We only hit 108 today, a long awaited break from the >110 degree days we've had for longer than I can remember.
I read today that Google makes more money each year in advertising that ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX combined.
Taylor Swift is doing a concert in Phoenix tonight and the evening news included shots from outside the arena where she'll perform. Moms, teen and pre-teen girls, and a few husbands looking very out of place.
I got the other bed case painted and made the headboard. Tomorrow I'll sand and paint it, install the glides on the cases, and put the drawer fronts on. All that will remain at that point is making the end pieces and center braces. Getting close.
I also spent time filing the front edge of the driver's door and the back edge of the fender. The floor of the garage has a significant pile of metal filings but the to body panels still make contact. More filing tomorrow morning.
I worked on my Costa Rica sermons this afternoon while downing a cup of coffee at Starbucks. I have the proposition and outline for each, and some of the meat on those bones for the first of the two. The proposition for that first one:
* The Christian should live as a steward.
Sermon construction, at least as I learned and taught it, must begin with the careful development of the proposition. You can't have a tight, focused sermons without a good prop, and getting there typically requires several tries. I went through three before I landed on this one. The first two were about stewardship, but were slightly muddled, out of focus. This one works much better.
From Starbucks to the gym where I overdid it. I think my time out in the garage - from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. - left me too drained for the workout card I pulled from the deck. It involved burpees.
I feel bad for Pam. Her job situation continues to decline and she's hurt by the treatment she's receiving. Budget considerations increasingly govern management decisions, and as a result her hours continue to get cut back. It illustrates that medicine, like all big business, is dictated by the bottom line. Given the chance it's pennies over people, and if there's an opportunity to save a few bucks they'll jump on it so their superiors can see "maximum efficiency" in the monthly report. Efficiency is defined in terms of staff salaries relative to patient census.
It's no coincidence that hospitals are having trouble holding on to nurses. Maximum efficiency includes the number of patients per nurse, and the stress of a higher ratio has the good nurses bailing for other opportunities in the field, including those outside of the hospital setting. Newly graduated nurses, full of enthusiasm, eagerly fill those openings...for two years. By then they've fulfilled the commitment req'd to receive the help with their educational loans the hospital gives them as a signing bonus. Then they, too, move on.
If you've ever been hospitalized you've felt the sense of dependency on the knowledge, skill, and dedication of the staff. The nurses and aids are the front line, the faces you see. Behind them is a far larger group of equally essential employees who fix the meals, clean the rooms, do all the paperwork, keep the structure and its systems working, do the lab work, run the tests....
And all these people are increasingly under the administrative pressure of a matrix that dictates who works when, based on patient census.
It's all about the bottom line.
One more reason to hope you never get hospitalized.
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