I'm now officially certified as a lifeguard by the Red Cross. apparently this sort of thing runs in my family. My Dad was a lifeguard and so was my grandfather (on my Mom's side). I explain more about the story with the accompanying Flickr photo but here's how my week went.

I had class from 4-9 pm each night Monday through Friday. Most nights we were done by 8 but some nights we weren't. The other students in my class were three VTC students, one high school kid, one other guy from the community about my age and two lifeguards who were training to be lifeguard instructors. The instructors were two no-nonsense women sent by the Red Cross. We split the classes up between watching Red Cross videos, going over and practicing first aid, and going over and practicing drowning and rescuing. Then we'd have tests on these things culminating in an all-day testing situation on Saturday from about 9 til 1.

I do good on tests. I have an okay head for numbers and first aid mnemonics. I am a strong swimmer. What I am NOT any good at... is drowning. Part of the class involves pairing up with other students (the female instructors make sure the women in the class are teamed up with the guys because they want to make sure the guys get used to grabbing women in rescue situations where usually they'd be more like "um, excuse me") and practicing rescuing each other. In most ways in the class I felt like I was holding my own as a (relative to the rest of the class) old lady, but I was the worst drowner of them all.

I could tell myself it's because I have asthma and I'm not good at holding my breath or whatever but the truth is that waiting under six feet of water for some high school student to drag me to the surface when I KNOW there are better options is just not something I'm good at. I was sort of happy with myself for being able to just suck it up and do it. As I get older, there are fewer and fewer situations where I need to suck it up to do anything or accomplish anything. I've sort of created my life this way and overall I'm pleased with that. However it was nice to know that for a good reason, I could suck it up and just take orders in order to learn things.

Every night after Monday I came home sore and every day I'd take ibuprofen and drag my ass back to the pool and do more practice rescues and swimming and tests. It's not like 30+ hours of class is all that grueling, but I think they normally break it up over a few weeks. By Saturday morning I was feeling feverish and just out of it, but I made it through the tests okay -- as did everyone, I think the goal is for everyone to finish up cerified (certifiable?) -- and I came home afterwards, popped in to a friend's house to say hello and then went home and slept for almost twelve hours. I woke up today feeling much better -- even went for a little hike -- and didn't even think about going to the pool. Normal swimming will resume on Tuesday.

Labels: lifeguard, me, pool, swimming

It's tough when it's school vacation. This is not because there are more teenagers on the street or because the library isn't open as much. It's tough when it's school vacation because the pool schedule gets erratic becaue most lifeguards are on vacation. When I'm having an otherwise good day that goes south, I can't work it off in the pool. Or, I may show up all ful of piss and vinegar expecting to swim and then can't. In this case only vegetable soup will save me, apparently. I'm up to 35 miles for the year.

In any case, these are the milestones from this week, both up and down.

1. Ola is getting relocated to Botswana. I got a series of confusing emails from her where it looked like she was leaving Kiribati because of safety/transportation issues (not hers personally as I understand it, but the country's generally) and might be back soon. I went through about 24 hours of "Oh my god, I just got this place working like a finely oiled machine" Then she emailed and said she'd be going to Botswana instead. She's getting back to California on Monday and heading out to Africa in mid-April. I will likely not see her, but I'll probably talk to her on the phone. She seems okay with the change, but she'll have done more plane travel than me without all the fun vacation part of the trip. I'll keep you posted on her whereabouts.
   
2. I had a Kafkaesque run-in with the health insurance company. They bill on the 15th of the month. If you haven't paid by the first day of the next month they cancel your health insurance, effective immediately. Now, I'll jump through a lot of hoops for low cost health care, but I sent a check and... something happened to it. I was jetlagged, who knows where I sent it, or maybe it arrived and slipped through a crack. By the time I figured it all out, it was Tuesday and I spoke to many nice people who claimed that the ONLY way, the only way to pay my health insurance bill was via check, via the mail. No person could take my money, no phone representative would take my credit card, no state worker would confirm my check had been delivered, no one would take my eleven dollars. Their back up plan was to give me an address to Fedex a check to when I asked where I could drop one off. I was very nice and, in my most pleasant phone manner asked if they were really going to cancel my health insurance because their system was so antiquated they did not have a post-1950's system for taking my money. Eventually I got through to someone whose job title included the word "grievance" and was given an address, in Waterbury, where just this once, I could drop a check off. It felt like a somewhat hollow victory but at least I don't have to worry about getting his by a bus.
3. I went to see a fancy ear doctor about the ringing in my ears that's been going on for the past few months. She says my hearing is fine, but the ringing may not go away. It was nicer the way she said it than the "suck it up" way my doctor said it. I'm not being driven crazy by it, but that's partly because I've been doing my best to ignore it -- been working okay so far. Don't expect to hear anything else from me on the subject, it's one of those weird topics where endless talking about it actually makes it seem worse than it is.
4. I got an article published in Library Media Connection magazine (yay!) and they screwed it up (boo!). One of the hardest things for me about writing is that I dislike being edited, a lot. I've found a few editors I work really well with, but maybe it's the profession or maybe me being a perfectionist but I swear I've had more errors injected into my articles via editing than taken out of them. In this case a perfectly good screenshot that I'd supplied was replaced with a different screenshot, of a completely different part of the website, that didn't illustrate what the caption said it did. My first inkling that this had happened was seeing it in print. I got a very nice apology from the editor but also a "gee I don't do layout" admission so it's still a mystery what exactly happened.

Good things that happened included my Excel class that has been going gangbusters and my hilarious (to me) sample spreadsheet that I whipped up for Seven Dwarves LLC for everyone to work on. I also got a copy of my friend Meredith's book Social Software in Libraries in which I am one of the two back-cover blurbers. I went to Maine last weekend for a MetaFilter meetup and to see some friends and it was a great excuse for a day away. You can see some dorky pictures here. I also went to Small Dog and finally bought a dongle for my newish laptop so that I can use it with a video projector. I then came home and showed it off to Forrest and Kelly who already had one that they never used. It never occurred to me to ask "hey before I drive off the Burlington, do you guys have a spare dongle?" I made another little semi-boring movie. The house next door is for sale again if anyone would like to be my neighbor. The property value has been decreased by one birdhouse which I stole because squirrel piss destroyed one of mine. Won't you be my neighbor?

Labels: botswana, fedex, health care, jessamyn, kiribati, maine, swimming, tinnitus, vermont