Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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Learn more about careers in Nursing

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I wonder how many people who read my page are nurses, or have thought of becoming a nurse as a career? Even though I haven’t been able to work for a while due to my Crohns, I can tell you that I love my career choice. If you’ve been reading this page for a while you probably also know that becoming a nurse wasn’t my first career choice. It took me a while to come around to nursing. I was a make up artist first, then a Jeweller to the trade, and only when the Jewelry trade went into recession did I decide that I wanted to make a career out of helping others.

As a nurse, I can tell you that you will never come home from your shift feeling glamorous, but you will come home from your shift most of the time feeling like you’ve made a difference in someones life. Whether that feeling of accomplishment comes from making someone who’s in pain feel just a little bit better, making someone laugh, or from saving a life – you’ll know you made a difference.

If you’ve been thinking of becoming a nurse or going back to school to take some specialty courses in nursing you should take a look at the Nursing Degree Guide. You’ll find information on the site about the various types of nurses/ nursing careers from LVN/LPN, RN, specialties and advanced practice Nursing.

The Nursing Degree guide also has information regarding the various types of Nursing Degrees that are available Online and in Universities, such as Associates Degree, Bachelor’s Degree and Master’s Degree courses. If you are interested in getting a Degree you can read up on what’s involved in the course and the specialties that you can branch out into when you achieve your degree.

I really enjoyed reading this site and getting more information on the courses available to me. I was also pleased to find that if I wanted to take more courses that there is a way for me to take them online through the University of Phoenix, Kaplan Nursing and six other Colleges and Universities that offer Online courses.

I hope that if any of my readers have ever thought of a career in nursing that they will take a look at the Nursing Degree Guide for an explanation of the types of nursing careers that are available today. There are nursing shortages all over North America. We need more nurses to join us in our work. It’s demanding, but it’s also satisfying work.

I can tell you that one of the reasons why there are long waiting times in the ER and for surgeries is because of the nursing shortage. I work in one of the busiest ER’s in Canada and while we are likely one of the best staffed units in our hospital, most days we could easily double our staff and still have people waiting to be seen.





Crazy time of year for Jewellers

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‘Tis the season, and no I don’t mean the Holiday season I mean the season for getting engaged. Back when I used to be a jeweller this would be the busiest time of year. From at least mid October and up until the first week or January I’d be busy working as much as 18 hour days putting diamond cut designs on bands, signets, bangles and other pieces of jewelry. I also did gold electroplating and made rubber molds so that jewelry pieces could be reproduced easily in wax form and then cast into gold by melting the was forms out of a hardened plaster of paris type of mix.

By Christmas time each year I was exhausted. I love Christmas but back in those days- having that one or two days off was nicer than the holiday itself. I swear in the few hours I slept each night during the busiest time of year I’d dream of all the designs that I’d do on wedding bands, engagement rings, and bracelets.

My husband Chris worked for another business, and well he wasn’t my husband at the time, he was still only my boyfriend. He did jewelry repair and he set stones in pieces as well. If we’d merged both of our talents into my business, plus kept my sister around with her engraving business we would have made a killing.

During that time of year Chris and I were not only working hard in our respective jewelry businesses but we also made jewelry for our friends. I don’t know how many times we’d bring home loose diamonds for our visiting friends to choose from, and then once they’d picked out what they decided was the perfect diamond for their soon to be fiance we’d make up whatever engagement ring they’d picked out. It’s a good thing that we both had good connections with diamond wholesalers because we’d often get discount prices on the diamonds our friends had picked out. Our friends always got a great price on any custom designed jewelry that we did for them. Lucky dogs!

My husband and I got engaged on New Years Eve, but we didn’t even have an engagement ring at that time. In fact I still don’t have an engagement ring. I really don’t care either. I don’t know too many people that work in the jewelry trade- I mean the people who actually make the jewelry – that really wear much jewelry. I have a fantastic collection, but I rarely wear it.

My sister is still an engraver and I know she’ll be working long hours this month. Ah, the life of a jeweller.

So when did you get engaged? And more importantly, what time of year did you start picking out your engagement rings and wedding bands? Are you one of the people that used to drive me nuts at this time of year?

Thinking of returning to school

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Have you ever considered going back to school? I know that I’ve thought about it, particularly now that I’m off work due to illness. I’m starting to think that I might need to consider changing careers if I want to keep working. Being an ER nurse and working continuous 12 hour shifts is difficult when you have a chronic illness. Actually, prior to becoming a nurse I was a jeweller and I did end up going back to school- for nursing – when a severe recession hit and dramatically affected my business. So, as someone who’s already changed the course of her career path, it’s not that difficult for me to think about doing it again.

I found a site online called Capella university and I think this might be a perfect way for someone like me, or perhaps someone with a full time job and family who can’t afford to take a few years off work in order to go back to school. Capella University offers online courses. Students of the University can study for graduate degree programs in fields such as business, education, information technology, human services and psychology. Capella also offers bachelors degree programs in information technology and business.

When I was reading information about Capella University I discovered that there are currently 16,000 students from all 50 states of the USA, and 63 countries, and that the University has been teaching students since 1993.

I think I’m going to look into the courses at Capella just in case I find out that I won’t be able to go back to my former job.

Have you thought about investing in gold bullion?

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There’s gold in them thar vaults!

As I’m sure many of you know people have always purchased gold in the form of bullions as a way of investing their money in the hopes of getting a better return on their money when the value of gold increases.

Having been a jeweller in the past I have a tendency to watch the gold prices as they scroll by on the screen during the nightly newscast. When I was a jeweller in the late 80’s gold prices reached the highest that they’d ever been. Business was booming and people were purchasing all forms of gold as an investment. In the last 5 years the price of gold has steadily increased reaching, I believe, an all time high earlier this year.

If you’ve ever thought of investing money into gold bullion now might be a good time. A company called BullionVault.com has created a revolutionary new way for individuals to buy and sell gold bullion online. The gold bullion being traded is held in high security Brinks Vaults in international vaults – in London, New York or Switzerland. Clients using BullionVault can check on the value of their holdings daily because the company publishes the values daily on the site using anonymous aliases that are known only to the client his or herself.

Using the live Market order board at BullionVault you can buy or sell your gold holdings at real-time gold market prices. Apparently BullionVault.com has close to 2 tonnes of gold bullion in the vaults. There is a lot of valuable information on the site if you’d like to learn more about investing in gold bullion.

Jewel embedded eyeballs?

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Ok raise your hand if you typed a strange search term over at Google or yahoo or whichever search engine you use and it brought you here. Alright, not that many hands in the audience. Sigh of relief.

I’d really like to know who -and more importantly – why? someone was searching for jewels embedded eyeballs – **ewwww* – and how that ended up bringing them to my site?

That search brought the sadist to my post Sqeaky clean golden girl where I talked about preparing for a colonoscopy and, at the time, an upcoming MRI and somehow went off on a tangent. Gee when do I ever do that? The tangent led me into a discussion about how, when I used to be a jeweller, I ended with gold stuck in my eyeballs quite often.

Now I know that a tiny little sliver of gold stuck in your eyeball hurts like hell. When that would happen to me when I was cutting designs in gold with a diamond flywheel or my diamond cutting machine I’d make my way as best as I could to the optometrist that happened to work in the same building with my eye watering like mad and me trying not to blink too much as that would have made the situation worse.

So if a tiny sliver of gold is extremely painful in your eyeball think about how painful a ruby or a 1/4 carat diamond would be! Geez what was that person thinking searching for jewels embedded eyeballs? Were they searching for people with gems in their eyes or eyeball ornaments that had jewels embedded in them?

Is this going to be some new, and likely short lived, fashion trend? If it is- well remember folks, you heard about it here first.

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