Back in the game

So my wife made me realize the other day that I haven't been what you would call an "avid blogger" as of late, and considering that I am home from work sick today (with nothing better to do) I thought that I would take that time to actually write something.

The Past:
Since school let out last semester I've been working for the summer on a Co-Op work term with the Regina Qu'appelle Heath Region as a Staff scheduler. I mostly deal with the immediate needs that come up (anything within 72 hours) such as people calling in sick or need bereavement leave. But I was also one of the few people trained for a specific area... Home Care! Sounds glamorous eh? In reality it is a very hard cluster to schedule, they don't follow most of the rules that the other units have to, mostly due to the very odd hours that most of them work. So on top of knowing both the CUPE and SUN contracts inside and out, I have to know how to manipulate them in ways that most of the other schedulers wouldn't even dream of touching. It requires a lot of multi-directional thinking, which apparently I'm very good at! It's one of the jobs you get that you know you're good at, and your boss and peers know your good at, so you all know that your pretty much indispensable... always a great feeling! I have to say though, getting this job was such a God thing! It's not only something that I enjoy, but it paid well enough that I was able to support Jordan and I while Jordan had a very short and busy summer.

The Present:
School will be starting soon, and my job with the RQHR will be coming to an almost grinding halt. Even though I am very good at my job, everything is in the Union, including me, and all of us are ranked by seniority (me being closer to the bottom then the top). All of that boils down to me being able to be prebooked for only 1 shift a week. I left my self open to be able to pick up more shifts, but with not wanting to get student loans this year I had to go back in to Canadian Tire and give them my availability there so that I could get a couple of shifts a week. I'm actually looking forward to working there a couple of days a week, it's not as near as nice of pay as RQHR, but it too was one of those jobs that I was good at and and found rewarding in its own way. What else is happening? I'm going to Red Deer tomorrow to visit with my Dad, that should be interesting. It's too bad that Jordan can't come with me because this weekend would have been the last couple of days we have off together for the next 3 weeks or so. Oh! There's a present thing! In both the temporal and gift sense! Jordan found a full time job! It's with SaskDrama, a company she had already worked for last summer, but it's full time for the year, salary and everything!

The Future:
Jordan and I decided that student loans were getting on the higher side, not that it's too bad when you look at how much school we've done, but now that Jordan is done school and she'll have to start paying back the loans this year, we figured that we would try and not get any more. That's why I'm going to be able to work more days this year, because one of the ways to keep loans down is by being able to pay for the classes you take, which mean only taking 3 instead of 5 a semester. I'm hoping that by taking less classes this year I'll be able to get my GPA up a little too. Well that's pretty much going to be my life for the next little while. Hope it's not too boring for you... hope it's not too boring for me!