August 17th, 2015

I woke up around 10 and started breakfast. I also started lunch and dinner around the same time. 

I rode to the bank and then to Walmart to get undershirts for class. I haven’t worn an undershirt since I moved to Mexico in 2008. It was too hot to wear them then, and it’s too hot to wear them now. 

I went home, started dinner and sat down to study. I was only able to read for about 45 minutes because my brain started hurting. Rebecca came home and we ate and watched a movie and then she went to bed and I studied for a couple hours. 

Aug 5th, 2015

I woke up at 6 to go to an orientation at the college for the hospitals in which I will be doing my clinical work during class. It was 3 hours of “don’t show up drunk, respect other cultures, don’t look at people’s medical records that you aren’t treating.

I picked up the patches for my EMT shirts, and drove them over to the shirt shop. I went home and finally wrote a thank you note to the Australian family who sent me the Tim Tams a couple months ago. I spent the next 4 hours with my nose hurried in my text book. I studied until Rebecca made dinner and then I spent the rest of the night relaxing and catching up on a weeks worth of blogging.

Aug 3rd, 2015

I woke up around 9 and had eggs and chorizo for breakfast. I got ready and then rode to the bank, and then went home to make dinner and study. Once Rebecca came home, we had chicken marinated in salsa with mangoes baked with bell peppers and onions. I was ok, not the finest meal I have made.

After dinner we went to Costco where we stocked up on chicken breasts, ground beef, vegetables and various meats that we are able to eat on this diet. I grilled up some sausages s soon as we got home and settled in to study for the rest of the night. My class doesn’t start for another 3 weeks, but I am trying to get a jump start… as much of a jump start as I can give myself after having done the job for almost 6 years. I think I am going to completely stress my self out over this class.

July 28th, 2015

I woke up at 10 and headed out the door. I went to the book store and bought an EMS field guide. My next step was the bank to deposit my tips. I then went to Walmart to look for a map, which I didn’t find. I then rode to the embroidery shop to order my shirts for the EMT class. I found out that I need to provide the patches myself. I rode to the college to see about buying the patches, but was told they won’t be in until next week. I headed to the EMS department and asked about the map book which was required for the class. The director came out of his office and told me to follow him. We went to the class room and he handed me the map book and said he found it while cleaning the classroom, and it was mine to keep.

I went to the rainbow drive in for lunch and then went home to study. I read a chapter and wrote one of the two papers due before class starts. Rebecca came home from work, and we went to the grocery store to stock up on food supplies and we scurried home to cook some frozen pizza and watch the latest Hobbit movie. I went to work at 10:30 to check my schedule for tomorrow because I have yet to receive my schedule in an email.

July 24th, 2015

I woke up at 6:30 and got ready for along day. I was at the college by 8 for the orientation meeting at 8:30. There were roughly 15 other students there, some with their sponges or parents to learn about the program. We went through a power point lecture talking about the demanding schedule of the class, and then some students who had just graduated from the program came in to talk to us. The class will be Tuesday-Saturday from 07:30-11:30, but the students from last semester said they would stay until 8 or 9 at night every day studying. That doesn’t leave a whole lot of time to see Rebecca, or work. I am very nervous about this class. When I took my first EMT course back in 2002, I was working at a restaurant from 10-3, class from 6-10 and making bagels from 2-6 in the morning. I don’t remember even opening my text book outside of class to sudsy and I still managed to pull a “B” average. I ma nervous that the instructors, not to mention myself, will hold me to a higher standard as I have already taken the class, and worked as an EMT for nearly 6 years. I am worried that I will either stress out and ignore my other responsibilities, or go completely apathetic and assure myself that I don’t need to study.

After the orientation, I went to the financial aid department to inquire about when my tuition was due. I was informed that I wasn’t even registered for the program, and tuition was due today by 4 pm. I rushed home, registered for the class, which I thought I had already done in April, ad the rushed to the bank to transfer the last of my money into my checking account to pay for tuition.

We have a few assignments to complete before the first day of class, as well as a lot of reading. 4 of the assignments are FEMA courses which deal with incident management. They are 2-4 hour online classes. Luckily I have already taken 3 of them back in 2007 when I was trying out for my companies “Incident Response Team” which was set up after hurricane Katrina to travel to areas affected by a mass causality incident. I took the one class I still needed and then Rebecca and I made fajitas for dinner and I watched a documentary about the war on cocaine.

July 20th, 2015

I woke up at 10 and after a quick breakfast, drove to the moped repair shop for my tune-up. I walked home and prepared dinner while I waited on my moped. The tune-up took longer than expected so I watched a movie while I waited for the call.

I left around 4, picked up my inhaler, grabbed my moped, drove to the eye doctor and picked up my left contacts as the right ones were temporarily misplaced. I then drove to a uniform shop to inquire about pricing for my uniform for EMT school. Each shirt is $70, and the trousers are $67. I decided to see if I could find something cheaper online.

I rode home, started dinner and began watching a nature program on Netflix. After dinner I continued my show, but fell asleep. I was watching salmon fight off bears and woke up to a lion taking down a wildebeest. I ended up going to bed around 11.

June 25th, 2015

I woke up promptly at 10:30 and ate leftover pizza for breakfast. I got an electronic mail last night telling me which book I need to buy for the EMT class, as well as letting me know where to but the uniform I will need for school. I used to own 6 pair of EMT pants, but they have vanished over the years and now I need to spend a bunch of money to buy more.

I watched Gangland and slowly got ready for work. I left earlier than usual and got into an imaginary argument with the general manager in my head before I got to work, which really helped me be in a good mood for my shift.

I was in an ok section, but had really bad tipping tables. I had a few leave 5% or less. I spent a majority of the time helping the bartenders because most of my tables didn’t speak English, and there isn’t much I could do to improve their experience, or get to know them.

I left around 11:30 and went home and watched Man Vs. Wild before going to bed.

May 26th, 2015

I woke up at 10, finally able to sleep in. I made breakfast and the it was off to Kinko’s to make copies and laminate flashcards for the new drinks we are making for the summer promotion. I finished everything I needed with enough time, so I rode up to the college to drop off all the paperwork required for starting the EMT program. I still need to get a CPR certification, but I have until July.

I rode home and read some of my book. It is the third of a trilogy about the video game Halo. Each book is around 400 pages long, and I started first book last week, and finished the third book today before work. I made lunch and then headed to work where all of my energy and desire to do anything had drained. The regional manager was in town over the weekend, and for some reason he felt the need to calculate how many plates, cups, bowls, and pieces of silverware we should be bringing in to the dish washing area during a shift. The number for the night shift was 145. They estimate a busy night should equal 600 dinners. That is 600 plates, cups, and bowls, plus 1,200 pieces of silverware divided by the number of servers working. I think there are many other things a regional manager could be doing to help the restaurant, but if he wants to figure out how many dishes I should be busing, who am I to argue. I kept count throughout the night. We sold way under 600 dinners, but I was almost at 400 by the end of the night. When I had reached 150 halfway through the shift, I asked if that meant I could stop busing tables.

I was doing cash deposits tonight, normally that means I am in the office by myself for long periods of time, but tonight one of the female managers was in the office doing paperwork. This only bothered me because I had made burritos for breakfast, and the beans wanted to sing me the song of their people. I politely kept everything inside because it is a small, cold, poorly ventilated room, and I am a gentleman. Once I was free to go, I let loose a series of vapor clouds that would make a sewer rat scurry away in fear.

I rode home, gassed up the moped (in more ways than one) and watched Sons of Anarchy until I went to bed.

May 12th, 2015

I woke up whenever I did and the very first thing I saw once my eyes were opened was a gigantic spider crawling on the wall above the bathroom door. I pretended not to see it in the hope that it would do the same and we would both be able to continue our lives not acknowledging each other’s existence. This lasted about two minutes until I decided I really had to go to the bathroom. I ran through the door just as fast as my legs would take me, praying that he wouldn’t decide to, at that moment, drop from the wall, land on my head, and eat my soul. I finished my business in the bathroom and jumped through the doorway, tucked and rolled across the floor and struck a defensive position. The spider was still there. I quickly grabbed a broom and escorted my villainous foe through the back door and out of my life forever.

The rest of the morning was spent eating pot stickers, a type of Aisin won-ton or something, watching the rest of the documentary on world war 1, and filling out the endless forms for the EMT school.

I left the house around 1, and headed to the health department to get a tuberculosis test done for school. I have had countless TB tests done in my career as a health care “professional”, but the regulations have changed, and now I have to have a two-step test done. I was injected with what I assume to be mind control serum, and sent on my way. I have to come back in a week to have the injection site looked at, and then given a second injection.

I rode to work and stretched out and had lunch. I was training today, but he spent a majority of the night in the kitchen, host stand, gift shop and bar learning about what they do. I ended up leaving around 11:30 and went home to search out new documentaries to take up my time.

May 11th, 2015

My day started really early, at 9:30 and consisted of making breakfast and watching world war 1 documentaries.

I got to work at 3 and ordered lunch off the kids menu to save a few bucks and was told that I would be bartending instead of serving tonight. I was making drinks tonight and it was slow enough for me to not make myself look bad, but busy enough to keep me occupied the entire night. Rebecca texted me around 4 when she got home because I had a parcel from the college. She asked if she could open it and I was overly curious as well. About 30 seconded later she sent me another text telling me that I had been accepted into the EMT program. There is an informational meeting sometime in July, and classes start on August 24th. I have been trying to get into this program ever since we moved here, and have been hit with road block after road block but I finally made it. Now I can re-take the class which will allow me to work in an industry in which I have almost 6 years of experience. For the rest of the night, I was in a great mood. Nothing could bring my spirits down. Not even the lady at the bar who kept yelling my name just to see ho fast I would run over and see what she needed. This means I will be done with school by December, and hopefully working as an EMT by January or February and done with the restaurant industry forever. Although I have said that before back in 2003, and again in when we moved here in 2013.

We finished cleaning up the bar and we were out of there around 11:45. I went home to wash off the stink of beer, fruit juice and liquor and then I stayed up to watch more documentaries.