Mud Season - The Beginning

Now Playing -  
Marilyn  by Dan Bern

Life -  

This last week was a pretty good one here in the ROUS house!   


Lindsay's wisdom teeth pain has finally receded to the point that she's essentially off of the ibuprofen and with the exception of needing her filling shaved off a bit,, she's back to normal. Which also good news for our diets, as I can start cooking real food for the both of us again.

For the last, well, it seems like forever, but I think it's been about three months, I've been studying (And more than that, stressing) about my upcoming Pharmacy Technician Certification Board Exam. (The PTCE) It's a step in my job that's required for the position I'm in, especially if I ever hope to have my own store, but man... It's darned hard to take a test about drug generic names, usages, interactions and strengths when you work in a pharmacy, but not IN a pharmacy.

Luckily, this last week, I took it and passed. I don't know how well I did, though I felt pretty confident by the time I pressed the "Finish" button. They'll send me my official results in the mail in a few days, but they give ya a preliminary result on the screen a t the end. Used to be, you'd have to wait up to six weeks to find out whether you passed... that would be truly horrible.

A couple of interesting things about the test facility -
- You cannot bring ANYTHING with you, not a pencil, or a wedding ring or a calculator. They give you a locker and check you pretty closely.
-Instead, they give you a white board and a marker and tell you not to erase anything, they'll bring you another if needed. Then they hand you a $2 calculator that displays a 5 instead of an 8 half of the time.
-They have you sign a screen, take a scan of your fingerprints and both palms. I've never had my palms read, it was less illuminating than I'd expected.
-I chose exam cubicle number Three for luck.
-Unfortunately, it was right next to the incredibly obnoxious white noise machine.
-Their noise blocking headphones were clearly designed for someone with ears twice the size of mine but with a head that was six inches smaller around.
-At the end of the test, they ask you three times if you're really really sure you're done.Then you get a screen that should be your results. Instead, it's the start of a 20 question survey about the facility. Those are some nerve wracking questions while you wait to get your score!
-I passed the damned thing! That's the most important detail.... I can finally get back to doing things I love in my spare time instead of fretting about a test.

Oh, and MUD SEASON IS HERE! Or, as we prefer to call it, Rainy season! Hooray!

We took an hour walk in the pouring rain yesterday and really enjoyed it.

Writing - 

Now this is exciting too - I have a few pages of editing left, then all that remains is formatting before I can officially release THE WHISPERING FERNS! It was a long decision, but I've concluded that I like the book as it is too much to let it linger for years while I try and find a publisher. So I'm going to create a new series to write traditionally and make The Moonstone Bay Mysteries an online release series!


I don't have an official release date quite yet, but soon! SOON!

In the meantime, here is the fabulous cover by Deeply Dapper-

More news to come!

The ROUS FAMILY -     

At Last

Now Playing -    
Whispering Grass by The Ink Spots

Life -  

 

 It's been a vaguely eventful week or so here at the ROUS house. Spring has finally arrived in a slightly long-term form. The snow is starting to melt into rivulets of cold water washing out my driveway and out back, we can start to spot signs that there is indeed grass back there somewhere beneath the arctic floes.

Yesterday, we took a really nice walk with the dogs, the first in a good long while. (Since Ludo hurt his paws, actually.) There aren't really many dog-friendly places around here to take them during the winter, so the poor guys have been cooped up for far too long. Ludo about bust a gasket when we put his harness on him, I didn't think he'd ever stop wagging his tail. Unfortunately, unlike back in Idaho, where we were spoiled to have a large park, wide sidewalks and a gorgeous walking path within a brief stroll from our front door, we have to travel out here to find a place, so that's our goal, to find a conveniently located place that we can comfortably walk our kids.

The road outside our house is out of the question, there's no walkway and the fools around here go speeding past so quickly that I feel unsafe checking my mail, let alone walking two large dogs. Walks are supposed to be relaxing. Luckily, Linz remembered a more secluded looking road a couple of miles further down that we had driven along when we visited the cemetery in the area. It's not the best, it still has a few jerky motorists, but the road is wide and relatively untraveled, and there's a few rural farm sites, so Ludo can salivate at the geese and chickens.

And better yet, just a few blocks down the road, we found an old logging trail. Who's to say it wont be used this summer and chase us elsewhere, but for now, it's perfect. It's not too steep, not too rugged and it's blocked from motorized traffic. It was half snow this time around, but that will change soon, and that's why we used some of our tax return on some Bean Boots, so we don't have to worry about icy puddles!

On another "Finally" note, tomorrow morning, I take my PTCB (Pharmacy Technician Certification Board) exam. I've been studying off and on the last three days and I feel vaguely more confident than I did a few months ago. My weak spot  is clearly going to be the drugs and usages. I have the math and history pretty well down, but it's hard to grasp the generic forms and usual dosages of something that I have no real day to day contact with. It's an area that my position is really hurt by taking the test when we are in a management position, not a pharmacy one.  So wish me luck. I don;t have all of my hopes and dreams riding on passing, but it sure would be a huge weight off of my shoulders.

Speaking of huge weights, we decided to get me a desk for my art and sculpting and lego assemblies, in an attempt to keep our sparse counter space in the kitchen free from little yellow men and pieces of paper. So we found a nice one at Goodwill for a great price, only $25. It has deep drawers and is in pretty good shape, and is quite sturdy.

And weighs something like 100,000 pounds! I've never had such a difficult time moving a piece of furniture in my entire life, and that includes the time I moved a half-full washing machine down a flight of too thin basement steps by myself. I thought I was going to die by the time I got the steel behemoth inside, and that was after taking off most of the doors in between and bruising the linoleum in a few places. But man, it's nice having a desk again, if only to have a place to organize all of my Deeply Dapper things.

And Ludo likes it -

Writing - 
 

I actually have something exciting to announce here! I don't have a firm date yet, but I've decided that, although I'm still working on a different version of it, written from Smith's point of view with some more humor and action, that I will release the original version of THE WHISPERING FERNS in eBook form sometime in the next month or so. I'm not making too big of a deal of it, or promoting it too heavily, but I think the version is a lot of fun and there's a market out there for fans of old-school children's mysteries and adventures.

I should have a cover finished in the next couple of weeks and a release date not too soon after. Stay tuned!

The ROUS FAMILY -