It was quite a week

These pictures have absolutely NOTHING to do with any events from the past week. I was just goofing around with Photoshop last night, ran across the photos from my 24 hour trip to Paris and thought I would play around with making them look "antique-y". I can't believe it's been almost 4 years since I went to Paris. Gawd, time certainly does go way too quickly.
I should have posted the original color photo of this shot too, just to show the dramatic changes you can make with Photoshop. If you don't have it, you really should download the free trial version. It's amazing.

Wow, Sacré Coeur looks very cool in this vintage looking photo. I may never sleep again...making all my photos look vintage.

Anyway, I don't know why I wanted to put those photos up, maybe because I'm in the mood to travel and know that's not going to happen any time soon. Well, I'll be going to LA soon for work, but that doesn't really count.
This week was wonderful, scary, depressing, great, and certainly thought provoking. The woman whose position I took over....well, she came in to help me for 2 hours one night. TWO hours. I had post-its on every single pile of charts and papers that were all around the office and we barely got through the majority of them before she had to go. Now, I understand that she has a new job and for all intents and purposes doesn't "owe" me anything, but for the love of God, have a little compassion!!!! There was this wire basket sitting on top of a filing cabinet that was overflowing with all manner of medical papers and of course I had no idea what it was much less what to do with it. Come to find out, it's just stuff that needs to be filed in the patients charts. Yeah, some of this stuff was from 2002. I am NOT kidding. That pretty much freaked me out. I've since learned that many times after an initial genetic counseling appointment, the patient isn't seen again. We still receive updates, family letters, lab results and the like and all this stuff has to go in the chart.
I have a problem with things not getting done. I mean, c'mon....6 years and you can't find the time to file this shit away? On to the next pile...and the next. I'm beginning to see a pattern here.
Soooo...I know there are still a million things I need to learn, but for right now, I knew I had to get some of that filing taken care of. I spent the first couple of hours at work on Friday just alphabetizing all the stuff to be filed away...and then I literally spent the rest of the day putting this stuff where it belonged. I still have a good sized pile of things I couldn't find charts for, but at least now they're in alphabetical order in a folder. That's one pile taken off my desk!!! From what I understand, sometimes we get medical records for potential patients and they never follow up or for some other reason we don't ever see them so we don't have a chart on them. That could be the reason I still have such a pile of papers.
I left my office Friday evening feeling a huge sense of accomplishment. Not so sure what I'm going to feel tomorrow when I go in, but hey, it's a start.
I cannot even begin to say how incredibly happy I am at this new job. My boss is the most wonderful, down to earth person...and for the first time in a very long time, I don't have to worry about having to listen to rants and raves, I don't have to watch my back, and I don't have to "go to my happy place" just to make it through the day. I have had such a reduction in my stomach problems since I stated working in genetics it's ridiculous. Not only that, but just the other day we were sharing some chicken salad for lunch and we started talking about the Fetal Alcohol Syndrome parents support group that we had just had a few nights before. The next thing I know, she's giving me a little mini-lecture on Fetal Alcohol and it was amazing!! I'm sooo loving being around her and soaking up any little morsel of knowledge that she passes on to me. She's amazing. I am so in awe of her knowledge.

That was pretty much my week. The genetic counselors, program coordinator, and office girl are the absolute best people to work with. I love everything about this job and I still can't get over how truly blessed I feel now. I really do.
Scott's on call this weekend. I haven't done much this weekend but go clothes shopping, which I totally hate. It's so hot, it's not really worth going out shopping unless you're going someplace with covered parking. Well, not many places like that around here so you either have to cowboy up and deal with it, or just don't go while the sun is out.
That's why I ended up looking at pictures of Paris for a good part of the day yesterday and playing around with Photoshop. I actually uploaded some photos to Costco and I'll pick them up later today with the idea that I'm going to frame them and place them in my new office. Yeah, I'm there for the long haul. They'll have to get me out of there with a crow bar and a stick of dynamite. Truly.
Times-a-wasting....need to get creative and do something with more pictures. It's only supposed to be 114 out today so I think I'll be happy to be inside all day. Don't get me started on living in the stinkin' desert. Off to be crafty and happy!!!