16 Feb 2009 Monday

Well tomorrow is the big day at the Dentist office. I found out that they have blocked off 2 ½ hours for my appointment. And oh yes, I have filled the prescription for the Valium pills. I need to go out to the car and bring them in. I wasn’t sure I had a ride to and from the appointment so I hadn’t planned on taking them, but M got a friend of hers to come out and get me to take me in and M will get out of work early to take me home. So I plan on getting slightly loaded tomorrow morning.

My only problem is that I have never taken Valium before so I have no idea how they will affect me. I’m already getting a bit twisted up in my guts just thinking about it. I know that I’m going to be worked on for 2 ½ hours tomorrow. Ok. Time to change the subject.

Going Back to School:

I have decided that I’m going to go back to school for something like radiology or something like that. I will be going later this week to the nearby University that I attended a few years ago and get my transcripts and then I’m going to go to the nearby community college and see what I need to do. I also plan on going ahead and taking a welding class too.

I did some research this past weekend and I may be able to get an Associates of Science Degree just based on my current transcripts or at least some kind of Associates degree.

Based on that I may be able to take just a few classes and get some kind of Certification. We’ll have to see what the counselor at the Community College has to say.

I guess the short term plan for right now is to not spend much money and collect my unemployment checks while going to school. The long term plan is to get hired at the VA based on the short term plan, then get the VA to pay for me to go to school and become an Occupational therapist. Some how I get the feeling that the long term plan will get changed or adjusted somehow and… Well who knows what will happen.

In the Meantime:

I have been keeping busy most of the time making beef jerky. I have some contacts that have tried my jerky and have suggested a plan to make a few bucks. There’s a local “watering hole” that has a really cool owner and he has suggested that if I were to show up on Friday or Saturday nights with jerky already bagged and ready to eat, he’d let me sell it to his customers.

So I have been experimenting with different mixes and drying times to get the absolute best jerky I can come up with. Plus I think I will be getting a second dehydrator so I can make more than 2 pounds of jerky at a time. Plus I have been using automatic timers so I can easily set up a batch and not have to worry about whether or not I will be home to shut off the machines when the batch is done. Also by doing that I get a more uniform texture to the jerky than if I was randomly checking the machine. The hardest part of the whole process is actually cleaning the trays for the dehydrator.

As another side thing to occupy my time I have been helping out at the gun carry permit classes and at the gun range during qualifying. I won’t be making any money off of doing this, however if I get trained as a Range Safety Officer, I’ll get a key to the gate and I will be able to go out and shoot at the range whenever I want to. And if members of the range want to shoot they need a Safety Officer there. I can see all kinds of perks that can come from that.

Well for a post that was supposed to be short, this thing really got stretched out. I’m headed for bed. Hopefully I’ll be able to sleep tonight.

I’m  Alive… So Far…