I'm almost through with another week-long stretch at work, and I'm feeling pretty good. I'm slowly becoming accustomed to the odd sleep schedule, and I'm starting to understand exactly how much sleep I need as a minimum. Night shift is the fine art of arranging your lifestyle around sleep, which I admit makes one appreciate sleep quite a bit. Not too much noteworthy has happened recently in the sleepy little ER. A handful of true emergencies, a parcel of urgent issues, and a whole truckload of mostly unnecessary visits. I signed in a patient yesterday who had a chief complaint of "sunburned face". He had a little bit of reddening around his eyes and cheeks - he rated his pain as an 8 out of 10. This would sound completely ridiculous but for the fact that he's a known drug seeker, so I suppose any excuse would do. Because of the sunlight, we have had several patients check in with sunburns, which doesn't make much sense to me. I can understand how it can be painful, but I'm curious as to what mentality would make someone think of the ER as a place to go for it. I suppose I can blame popular culture and commercialism, where everything and everyone should be medicated (at least according to the pharmaceutical companies).

In other news, with the fiance applying for (and likely to be accepted to) a radiology technologist program, things are up in the air. The school is a three-hour commute from where we currently live, so we're going to have to figure out whether we need to move or if we're going to keep our home base here. There are many arguments for both, so crunch time will be later this week when we get word back on acceptance. I will either keep this job, or apply for another ER position at a hospital in that other town. Either way, I'll work while she gets edumacated, and then we'll switch off once she graduates.

In even other news, I recently attended an in-house tournament at my judo club and attained yonkyu rank (blue belt). Now I need to start really training my butt off so I can get to brown belt! With no schooling to distract me, I can focus on work, the kiddos, and physical training. It's pretty nice. When I'm not working I'm either playing with the kids (we made some cool little bonfires last weekend!), sleeping, or training. Five days a week of lifting/cardio/judo/jiu-jitsu is pretty good, it tends to balance out well with the rest of my schedule.