Tartan Day

The girls at work have been counting down to Tartan day for over 3 weeks. They actually have a calendar up so they can cross off the days until it got here. They just can't wait to see me in my kilt. For those who don't know what it is, Tartan day is a day to celebrate being Scottish. It commemorates something from back in the 1300's and the U.S. made it special back in 1990 by making every April 6th Tartan Day. Your tartan is your plaid or your Scottish colors.

Now since the count-down calendar has been up several people have asked about it and said that they would come in for a visit to see me also. Therefore the anticipation keeps building, and the promise of many cameras always makes it even more interesting.

I have to work 13 hour days, and wearing a kilt is not very comfortable. All that wool and the long wool socks get very itchy. Plus there are no pockets so my normal habits will be off. I refuse to wear my lab coat with the kilt on as it takes away too much by covering everything up, so I don't even have those pockets to use.

All and all the day went very well. Most of my regular customers came in and no one was freaked out by it. (I have had some people that had no clue as to what it was and said it was not right for a guy to wear a skirt at work) My supervisor was in to check it out and she liked it, as well as several of my technicians' husbands. Unfortunately one of my technicians partners is actually from Scotland but she couldn't come in today because they only have one car. My partner came in and took a picture and she said she was going to send it in for our companies monthly newsletter. That would be funny to finally get in to that in my kilt, maybe my colleagues from Rhode Island would remember me.

my clean little boy

I want my team to stop winning!

I am not a huge basketball fan, but every year my brother Mike, our friend Rob, and I make a road trip to Boston to see the Celtics play. This year I am actually routing for them to lose. We went to see them play last Wednesday and I am glad they won that game because we were there and it went to double overtime. But they keep winning and it has to stop now! I know it is bad but I really want the top draft pick. Not that there are any team changing players coming out this year, but it would be fun to get a good player to cheer for and watch.
As for the Red Sox, it was only the first game of the year but that was horrible! Inexcusable! Josh Beckett had better be able to pitch better than Schilling did on Monday.

Emergency at work

This is what happened from my point of view as the pharmacist at a usually busy store. I was just answering a phone from a school nurse who had a question when a elderly woman came up to the consultation window. I told her I would be with her in a minute and went back to the nurse with the question. The nurse had a Chinese family bring in a bubble packed medicine for their son at school. The nurse couldn't identify it and didn't feel comfortable giving the kid something that she had no idea what it was. She spelled out the medicine for me -alphachymotrypsin, and I had no clue as to what it was. I looked at the few computer references that I have available and came up empty. She then told me that she believed it to be herbal, and said that it was from a Chinese family and that the Aunt was a doctor and gave them the medicine for the boy. I looked in one more reference for homeopathic meds but it was kind of an old book and again couldn't find anything. I told the nurse that she should call poison control and maybe they could help her.
All this time I had seen the elderly woman standing at the counter waiting for me. Someone had also dropped of three narcotics for me to count and get ready. After I hung up, I started to go over to the counsel station and she was gone. No big surprise really, happens all the time, either people give up, don't want to wait, find what they were looking for, figure out what they need or just see that I am busy and don't want to bother me. I glanced down a few aisles that I could see from where I was to see if I could find her. I asked my techs who were trying to catch up with the mornings work. (Also someone called out sick so we were short handed.) One of my techs said she must have figured out that foot care was way up in aisle one; a common question back at the pharmacy, and we all thought nothing of it. It was a quiet morning as far as the the front store goes, no one was picking up their meds and I just had that one person who dropped off their narcotics who was waiting. As I was counting and verifying her scripts I heard a soft "somebody help me" it was faint and seemed childlike. I glanced behind me at the registers thinking maybe someone was at the counter waiting to pick up, or maybe it was one of the front store kids playing a trick on us. I didn't see anybody, so I started to look down the aisles when one of the front store girls came around the corner and saw her on the floor. I came out of the pharmacy and saw her and ran back in to call 911. Luckily there is a fire department in the same parking lot as the strip mall we are in. The 911 operator asked me some questions, she was in and out of consciousness with a shallow breath, he had us move her to her left side and then the fire department was there. They quickly got an i.v. in her and took pulse, blood pressure, and did the things they needed to do. Come to find out she was coming to ask me about constipation because she was just out of the hospital last week. She was in the hospital because she had a stroke. I really felt like a jerk for not being able to do anything. Her son came in the next day to thank us for all that we did in taking care of his mother. She was still in the hospital but I don't know anything else about what or why or how she is doing. Hope all is fine.