Once again, it has been forever since I have updated my blog. But, I have somewhat of an excuse. We were without a computer for over a month! It was terrible! A few days before Christmas, the computer just completely froze. I tried to troubleshoot it, and nothing worked. We ended up taking it to the Geek Squad at Best Buy the day after Christmas and they said that it was pretty much toast and that they needed to send it off to the manufacturer. Luckily, we had bought it less than a year ago so it was still under warranty. Chris blamed me though since I have a tiny tendency to download games off the Internet. I like to remind him that he has no proof that this was my fault :) Anyway, when the computer finally was shipped back to Best Buy, we then had to wait an extra week or two because we couldn't find the CDs that come with the computer or something like that. We set up out ancient laptop while our computer was out of commission, but let me tell you that using that computer makes you want to pull your hair out. It was sooo slow! To make matters worse, my phone then decided to die for no apparent reason and so I was phoneless for 2 days as well while waiting for a new phone to be shipped. $200 later, I have a new iphone. Let me just tell you how ridiculous it is that I am dependent on technology. Anyway, all is well now in the Krieger household.
Work is going really well. I really like my co-workers and feel like I am learning a lot. I kind of feel like a real nurse now! One thing I like about working on Neurology is that I have a lot of opportunities to practice my skills that I learned in nursing school. That was really important to me as a new grad to try to solidify my skills early on. A few nights ago I got to put in my first NG tube. This is a tube that is inserted through the nose down into the stomach. I must really be a nerd because stuff like that gets me really excited. I recently had an informal 3 month review and there wasn't anything that I needed to improve on. Score!
In November, Holly the Honda started to act up a bit. I was planning on getting a new car in the near future now that I had finally landed myself a respectable paying job, but she decided that I needed a new car sooner rather than later. She never once died on me in all of the years that I owned her and was pretty dependable for having close to 180,000 miles. Gotta love those Japanese made cars! Chris had previously looked at 4-Runners at the Honda dealership and had left his contact info with one of the salesman. Well, right when Holly was starting to show signs of distress, Chris got a call from the dealership that they just got a 2007 4-Runner in with 17,000 miles on it. Want to know what my only drawback was? It wasn't galactic gray like I was hoping for. Instead it was silver. Silly huh? But that reason alone caused me great turmoil for a couple of days. This 4-Runner was perfect besides and came with lots of bells and whistles including DVD players in the headrests (perfect for future Krieger kids). I finally stopped being silly and we welcomed Trixie the Toyota into the family.
Well shortly after we bought Trixie, Chris' truck started giving him trouble. He had a 2002 Ford F-150. We were not planning on him getting a new car anytime soon, believe me. When he was taking his truck to the shop, he drove by the Ford dealership and saw his perfect truck. It was like a sign from God. So after much debate, we decided that we could afford to go from no car payments to two. Yikes! Especially since Chris still has a motorcycle payment! But it was seriously too good to pass up and we thought about it long and hard. So, we now have added Tank the Tundra to the family as well.
Let's see. What else? Christmas was great considering there were a few bumps in the road. Being a new employee, I didn't quite understand the schedule and had thought that I had Christmas Eve and Christmas off since they fell on my normal days off. Chris and I had planned on going down to Klamath for a few days and then coming back on Christmas. Luckily I discovered about a week before Christmas that I indeed did have to work both Christmas Eve and Christmas. Wouldn't that have been horrible had I been down in Klamath? But, everything worked out and we spent Christmas day with my family and went down to Klamath for New Years. Here is the annual family picture:
