BUSH DIARY APRIL 1997:

Christmas Mystery solved.  I received a mystery gift 1995, some one sent me a large sheet of plastic angels, the kind you use as decals.  It came from a Mail Boxes in Boise, Idaho.  No return address and no idear from whom this largess had come. Last Sunday, Barbara Whelan called to chat and asked if I had received a tube from her.  I told her the only tube I had received was 1995 Holiday Season.  She said that yes that was her.  Thank you Baba Wawa!!

O Jeez our coders are becoming an endangered species. The new head of the clinic, Dr M has a business degree as well as an MD.  He believes that choosing an IDC9 code from page one of the superbill and CPT code from page two is sufficient.  Thus the coders have been hammered with superbills.  Billing has noted, thank god, that the doctor assigned codes do not match the codes on the medical record.  Um, well change it says Dr. M.  Um, nope that constitutes fraud with a capital Fra!! Monica is going through the whole pile.  Somebody gonna get mad and quit and the sooner the better.  Also there is the looming threat that our coders will get moved to the new ASNA building.  Um, coding from pinks, don't think so. Why couldn't the man own a winery like all quasi God-like self assured MD's. I ax youse.

Interesting morning. Monica stayed home with a case of the Barrow crud.  I attended a big deal meeting.  John Morrow CEO announced that he is going to ASNA as he does not agree with the bottom line mentality.  Dr. M will become the hospital administrator????  Eeesh gawd.  John will be paid full salary by ASNS until he retires.

Monica came in later that day and was nearly knocked over about John's leaving. She said she would have NEVER come to Barrow if she knew he was not going to be here.  Tim and I even discussed whether or not to move if everyone quits, I am not quite ready to give up the present salary so we shall take a wait and see attitude.

Shopping dream. I purchased a set of weird nesting salad spoons and forks.  They came preloaded with straws as soon as the fork and spoon separated, a straw popped out.  Hmm is that handy?  Not sure.

Work shop in Anchorage:  I will be attending tne State Medical Record meeting on May 1-3. I will be camping out the Sheraton where I shall enjoy room service.

Spring Festival has been cancelled. A small plane went down near Wainwright.  Search and Rescue could not go due to fog.  They went out the next day, found the wreck and think the fuel line froze and flew straight into the ice.  I am doing all five death certificates.  Doctors have documented death by trauma.   What a tragedy.

Bradford is going to get irradiated for his hyperthyroidism.  The medication is no longer keeping him stable.  Tim is calling around to find a Vet who does the Iodine 131 treatment.  When this has all been ironed out we will be scheduling a three week trip to get this all done.

4-17:  This is a three by three foot opening just outside medical records that is an access hatch to the lower workings of the hospital.  One of the maintenance guys had the hatch open, there were warning codes posted and he walked away and then walked back right into the hatch and fell a good ten feet. He stayed there until the ambulance crew arrived and hauled him out of the hole. 

Embarrassing day.  I called the pilot's widow about details for the death certificate to get some details and she said that he had been cremated and that she already had a certificate.  So I kept on checking details and mine were not agreeing with hers until we got to the middle name.  Two different patients, same name, same DOB, ugh.  I apologized profusely and hung up the phone..  Note to self, put SAME NAME warning label in system for a heads up.  Duh.

Spring Festival is this weekend.  Tim is going to sign up for the ping pong tournament.  We should see some snow mobile racing as viewed from the lab window.  The parade was broadcast on the radio and consisted of sixteen trucks with balloons.  The honey bucket truck got special attention.

Boy, that is enough about April 1997.

G'night folks.

COOKING...sorta

I adore watching PBS America's Test Kitchen.  One of my favorite programs was one where the host decided to cook a holiday dinner from a very early 18th century cookbook.  He even went to far to purchase and install a very high tech, for the day, wood cooking stove.  It had all the bells and whistles that included a water reservoir to heat water either for cooking, washing dishes, washing clothes or Saturday night bathtub use.  

I have been testing,yeah that's a good word, testing the time honored family recipe for pumpkin pie. 

I made two pies for Thanksgiving and froze one for later use.  For this recipe I had used the usual peel and stick pie crust.  I was not happy with the doneness of the crust for this bake and decided to change things up next time.  I also dragged out the frozen one and donated it to the Tuesday morning garbage pick up.  Enjoy!!

I had also substituted the 1 1/2 cups of sugar with same amount of Splenda.  Results?  It tasted half as sweet and was distinctly missing something in the flavor as a result.

This time I decided to pre-bake the pie crust.  I unrolled the pie  crust in the very large glass pyrex plates.  I put fork marks all over the bottom of the pie and decided to sit the smaller pie plates on top of the crust as it baked.  I prepared two of these and baked them at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.  They were still light brown and I left them in another 15 minutes.  I allowed the plates to cool.  The results were less than satisfactory.  I should have gone with a bag of dried beans because the crust actually stuck to one plate and I had to scrape bits back into the bigger plate.  Also for some reason one crust shifted a bit so that there was zero crust on one side and it skewed very high on the other side.  But I will try pre-baking again.

Now I had decided to use tofu this time.  I also snagged a pint of black treacle syrup to use as sugar.  I mixed with together with the 2 cups of pumpkin, 4 eggs, 1/2 cup of almond milk and the appropriate amounts of cinnamon and allspice.

I used the small mixer to stir this all together.  I did not like the texture of the tofu.  I should have processed the tofu in a blender to get it past the cottage cheese looking stage.  The taste was very nice, it was pumpkiny, sharp molasses and spiced well.  I poured the mix into the two pie plates and patted it down like a very thick mix.  It looked like a cross between a brownie and a chocolate cake.  I checked it at 45 minutes and it was not done.     I let it go another 15 minutes and then turned off the oven.

I sliced and tasted a piece with some whipped cream on top.  This is a weird looking pie, it truly looks like a chocolate cake pie with bits of cottage cheese on top. I gotta fix the optics on this and I will have a much smoother pie next time.  And maybe cut back on the black treacle and use half Splenda. I froze the other pie.  And I am officially sick of making pies.

Today I plan to get the dressing out of the way.  Last night I pried out a bag of frozen turkey stock and it is half thawed this morning.  I will chop up a whole onion, add the usual spices. I have some fresh frozen Rosemary that I will toss in, if I remember and I might put on my lighted helmet thingie and go looking in the bottom cupboard for a can of hominy. This should be tasty.  Husband really loves my dressing.

The meat dish for Christmas dinner is some tasty looking deluxe version of chicken sticks.  Pass the toothpicks please.

BUSH DIARY MARCH 1997

 BUSH DIARY MARCH 1997:

3-2: Got up early because the next door neighbor was in her bathroom tuning up her smoker's cough.  I like doing wash early Sunday morning, usually have the place to myself unless someone is sleeping it off in a warm spot.  Only mishap has been the instance in which a neighbor quickly started a load of wash before I had entirely emptied the washer of my tattier unmentionables.  I explained the problem and the gentleman allowed me to extract my delicates from his far studier wash load.  Phew!!

Official renaming ceremony. ASNA has decided to rename the hospital The Samuel Simmonds Memorial Hospital. Quite a blow out.  Many testimonials regarding Mr. Simmonds.  NSB announced that an entire collection of Mr. Simmonds ivory carvings had been collected and will be on display when the Cultural Center is built.  Mr. Simmonds has a distinct style, one always knows his pieces.  All of the heads are slightly rounded off squares.  In my opinion the best one depicts a hunter lying on the snow behind a pile of ice blocks waiting to throw a spear at a group of seals.

One of the elders told a story about Samuel and his cousin, Arnold when they were both young men.  One summer their job was to herd reindeer.  The herd was split and went east and west.  The boys packed their sleds and took off with their dogs. Samuel missed his cousin and named one his dogs after Arnold.  He would talk to the dog, Arnold, every day and when things didn't go well, the dog got a boot in the tail.  The two cousins met at round up and greeted each other and began catching up with each other's summer.  A couple of the dogs started growling and snarling at each other.  Both men turned at the same time and shouted.
"Arnold, get over here!"
"Samuel, get over here!"
Everyone laughed.

House dream with a nice collection of water bowls, the kind that nest together and make a sort of fountain.  

3-3: Computer system not working this Monday morning.  The disk is full. It took IT until 11 am to fix things. 

 While working on a birth certificate I noted the baby boy's middle name was McCord.  This was in honor of the physician who was presumed lost in the blizzard.  The Inupiat do not name their children after living people, so there will not be any little Royce's running around in Barrow.  One of the medical record ladies gave her baby girl a middle name of Daphne, after Dr. Perez' wife who was killed in a whaling accident.

3-5:  A young man, 20, shot himself in the abdomen and died.  He was brought into ER but he could not be saved. The ME refused the case as it was clear this was a suicide.

The Future System people have been here setting up the accounting package on the computer.  This is a halting step forward in better billing. Will keep fingers crossed.  While I do not officially have anything to do with billing I have gotten interested in the providing the CPT codes and ICD9 codes part of the billing package. Idle fingers syndrome. 

3-6: One employee out with sick kid, ASNA provided emergency short term phone answering person.  That worked out well. 

 Kept getting interrupted by Husky looking for his person.  I was looking at his collar and he actually knocked me over....I felt so uncharacteristically delicate. Called the Vets and they came over and secured the overly friendly canine.  I had to write a damn incident report about the dog, etc.  He was very polite, did not bark.

3-8-97:  Sat news from Pendleton.  Tim's sister Better called to say that his Dad had died at home.  The church became concerned when he did not show up as usual.  They think it was a heart attack. Tim will fly down to help with things.  His name full name was Vesterlide Alden, his nickname was Buster. He was named after a battleship.  The funeral will be Wednesday, I will send flowers. 

Today at work I learned how to make a macro.  Hold the F12 key and now most of Dr. M's perfectly dreadful physical exam spits out on the screen before he is through talking.  Yay me!

Hospital drama:  One of the nurse's husband came home from his first day on the job at the post office.  He sort of went postal, he started waving a hand gun around. She took the kids and left calling PSO. It took PSO about 7 hours to talk him into giving up the gun and not shooting anyone.  PSO had evacuated the entire quarters and everyone huddled in commons.  He was admitted for evaluation and observation.  The psych people said he was okay to discharge. PSO did keep the gun.

Had a newbie come in to be seen in ER as a walk-in. He was upset that the process took so long.  I explained that he needed to make an actual appointment for the morning and it was show up as walk-in for everyone in the afternoon.  The guy came over on his break thinking that it would go swiftly. Um, nope.  Have a seat.

3-11:  Martin Buser won the Idatarod.  Got to watch a lot of it on ABC.  He has loved the Iditarod so much that he named two of his kids after villages that he has driven through; Nicolai and Kaltag.  Hopefully if he has a little girl she won't be named Safety or Unalakleet.

Heard from husband, the funeral went well and all of the siblings participated in a grief counseling session.  There may be a tussle over the "will"  I have seen the last will and testament and it is a mess. There are a dozen or more changes all notarized.  I think they need a legal opinion on whether or not the thing is even valid. I think the Seventh Day Adventist will get the house and there are some small cash disbursements basically.  So we shall see.

Potential purchases;  Husband and I are thinking of purchasing a new computer with all the bells and whistles.

Shopping dream: Dress shopping.  I wanted some of the special shoes, they turned color to match the dress!!

3-27: Traveling dream.  Toured some nifty bathrooms that had marble walls.  I wandered around and found five years worth of mail waiting for me.  Argh, gotta get to the PO more often I am guessing.

Lots of conversations yesterday at work, no one got fired but there was alot of loud discussion regarding reports and stuff. Works out that the organization chart has changed slightly medical records now reports to Finance rather than administration.  Okey dokey.

Got to pick up Monica, Tasha and two cats.  We got her into her apartment, no gas , no phone.  I took hammer, screw driver and plyers  just in case and needed them, some things needed assembly.  I will call her a cab for Monday morning and she will be on the look out.  Thank God, she is here.  I can stop worrying about stuff, kind of.  We will run around Monday getting Tasha enrolled and utilities started.
 Monica reported that the longest ten hours and 150 miles was the part they drove from Haines to Haines Junction. The road was drifted most of the way and the only marker was pole markers by the side of the road.  She did this in her cute little KIA.  Just shoot me'.

That's all the excitement for March.  G'night folks.

BUSH DIARY FEBRUARY 1997

BUSH DIARY FEBRUARY 1997:

2-13:  Woke up from busy and lengthy dream.  Travel on a ferry (how fun!) The ferry was two stories. My cabin was upstairs.  I always had trouble closing and locking the door. There were lots of passengers.  I cautioned one little boy about being careful while playing with the ship's dog, an old wrinkled blood hound.   The ferry went through some sort of canal to cross an isthmus of land in the middle of where ever. I was talking to the ship's photography and leafing through the catalog and spotted a picture of Dad!  I recognized the picture from a trip he took to Chicago.  I asked the photographer for a copy and then I woke up.

Busted:  2-14:  Happy Valentines Day.  All the ladies were given a lovely fresh rose from John Morrow our CEO.  Thanks John!!

Mary P our RN from OPD called in sick today.  The day progressed and one of the girls in the department told me that Mary made the local paper. Oh let me see!  She was charged with importation of alcohol! WHAT!!?? Mary is the nicest, hardest working person.  I do not know the whole story but I will bet ten bucks that the whole situation has to do with her significant other, a raging alcoholic.  She took the hit.  I hope she isn't so embarrassed that she quits her job.  What usually happens with high status locals is that they issue a public apology for not setting a good example.

Roller Rink at old Ipalook School.  With the cooperation of City of Barrow, NSB School District and North Slope Borough the old Ipalook school gymnasium has been converted to an indoor roller rink. What a great idea!! They have roller blade rentals, helmets, knee pads, elbow pads and have set times on the rink so big kids do not knock over little kids.  They had a trial run over Christmas. The skates cost three dollars and each session lasts three hours.

They started up this week and we had a rash of ER visits from kids with various roller blade injuries.  They have a music system to rock the hall and the biggest over head glitter ball for light effects.  It is going to be a very popular place.

Work week Feb 17 through 21:  We had Presidents Day off but half the crew came in to make up for lost work.  I went in to the incomplete chart count.  Our new clinical director is 100 out patient charts in arrears.  He is a nice guy but a tad arrogant and probably won't sign them.
  
Mary Jo:  Our occasionally unreliable receptionist disappeared from Barrow all this week and did not call in or has an aunt or grandmother heard from her or seen her.  I have called her number, no luck.

On Friday John Morrow called me to his office he was sitting there with the administrative assistant, Tom. They wanted to know what I was doing about Mary Jo, because people were bugging Tom about how she got to be away without penalty.  It outlined all of the steps I had taken.  I am worried that she is having a stress related absence.  A couple years ago she went to Anchorage during her high risk pregnancy.  While there she was attacked and raped. The guy got two years.  She got a notice recently that he was out of prison, she may be hiding.  I hope she is okay.  When she is on the job and healthy she is just the best.

2-24:  Mary Jo called me and resigned.  Crap.  Now I have to find someone foolish enough to want to sit at the phones and treat everyone like a Queen, King, Prince or Princess.  Crud.

John Morrow gave me a program that makes organizational charts and begged me to make one quickly for the board meeting tomorrow.  Shoot me.  It will take about a week to make a nice slick one but I cobbled together one that at least shows who reports to whom.  Gahhhhh.

One of the doctors kept waving the microphone while dictating.  My ears were getting dizzy.

There was a baby born over the weekend and I didn't get a chance to interview the Mom, so paper chase is ensuing.

I finally got the Satisfaction Survey more or less figured out on yet another computer program. Turns out the scanner still doesn't work so pretty much so had to do massive amounts of key entry.  Makes a nifty report WHEN YOU GET IT DONE.

Going Away Party:  Dr. Maria Freeman hosted a party for Glo Andrews in her apartment.  Glo stayed here to get her five years in with NSB and she leaves Friday. Her daughter married and has been living in Wasilla. Glo is eager to move there.  They both own property in Homer but had decided to sell it for a tidy sum.  Apparently Homer is turning into the Sun Valley of Alaska.  All sorts of famous people are buying property.  The view there is the most beautiful I have ever seen.

New Pet Policy for quarters.  Starting 3-1 no pets will be allowed in quarters.  The ones already there will be grandfathered in.

Monica got hired!  Hooray!  She will not live in the hospital quarters because of their two cats and they will be here the end of March. I am thrilled.

Another program another day.  The head nurse asked me to tackle an organization chart for nursing.  Ok.  I shudder and shake and it looks nasty but it does work.

Weird incident report:  Carolyn was cleaning out her office in November and shared an incident report.  A few years ago, an inebriated villager decided to give himself a circumcision with his shotgun.  He didn't miss by much but bled like a stuck pig.  He shrieked, "I'm bleeding like a woman!"  The incident report written by the nurse was that she thought he was given a wrong dose of pain killer.  Like Carolyn has often said, "I could write a book!".

Got a mysterious error message, must go pretend I yam an IT professional.

G'night folks.

BUSH DIARY JANUARY 1997

BUSH DIARY JANUARY 1997:

1-10-97:  Happy Second Year Anniversary:  Husband and I walked to the next block where the Northern Lights Restaurant is located.  I had garlic chicken and husband sawed away manfully at a well gristled steaklet.  Sadly, no left overs.   sigh...

Price shocker.  Got a notice that the washing machine tokens are going to go up in price from two dollars each to three dollars.  And the limit is 15 tokens per month.  If you need EXTRA tokens they cost $7.50 each.  That would encourage conservation of water all right.

Tweaking PC at work.  The IT guy has me hooked up to both Barrow and Anchorage so I can work in two places if I wanna.  Also got a scanner hooked up, it does pictures much better than text.

Housing is busy making arrangements for a two bedroom apartment for Monica and Tasha.  

AHIMA meeting will be in Anchorage in May, putting in my bid to attend for that week.

Book mention:  Finished reading "A Monstrous Regiment of Women" by Laurie R. King.  Her first book was "The Beekeepers Apprentice".  Sherlock meets a very young lady genius and things go from there.
  
1-22-97:  The sun officially rose above the horizon today in Barrow.  Weather man calculated the sun would be up for 29 minutes. It is overcast so we didn't see much except it cleared up enough that by 5 pm we could see a gorgeous deep blue and a great big fat full moon.

Thin walls: Somewhere in our building someone has a remote control on the same frequency as ours.  Two days in a row the unit came on by itself. Husband responded by pointing the clicker thing at the wall in an attempt to return the favor.

1-30-97:  The Great Barrow Taxi Cab Strike:  I got a call Thursday morning from Danny Abasolo one of my regular drivers at City Cab. He called to let me know no one was running this morning. Ugh.  Thanks, Danny.  I thanked him and bundled up and walked to work.  I did see a bus enroute but both times it was going the wrong way so I just kept walking.  It was only 20 below and I was well wrapped and had worked up a bit of a sweat by the time I trudged up the steps at the hospital.  The cab drivers are all upset with City Hall. The City charges each company 5000 dollars for the yearly license and each driver must take a CDL test each year and the market is saturated with cabs. There is not enough commuters to keep  50 cabs busy 24/7.  The cabs were all back on the road by the end of day.  Update:  Eskimo channel had notice that cab rides now go from 4 dollars one way to 5 dollars one way in town.  I will still get a dollar discount for work, so thanks gentleman.

I received a magnetic David and Venus with stick on clothing.  I decided to take them to work and stick them up on the metal lockers at work.  All of the ladies like to "play dolls" with the magnets. It is a lot of fun.

New Coffee House in town.  Polar Coffee Haven, just dial 852-BEAN opened this last Saturday.  It is close to the Post Office. I stopped by and picked up a large mocha with whipped cream and two almond biscotti for 7 bucks.  Watch out Starbucks!

Talked with Charlie they would love to have us come for a visit closer to Christmas to dandle baby on my knee.  Will do some travel plans.

That is all for January,  G' night folks.

BUSH DIARY DECEMBER 1996:

12-3-96:  Charlie called over Thanksgiving to let me know that I will be a grandma in a few months.  Hooray!!

Apartment dream.  Tim mowed the lawn.  

Might get Monica Back!  Hazzah! ASNA has decided to hire an RRA for the medical records manager.  I have been officially acting in that capacity.  I have been on the horn with ASNA personnel and am trying to remodel and get a desk squeezed back into the department.  Might not get her until April but I am happy to wait.

We upgraded the Email system and now have more icons to do more stuff.

House dream: Rented a house belonging to Dean Coltrin.  The house had a very large black cat there and Dean said he forgot and would come get it.

12-3-96: Today is my sixth year of working in Barrow, that makes me practically a senior citizen on the medical records crew.

12-6-96:  Terrible news today.  I picked up the phone in admin and it was someone trying to contact Clara Steimetz significant other.  He was working in one of the villages.  She had died in her sleep. Dr. Perez said she was depressed and probably committed suicide. 

12-7:  Chatted with Charles and Leslie, July 4 is their due date. They have both quit smoking.

12-14:  Craft fair at Ipalook grade school. I went specifically for mittens.  Bought a brand new pair of spotted seal skin outer and lined with shearling lamb, fancy inset on wrist of calf skin, cuff made of beaver and the idiot strings attached for a total 130 dollars.  They are so warm.  The first pair I purchased was 85 dollars.

Interesting gossip:  One of the doctors was talking about an arrest that happened on Alaska Airlines.  A woman passenger was returning to Barrow and decided she needed a smoke.  She went into the bathroom, tampered with the smoke detector and was met at the airport by the cops.  Naughty. Federal offense for crying in a bucket. The fine will be 2000 dollars.

12-19-96:  First ASNA Christmas Party. It was a potluck and ASNS furnished the turkey, yummy.  We got individual gift bags of coffee mug, coffee beans, instant tear and other goodies. very nice
.
Price shocker at the craft fair.  I caressed a home knitted sweater made from musk ox wool.  It was lovely and was 2000 dollars.  Sigh...

Price shocker of the week. Saw a small carton of Bing cherries imported from Chile, six dollars. Drool.

New twist at work. If you want daily lunch you must sign up for each meal by 10:30 a.m.  Well I forget and the tuna is not worth signing up for.

Death certificate;  A man froze to death when his snow machine broke down. The weather was awful and we had another blizzard.

Customer relations NOT:  We had a civilian blow in and essentially demand services, would not cooperate with any of the information other than her name.   There was much explanation etc and eventually she was given something and she explained that she was a member of Mensa and no one had to explain anything to her and she refused the service.  Thank you, Smart Lady.

Christmas 12-25:  We had a quiet day and exchanged gifts.  I had almost forgotten  one gift for Tim. He had been complaining about how there was never ping pong balls at the Teen Center.  I fixed that one.

That's it for December 1996:  G'night folks.

OUR LADY OF THE SKY

I was determined to find a prayer for flying just in case I ever hit air turbulence or get a hang nail or something untoward.  Took a lot of Google effort.  Finally went Catholic and the following is beautiful.  I cut short the salutation and the following is quite wonderful.

Our Lady of the Sky

Our Lady of the Sky, protect we pray thee, the wings made 

by men to which we entrust ourselves when crossing the spaces above plains, mountains and seas. 

Protect our flight, and may we have a greater realization of God’s love and glory reflected in the beauties of the heavens and the earth. 

Be thou our help every moment of our aerial journey, preserve us from all perils, and restore us safe and sound to our dear ones. 

Obtain also for minds and hearts, O Lady of the Sky, the grace to rise towards the things of heaven, and soar above the errors and meanness of this world, far from the darkness and mire of evil, so that we may at the end of our earthly life enter into the everlasting abode of rest and happiness, and enjoy with the glory of God, with the Angels and Saints, amen.