Pills

Dear Utah,

it seems like forever ago that I wrote and I suppose it has been some time. Life has been flying by at extra ordinary speeds! It's kind of fantastic, every day has something interesting and exciting going on. For the last 3 days or so its been raining almost non-stop. I like the rain but everyone seems to loathe it, probably because it doesn't help the flood warning that is already approaching. If you didn't know, they had an incredibly bad flood last year and signs aren't pointing to anything better. On Sunday the ward fasted that God would stay the flood. I hope it doesn't get to bad this year but we are still facing the danger. I suppose that is what we get for living on a flood plain. Luckily I think Amanda and I are plenty far away from danger, so I am not too worried about it. For mutual activities this week the young men and women went to fill sandbags, unfortunately I missed the memo, but my guess is that I will have some time to help in the future. Last year they invited all non-essential businesses to shut down to help sandbag. Amanda's company shut down for 2 or 3 whole days... scary.

There is a positive side to the rain and that is that Fargo has been increasingly growing in size. The snow is shrinking and everything is starting to look bigger, no more 3 feet walls of snow on every road. I honestly felt like the snow was never going away, little did I know that the rain would be a great help.

Well enough about the weather. My life has been sprinting in the fast lane, at least the fast lane at work! Pills! Tomorrow my training is complete... and by complete I really just mean a gain in responsibility, and really (I know again) I mean on Monday we will be open for business in our new location.... Ok, maybe I should rewind a bit... I work for Thrifty White Drug (this is the corporate name). In North Dakota there is another company named Thrifty Drug, so here we are known as just White Drug, out of respect of course.... or legality, I'm not quite sure about that. Anyway, when I was hired on Feb. 1st of this year I was told of the plans that I would working in a brand new facility called New Bethany, this is one of the new prototype stores because it is located directly in a LTC (Long Term Care) facility, aka nursing home. WELL... the first week I work here, I just helped out in the warehouse (no Pharmacy Techs, CPhT's, just workers), but this was fine because we assembled orders of drugs for our facilities and I got to kind of participate in the back end of where our drugs come from. Then after a week of that my formal/really informal training began in the warehouse across the street. Now I was surrounded by actual tech's and pharmacists, but in an incredibly busy environment with no one really standing next to me just showing me how to do things... lets just say I was making a lot of educated guesses at what I should be doing. Side note: I am mainly referring to the usage of the computer and associated programs that were completely foreign to me. I worked there for 3 weeks and got hit or miss training but by the end I could figure out my way around a refill or two. Then they sent me to the Old Bethany. This is where I received my best training from the trainer. Go figure, right? Who would have guessed that once they sat me down with a trainer I would be able to really understand things. Those first couple weeks I was really struggling with feelings of non-productiveness and uselessness (haha, -nesses). I really do not enjoy feeling like I am not working for the money I am getting paid. Well, two weeks later at Old Bethany and a couple of days with the trainer, plus lots of hands on practice (they are super busy at the Old Bethany too) I am feeling 150% more confident! I still recognize that I need a lot more to learn but at least I know what I am doing and how to do it! The pharmacy manager at the giant warehouse sat down with me one of my last days there (maybe because he saw my discouragement) and said to me that I shouldn't worry about picking things up because that would come with time and he said that it really takes 6-8 months to feel comfortable with the position and that I shouldn't fret about it. After he said the 6-8 month thing, my mind kind of stopped listening and I thought to myself that if it takes that long I might shoot myself... Well I really don't think it will come to that because 2 weeks of real training is already paying off. I feel a lot more comfortable with the system and I am real excited to move into a brand new facility (the Old Bethany is a tiny hole in the wall, wasn't really meant to be a pharmacy before) and tomorrow we are moving into the new one. Saturday (time and a half baby!) we are opening to the public (sort of, not really until Monday but we will be showing off to the public as they tour New Bethany). I need to post some pictures because this place is ridiculously nice, maybe next post. That is about it, I have been living, eating, and drinking, pharmacy for the past couple months. When I get home at night I think about pharmacy and right now I am thinking about pharmacy, even though the idea of sleep is becoming more powerful as each moment passes. I need to get some rest the day tomorrow will be long! I'll let you know more later.

Gee-off!

P.s. - Remind me that I need to talk about cars and scouts next time... until then.