Ya'll...I love my job helping sick people and all that but dammmit, these folks are cuttin' down perfectly beautiful trees to spy on employees. Sounds like something Dubya would do, if you get my drift. Get thee out oh noncompliant ones! Thou shalt lose thy job if you dare to break one of the brazillion rules governing your behavior at the day job place where sick people come and expect to lie in a clean room and not get dropped through one of the cracks that is the maze of healthcare today. More often than not, some angel who is doing his or her best to care for them will earn their wings on the spur of a moment, simply by seeing it as more than "just a job."

I've always been that kind of gal. Bored to tears with the automation that has become routine in the lab, I've wandered the halls meeting strangers and catching up with old friends and their families...even my own family. Mom and Daddy have volunteered for years. Harold was an EMT back in the day. My cousin is an OB nurse and two paternal aunts man the front desk out in the lobby. Every time I turn a corner, I run into a familiar face....often one that looks just about as tired as my own. We're fortunate to have well paying jobs while others scramble for food money. Many of those scramblers are our clients in the shift to shift world, and we love 'em just like they were our own. Well, most of us do.

The county commission sold us back in the early eighties to a not-for-profit organization that tried at the local level to make things work. For twenty years we had parties and meetings and places outside of the sawmill to meet each other aside from the work persona. Continuing education was paid for. Our facility did well and had great leadership for a long time. When that company's "vision" changed, the seven little stepchildren went up for bids. Think about group sex, only it's in the you know what. Conversion was a nightmare for all of us as we struggled with new software and changing ways of doing business. Non-profit companies have good accountants who can find a valid business expense and figure that it was worth it if the associate is happy. Yeah..we were associates. Now we're employees again.

I got the biggest kick out of an email that my boss shared yesterday. Seems as if the Chinese are shuttin' down their rubber glove factories for the Olympics so the tourists won't see how dirty the air is over there where they produce the goods for us here in the US. There's a shortage predicted! If you've got it, hoard it I say. It's the American way ain't it?

Until we, as a country, move away from cheap goods produced by exporters with slave labor nothing will ever change for us. Any one of us knows how to survive with less and be happy, yet we don't. Our collective balls are held by a tiny portion of the world where the oil is a constant pawn that controls our lives. We talk at work sometimes about things that affect us...movies and life events and stuff. Okay. Sometimes politics too ;) The Democratic party isn't very well represented there in the lab, and the few of us who are trying to believe just can't buy the candidate or his line. Sure, he's young and has little experience but god knows he has a cute family and went over to where the problem is. I refuse to vote for McCain though. That dude is a world war waitin' to happen.

I couldn't resist hittin' the high points of Dubya's administration today, sort of a synopsis of what pissed me off the most. Three words say it all...War, Katrina and Terri. The government that "we the people" put into office failed about 99% of us in some form or fashion during each of these events. They were busy chasing the enemy and shit. I've lost count, so forgive me for not sharing.

Yea,I know. Too much info for humpday.

Deal with it ^j^