Joey rode 40 miles yesterday in the MS bike tour.

We left our apartment around 6:30am and made it to the campgrounds where the bike tour started around 8:00am. Joey was excited to ride and I was nervous because he was going to be all by himself. Well, not really because there were a lot of people riding but he didn’t have someone that would be riding with him the whole way. He assured me that he would be fine and that he would call me at the rest stops.

My sister came with us to the bike tour. Mostly to keep me company while Joey rode but also to see one of her friends that was riding in the bike tour as well. We decided to meet Joey at the rest stop that was serving lunch but they didn’t have a very detailed map. When we asked the lady at the information desk for a more detailed map she asked us why and said that they didn’t have one and mentioned that they discouraged people from driving on the route or hanging out at the rest stops. Then the lady pointed to the map and said “if you find this road and follow it it should take you to the lunch rest stop.” So, we started driving in the general direction of the lunch rest stop and eventually ran into a lot of bikers. We actually ended up on the route! Opps. I felt bad driving on the route. I didn’t want the bikers to feel like they had to hurry just because there was a car behind them. Plus, I still had the bike rack hooked up to the back of my car. Anyway. We made it to the lunch rest stop about the same time Joey did. It was quite the sight to see with all the bikers and their bikes.

Joey called me at the last rest stop and said he had 7 miles left so Christene and I headed for the finish line. We stood at the finish line for about 40 minutes waiting for Joey and we were dying of heat. We actually got a nice sunburn from waiting. At the end of the day I think we were more tired and burned than Joey was and we didn’t even ride in the tour!

Joey said he had a great time and that 40 miles was perfect but next year he’s going to ride 75 miles. Christene and I think we might try to ride 40 miles. We’ll see.

If you want to see all the pictures we took at the bike tour, click here.

On Thursday my mom’s car broke down so she called me to see if I could pick her up since my dad was with her and she wouldn’t be able to get a rental car for a couple of hours (apparently there was a convention in SLC so there weren’t many rental cars available). My supervisor had no problem with me leaving early so I called my mom and told her I was on my way.

When I got to where my parents were, we waited for the tow truck and my dad made a few phone calls. One of the people he called was his car salesmen, Thomas, and told him that my mom’s car had broken down again (it’s been having a lot of problems lately). Thomas said he was at a tent sale and that they should come down and look around. I offered to drive them around until they got a rental car (since I didn’t have anything else to do until 7:00).

We walked around the tent sale and my mom saw a few that she liked but Thomas said he had a certain car in mind and wanted her to see it before she made a decision. (My family has purchased 9 nine cars from Thomas in the past 12 years – he knows what kind of cars each of us like). I pointed to a car I liked and said “what about this one for me?” My dad laughed and said to Thomas “would you get us a good deal if we bought 2 cars?” I was joking when I said I wanted a car but Thomas quickly said “I could get you a really good deal if you bought 2 cars.” Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I started working at a local hospital that is attempting to become paperless. Almost everything is done on the computer and soon there will be no paper charts for patients. This is hard for me to imagine but I’m sure they will find a way to do it. All I have to say is that they better have a huge IT department to support such a feat.

During the hospital’s mandatory orientation they mentioned (more than once) that they have won awards for being so technologically advanced. However, they never mentioned how to log on to their computer systems or how to access your personal information online. Nothing! So, I spent the next 4 days trying to log on to all the applications I needed access to. It was quite a pain and I think I ended up calling the IT support desk close to a dozen times. When I finally found my personal information online I noticed that my social security number was wrong. So, I made a few more phone calls and was told it would be taken care of. I was glad to hear that it would be taken care of and thought everything was good. However, I got a call today saying that they had to change my log-on information and that everything should stay the same.

Well, they were wrong and I am in an even bigger mess than before. I have made close to a dozen more calls to IT today and I still need more help. I wish I could just put them on hold instead of calling them back over and over. Anyway. When I called about my email address not working (after I tested it a couple of times) the IT person said “it looks like there are two Janene Days in the system”. Ahh!! I had to explain to him the whole mess and he said he would let the correct department know. I sure hope everything gets straightened out before I work again. What a pain!

Just as a side note – all the IT people I have talked to have been very nice and helpful. I just feel sorry for the mess they are trying to fix for me.

I decided to try a new theme on my blog. My husband was nice and helped me tweak it a bit. It’s nice having someone who knows HTML around.

Awhile ago I mentioned that I was looking for a job so I thought I would update everyone on where I will be working. I actually ended up accepting two jobs – a full-time job and a PRN job (PRN is latin for “as needed”).

My full-time job is with a local school district in the early intervention department. I will be traveling to people’s homes to provide speech therapy to kids ages birth to 3. I start next week so I will have to keep you posted on what it’s like. I spent 10 weeks with a different early intervention department so I kind of know what to expect but every school district is different.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday was a very busy day doing newborn hearing screenings for the two different hospitals I work for. I finished the first hospital and when I got to the second hospital there were a lot of babies that needed to be screened “right away”. The nurses kept asking me “have you screened so-and-so?” or “did so-and-so pass the hearing screening?”. In the three (or four?) years I’ve been doing newborn hearing screenings, I have never had so many nurses come after me about so many babies. It made for a very stressful morning (since I like to keep everyone happy).

I think the babies knew I was in a hurry because they were very fussy! I usually finish around 10:30, which is nice since there is an 11:00 church service at my church, however, yesterday at 10:30 I still had 4 babies left AND I got a phone call from the first hospital asking me to come back and retest a baby before they discharged. I told the nurse I could probably be there around 11:00 and she said that would be great. When I finished screening all the fussy babies, doing the billing and charting it was 11:00. So instead of calling the hospital to tell them I was on my way I just decided to “hurry”.

Read the rest of this entry »

Do you have a lot of blogs/favorite websites that you follow? Do you waste a lot of time checking to see if anything new is posted on these websites? Well, I have good news for you. There is a quicker and better way to keep up with your favorite blogs and websites. It is called Rich Site Syndication (RSS).

Instead of going to your favorite blogs and websites looking for new posts, RSS lets you know when something new has been posted. Therefore, saving you lots of time to do other important things.

In order for this to work to your advantage, you need to sign-up for a “reader” (e.g., Google Reader) and then subscribe to your favorite blogs and websites. I have no idea how to go about describing the rest of the RSS process but I found someone else who can do a much better job.

Before I knew about RSS, I spent way too much time looking at blogs/websites that were never being updated. How frustrating! However, now I am able to follow twice as many blogs/websites in half the time. It’s great.

Happy surfing everyone!

At the beginning of this year a new Bible study group was starting at my church for newly married women (i.e., married less than 5 years). I was excited to get plugged into to another Bible study group but a little hesitant to join. At the time I was very busy doing my externship at the hospital and studying for the Praxis (a huge exam you have to take to graduate and become a certified speech-language pathologist). I called the church anyway and told them I was interested but wasn’t sure how often I would be able to attend.

A couple weeks later I got a postcard with all the details and made sure my schedule was free so I could go. The book they had chosen was “For Women Only – what you need to know about the inner lives of men”. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect but I am so glad I decided to make an effort to go every week. It was truly an amazing study. I learned so much about what Joey needs and gained insight on how to make our marriage stronger. Now I just have to work on applying everything I learned (with God’s help of course).

Read the rest of this entry »

Last Saturday I went to a BBQ with some friends from my class. It was a lot of fun to see everyone again and catch up on what’s been going on (even though it’s only been a month since we last saw each other). I hope we continue to get together every once in a while.