The Chronicles of Barry

Updates on my life

2005-08-19T14:34:00.000-05:00

Well, it's been just a little over 2 weeks since I last posted, and I must say that a whole lot has changed since then. I'm back at good old Mizzou (yay) and all of my friends have moved back in! Honestly, it really feels good to be on campus, no more boring, "crap it's 10pm and there's nothing to do" moments.

Reslife had made a valiant attempt to suck my soul away, but I think I somehow managed to keep more of it this year, maybe it's just because I'm not new to it anymore. Staff is definitely going to be awesome this year, I feel that we have a really good balance and blend of people, we talk too much, but it could be worse. I'm really excited to get to know my FIGlets better, I think I'm going to have fun with them. I've also realized that I'm not as scared about getting up in from of them as I thought I would be. My residents on 3rd floor are an interesting bunch, headed up by Frank, my favorite resident nonresident (there's a long story behind that).

Other than the fact that I'm really in no way shape or form ready for school to start, I think that this year is going to go really well. So now I'm going to go find something to do.

door dec pic

2005-07-30T20:22:00.000-05:00

Here's what my door decs are going to look like...

Each person is going to be a movie character, I chose willy Wonka at random, it just happens to be the #1 movie according to imdb.com anyway, I have enough stuff to do everything but write on them, so I'll have something already done when I go back!

Wedding!

2005-07-30T15:56:00.000-05:00

So if you happened to see my away message this weekend and asked yourself what I was doing in Columbia a week before I am supposed to move in, it's because I was on my way to a wedding with a few other MT staff members. Friday was Tasha (4th floor PA) and Steve's wedding, and it was amazing! There were about 100-150 people at the ceremony and it was beautifully done. Tasha and Steve are such a cute couple, and she looked gorgeous in her dress. The reception was fun, although we were never actually able to get Leah on the dance floor... Maybe next time...

Trevor and I got to spend the night in MT thanks to Rachel (she's doing summer staff) and it felt really good to be back, even if only for a night. And then Friday morning while we were waiting for Leah to get off work, Trevor and I went to the RAP office and started working on door decs. I've got mine all planned out now, and I'm really excited about getting them all done. I'll post a pic of one once I find a silver paint pen.

I got my room back!

2005-07-26T22:25:00.000-05:00

After over two years, I've finally gotten my dad's desk/office out of my room! My mom and I did it this morning, and even though it did require me to get up relatively early, the work wasn't too bad, a little bit tedious, but not bad. With the desk gone, my room feels like it's empty, but in a good way; I have room to spread out all of my stuff everywhere. Of course, will be sad to lose his very comfy desk chair that I commandeered, but I'll get over it. We tested our new ethernet connections (which I finally got all done with yesterday) after we moved the desk today, and they all worked!! I'm very proud, but if anything goes wrong, we're screwed because I've made a vow never to go back into the attic ever again.

Work today was kind of a bear, so I'll spare you all the details; I'll just suffice to say that Mike, the pharmacy director, was not in a very good mood today because about 20 people were asking him questions at the same time.

I'm going to Columbia on Thursday, and from there I'll carpool with Leah and Trevor to Tasha and Steve's wedding in St. Louis, I'm really excited, they're such a cute couple. Plus, I'll get to see Trevor, Leah, Rachel (I'm going to be spending the night at MT thanks to her), and hopefully my new boss Jennifer.

And then a week after the wedding, I have to go back to Columbia, only this time it's to stay; I'm running out of time, and I'm getting nervous/excited/kind of sad. This summer has absolutely flown by, and I don't know if I'm ready to be a PA yet. I've done some stuff, but I don't know if I've done enough, and I hate that feeling. I'm really excited to get things going again, I think this year is going to rock!

Anyway, enough rambling, I'm going to bed. I have to get up and be at work by 6:30am. Hopefully it will be better tomorrow.

Yay for reading!

2005-07-21T15:42:00.000-05:00

I just finished reading the latest Harry Potter, and it was good, and almost made me cry at the end. There's a very interesting plot twist toward the end, but I'm not going to spoil it because you should go read it if you want to find out.

I got door decs for my FIG today, which is good, and I found them in the coolest "teacher" store I've ever been in, so much cool stuff. Anyway, for my FIG's door decs, I got the kind of name tag that you put on your desk in elemtary school, the ones I bought have backpacks on them. Yay for easy door decs!

After almost all summer, we (being my family) are still working on getting the house wired, wee need to drill about 3 more holes and then pull wires through. I will be very glad when this is over, becuase I don't like climbing around in our attic.

I got a haircut on tuesday, you should see it. I'm not going to post it, but if you email me and ask nicely, I might send you the pic.

I'm still alive

2005-07-18T01:10:00.000-05:00

I'm still alive, I promise. I've just been working a whole heck of a lot. For the past 3 weeks I think I've worked at least 4 days a week, which is great for the checkbook, but really cuts into my social time. My summer only lasts for 20 more days, and there is so much stuff that I still need to get done, I hope I can get it all done. (well except for reading Enough; desire to read = 0)

Reslife readiness has been pretty much a bust thus far, but I had a breakthrough tonight because I made Rachel K. brainstorm ideas over hashbrowns at the Waffle House. I've decided that I'm going to do a Hollywood theme this semester, and from the bulletin board ideas that we sketched, I think it's going to rock.

We have air conditioning again, I don't remember if I wrote anything about not losing it... it doesn't matter, we have it back again and it's good. Our termite problem has been fixed (I'm keeping my fingers crossed), which as allowed me to really push the wiring of the house. I've put in all but one of the boxes, and we've totally wired 2 outlets. But before I can do anymore, I have to get a bigger drill bit, because the one we have isn't going to be long enough to go through all the layers of wood.

I bought the latest Harry Potter book for my sister at midnight when it came out, and I have to say that the other people waiting in the store to get the book kind of freaked me out; they were very obsessed.

Ok, I think you're updated on my life (what little there is) now, so I'm going to bed now

Email from the HC

2005-07-13T10:04:00.000-05:00

Well, we got our first email from our new HC on Sunday, and as far as I can tell (although there really isn't a whole lot in the email) she sounds pretty nice, or at least she's pretty decent with her word usage. The weirdest thing is that she's married, I just hope she doesn't have kids because that apartment is not big enough. Anyway, the weirdness of being married aside, this probably turn out to be a good thing, no more even weirder sexual tension going on (if you understand what I'm talking about, you'll appreciate this). Of course it's also going to make me feel even worse if I have to wake her up at 3am with some problem. She apparently also likes videogames (that's awesome), music (maybe she'll have iTunes), and food (that hopefully means yummy stuff for staff meetings).

Ok, I'm done with my thoughts now... Off to get ready for another fun day playing with drugs.

Videogames are you friends

2005-07-09T01:04:00.000-05:00

I discovered a new computer game on Wednesday, and as of late it's kind of taken over my life (just in case you've wondered about my relative lack of being online). The game is called Neverwinter Nights, it's an RPG kind of in the style of Diablo, but different (of course) it's very addicting, and I have a feeling I should not bring it back to school with me; I think I'll just play it a whole lot from now until I have to be back so that I've got it out of my system.

Today at the pharmacy was excruciatingly boring, between the hours of 4 and 7pm, absolutely nothing happened... I got bored surfing the internet. I wish it had been more like yesterday, because that was fun. You know those foam stress reliever balls? Yeah, we stress reliever ball fight yesterday, it was the techs versus the pharmacists. We had two round ones, one shaped like a human heart, one shaped like a pill, and one shaped like a zebra. I was pegged in the head many times, but no damage was done (although some would refute that). That was a fun day.

You know how I said that I was going to call July Reslife Readiness Month? Well, I've gotten slightly distracted and disinterested. I know I need to be doing stuff, but I just don't want to. And the other day I got an email from Brian Brooks and he got all pompous about making sure that the work honors got into a description. It pissed me off and I thought about writing him back and telling him that we don't support elitism, but I think I like my job, so I'll keep my mouth shut.

Sometimes my family is ridiculous

2005-07-06T17:24:00.000-05:00

I've decided that my family can definitely be out of touch with reality. This revelation came today when I had to deal with the termite people today because no one else was home. Up till today, all I had ever heard was my family's side of the story about getting the termite problem fixed. So as I was talking to the guy and he was explaining what was done, it made perfect sense, but I knew that my parent's wouldn't be happy because they didn't take the whole wall out (another long story, just follow me here). So I called my mom and started talking to her and as I was explaining it to her, she just got mad and told me that she was going to have to hang up the phone.

I've also decided that much of the issues that have arisen recently with the house/termite thing have also been because of my mom and her slight irrationality. Ever since the contractor came to fix the termite damage, she's been complaining that all he ever does is tell her that our house was built badly and nothing we've done with it is right. I know that much of this has to do with how women naturally tend to lean towards the emotional side. I know that he said that there were some problems with the house, but she interpreted that as being a dis to our house and how we take care of it. And with this irrational thinking she talks to my dad (who's never actually there when the do any work, because he's at work) and makes him hot under the collar, and then when the Terminix guy calls, my dad yells at him about how the contractor is a know it all and a jerk, even though my dad only met the guy once. And then my parents talk about how awful of a job he's done, but the won't tell him that, no, because that would be the sensible thing to do, tell someone that you have a problem with them and get it fixed. And then I have to deal with the Terminix guy who doesn't understand why my dad is so angry. It's all very stupid and irrational if you ask me. I just want to put them all in a room together and lock it from the outside and tell them that they can't come out until they resolve their differences.

Mistakes were made on both sides. On Terminix's side, they forgot us for a year... I'm serious, and entire year; and that made my parents quite hostile to the company, which is completely understandable. And as this has progressed, they have seriously dragged their feet about getting the work on our house underway, which again made my parents hostile. But my parents have ridiculous expectations of what they're supposed to do. And then, in my opinion at least, they try to use Terminix as a scapegoat as to why we got termites in the first place, which is not necessarily their fault. Unfortunately, termites happen and all we can do is get rid of them and try to keep them from coming back.

I just wish the animosity would go away. I would like to just sit down with everyone and get everything out in the open, you can't solve anything if you never tell someone that there's a problem. Am I really the only one who can think sensibly? If so, we're all doomed.

It was definitely the coffee

2005-07-03T22:56:00.000-05:00

Ok, I tried to go to bed last night, but the 4 shots of espresso just wouldn't let me. I ended up trying to bore myself to sleep by clothes shopping on the internet. The caffeine finally wore off at about 4am... but of course I was supposed to get up at 6:30, which definitely didn't happen.

Work today was very hectic, I was the only tech, and I barely got 5 minutes for lunch, let alone any time to just sit down and relax. Every 5 minutes it seemed that someone or something needed my attention. I'm definitely glad it was relatively slow, I don't think I could imagine it if the hospital was very full.

Air conditioner update... it's still dead. We now have 2 window units in our house to slightly (very slightly) compensate, so it's still hot, but a little more bearable. I hope we make a decision on what to do soon.

Off to bed, I've got to get up early

My stomach feels weird

2005-07-02T23:56:00.000-05:00

I think this is a sign that you should not drink mint mocha frappuccinos and baileys together, or at least not so much. Or maybe you just shouldn't drink 4 shots of espresso in a span of less than 3 hours. Either way, I think I'm going to go to bed now.

When it rains it pours

2005-07-01T22:35:00.000-05:00

Well, I got my car back yesterday... Unfortunately it cost me $212, but my dad was nice and paid it for me. When I got the car back Jimmy told me that my battery cable bolt had been overtightened when it was installed the last time and it was stripped out, and the only way to fix that was to buy a new battery (I had to get a new battery sometime last winter, so I probably overtightened the bolt). So this morning I took it back and had them put in a new battery, and when I paid, I felt kind of swindled because it cost me another $97! All I have to say is that this battery better last for at least 10 years and I better get an amazing warranty.

After my post on Thursday, we discovered why the lights in our house were flickering; apparently the transformer that feeds power to our house and about 6 others on our street had a cable problem which caused a powersurge on one half of our house. So we had the water and electric company out at 1:30 in the morning climbing the pole to find out what was up; it was great, kind of like a neighborhood pow wow ridiculously early in the morning. But ever since then, our air conditioner quit working. And talk about annoying, it's been in the upper 90's this entire week. We called the air conditioner people and they came out this morning; the replaced a compacitor and then left... But that didn't fix the problem, because it stopped working again; so they came out again and told us that the powersurge messed up the air conditioner's compressor and in order to get air conditioning again, we pretty much have to replace our entire heating/air conditioning system (it's over twenty years old, what do you expect). So chalk up another $3 - 5,000 in expenses. It just keeps getting lovelier and lovelier.

And then the Mizzou bill came... I don't know why, but for the July bill, they never seem to add in financial aid, regardless of whether you've accepted it or not. So, there's another $900 bill along with my sister's first college bill, which admittedly is cheaper than mine, it's still a bill.

Like I've said before, it seems like when it rains, it pours.

But I've managed to put all of the financial worrying on the back burner, because today was payday (YAY), and they're working on the termite damage in our house, which means that I might get my room back before I go back to school! And I'm kicking off what I'm going to call Reslife Readiness Month, where I plan door decs, bulletin boards, and FIG lessons before I get back to school so that I can focus more on my grades when I am there. If you have suggestions, comments, or generally helpful ideas for FIG planning, send them my way.

The lights in my house are being weird

2005-06-29T22:28:00.000-05:00

Today was a rather boring day, but after about 3 it got interesting. I took my car in to get a tune up this morning so I haven't been able to go anywhere and pretty much all I did was mow the lawn and read.

Then around three, we got a phone call from my dad; he told us that he had blown a tire and was sitting on the side of the road about 4 miles outside of town. For some strange reason, the spare tire for his truck was sitting in our driveway (actually, knowing my dad, it's not so strange) and we were supposed to bring it to him. To add to this, his truck didn't have a jack, so he called Jimmy (our friend who's mechanic and happens to be working on my car) and he loaned us a jack. We got dad all jacked up and the tire replaced and then followed him most of the way home (he was taking his truck to Jimmy's). About 20 minutes after mom and I got home, we got a call from my dad again, asking us to pick him up from Jimmy's because his truck died and wouldn't start again. My mom and I felt so bad for dad, because without his truck, he really can't work (just in case you don't already know, my dad is a roofer).

And to add to all of this, the first time we went to Jimmy's, he told me that my car had developed a leak in the transmission line and there was barely any tranny fluid left. I'm glad I brought it in when I did. We've decided that our cars like to be together; apparently my dad's truck just can't stand to be separated from my car. We also decided that Jimmy would be making a good chunk of change from the Still family...

When it rains, it pours.

But on a happier note, I should get my car back sometime tomorrow morning, just in time to go to work

Concerning the title of this post, about 10 minutes ago, the lights in our kitchen, the front bathroom (mine and my sister's), and my room have all kind of gone nuts, going dim and coming back and going dim again. My mom said that the last time this happened was almost exactly 20 years ago, in July of 1985. When it happened then, something weird electrical thing happened and it blew a TV, a new cordless phone, and some random other things. So needless to say, I'm turning off my computer and unplugging it when I'm done with this post.

Car wash

2005-06-28T21:23:00.000-05:00

After I got up and going today, I decided that I would wash and clean out my car because it was badly needed(I honestly can't remember the last time I washed it). Anyway, after about and hour of scrubbing and vacuuming and sweating, I stood back to see a wonderful sight, my car looking it's best. And since blogger has recently launched image hosting, I can show you how great my car looks!

isn't it beautiful?

Anyway, that pretty much comprised my day, other than running errands for mom and helping Rachel make a sponge for sourdough bread that she will bake in the next day or two.

Afterthought

2005-06-28T01:05:00.000-05:00

Boy I learned a lot today, I should get a gold star!

And I got a postcard from my favorite resident who works at the St. Louis Zoo! Thanks Katie, you definitely made my day better.

I just wanted to sleep

2005-06-28T00:42:00.000-05:00

Well, to say the least, today was a very interesting and long day at work.

I was awoken this morning to a phone call at ~7am asking me why I wasn't at work. Apparently, someone changed the schedule and didn't tell me. So I bolted out of bed, and was in the pharmacy, dressed but definitely not ready at ~7:10. It was a great way to start off the morning.

Then, sometime during the 9am hour, I created a med error which is hospital speak for, someone got a drug that they weren't supposed to get. It happened because we were relatively busy putting in orders and I got distracted by something (no telling what, I'm so easily distracted). So I put orders for a pneumonia vaccine and a flu vaccine in under the profile of a patient that wasn't supposed to get them. Well, the pharmacist missed it, and the nurse gave the pneumonia vaccine! (grumble, grumble... stupid nurses who don't read their orders) And the only reason that we discovered this was that the patient refused the flu vaccine.

Luckily, the pneumonia vaccine won't kill you (unless you're allergic to it) and it probably means that the patient won't be getting pneumonia anytime soon (which is a positive), so Mike (the pharmacist, and pharmacy director) wasn't too incredibly mad at me (which is amazing considering that he's the anal retentive pharmacist), and he didn't fire me (always a plus).

The rest of the day went off pretty much without incident other than the constant being made fun of by everyone in the pharmacy about being the "Angel of Death" who was trying to kill Mrs. Smith (not actual name, I'm not violating HIPPA) with pneumonia vaccine.

After work I took a long and very much needed shower and then went to Rachel's to make brownies and visit Starbucks to make my day a bit better. It worked, we hung out, made brownies and Sourdough bread starter, and then got Frappuccios, and eventually we ended up a my house where I gave Rachel a brief primer on how to write in HTML.

Lesson learned today:
1. Check the calendar at work often.
2. If work calls and you don't think you have to work, don't answer the phone.
3. Don't ever trust a floor nurse to make sure she has orders for a drug she gives (at least in the hospital where I work)
4. When in a crappy mood, find friends
5. Turn off AIM when friends are using your computer (ignore this if you're not Michelle; we got figured out)

Tick Tock

2005-06-24T00:36:00.000-05:00

Hey, it's 12:30, what are you doing? Well, I can tell you two things I'm not doing:

1. I'm not sleeping, which is bad because I need to get up at a decent hour and go to work tomorrow. The problem is, I can't fall asleep to save my life right now, and I don't have a clue why.

2 I'm not breathing through my right nostril... although not life threatening, it is really annoying and I'm sure adds to the reason I'm not sleeping. Oddly enough, the whole only breathing though one nostril is definitely more of a fall occurrence, not a mid summer thing. I've taken allergy pills and hopefully they'll kick in soon.

I'm going to now go bore myself to sleep, maybe I'll start reading the freshmen reading book...

Popup problems in the pharmacy

2005-06-23T20:17:00.000-05:00

I have the urge to update today just to keep in the habit...

Anyway, not much has happened lately; I've done an amazing amount of cleaning, both at my house and at church. On Tuesday, I lounged around until my mom got off work and then we went to the church and did some industrial cleaning to get ready for VBS (Vacation Bible School) which started Wednesday and goes until Sunday. On Wednesday, I slept in until 10, and then decided to reorganize my closet because I was tired of having to walk around all of my dad's crap. If you're asking yourself, "Why is your dad's stuff in your room," it's a long story, but it has a lot to do with the fact that our house has had some problems with termites a while, and we're trying to get this remedied. But the affected area had to be cleared, and my dad's office effectively moved to my room, which at that point I didn't occupy much because of college, it's just a pain in the butt when I'm here. Anyway, I got my closet reorganized and was able to get a lot of stuff out of the way and into the closet.

Rachel K. (my Rachel from home) decided to call me at 6:45 this morning, which woke me up... not enough to answer the phone, but it still woke me up. I called her after work and she really didn't have a reason for calling me other than she thought I might be working early. But anyway, work was pretty good, I spent most of the day trying to rid one of our computers of popups, I got a lot of crap off the computer, but I never did stop the popups. I'd actually appreciate any suggestions.

Well, now I'm going to go find something to do, I think I might work on the MT website some more.

Yay Starbucks

2005-06-21T01:01:00.000-05:00

Our area (Joplin and surrounding towns, including Carthage) got it's first Starbucks recently and I tried it for the first time tonight. I may never go back to prepackaged frappuccinos again... Ok, that's a lie, but it was really good. Yay for caffeine and yay to Starbucks for supplying it!

What a weekend

2005-06-20T20:47:00.000-05:00

Ok, so here's a quick overview of my weekend...
Friday:
Go to work on Friday from 7am - 3pm
Leave at 4pm for Columbia
Arrive at Columbia at 7:30pm
Hang out, then sleep
Saturday:
Get up at 6:45am
Take C-BASE from 8am - 12pm
Hang out for the rest of the afternoon, then sleep
Sunday:
Get up at 10am
Leave Columbia at 12pm
Arrive home at 3:30pm
Do Father's Day stuff with Dad

And that was a brief synopsis of my weekend, so now on to the details.

On the way to Columbia, I got stuck in construction on I-44 which really sucked and made me have to speed even more than usual to get to Columbia on time. But once I got there, everything was better; I got to hang out with Leah and Rachel and eat Chipotle (mmm... How I missed Chipotle). I stayed in Excellence (the dorm) with Rachel (from college, not to be confused with Rachel from home) which reaffirmed the fact that I think MT is the nicest Res Hall (aka dorm).

Anyway, on Saturday, I got up early and was completely awake and ready for the C-BASE. Of course I got there and realized that I didn't have a pencil; In fact, I hadn't even brought one to Columbia. Luckily, I have nice friends who remember to bring pencils to tests, so I was ok. Thanks to a miscommunication, the test started an hour late, which only added to the fact that it was incredibly dumb, a waste of 4 perfectly good hours of my life (grumble, grumble). I finished with about half an hour to spare, and did most of the math in my head. After the test, Rachel and I just hung out, went to Walmart, and rented a couple of movies to watch. We rented, Kinsey and In Good Company. Kinsey is about the guy who did the first ever scientific study of sex in the U.S., the movie is pretty good, but there is definitely some nudity. In fact, the first nudity you see isn't even boobs, it's most definitely full frontal male, but overall, there are more boobs than penises shown (FYI). In Good Company is a chick flick, but it made Rachel happy, and it happened to be pretty funny in parts, so all in all, the movies were good.

On Sunday, I left Columbia at about noon, just in time to avoid the onslaught of Summer Welcome students and parents, what a relief. The two most eventful parts of the drive were getting flipped off by a couple of guys in a car that was trying to pass me on the outskirts of Osage Beach when the road goes from two lanes to one, they were in the lane that was merging, and I was definitely in front of them, but the got all pissed off and passed me and flipped me off, and then got in front of me and drove slowly, and when I passed them, they flipped me off again. (At this point I would like to interject that the car had the little Calvin and Hobbs cartoon with Calvin kneeling in front of a cross in the back glass, what an incredibly bad witness. And now I'll get off my religious soapbox.) The other memorable moment was driving behind this really scary trailer on Highway 5 that weaved and acted like it was going to tip over, I drove behind this thing for 23 miles and it was probably the longest 23 miles of my life, because I was afraid that I was going to be killed when it flipped over. But luckily it didn't, and I was able to pass it once we got to Lebanon.

May I reiterate, what a weekend.

Happy, yet sad

2005-06-16T23:23:00.000-05:00

I had to work today, but it was good; I finished labeling the C's and started on the D's. You see, we're changing the bins in which we keep our drugs, we're getting bigger bins. To give you a picture of the pharmacy, we have shelves that run from the floor to about 2 feet from the ceiling that cover 1 complete wall, and partially 2 other walls. All together, these shelves hold around, I would guess, 300 drugs. The bins we have them in right now are really hard to fit your hand into, thus making it hard to get the drugs out of the bin; so we bought larger bins and are now in the process of putting the drugs into them. Of course, the new bins have larger label slots, so we have to make new labels for the bins too, which wouldn't be too bad, except we relabeled all of the bins last summer, so it's kind of annoying. But amazingly enough, it's going much more smoothly than it did last year... last year it was a nightmare...

Anyway, so tonight was the last night that I will be able to see Michelle, until Thanksgiving, which we realized tonight is 5 months away, que triste. So we went out and drank coffee at Dioko (it's seriously the only "coffee house" in the area). We talked a lot and had a good time. We ran into Rachel Kenny and Justin Enderle, friends from high school that we hadn't seen in a long time, and we chatted for a while... it was good. After that we went back to her house and sat outside and talked for a bit longer, we accidentally woke up her dog Jack when we tried to go out to the trampoline, and then he just barked at us for about 15 minutes. Michelle doesn't actually leave until Sunday, but I have to be in Columbia on Saturday so that I can take the C-BASE, and I'm leaving right after work tomorrow, so tonight I got to monopolize her evening.

Anyway, I should really go to bed now, I'm supposed to be at work technically at 7:00, but they like us to be there by 6:30 (we'll see if it actually happens).

Good weekend, long Monday

2005-06-14T00:52:00.000-05:00

My weekend was much better than Friday thank goodness and now I'm happily surfing with fast DSL. Ok, Sunday was my sister's birthday, she's now 18 (weirdest feeling ever, for me anyways) and my dad got tickets to the Cardinals v. Yankees game on Sunday for Carrie for her birthday. So we left at about 4:30 because I had to work until 4. The drive up was rather uneventful; our motel was slightly shady, but it worked and none of us got killed (or a weird disease).

The Cards won 5-3, and it was a good game overall. My parents spent a ridiculous amount of money in general at the ball park in my opinion, but it made the day more fun. I hadn't really gotten Carrie anything for her birthday, mainly because I was being vindictive about not getting anything from her on mine. But in the end I caved and promised that I would buy her the next Harry Potter book when it comes out next month. The trip back was a bit more interesting because of a traffic jam on I-44. After we heard about it at the Dairy Queen where we were eating, my mom got out the trusty atlas and detoured us through some really pretty scenery on some country roads and even the town of Bland, Missouri. We got back at about 10 and I just putted about until midnight when the DSL was supposed to be turned on and I got it all hooked up and going during one of the biggest thunderstorms in the past month or so, very fun. And as a result of said new internet, I didn't go to bed until 4am, which made getting up and going to work hard...

Anyway, today's highlights included, making a working ethernet cable (very exciting), and watching the very strange orange colored sky this evening. I think the sky thing was caused by the combination of the thunderstorms we'd been having all day, and the sun setting. It was really eerie everything had a reddish-orange tint to it. Oh well, off to bed now.

Yay fast internet!

2005-06-13T02:55:00.000-05:00

We finally got our DSL, and with amazingly little effort on my part, it works great! I'm tired now and I'm supposed to get up relatively early tomorrow. Good night!

Ready for a weekend

2005-06-10T23:41:00.000-05:00

Last night I had a very eventful evening that included making all my friends go to the Home Depot with me, having some good times at Rebecca's, and (as Rachel calls it) a computer raping. Just as a side note, I do not subscribe to calling file sharing "raping" a computer. Anyway, the evening ended on a somber note as Rachel had a small emotional breakdown and I ended up sitting across from her at 3am trying my hardest to think of some way that I could make her better as she let all of the pain, anger, and anguish out that had probably been building for several months. I think she left feeling a little better, but I still wish there was something more I could do than just hug her and listen; I know I can't, but wouldn't it be nice, just for once.

Work was good today, it wasn't really busy until about 10 till 6, and then we got a Generations admit and another big order. Generations is the extended care facility of our hospital, imagine crazy old people on lots of antipsychotic drugs and you kind of get the idea. Each person in Generations is on at least 8 different drugs, usually more. So needless to say, we got out at about 8:45.

I called Michelle back after work (she called earlier, but I don't have my cell phone at work) and she asked me if I had heard anything from Rebecca, which I hadn't. We were supposed to all go to Rebecca's house and have a party because her parents are out of town for the weekend. I honestly really didn't want to go because there was, of course, going to be the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Of course, my thoughts on this drinking are: 1) I've waited this long what's another 9 months of holding out until I am legal, 2) I have to work at 8am, and I want to be awake and sober, and 3) I'll walk into my house and my mom will come out with a breathalyzer, I just know it (she's got amazing mom powers). So anyway, Michelle and I decided to go get coffee because neither of us had heard from Rebecca, and it was getting late. About the time we got near the Waffle House, both of our phones started ringing, and because we wanted to avoid having that conversation with Rebecca, and Rachel, we decided not to answer them. Yes, I know we're bad people, but it was worth it. We just hung out, drank coffee, and had a good chat. I miss having just Michelle and I time, we have some of the best conversations, even if it does happen to be about nerdy things, or our crazy friends. I'm sure someone's feelings got a little hurt, but you can't please everyone all the time, and everything will be ok again soon enough.

Now, I'm going to bed so that I can get up for work on time.

Stalled home networking

2005-06-08T23:32:00.000-05:00

Well, after my initial buzz about wiring the house, a realization has set in that it's probably not going to get completed for a while. All of my ability to get the house networked hangs on the company that's supposed to come and fix our termite damage because they are going to be working on the wall where all of the ethernet cables come together to get hooked into the router. Of course on Monday I did go to Home Depot and bought about $80 on pretty much everything that we need except for the ethernet cable (this shopping spree pretty much decimated what was left of my paycheck from Friday, but oh well).

On a happier note, the DSL modem came today, and at the risk of sounding incredibly girly, it is really cute. It's about the size of a 5x7 photo and about 1 1/2 inches thick. I assumed that it would be a lot bigger, and boy was I surprised when I opened the box and found this tiny thing. Anyway, the router should be here tomorrow, and I'm really excited about that, because well, it's pretty much what the network is built on (save the computers of course), I just hope someone will be home to sign for it.

My friend Michelle came home from MIT on Sunday and we've gone out about every evening since then. Of course we have to spend as much time with her as possible because she goes back to Boston on the 19th. Yesterday Michelle, Rachel, Rebecca, two of Rebecca's friends from work, and I played tennis at one of the parks in Joplin. Let's just say it's been about 3-4 years since I last played tennis, so I sucked, but it was really fun just to hit the ball, it was a great stress reliever. And today I paid for it, my forearm hurts really bad, I don't think I remember that muscle existing before yesterday...

I was informed today that since I'm off tomorrow I will most likely be working with my dad. I hate working with my dad. Well, I don't really hate it, it's more of a really strong displeasure. My dad is a roofer, and needless to say, it's hot outside and I'm a weenie and work in a well air-conditioned hospital. So I might be in pain tomorrow too, just pray that it rains (and according to the Weather Channel, it looks like it's going to).

Not sleeping sucks

2005-06-06T02:09:00.000-05:00

It's two in the morning and I can't sleep, and it really sucks, because I plan on getting up at 6 to go running. Ok, that's really the only thing I can think to write at this moment, so I'm going to go find a way to bore myself to sleep.

I wish my brain would stop buzzing

2005-06-05T13:42:00.000-05:00

As you know, my family just signed up for DSL, and we are all (or at least I am) anxiously awaiting the activation of said internet. The night that we signed up, I was talking to my parents about how we would have to get a router (which I had to explain to them) and run cables all around our house so that the computers could connect and share the internet, and my mom voiced how much she hated cables running beside the baseboards all over our house (that's how our cable is hooked up for everyone too) and she asked if there was any other way. So we collectively decided that we would wire our house for ethernet (and cable too while we're at it). So now my brain is all abuzz about how we're going to get it all wired. On Saturday my mom and I went to Joplin and priced everything that we would need, and we found some amazingly fun stuff, which got me all excited and pumped up to get this done. And unfortunately, that's all that's been on my mind since then; I even had trouble setting through church today because I kept thinking about running wire at home. I really need to either get this started or get distracted by something else. I think I am going to go to Joplin tomorrow to start procuring what we need.

Good Times...

2005-06-03T23:35:00.000-05:00

I woke up this morning to my dad bringing my cell phone into my room because it was ringing and it annoyed him. I looked up at the clock and it read 6:05, which was unfortunate because I was supposed to be up by 10 till 6 to get ready for running. I answered the phone and it was Rachel, I asked her if I could just go back to bed and she said that she was calling to crap out because she was tired too... So consequently I didn't run today, I slept until 10:30 instead, it felt good.

Over the last 2 weeks I've been researching and haggling the possibility of my family getting internet that is faster than dial-up, and today I won! So as of June 13, I will have DSL! Oh joy for fast internet again! But this also means that, as part of the deal, I'm buying the router so that all of our computers will get hooked up to the internet. That's about a $50 - $70 piece of equipment, but I'll survive. Of course, since none of our computers are wireless, and our house was built before computers were around, we have to figure out how to run ethernet cables to practically every room of our house (it should be interesting). But regardless, yay for DSL, and my parents for agreeing to get it!

Today also happened to be my first payday of the summer (it's definitely been a good day)! I made a pretty good chunk of money (and no, I'm not going to tell you how much), but it went away rather quickly after making a sizeable payment on my credit card and paying my cell phone bill. So again, I'm poor, but at least I am less in debt.

Weird Dream

2005-06-03T10:54:00.000-05:00

When I woke up this morning, I had this snippet of a weird dream still in my head. Well, as you know I have to get my wisdom teeth out this summer, so in the dream I was going to get them out. The weird thing was, that the oral surgeon was going to take them out in a high traffic area of my high school. He looked like he'd just come out of a PTA meeting or something, and he had a nurse with him. There wasn't any chair or anything, just the wooden benches that are in the school. And then my mom magically appeared, she was drinking a mug of hot tea. She said something to me, but I woke up and can't remember what she said. Aren't dreams funny?

First book of the Summer

2005-06-03T01:30:00.000-05:00

Well, my list for this summer is rather hefty so I decided that I should get started. My first book was Hanuted by Chuck Palahniuk (hmm... can you guess who recommended/lent it to me?). I actually finished it a few days ago, I've just forgotten to mention it. Overall, the book was good in my opinion; it's not really a novel in traditional terms, it's more of a modern day Canterbury Tales only much more grotesque. The story revolves around this group of 15 (I think) people who go away on a three month writer's retreat. Let's just say that the retreat goes terribly wrong and this is the plotline for the envelope story. Most of the short stories by the characters are about why the characters are on the retreat and many of them are gruesome. I would recommend this to those who aren't squeamish or faint of heart.

And as a side note, if you've heard Kim talk about how Chuck's poetry sucks, I completely agree. She most eloquently put it this way, "It sounds like fiction with weird line breaks."

There are now officially 3 printers in my way too cramped room

2005-05-31T23:19:00.000-05:00

You may be asking yourself, why does Barry have 3 printers in his room? Well, it all started about two years ago when we discovered that we had been invaded by termites. So since I was going to college, my dad decided to move his office (which consists of a desk mainly, and lots of crap to go on it) into my room, because in my parents room where my dad's desk was, happened to be the place where the termites were found. So since then I've lost about a third of my already relatively small bedroom to my dad's junk. And now, finally, after two years of us going back and forth with the company that we have our bug stuff through, they are finally going to fix our walls. Mind you, it has been two years since the initial infestation of termites, and we (being my family) are pretty sure that there is a lot more damage than they (the company) think. So our house is in shambles right now because my parents have pretty much moved their entire bedroom into the rest of the house to get ready for the workers to come in and fix the house. And little by little my room is being taken over by their stuff. It sucks.

Anyway, running is still going... not much better, but it's still going. We've decided to go three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 6am unless one of those days I have to work at 7am in which case we postpone it until the next day. Anyway, the strangest thing happened on Monday, as I was getting ready to go to Rachel's house, she calls me and tells me that she must have eaten something that didn't agree with her the night before, and we decided to postpone till Tuesday. So I go back to bed. When I wake up at 10am my neck is so stiff I can barely move it, or at least I can barely move it to the left, to the right I'm fine, but I can't move it left. I still haven't decided what I did during that 4 hours of sleep, but it still hurt today. I'm just hoping it goes away soon.

Let's see, other than that the pharmacy is good, it's not causing me tremendous pain anymore... I think I've finally readjusted. There was a discrepancy on the percocet all weekend in the Pyxis (drug vending machine) which really sucks because it's a controlled substance and missing controlleds are BAD. The weekend other than the percocet was really boring, but I've decided that there are only two types of weekend days at the pharmacy, there's the "I'm so bored I could shoot myself" kind of day and then there's the, "please just put me out of my misery, we're so busy" kind of day, there are no in betweens. Luckily, this weekend was the I'm bored kind.

I found out that I have to have my lower wisdom teeth removed sometime this summer... That really sucks, but at least I get some good pain killers! ;) On that note, I shall bid you farewell for the evening.

Still out of shape, but getting better

2005-05-26T22:30:00.000-05:00

So I did my second day of running at 6am yesterday, but this time I did it with Rachel, because a) it's better to do things with buddies because of the whole encouragement and accountability thing, and b) she's trying to get back into shape too. Anyway, she lives outside of town, so I went there and we ran in the country which is much nicer than running in town, except for that occasional speeding car on a road without shoulders... yeah, so we weren't really keeping track of how far we were going, so we ended up running about a 1/2 mile, and walking about 1 1/2 miles. Another good thing about running in the country, county roads are marked off in miles. For instance, from county road 160 to county road 170 is one mile. We're doing it again tomorrow, at 6, and our goal (once I tell Rachel) is to run a full mile, or at least 3/4.

And now to switch subjects... During the last week of school, I got a call from my mom saying that we had received a wedding invitation from my friend Derek. I've known Derek since third grade, and we were really good friends up until high school, we kind of drifted apart and I haven't really seen him for about a year. Of course, thanks to a certain stupid test I won't mention C-BASE I will be in Columbia on the day of the wedding which really sucks. So my mom said that we would go shopping and get them a wedding present. You must realize that my mom and I have never shopped for someone from a registry before, so it was an interesting shopping experience. We first went to Famous Barr and had a hard time finding the registry computer, and then we didn't find anything that we liked, so we next went to Target. At first when we went into Target, we forgot about the registry and just started perusing for things that we wanted. When we did go to the registry computer it started just shooting paper at us when it was printing, which made us laugh and chase paper as it fell... In retrospect, we probably looked really stupid, but oh well, it was fun. After that exploit, we decided to just go home, decide what we wanted to get them, and come back another day.

Today believe it or not, my sister and I were actually driven out of town by an odor that smelled strangely like fire and brimstone (think sulfur). Apparently the smell comes from a plant that was built by the local chicken processing plant in town to somehow convert the waste products from the chicken processing, to a usable fuel, or something like that, I'm not actually sure. But I did end up getting my watch fixed and a haircut so it wasn't too bad, and when we came back, the town smelled ok again. After the whole smell fiasco I decided to make some chocolate chip cookies, because I hadn't baked in while. It felt so good to make food again, and the cookies tasted great, yay for baking.

Now it's off to bed, 6am comes early.

What a Monday

2005-05-24T00:49:00.000-05:00

In an effort to get in shape over the summer, I've decided to take up running in the morning a couple times a week. First off, stop laughing at me, it's totally legitimate, and I'm determined this time. Anyway, today was my first day, and it about killed me (not really, more just for dramatic effect). My wake up time for this morning was 5:51 and believe it or not, I actually woke up. So I put on some running clothes, did some stretching, and started jogging down the street. My goal was to jog to my elementary school, which is about maybe a quarter of a mile (or less) away, and jog back. Well, I at least made it to the school, but coming back was definitely more painful. My thoughts to myself were, "I'm going to die. I'm going to die," over and over again. I did make it back, and since I'm still dedicated, I'm going to run again on Wed. but this time with Rachel because having a buddy always helps. After I got back, I took a shower, got dressed, and then somehow managed to go back to bed for about 4 more hours.

Other than my morning escapade, my day was rather dull. I rearranged my room and finally got everything out of boxes, so my floor was covered in crap most of the day, but now most of it is in a place, and what's left is hiding in my closet until I can find places to put all of it.

This evening a few friends and I went to a bar/pool hall called J-Town to play pool. We only got one good game in because apparently at 10pm they kick out everyone who isn't 21 which kind of sucked. So what did we do? We went to the Waffle House! Have I mentioned that I really like the Waffle House? We drank lots of coffee and just talked a lot, it was good. Yay for good friends, and good places to drink coffee with those friends.

Yay for parties!

2005-05-21T22:16:00.000-05:00

Thanks to a few of my friends and our habit of keeping weird sleeping hours, I didn't get to bed until around 2 this morning, which was ok, because I didn't have to be anywhere until 1pm today. I woke up at about 11 to a phone call which I decided I wouldn't answer because no one calls for me on our home phone. So, I played around on the internet for awhile and bided my time until I had to be at church to get ready for the day's big event, my parent's 25th anniversary party.

The party lasted from 3-6 and it went off without a hitch, for the most part. My mom is one of those people who hate being in the limelight and so she was more than a little mad at Carrie when she got there, but after a while I think she started to have fun and actually enjoyed herself. There were a lot of people there, many I hadn't seen in a long time, and it was good to see everyone and catch up on what I'd missed in the last however long it had been since I had seen them last.

One of the coolest parts was that my aunts and uncles on my mom's side came (my Aunt Jane and Uncle Rick from St. Joe, about 4 hours away) and after the party we had dinner at Bamboo Gardens which is a local Chinese food place. All in all, today was a good day.

Pringles cans and WiFi

2005-05-21T01:57:00.000-05:00

So today I helped my friend install a WiFi card in her laptop, and after we were done she said something about making an antenna out of a pringles can. We googled it, and amazingly enough, you can make a directional antenna out of a pringles can, it's kind of amazing.

http://www.3nw.com/pda/wireless/wi_fi_pringles_can_yagi_antenna.htm

Pharmacy report says Hell has been subdued... a little

2005-05-19T23:11:00.000-05:00

As you can probably guess, today at the pharmacy was much nicer than yesterday, but I'll get to that in a moment...

So last night after I finished ranting about the pharmacy, my friend Rachel (not to be confused with Rachel from Mizzou) called and said that she and Rebecca wanted to do something. After some calling back and forth getting opinions, we decided to go to Dioko, a local coffee shop; so everyone came to my house and we set off for Joplin. Unfortunately we got there and discovered that dioko was closed, which happens to be another annoying thing about being home, everything closes at 9pm and I don't go to bed until at earliest 12am. Anyway, undeterred, and still in need of coffee we decided that we would go to the Waffle House! Rebecca called Jeremy, another friend from high school, and he joined us at the Waffle House and we had a lot of fun, just chatting and eating. Oddly enough, when we got there I didn't order coffee because I was sidetracked by some hashbrowns that really hit the spot. All in all it turned out to be a good evening.

Today at the pharmacy was about 100 times better than yesterday, many less problems and I got out on-time. Learning the new computer system still sucks, but I've discovered that it's really fun to just try out unknown keystrokes, sometimes I ended up having to close the program, but more often than not, I found new stuff that I didn't know existed.

I also discovered today that barcode scanners are a lot of fun. At each of our computer workstations there is a barcode scanner that until today I really hadn't discovered a purpose for. The thing with the barcode scanner is that every drug we send out is in a package that has a barcode on it that the nurses on the floor can scan to make sure the patient is getting the right drug, and to verify that the drug was given to the right patient. Also, every order that we get has a patient's sticker on it for obvious reasons, and these labels also have barcodes; so today I discovered that I could just can a patient's barcode and not have to look them up! It's a great time saving feature.

After work I got home and found a note from my mom saying that there were leftovers in the fridge, a can of ravioli on the counter, or I could go out for dinner, and due to not being in a leftover/ravioli mood, I waited for my dad to get home and we went to subway for dinner.

I started working on Haunted more today, I'm about three stories in, and I think I'm starting to believe that Palahniuk is a twisted, scary man, but only time will tell...

I'm off to bed now, I have to be at work at 7am, oh joy...

Pharmacy = Hell

2005-05-18T20:42:00.000-05:00

So, as you can see from the title, today at the pharmacy was not the best day in the world, especially the first day back since January. Let me just say that new computer systems suck.

Well, it all started about 2 weeks ago according to my mom (she works at the same hospital) when the entire hospital went live with a new across the board computer system that pretty much connects the entire hospital via computer. In the broad aspect, this looks like it would be a great idea, and it is, it's just that the software being used is a step back in the dark ages; everyone think DOS with happy window's colors, and you've pretty much got the idea. Back in January, the pharmacy had one of the most state of the art software programs in the industry that we used to enter orders and get drugs and the instructions on how to use them to the nurses. It was very user friendly and easy to change things. This system on the other hand, is very user-unfriendly and if you mess one tiny thing up you have to pretty much start over on whatever you happen to be doing. This system is almost entirely controlled by the keyboard if that says anything, and using the mouse is sort of considered a no no. And to add to the confusion of having just started using a new system, we got new pyxises today too.

I know that most people just read that last sentence and were like, "huh? What in the heck is a pyxis?" In the simplest way I know how to put it, a pyxis is like a giant drug vending machine with a computer attached. I'll see what I can do about getting a pic up, but just believe me for now. In our hospital there are three pyxises, one on 2nd floor, one on 3rd floor, and one in ER. One of my jobs as a pharmacy tech is to fill the pyxises with drugs that have been used by the floors. And we did this today, unfortunately, since they were installing new computers in the machines, we didn't get the list of drugs that needed to be filled until after 7pm, which happens to be the time that the pharmacy closes and we go home. Subsequently, I didn't get off until 8pm. And I get to go back and do it all again tomorrow. 11-7 baby!

Now I'm going to go out with my friends and have coffee, so I'll see you later.

Day 2

2005-05-17T23:37:00.000-05:00

Well, day 2 of being home is officially over, and what a day it was...

Today was my parents 25th anniversary (woohoo mom and dad), so Carrie (my sister) and I decided to, well, not be around all evening so that they could celebrate... Anyway, here is why I love rural Missouri, as we were driving to go eat the traffic on the highway just stopped. We wondered what was up for about 3 seconds before we realized that there were some cows out of their fenced area; they were spooked and dangerously near the road. So the semi driver in front of us got out of his truck and helped herd the cows back into the pen and traffic resumed as usual, only in rural Missouri. It's good to be home.

Another reason I can definitely tell I've been living in a college town is that the biggest headline in the paper is about the town being all up in arms about a relatively new (since last semester) video store that has an "adults only" section. It made me laugh, especially as I thought about the advertisements on the radio for one of the porn shops in Columbia. Good old conservative SW Missouri.

During the time that Carrie and I were avoiding home, we decided to watch a movie. We saw the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and there were about 5 people in the theater including us. Let me preface my thoughts on the movie by saying that I have not read the books, but I definitely think I would like to now. The movie was really good, very bizarre and comical, but good. I especially liked the Point of View gun; many unnecessary arguments and fights could be stopped if someone could invent one of those.

Ok, now is the part where you're probably going to think that I'm an awful person. For some reason, my sister and I have never gotten along well; we fight and bicker and just generally have mean attitudes toward one another. I know this and I've been trying to fix it for quite some time, I mean I really do love her and I want us to get along better, but she just drives me absolutely insane. So tonight while we were out, I started to get annoyed with her, and I asked myself, "Why are you getting annoyed? What's causing this unnerving irritation, and why can't you just get over it?" And I started going through the things about her that bother me, and I think I've finally found what bothers me, but there's nothing I can do about it. I think what bothers me the most is that she is very loud and opinionated, but has no experience. Don't get me wrong, many, scratch that, most of my good friends are loud and opinionated (think Rachel), and I'm ok with that, I'd much rather someone have an opinion than be a mindless follower. It's just that she's lived in the same place her whole life, and she's had little to now experience in the world that's not Carthage, Missouri. I realize that I also had the same kind of thing, but I also think I have a better sense of when to keep my mouth shut; she tends to be a walking faux pas, because of her lack of tact. But enough about my relationship with my sister, it just makes me feel better that I can articulate (sort of) why she bothers me, and I think that the only way it will get better is when she moves out of the house, and hopefully out of the town.

Ok, now it's time to go to bed, I start work tomorrow! Yay for drugs!

Well, here goes...

2005-05-17T01:18:00.000-05:00

Ok, I have a blog, now what? I guess I'll just have to tell you all about my exciting daily adventures (actually, probably not, I'm pretty mundane). So anyway, like I said, here goes...

The thing I think I've decided that I most dislike about moving out of the Twain is that I have to pack up all of my crap, transport it, and then unpack it all for three months and then reverse the process. But that was my weekend, pack, pack, pack, move home, and start the unpacking process (my bed is under about three layers of junk right now).

But anyway, Sunday was a long day. I went to bed at about 2 am because I was packing and as I was getting ready for bed I realized that I had already packed all of my bedding save one not really big afghan, so I slept on an mattress with a pillow and the afghan that only covered to about my calves. It was a little chilly. I got up at 9:30 and got ready and went to Church which was good, Doug was late as usual, but Sacha and I were on time. After church was IHOP and then back to packing and cleaning. After several goodbyes and some hugs, I left and finally got out of Columbia at about 3:45 and set off on the three and a half hour drive back to Carthage. The drive was long and boring as usual, and I only almost died once on I-70 (stupid other drivers). When I got back to town I unpacked the car onto my bed and then promptly left again, because my family was at church and Rachel and Rebecca had called, so I hung out with them all evening. We decided at about 10 pm that it would be cool to go stargazing, because Rachel and I have been in cities with lots of light pollution. So we went out to a field and laid on blankets and watched the stars, which would have been better were the moon not out in full force. We were out in the field for about half an hour before we started to get cold and Rebecca's overactive imagination got us on a scary movie kick, so we decided to rent a horror movie. We got a movie titled "Anatomy" which Rachel said was really scary, but as it turned out, it had too much plot and not enough death, so I was bored. Interestingly, it is a German film that had been dubbed in English so in a sense it was almost comical to watch it. After that I went home and to bed. So ended Sunday, not so bad after all.

If only Monday had been as exciting. All I've done today is clean and do lots of laundry. Although, I did get to make dinner because everyone had to work but me, but I only have one more day off and then it's back to the old pharmacy, I'm really excited to play with drugs again.

Ok, that was way too long for a first post, maybe more tomorrow.