just the big toe

Heeey guys… I’m sorry it’s been so long. I just read Todd’s blog and it’s openness and well-written-ness has inspired me to try some more… I’m going to just dip my big toe in the water here, so to speak and perhaps in a day or three I could get the whole foot in… or even a leg… but it all starts with the toe, right?

1) My house is good… Blair Miller, a p4 is living with me for 6 months or so… I told her how much I wanted to charge her for rent and she actually laughed and told me she was going to pay more… and on top of that she’s an incredible roommate- cooks (for herself, but sometimes I get to sneak a bite…) and keeps the place looking slightly better than I had it before… she’s great and one of the people I used to fondly look back at Memphis and miss this past year when I was gone… and now I don’t have to because she’s about 20 feet away in the guest bedroom… you need to meet her if you haven’t already- you’d like her.

2) I’m dating Abbie (the one from before)… she’s smarter than your girlfriend (you want to compare ACT scores?), and can probably ride a horse better than her too… also pretty-. Someone asked us how long we had been together at her family’s ranch in Colorado (just got back from there a few days ago) and we both looked at eachother- I guess since Mid-April? But it seems like longer than that because of the before part… we decided to add our time together before to what we’ve got now and we came to the consensus of “6 months”. I’d say from an emotional connection standpoint we most certainly picked right up where we left off… I could write more- but we’re keeping this short- remember?

3) My job’s good. I got a relatively big promotion back in May to ‘Mr Manager’ (sorry- been watching some arrested development again…) but yeah- I’m ‘da bOs’ or the “pharmacist in charge” or “Pharmacy Manager” like it says on the new bidness cards. It’s more of a lot of things… paperwork, responsibility, meetings, conference calls, accountability, moneyibility… so I said “lets do it”… it was a little scary at first until I realized I was already thinking and making decisions like the manager would anyways, just if it was a big one I’d run it by the previous manager… and now I just have to run it by me! It’s nice in a lot of ways. I’ve been very happy at just how LITTLE of the job I manage to take home with me every night. For the first few months I’d come home and think “did I do that right?” or “did I give that person the BEST advice?!”- now I just let that go when I get home- and I say “get home” instead of “when I leave” because, as Abbie will tell you, sometimes I still think about things on the drive home (28 minutes- give or take 30 seconds). Overall I’m very happy with how things are going- my flexibility is incredible with my job. I just took a 7 day trip to Colorado and had to bill only 1 vacation day. I’m taking a 5 day weekend next week (DCI at MTSU stuff and Abbie’s in town) and I just had to move a couple days around- I don’t have anybody to OK it with- I just write my own schedule and as long as it all works out in the big picture everybody’s happy… because my “overtime” is paid to me at the same RATE as my regular hours- it doesn’t matter if I work 6 days one week and 2 the next… it’s complicated but it all works out on paper. One example was that I needed to take 2 vacation days last week, but the week before my district boss/schedule-approving person called me and asked me to cover an open shift for a day and I said “can I just count that against one of my vacation days and NOT bill overtime?” he says “psh… you can do whatever the crap you want with that day- totally up to you…” and I was like… “I love Target” or something like that…

4) It’s late and I gotta sleep. Peace.