Shot in the Dark

It is late at night and I am delerious from salmon on the brain, but I just wanted to update everyone that I got the job!  Even after I thought I blew the interview, my title is now Associate Planner for Snohomish County Planning and Development Services.  This was all the result of a class assignment for our Senior capstone class where we were required to turn in a final resume, ready to send to a potential employer.  I was going to put it off like everyone else, since I had one that just needed some updating, but the county posted the position the same week the assigment was given.  I took a shot in the dark and sent in my newly updated resume.

Today, I met a whole office full of planners, engineers, permitters, IT, and inspectors, and was shown my cubicle and "a good GIS computer".  I had to chuckle at that one, as sometimes the park planners (including myself) would freeze the Willis Tucker server by using too many GIS applications, to the point of almost crash it on time card day. 

After my intro meeting with one of the department heads, I'm trying to figure out whether it was really my GIS and data skills that got me hired, or if it was my retail pharmacy people skills.  I told them in my interview that I had been called every name in the book, had things thrown at me, and yet I still didn't mind confronting Trouble customers (notice the capital T - Elvis shout-out).  I think all three interviewers wrote down that response, and today I got to hear about "new approaches" and "customer service" when dealing with stakeholders (such as large developers?).  It's all good, I can handle it.

It will be strange not working in a pharmacy full time.  Even when I was 9 my dad had me sweeping floors, filing prescription numbers and filling vials.  I should have known that it wasn't a long-term career choice at that age though, as my favorite part of hanging with my dad at work was pulling the gate down at the end of the day.  It meant it was finally time for the pharmacist to go home, and mind you sometimes this was long after everyone else had left.  So be nice to your local pharmacy staff even when you called in your prescription 4 hours before and it's not ready.  You never whose hand they had to hold that day, or what kind of crazy person they had to deal with.

Keeping my Head Above the Water

Wow! Welcome back to the e-world. It's been an insanely busy summer, that didn't really feel like summer, unless you're a northwestern native, which clearly with all my complaining, I am not. Hopefully next year there will be better weather and more time off.

Lately, my life feels like it's flying by faster than I can keep up. I ended up working at my internship for most of my staycation, but I can't complain when I'm working on trails and at the fair. There have been lots of changes at work, my babies are both in middle school where I have been volunteering with the band, and the hubby turns 40 in nine days! We are going to have an awesome night of family, friends, bbq, gambling and a his-and-hers pampering at the Tulalip Resort.

My parks internship has been extended into November, and I am about to go back to the city in three weeks. Not sure how working 6 days a week with school is going to work out, but at least I only have two classes this quarter, one of which is intro to GIS, which I already took at EvCC. Of course, I have to take it again, just to get that 300-level class on my transcript, but it should be cake.

Speaking of cake, I need to get busy on the over-the-hill version. See you peeps later!

Time to Be Back

Here I am, back to reclaim my Saturdays. No more trips to Sequim or long road trips to Mt. Rainier or Spokane, but it's been weeks of great experiences. I've learned how to measure trees, tons of native plants, hydrology, soil science, and even got in some snowshoeing on Mt. Rainier which was a major feat. Not because I played in the snow, or camped in the mud, but because I made it up a trail from Paradise, that I couldn't even go a quarter mile on when my dad took me 20 years ago. Don't judge - I was raised a flatlander and had just moved out here. The other feat was getting one of our housewife classmates through the mud camping and packing her excessive baggage and shoes into my car. Oh, and I need to mention that I got a 3.83 out of this crazy 16 credit quarter.

My poor little car put so many miles on these last 3 months, and now I'm depending on it to get me to and from work in Arlington and Snohomish 6 days a week. I wasn't sure how working 6 days a week was going to go, but the first week wasn't so bad. Work seems to be flowing better at the pharmacy, although there are always going to be those busy days with strange situations. I'm just not as tired as I thought I would be, but I guess I'll have to wait a few weeks to really judge that.

The internship down at SnoCo Parks planning department has been great so far. I've met most of the planners now, and cannot believe how many concurrent projects they have going. I definitely need to inquire about getting some files and a clean drawer. I've run into so many familiar faces just in my first two days, it's been great.

I sat in on the depressing Sr. Ranger budget meeting and talked to Jack, my boss the last year I was at Kayak Point, as well as other rangers we had done various things with. Jack and I didn't really hit it off when he came to the park, as he changed everyone's shifts and work partners, and I couldn't really tell how he felt about seeing me in the administration office. It was nice to see him though, and catch up on life.

Then on Thursday, Ranger Tom came over to my cubicle to say hi. He's probably the most involved ranger in the community as he does raptor shows and bat box demonstrations all around the county parks and at schools. When I was in high school, I did most of my Honor Society community service with him in his Ranger Explorers program, and he got me the seasonal job out at Kayak Point after I graduated. We caught up for a while and he threw me some ideas for one of the camping projects I am working on. I wonder who I will run into next week.

I'm not really sure what I'm going to do today with my only day off. It's pretty gray and damp outside, so I'm sure some housework will be involved, but I want to try and finish my pumpkin patch before all the pumpkins I planted become too rootbound in their pots. I want to get some hiking in too, so I hope summer shows its face around here soon. Come on sun, you can do it.

Watch What You Say About Old People

I got my final grades today from WWU, and did much better than I thought - 3.56 baby! The most surprising grade was my US Environmental Policy grade. I got a B+ or A- on all of my policy briefs, including a B+ on my final Drug Take-back paper and presentation. Class participation must have bumped up my grade to an A-, so maybe I should talk some more in her class next quarter for an A. It's still very strange to communicate through classroom internet and video technology.

Next quarter should be interesting, as I don't have a science class for an easy B. No, my science class is Environmental Economics, considered a mathematical science. Oh boy - hopefully Uncle D will be helping me again. I never thought in my life that I would end up taking 3 Economics classes.

On the pharmacy front, I correctly identified a tablet my cousin found in his couch in Mississippi over the phone. My sister called me on Saturday as I was leaving work. She was spending a few days at his house, and they had found the tablet earlier that day. My cousin has young kids and teenagers, so he was concerned on both fronts. She described it as a small and yellow tablet with a 7 on one side and nothing on the other.

Before I go any further, I have to explain my family history a little. I was the only product of my parent's second marriages, who had teenagers that were the same age from previous marriages. My aunt had 3 kids that were spaced years apart, so on her side, I have a cousin that is the same age as my oldest siblings, and a cousin that is only 6 years older than me. Okay enough of dysfunctional brady bunch.

Anyway, I told my sister that it sounded like an 81 mg aspirin, "the kind that we give old people." So my sister repeats to my cousin, "she said it's an aspirin, an old person aspirin." To which my cousin replies, "I have aspirin, but I'm not an old person." Then he kept interjecting old comments into the background while I told my sister I would look it up at work the next day.

About an hour later, I got a text message from my sister, that it was our aunt's aspirin that she had lost and couldn't find. And my aunt, bless her heart, is kind of old. Then on the next line, "but Wayne still doesn't appreciate you calling him old." Never gonna live that one down.

Think Salmon Before You Flush

I've recently come to the conclusion that my mind works in strange ways. I have two big papers to write this quarter, that are both worth a large part of my grade in each class. Keep in mind, I have 3 group projects going as well, and each are coming together very well, except for one. I am having the hardest time with a policy focused Ecology paper.

I've loved amphibians since I was a very small kiddo, and had a great outline prepared for a science based paper. Unfortunately, with the extension deadline came a stipulation. The paper must be written based on your major. I picked Environmental Planning and Policy, so my paper must be from a policy perspective. I immediately thought of wetland buffering, and protecting the metapopulations of Western Toads, a threatened species in Washington.

We must have as many primary sources as possible, and in this field, that means peer-reviewed journals. I've searched the EBSCO library as many boolean ways I could figure out, and can't find a primary source on any amphibian in our state. I did find excellent sources for my points, but nothing on the topic. I'm so frustrated, but it's back to the grindstone today to find one.

My other major paper is for my Senior US Environmental Policy class. I will be making the argument that a drug take-back program is much needed in Washington State, and that the current pilot program that exclusively contracts Group Health as take-back sites discriminates against poor and rural communities. According to the Puget Sound Partnership, a lot of pollution that ends up in the sound starts at the base of the mountains. When rural citizens have to commute over fifty miles to dispose of unwanted prescriptions, they are likely to flush them or throw them away. (Odd note - Carly Simon's "Let the River Run" just came on t.v. as I'm about to talk about salmon and orcas - keep that in your head for salience people).

Even our best sewage systems cannot clean out pharmaceuticals from the water, and it is flushed out as "clean water" because the "best available technology" is just coming on the market. I have family in Huntsville, Alabama, where the drinking water has tested positive for estrogens, mood stablizers and cholesterol medications. Yet, there has been no government incentive to install UV filtering in the water treatment plants, and communities are only "looking into them." In Maryland, where I used to live, male fish have been developing female parts and eggs for multiple generations now, because of high estrogen levels in the water.

The WA Department of Ecology released a report in 2007 that made every citizen responsible for the ultimate pollution of the Puget Sound. The report mainly focused on storm-water run-off from communities all along the watershed, but took a wholistic ecosystem approach on how all of the contaminants flow into the Sound. If you think about every community along the watershed of all of our major rivers in the Puget Sound Region, you can see how the pollution problem multiplies as you move downstream. Remember, Puget Sound Chinook Salmon and the three Puget Sound Orca pods are listed on both the federal and state Endangered Species List.

Currently, state and federal policy is to seal unwanted drugs in a plastic container, and throw them away. If it is a narcotic, they require that you flush it. There are three major problems with this policy, and I've already discussed the problem with flushing. Landfills do not have any policies in place to prevent seepage of unwanted pharmaceuticals into the groundwater, and they end up in the rivers and ultimately, the Sound. Not to mention, you and the garbage collector are breaking the law when you transfer those prescription drugs into their hands, because if you read any Rx label in Washington State, you've agreed to those terms.

As a private pharmacy, we walk a fine legal line accepting drugs from other pharmacies, unless the customer has asked us to repackage them for Assisted Living use. The Federal DEA has restricted us from accepting unwanted narcotics for destruction, and only a Regional District DEA hearing can grant a pharmacy the special permit. The formation of the Puget Sound Action Team, which became the Puget Sound Partnership in 2007, spawned a committee called WA PH:ARM which constructed a pilot project to take back unwanted prescriptions at Group Health pharmacies, and reimbuse them for their participation.

Group Health allows us to bill them for prescriptions, because they acknowledge that their pharmacy is up to 65 miles away from some municipalities in Snohomish County. Yet, the state and the Regional DEA will not allow us to accept unwanted prescriptions from our rural patients, even if we were willing to do it on behalf of Group Health, as we do with filling prescriptions. Do you see where I'm going here?

I know I sound like a lawyer, but I was appalled at how slow the pharmaceutical community is responding to the charges given to them by the Puget Sound Partnership. I want the community where I live and the community where I work to be able to hold Partner Status in the future, so they can continue to receive grants and funding from state agencies such as the Department of Ecology. Don't worry, I promised my uncle (who is a lawyer) that I would never go down that road, and I intend to keep that promise. This is a small action the Department of Health can take that would make a large difference in the health of our streams, rivers and groundwater. After that, we can move on to installing UV filtration into our water treatment centers to take care of those chemicals we excrete from our bodies.

Restless Life Goes On

I cannot believe how tired I am today. Lately, it seems that work is wiping me out. Nothing too drastic has changed at work, but everyone else seems to have stuff going on, and I've been left by myself several times in the last weeks to run the show. Ten years ago, that was no problem, but now, my knee and my back are screaming for me to take it easy. It's to the point now where I can't keep up with my housework, because I'm recovering from work. I feel too young to feel like this, but I don't even feel like exercising anymore, because I'm absolutely wiped out. Hmmm...what's up with that?!

I did finally finish my urban garden on Sunday, which gives me encouragement for the future career. I will load pictures later, when everything grows a little larger. Due to a mapping error by our house builder, we have to move the old garden to another part of the yard, so it doesn't affect our drain field anymore (I know, gross). But before I can do that, the Hermit needs to remove about 10 stumps, and that won't happen until next February, as long as there's not feet of snow like this past winter. We were planning on moving it this year, but Mamma Nature had other plans, so I had to improvise.

I've got several large pots going, a couple of planters, and 3 beefsteak tomatoes in their own pots. Of course, there's not peas or corn this year, but all of the fruits that we planted 6 years ago, have finally grown large enough for big harvests, so to me, that makes up for a lack of a plot. I've been having a great time making jam and syrup from my strawberries, gorged on tons of cherries, just harvested some raspberries for ?? this week, and in a few weeks we'll have thousands of blueberries. The blueberries will be our largest harvest this year, but I think I will still miss my corn and sunflowers. Pictures soon, I promise.

Refuge From the Mean Public

It's really weird, but I feel like I have found a refuge from work at school this week. Not that pharmacy workers regularly need a refuge, but we had one of the worst Mondays in a very long time. Mondays are tough enough with the high volume of prescriptions, but we just seemed to have problem after problem on top of our regular Monday. Not only did it seem as if every customer that got a regular narcotic prescription was calling hourly to see if their doctor had returned our fax, but the military's insurance computers were down, and so we couldn't bill anything for them. Then Kusler's called several times for several transfers and asked us to fax them, only to find out that their fax machine wasn't working after they called and rudely complained about us not sending them. Note it was no fault of ours, but two of their technicians were beeahtches about the whole matter.

Then to top off my Monday, I got chewed out by one of our pharmacists because an acquaintance of mine transferred a prescription out of state to a pharmacy that didn't know sh** from shinola, as my grandpa would have said. That pharmacy didn't even understand what she wanted filled, but yet she called my boss and, as he put it, condescendingly bitched him out for the other pharmacy's incompetancy. And finally to conclude the problem festival, we ended the night with a 20 prescription list from a patient that called them in 30 minutes before closing, when we only have two pharmacy staff members working. This customer is on disability and doesn't work, so it's not like she didn't have all day to call them in when we can actually handle that volume of a request.

I was so happy to look at the schedule yesterday to find myself in the nursing home packaging pharmacy, because there's limited contact with the public. However, about 2 hours into my workday, the out-patient pharmacy's printer shredded a paper inside of it during a paper jam. They called the IT people, and scheduled an expensive maitenance call for today, but they were using my printer way too much, and so I helped them fix theirs. These engineering classes are coming in handy. I actually took that sucker apart, cleaned it out, and put it back together. Of course that took 45 minutes out of my day. Just 3 more years, just 3 more years.

This morning I got to play with GIS maps and started a zoning and planning project. I really like GIS and I'm so glad I found my niche. After 1 week of this GIS/Geosystems class, I'm no longer afraid of making bad planning decisions, because the technology is just so much better than 14 years ago when I first attempted this degree. It will be really cool to expand the knowlege into my WWU classes next year. I'm so glad it's a school day today, did I say that already?