A Survival Story

I've survived my first day of doing both a graveyard shift and a day shift consecutively.  It actually panned out to be 12-8 at one place, home for a shower etc, and then 10-6 at the other.  I survived pleasingly well.  I had a harder time concentrating from 3-4 but I think I remember what we talked about, and then from 4-6 we were driving so I'm not surprised that I was tired.  However, the mistake I made was to "have a nap" when I got home.  I don't even remember the alarm I set... I slept right through until quarter after one this morning.  Good news is I know that seven hours seems to be the amount of sleep I need.  Bad news is that it is now almost two and I'm blogging. More good news is that blogging seems to putting me back to sleep so I should be snoozing again soon. 

I'm really liking the corrections job, the research isn't overly difficult, just time consuming and the pay is amazing.  Better than any job I got in Alberta.  And I am learning a lot about Criminology and stuff that I actually didn't learn anything at all about in school.  So this is really going to expand my horizons. And I really like that.  

Lastly, I went with work to New Westminster yesterday and had the chance to be a little bit of a tourist.  They have some pretty old buildings and cute shops on Columbia street (i think that was the name).  We ate at the Spaghetti factory. Walked by the keg. Saw some beautiful brick building exteriors. And there are about 10 bridal shops on a 3 or 4 block strip! The history of the area seemed very rich and its right along the river so our parking stall had a view!  I really need to go back and take pictures.  

But now I think I will do my best to sleep again, and I will think ahead better in the future and not let myself sleep all evening so I wake up in the wee hours.

Lots of Work

So work has kept me busy busy busy.  Tonight i finally had a chance to go out and check out a new path I heard about nearby. It goes through an undeveloped area that I'm sure has a story behind it.  There is a street that goes up halfway... and stops with a little spot where I'm sure some kids have been having a nice illegal time.  Along the way though there were tons of daisy's (or maybe they are the camomile stuff that is a horrible weed in Alberta?) And I found a rose plant that looked very out of place in the undergrowth but was beautiful. I'm wondering if they didn't start development and that is how rose got there?

It's going to be an interesting week. I start one day job and end up working a double shift.  But if I've done my calculations right working graveyard shifts for the next two weeks is going to make me $1000.  I think loosing a bit of sleep now won't seem like such a big deal when I'm in Slovakia at YWAM.  

Lastly, we also watched Book of Eli this weekend.. and I didn't get to watch the end of it, but the part I watched was really good.  If you can stomach alot of hand to hand combat and bloody grossness you will really like this movie.  It has an interesting story line (although I'm not sure if the ending makes up for the number of heads I saw looped off).  And we ate cinnamon buns with chocolate chips in them. It was amazing!

First Shift

I've officially started one of the jobs. This is at a residential treatment program for aboriginal teen girls, most of which are in foster care and aren't there by their own choice.  Very big difference from where I was volunteering during the school year.  I can already see really cool differences and ways to run a program like this.  Last night I worked graveyard from midnight to 8am this morning.  And it was cleaning for pretty much the whole time.  They clean the whole house every night which is amazing to me that the vacuum doesn't wake the girls up in the middle of the night.  Although we did get to wake the girls up for school and make and serve them breakfast so I did get to kinda meet them, even if it was in a groggy state.  As for working graveyard, it wasn't that big of deal. I came home, made my phone calls, went to bed for a couple hours. Then i got up and had something to eat, stayed up for an hour and slept for a couple more hours.  I could totally get used to this. Its supper time and I'm sitting in the sun on the front porch typing my blog.  This is the life!

However, my tune might change.  Right now I have 113 hours on the schedule this month which is about 20 hours a week.  But with the research position I was offered at corrections canada I'm hoping to fill that out for June with some 9-5 hours when I can, and then get to a normal week of those hours with less of the graveyard stuff. Hopefully God can sort it all out because I really like both jobs right now.

So tonight I'm going to be cleaning again, and it will go much faster than last night because I don't need instructions on everything.  I'm excited because there are all these binders of procedure I'm itching to read.  I'm a geek aren't I? Wanting to read procedure?  It must be a sign that this is the stuff I am interested in.