Killin' It In Kansas

So my first actual travel assignment is finally here. It's in a small town in mid-eastern Kansas named Emporia. Yep, it's about as exciting as the name implies. LOL Unfortunately, the timing could have been better. Matt landed a job in Austin back in Jan making Union wages (practically unheard of in Texas!) His job runs until mid to end of April. So arrangements had to be made, because we couldn't BOTH have the Rollie House. Besides, TALE (our Texas Annual Letterboxing Event) was coming, and we needed the Rollie House in Texas for that. So a friend agreed to let me use her little baby camper for a month if I made her

payment. It was only 22ft long, so about

half the length of the Rollie House, and NO slides, so.... It's adorable, but wow was it TINY. It also had a control panel just on the side of the cabinet, facing the bed, with no cover. The switches lit up BRIGHT blue when on, making it nearly impossible to sleep! I crafted this nifty rustic cover and installed it on hinges to cover the control panel. I decorated the front of it, but forgot to take pictures of it afterwards. LOL But I digress....I took the baby camper to Kansas with Miss Tilly by myself, and left Matt in Austin for a month.

Off I went on my very first real travel assignment. I spent 3 weeks alone in the baby camper in an awful, incredibly loud park with the most intrusive and weird park manager. After those 3 weeks, I took the camper back to my friend and covered her week of spring break like I'd already promised and had built into my Kansas contract. TALE was the following weekend, so I just flew back to Emporia and worked my 3 12's, then flew back to Austin in time for Matt to snatch me from the airport and head 5 hours away to TALE. As soon as TALE was over, I hooked up the Rollie House and headed back to Emporia for the rest of my 12 week contract and Matt went to stay with friends while he finishes up his job. Like I said, not the best of timing.

It has been great for my self esteem and for training purposes, though! I am now much more confident that I can walk in to a strange place and learn it fairly quickly. I've learned several new computer systems, gotten in practice with some different X-ray equipment I hadn't touched in years, and I finally got my hands on a Toshiba!!! There are 4 different brands of CT scanners commonly used across the US - GE, Phillips, Siemens and Toshiba. I know the first 3, but had never touched a Toshiba. This facility was willing to train me for a week or so on the Toshiba if I took the contract, which is why I ended up jumping thru my ass back and forth between Kansas and Texas. :-/ I had lost out on a contract in Arizona just after Christmas because I did not have experience on the Toshiba, and I really needed to fix that. So now here I sit in Kansas, just me and the fur babies in the Rollie House. I chose a different park this time, a bit of a drive from the facility but OH SO WORTH IT to rid myself of the creepy park manager! And in the meantime, while working and waiting for the Crabby Ol' Man to join me, I've been busy learning the Toshiba scanner and researching various historical places and people to make into letterboxes. This state is QUITE lacking in letterboxes and I aim to help with that.

Emporia is not bad, just fairly little. There is some nice old architecture, and the area is apparently teeming with Native American history. The department has the most heart-warming children created ceiling tiles! It is FABULOUS to wear cute scrubs again!!!! I HATE being color coded! :-/ There are lots of nice people here. They are for the most part quite friendly, even if they do talk funny. LOL The first time I went to fetch a patient from the ER, the nurse asked me, "Are you taking him by c

art?" All I could think was, "This ain't freakin' HEB!" Apparently a cart here is the same thing as a bed or gurney back in Texas. Coke is called pop. There's a liquor store on every corner because it's the only place they are allowed to sell beer and wine. Basketball is rea

lly important. They think driving more than 20 minutes to get somewhere is just AWFUL. They have no clue what "Fixin' to

" means. The roadways are much smaller. I think the largest I've seen is a 4 lane, and that was in Topeka - the capital. LOL The houses all seem to be at least story and a half, if not 2 story. Basements are definitely the norm. The farmers are beginning to plow and get their fields ready, and I am in awe of the deep, dark rich earth everywhere. There are lots of rolling hills and lakes, but so far it's been so cold and rainy and windy there's no way I was going to get out and see them. I'm hoping by the time Matt gets here I'll have stockpiled some letterboxes to plant and the weather will be nicer. They do not have my precious bluebonnets. But I have heard that Topeka has tulips, and the Topeka Tulip Festival is coming up, so you can look forward to that post and all of those pictures soon! Now if I could just find my damned flying monkeys.........