Keeping Busy In Tucson
On the job front, I managed to do quite well with my interview in the CCU and scored a job offer for a seasonal position. Actually, it turns out to be much more cardiac than I had thought, as it is a full-blown CT-ICU. They have all kinds of fresh heart and lung transplants as well as any cardiac surgery and ailment that you can shake a stick at. I had to be a little vague with my interview in regards to my previous experience with cardiac, as I've seen alot more cardiac than I've actually been involved with. At any rate, this is another big, fun hospital, and I am going to get a ton of new experience, to put on my skills checklist ;)
As a seasonal worker, I'll have a 13-week contract like any other travel assignment, and the pay is similar, including the fact that I'll receive a monthly living stipend. However, I'll be working directly for the hospital. That will be a new change. The bad news is that I don't start for another week and a half, until January 26th.
Of course, Jess is quite happy with that development. Right now we are just on her income, so things are tighter than we have come to expect in the past eight months. We have to watch our cash much more closely, eat out less, and hang out at home more. Actually, that's working well in my favor. I'm doing well with the Chickenfoot Weight Loss Challenge (loser eats a nasty chickenfoot we brought back from China). I now have 11 days that I have had some sort of exercise, for at least a half hour. I've been running, working out, hiking excessively, those sorts of things.
Also, my friend Scott has a Wii, so in a way, I've been playing tennis as well.
My weight hasn't dropped that much; I'm down seven pounds from weigh-in (we ate tons of chicken wings and beer the night before, so that weight was a little skewed). The more important part is, I feel a lot better than I have for awhile. I feel healthier, mostly in part because I'm getting plenty of exercise and I'm watching my diet much more closely. Being unemployed isn't all that bad. So is being in a state where physical exercise is much more common, in comparison to being up in Madison, Wisconsin.
I'm also getting plenty of photography time. I take my camera on all of my hikes, and today alone I added four new galleries of Tucson pictures. One of them is a compilation of photos where I've converted them into B&W or some other color scheme, which turned out very pleasing to me. Desert pictures usually are good for color conversion. I also really like the Slideshow option that I put in, I even find myself just watching the pictures rather than having to click through them. All new galleries in the past 5 or 6 months have had slideshows to go along with them. Here are links to Tucson B&W gallery as well as the Tucson Assignment page:
I even went to a Photography Meet-Up, where I went to meet a bunch of photographers. It was more about networking than about being informative, but I found out about a couple of other photography clubs in town that I need to check out. It's nice to have a little time to concentrate on photography for a change. It'd be great for that part of my life to move out of the hobby category and more into the money-making category!
Until next time, be safe.
