Finishing up...

The next two weeks will be brutal...finals! Actually two of my classes end this coming week, my last class ends on 12/19. I just received my schedule for next quarter, 5 classes, I had 4 this quarter. Today we did cold therapy. Amazingly enough it works! Actually, it is kind of painful at first, icing a muscle or muscle group with ice. We used water frozen in a small Dixie cup, then peeled the cup off exposing the chunk of ice. Rubbing the ice, wiping the water (water dripping is a gross feeling), rubbing the ice, wiping...at first, the cold is startling, then the stinging hurts, by the time the area is numb, you have acheived your goal. The body will return new blood to the area, promoting healing. I had my knee done, and I can tell you I felt no pain the rest of the day. Two weeks ago, we used moist heat therapy, which works to heat the muscles to make them more pliable, conserving the practitioners energy for more focused, specific work. The heat packs we used felt soooo good! Each therapy has its place and depending on what you want to achieve will determine the method used.

There are a couple of classmates who may not make it to the next quarter. They've missed too many classes, and though they may make up the work, points for class participation are lost and cannot be made up. Shame. We started with 18, we are down to 14. We have a guy from Vietnam who is having problems with the language, I believe. I have only worked with him once, and I didn't feel comfortable. I have to say last quarter, in Ethics class, we were given a scenario where we had to dissect the various elements of the story for ethics infractions, write what the practitioner did wrong and what he did that maintained his integrity. Well, this guy, I'll call him R, asked if I was done with my project. I said yes, because I was (well, kind of, it was my first draft). He asked if he could see it. I gave it to him. The minute I gave it to him, I knew it was wrong. Here we were in an Ethics class, and he asks for my paper (unethical), and I gave it to him (unethical). It took him one week to give it back to me. I never asked him for it, my bad. I learned a valuable lesson. Since that day, I've just had a really bad vibe for him. I don't trust him. I have been giving another classmate a ride home after class, and she told me that he has really bad body odor (a no no for this type of profession), and once when she had paired up with him, he carelessly exposed her - 3 times! We do massages on each other during class, practicing for when we get "real" clients...a very basic principle we learned in all our classes, the client must feel safe at all times, so our draping must be impeccable! After the massage, she gave him feedback to that effect, that he had exposed her, and he told her that because she was too fat, therefore her sheets were too small to cover all of her, and if she felt exposed, it was her fault! She told the instructor, and he was called on it. That just leaves a really bad feeling for me about him. The time when I worked on him, he was telling me that I was doing the technique wrong. I'm all for feedback because that is how we improve, however, there is a right way, constructive, and a wrong way, destructive! Interesting dynamics to say the least!

Work is starting to pick up, though house counts are still below what they were two years ago. Expectations for 2010 are on par with 2009, and we don't expect any drastic changes until 2011 or beyond! I manage to stay pretty busy with small projects that do not require much thought...oy vey!

Hey, the UofA won their last game of the season over USC!! First time in over 7 years that we have beaten the Trojans, and on their home field...which means we are going to a bowl game!! The Holiday Bowl to be precise. Glen cannot get the time off of work so my sister and I are going to San Diego! As soon as tonights game ended, tickets went on sale to season ticket holders first, the general public will get an opportunity on Tuesday to purchase. Actually, you request via an application, and they determine whether I will get the tickets. I am so excited...now if I can just get the time off of work! Since converting to a single bank system for PTO, I get the holidays "off", but I still have to use PTO to cover that time off. It kind of sucks but it is what it is.

I've been catching up on blogs, and though I don't always comment, rest assured I am keeping up with y'all happenings! Thanks to you guys for hanging in there with me even though I don't write often.

Talk soon...