroke at the same time. I can get the strokes but loose it when I move my head to breathe. Or if I focus on breathing properly, I lose the stroke. I've got a lot of breathing exercise to focus on, such as actually exhaling while underwater, and inhaling quicker when I do come up for air. My instinct is to take a deep breath when I come up but that's not really the goal. I think at this point it would help if I focus on one stroke too, probably the free style. I was trying the butterfly out on Wednesday which was getting really frustrating. I was hard on myself already from feeling like I was making a lot of mistakes at work (which I wasn't really..just dwelling on a few I did make) and then trying one of the hardest strokes I just felt like a failure all day in general. So.. hopefully I can keep this up and will should eventually start improving.

Ed is currently in Springfield at a swim meet. He's on his own with just two kids from the swim team to keep track of. The head coach, Heather, is with some of the older kids at a meet in Eugene. I stayed home to go dress shopping with Connie and the other girls. I got a dress for their wedding.. but I was the only one who got a dress and I guess we are all going to Portland next weekend to shop. I do still need another dress for Amy's wedding, so I'm glad we're going again, but I wish I had gone to the swim meet with Ed.
I do have the rest of the spring & summer meet schedule, there are 11 more meets, 6 of them are local, 2 of the remaining out of area are 3 days which I am going to try and get Friday off so I can go. Most of the out of area ones, and a few of the local ones Ed is on his own at those as well with the younger kids while Heather at different meets with the older kids. The last one is a camping trip meet on the coast. I'm really looking forward to that one, there is a big BBQ planned and it sounds like a lot of fun.

Not a whole lot else going on. Last month I took advantage of a photography special and booked Ed & I another session for this month. Still waiting for picture to drift in but here is one of my favorites so far.

I booked our session at the elementary school where we first met. Our photographer is another young high school student, truly has the cheapest prices in town. She was super fun and cute, and I actually got Dan & Connie to book her for their wedding after the other photographer moved and canceled on them. At the same time the person I found to do their cake told me she was unavailable that weekend and at least she recommend me to someone else who was available. Wedding planning chaos! They are so close it's getting a little stressful, but it also means they are nearly here and I'm super excited for them both.