Adventures of the Fully Employed

On July 23, 2008 I began my first full-time job in a year in a half! I was hired two weeks prior by a company called Talbott Recovery Campus (TRC) which is located very close to the airport in south Atlanta. TRC is a substance abuse treatment facility very similar to MARR which is where I did my clinical internship last year. MARR referred me to TRC once I had exhausted all opportunities to stay at MARR. I am working as a family counselor in the young adult program (18-25 yr old patients). My main role will be to counsel and assess the families' needs of our young adult patients (which are called YAP's) while they are in treatment with us and to provide therapy accordingly.

My first day was really awesome. Mainly, I was concerned with having someone to eat lunch with, and that certainly was granted in the full. All the employees are really friendly and I've gotten a lot of "ooo we're so glad you're here" type of comments. I think they've been understaffed in this area for a while, so I certainly am happy to oblige by offering my newly acquired counseling services for a salary and benefits!!

Probably my most favorite thing so far is the free soda and water, which includes Diet Dr Pepper. They also have free lunch several times a month for various reasons for the staff. Also, every Thursday you can walk down to Anchor Hospital, which is owned by the same company as ours, to receive free lunch for all TRC staff. I know I'm going to fit right in to these perks.

The only thing that's been hard to adjust to is getting up at 6:20 each day. The earliest I regularly got up for MTW work or to go to class was probably 7:30, plus in the past two months I normally got up at 8:30. So this is a bit of a shock. My roommate regularly gets up early during the school year, so she's been coaching me on what time I should go to bed, which has been around 10:30 or so. Last night was Friday night, and Amy and I were having my fave Friday night activity of pizza eating, movie watching, and beer drinking (me). I totally feel asleep during the movie at about 9:30! Amy said this is to be expected especially at the end of a work week with hours like that. Yikes!

Next week I'm going to be receiving more training on how to do family assessments and treatment plans. I'm also going to be sitting in on more groups that will help me get to know the rules of the program and the process groups the patients go to. My team is also going to take me out for a welcome lunch. I'm excited to see what else is in store!

Recap of the adventures of the ex-vacationer

I was officially on vacation from May 3-July 22. It was incredibly awesome and also sometimes incredibly nerve wracking. I do believe that God created us to stay busy, or work, or do things that are meaningful to us. I also think God gives us opportunities to rest. I tried to do a combination of all of those things. Here's the top 10 list of things I experienced while on vaca 08.

10. Checking the mail right after it arrived.
9. Never having to really worry about rush hour traffic.
8. Going to the bank or grocery store when no one is there.
7. Working out whenever I wanted to and having my pick of treadmills.
6. Reading a book called Shadow Divers, which educated me on the world of deep sea diving and WWII German submarines.
5. Going to the pool. Constantly. With friends, or with myself and the other hispanic people in my neighborhood.
4. Touring the CNN Center with Amy Mo and Christina and pretending to be from other states (this was also the day that I got my confirmation phone call that I had been hired. It was so fun to get that with them there!)
3. Watching the new Batman movie with Gates and Mel at the opening showing at 12:01am!
2. Meeting folks for lunch, especially going to Mi Casa with my fave MTW dudes! And the Monday lunches at Ami's.
1. Mexico. I mean, fo sho!!!!!!!

Taking down the man

I would like to point out that I am very blessed to have good friends. And family. And people that are both friend and family. One of those such people is Rochelle. And how do I know that she is such a blessing to me, you might ask? Because she understands the necessity of passions, especially when it comes to taking advantage of all things coupon related, and opportunities to take down the man.

One of such opportunities came up during the first week of July, when for some reason, Starbucks published a coupon in the sunday AJC (Atlanta Journal-Constitution) good for a free hot or iced regular starbucks coffee to be used once a day from July 1-14. Score!!! I don't get the paper and am not always on the up and up with coupons, so Rochelle who is an expert on both, called and left me two 9-1-1 emergency messages with this news so I could go out and find one. Fortunately Amy Mo's parents get the paper and don't care about Starbucks, so I was able to snag the coupon. It is SO awesome. I've been completely rearranging my days around when I can get a free Starbucks. For me, it's all about sticking it to the man. I think Starbucks is taking over the world. You know, like Wal-Mart and stuff. Now I can take them down by actually trying to use the coupon daily. For Rochelle it's a quest to discover which 600 Starbucks are closing. She always asks all the employees to make sure it's not her Starbucks that's closing (it's probably mine actually, since it's new). Rochelle and I were together last Wed to go to the pool with the kids. Since we had to drive to the pool anyway and we had the kids in the car, of course we had to drive by Starbucks to get our free drink. It was so sweet driving up both of us flashing our two free coupon cards (see inset). Immediately we heard the tired, flat voice of the Starbucks employee say "hot or iced." It's great. Only three more days to go!!

I survived the Peachtree Road Race 2008 (and I got two sweet shirts!)

Our yearly quest to run the world's largest 10k and have the coolest shirts centered upon a Ringsmuth tradition this year.

To honor my many family members who are a part of the Ringsmuth Riders Unicycle Club, we created the Ringsmuth Riders Track Club, complete with an uncycle with feet icon. The back of the shirt sported a tribute to a personal fear of mine that I've become sort of well known for, which is being worried that if I ran too fast or too long, I might explode. I also like the word neat. All such affinities were used.

The Thursday night before the race (which is on the 4th every year), consisted of massive amounts of spagetti, planning, laughing, and ironing. Thanks to Courtney who printed out all the designs for everyone! They turned out pretty awesome. The next day we all got up before 6am to take MARTA to the race. A lot of us got in a really good time group (Christina and Jamie even had consecutive numbers-what are the chances???) and were all together in the 20,000's for the race. It was a TON of fun hearing the comments from other runners. One person even offered to hold my lung for me if it exploded. Wow. That's servanthood.

I really enjoyed running and walking the race this year, even though the finish line was far from the flat Piedmont Park and ended up the long hill on Juniper. I finished in 1.24.01 or so, which is pretty awesome for me. I think that's my best Peachtree time.

We finished the morning off with an amazing breakfast at Courtney's, and then that night we all sported our official Peachtree shirts at the Decatur fireworks festival. More compliments ensued. Atlantans are really appreciative and admiring of Peachtree runners. It's really the most fun 10K ever. Otherwise, there's no way in hainesville I would ever do it.

More happenings of the Marginally Employed

Although I am starting to see a hint of boredom in my still-looking-for-a-job state, I have enjoyed getting to spend more time with friends and family.

One of ways that I have been spending time with people is by going to the pool. I am totally addicted to the pool and why not, when we live in a state that''s consistently above 90 every day of the summer. After going to Mexico and getting a nice tan, I've been pretty motivated to keep it. I'm skilled at whipping out my beach bag, lathering on the sunscreen, and getting a good book together at any hint of a chance to lay out. I've also been going with Rochelle and her kids to the pool, which adds a new element to the word "laying out". It's more like, well, actual swimming. And if you want to see serious "beach bag" talent, just watch her get together three sets of floaties, toys, towels, swimming shoes, etc plus the stroller and a six week old. It's mind-boggling. Usually she does it entirely by herself too. Wholly crap. It is soo fun and hilarious hanging out with them. The kids just say the funniest things out of nowhere. Probably the funniest was Evan asking his mom at dinner to pick up his "blood towel" which really was just a folded up paper towel he was supposed to hold on his knee to help soak up some blood from a scratch. We were like....sick...blood towel, really? Luckily Rochelle convinced him to get it himself. It was pretty fun though, especially said in his innocent little voice. He also loves to play with bungie cords, which he for some reason calls "hookers." Last time I asked him how many hookers he had. He said "mmmmmm, about 20." I actually gave him one of my hookers once, but I digress. During one of my days over there, enjoying also the company of Stephen who has been working on Atlanta lately, we brainstormed the idea of having a southern food cookoff, complete with fried chicken amazingness (Stephen), mac & cheese (Rochelle & Stephen), bacon green beans (Rochelle), potato salad (Julie) and peach cobbler and ice cream (me). It was OUT OF CONTROL good. We've been talking about biking the Silver Comet Trail, and that would have been a perfect activity to bike off this southern-load.

Also during this part-time job interim, I was able to accomplish my post-graduation goal of watching movies all day. Amy Mo and Courtney were happy to oblige and watched them with me. The deal was for all of us to pick out movies that we hadn't seen but we loved and weren't sure the others would like. This ended up somehow in two awesome movies (the ones I picked- The Village & The Best in Show) and two 80's movies of questionable awesomeness (Can't Buy Me Love and Say Anything). I normally detest all things 80's, but somehow I found myself laughing and enjoying this movies. And, when you start the day off too with IHOP and finish it with Five Guys Burgers and Fries, it's basically amazing no matter what.

I do have some good developments in the job front. I was offered a part-time job at Anchor Hospital, which I can start really anytime I want to sign up for their next new employee orientation. They are kind enough to give me all the time I need to think about it, because I'm waiting to see what pans out with Talbott Recovery Center which is a full-time job. Talbott is similar to MARR, my internship placement from last year, and the job would be right up my alley. They called me yesterday to schedule a second interview, so we'll see!