I am a news junkie. I watch the news in the morning, read the headlines all day, listen to NPR on the way in to work and while at work, then watch the national news when I get home.

I'm trying to break that habit though, because everything reported makes me panic. So far this morning I've heard that the St. Petersburg Firefighters will not be getting retirement benefits (new hires), unemployment in the Bay area is higher than the rest of the State and the Nation, and that we are a Nation in crisis.

I think that last statement about says it all, don't you?

I'm trying to remain positive, but it's hard when bombarded with how much life sucks for so many people. How close are we to becoming what these poor desperate people are? With all the budget cuts I just found out about in my agency, how much longer can I count on my paycheck? If people can't afford to drive their cars, how much longer is Sean going to have a paycheck?

There are no guarantees in life, but I thought at least my job was a guarantee! Dealing with my Mom, relationship issues, and pregnancy losses, I thought I had at least one area I could rely on...

*** Edited to Add: I love how Hollywood can go on strike. I guess if I had over 20 million in my savings account I wouldn't give a shit about working either! ***

I'm about to disappear; my 45 Hour Continuing Education CD arrived today. I have until September 30th to complete the course, including the final exam. If I fail the exam I have 30 days to retake it or I lose my license.

This does not give me a lot of time.

I wish I could download it on to my laptop because I could then take it in to work and study. Er, by that I mean study during my lunch hour, of course. But, seeing as it's so full of viruses and freezes all the time, I have to do it on my desktop here at home. I can't run the risk of it freezing during my final, so I'm stuck.

Anyone who knows me, knows that once I start something like this I won't resurface until I'm done. So, I'll see ya'll when I finish the course!

This has been one very odd week. Monday I flew to Palm Beach to go to the State Hospital up there. Our flight out got delayed three times and finally got canceled. We got on the next flight out, and arrived in Palm Beach around 2pm after one of the worst flights I've ever been on. Weather was horrid and flying in a matchstick with wings was NOT pleasant. My co-worker was fine though; she ate enough Klonopin to make her drool.

We got the car with no trouble and headed up north about an hour to see 8 clients. By the time we got there it was 4:30pm and we raced through out meetings, then had to drive 2 hours down to Miami for our hotel. We were supposed to have gotten through 2 hospitals but since out plane had to be rescheduled we were far behind our original plan...

We got to the Embassy Suites and decided to have dinner. It was the worst service I have ever had. It took 20 minutes for a waiter to come over, another 20 for three salads, a baked potato, and a piece of chicken, and then another 10 for our desert. 10 minutes after that we get the bill, and then it took over 10 minutes just to straighten out paying! (When we got back to Tampa we also discovered we had been double billed on our three separate checks).

After that debacle I decided to go to bed and watch Medium. Since I had a whole suite to myself I was able to relax and enjoy the quiet... for about 40 minutes. I passed out, missed the last 10 minutes of my show, and was then awoken at 6am by banging pipes! I got up and went to the continental breakfast which was awesome, and then went back to bed for an hour.

We left at 10 am so that we could be sure we'd get both State Hospitals and back to the airport by 3:30pm. We drove about an hour to the new State Facility, only to find out that the people we needed to see were at the old facility back in Miami! I was so pissed off I wanted to cry, so we drove back, saw the one client at the civil hospital, and then took off for the Forensic facility.

We never made it. We ended up on Miami beach, were people were all of 15 pounds, and drove around trying to find our way out again. We drove through the ghetto, through some of the city, back on the highway, through another ghetto, and then figured we'd never make it to the airport in time if we kept going. (I would like to point out that we would have found it if one of my co-workers had actually read me the directions correctly so when I entered it in TomTom it would have registered it. NW 7th Ave Road is much different than 7th Street!!!!).

We returned the car, ate some lunch in the airport (ew!) and then waited by the gate. It was at this time that I discovered one of my coworkers wanted to lie and say that we saw the clients so that we wouldn't get in trouble by our funding agency. At first I was like, "cool", and then my gut just started churning and my heart started screaming "No!". I worried about it the whole flight (which was much better then the arriving flight, other than the stalling mid-flight and the alarm going off), and then decided I couldn't do it. I just couldn't lie.

Then begins all the weird(er) stuff. The turmoil with my co-worker over some work related things, my clients suddenly going off their meds and needing to be Baker Acted, my co-worker basically telling me what I "need" to do in my job, the meeting with my boss to tell him I'm pregnant and his really bizarre reaction, have an on-the-sly meeting with my big boss and co-worker to try and straighten some things out, and then today, an even weirder thing:

I got a certified letter notification on Tuesday but I didn't get to the post office until today because, lets face it, I have a full time job and can no longer get to the places I need to be. The letter ended up being a notice from a towing company saying that the vehicle registered in my name had been towed on March 28th at the request of the Sheriff's office and was impounded. If I don't come get it it's going to auction on May 5th, but I could pay to have it released. I couldn't figure out what the heck was happening since I happened to be sitting in the car I own at the very moment I was reading that letter, but when I found out what vehicle they were referring to, I discovered that they were talking about the Expedition that I traded in!

I can't figure it out! The only thing that makes sense is that it was stolen and left somewhere so they ended up towing it... But why am I the registered owner listed? The car dealership should be since I signed the title over to them... Funny thing is I can get the truck back for a mere $485! It would be fraud, but it's tempting since I still have an insurance card with the truck listed on it. I'd love to have that truck back. I miss it!

*sigh* There have been some neat things that happened this week too. I got a message from my friend who's on vacation this week calling to check in on me and my mom which made me all warm and fuzzy, I got to hear Bug's heartbeat on the Doppler a few times, Ian has said some amazing things, Sean is being great, and my Mom looks wonderful. It's just that sometimes the stressful things push the other parts aside because dealing with stress takes so much more energy than the happiness... I think I'm experiencing another "test" from the Universe and I'm getting tired.

Thank goodness! There’s finally a ranking system that reflects the real score of my blog!

I got penalized by Google in the beginning of the year because I have some sponsored posts on my blog and I lost my page rank that I worked months to acquire. Not only did that mess up my whole blog system, but it really hurt me in regards to the extra money I had been making. To a lot of people $100 or so a week isn’t a big deal, but to us it meant a lot. The weeks when Sean didn’t get paid it sometimes made the difference between making a car payment or not. That’s huge!

Now there’s Real Rank, a system that was created by using real data to calculate which blogs are getting the most traffic and have the most influence on the web, such as webpages linked to the specific blog (otherwise known as inbound and outbound links). IZEARanks ranks the top blogs in the blogosphere via actual site statistics, not an “inturprutation” of estimates. This great ranking system, IZEARanks, even has a page where you can see how your blog relates to other registered blogs in real time, and offers a graph for visual people like me who don’t really “get” numbers.

Thank goodness this system has come about! Maybe now I can get back into the paid for blogging market. I’ve missed it, because it’s such a win-win situation for everyone involved. Advertisers get exposure and bloggers get to do what they love to do. How can you beat that?

My mom is scheduled to get her shunt put in next week. She saw the oncologist on Tuesday and they gave her the chemotherapy schedule: Looks like she'll be having chemo for 6 months followed by a few rounds of radiation. She's still in good spirits, and we're going to look for some nice scarfs for her to wear "down the road". She didn't lose her hair the last time she had chemo, but the oncologist told her that he is 99% certain that she'll lose it this time. Luckily she found a place that will take the time to show her how to put the scarf on and position it correctly, so that will be a big help to her.

I'm on my way to the lab right now to get blood drawn. They discovered that my Mom does have a genetic blood clotting disorder so my OB is frantic to get me tested. If it comes back that I have this disorder I'll have to do weekly injections starting ASAP... which is ironic since I just got the shots that I'm going to need starting at 16 weeks covered by my insurance. So, I guess I'll be looking forward to getting weekly shots through October. No problem though; I'll do anything to have this baby!

Work is going much better. I just finished a day long trip to the State Hospital in the northern part of the State, and on Monday I fly out to Miami, stay over night in Palm Beach, then fly home on Tuesday. Not only is it a fun "vacation" for me, but I'll be getting about 15 hours of overtime. That'll be a big help, since we won't be getting our economic stimulus check until the end of the year and I just found out we have to prepay for having this baby.