Black Friday at CVS

After spending time reading blogs about shopping at CVS for practically nothing, I have decided to give it a go. Thanks Mama Cheaps, Savings with Shellie, and Kingdom First Mom! My first week I did have to put in a little bit to get my initial Extra care Bucks (ECB), but now I am bringing home lots of goodies for very little money. I am still getting the hang of it, so there is a mistake here or there, but that's no biggie. Here was my shopping trip today!

Transaction 1

Leftover ECB: $1 ECB

Buy: 1 Carmex Lip Balm @ $1

Get: $1 ECB

Total Cost: FREE

Transaction 2

Leftover ECB: $1 ECB

Buy: 2 Colgate Total Advanced Toothpaste @ $2.87 each

Use: (2) $1/1 Colgate Advanced Toothpast coupons

Get: $5.74 ECB

Total Cost: $2.74 ($1.87 each)

Transaction 3

Leftover ECB: $5.74 ECB

Buy: 1 Philips Earbuds Headphones @ $6

Get: $6 ECB

Total Cost: $1.25

Transaction 4

Leftover ECB: $6 ECB

Buy: 1 Cepacol Lozenges @ $4.99

Buy: 1 Mars Chocolate Singles @ $0.75

Buy: 1 Kleenex Pocket Tissues @ $0.69

Get: $5.74 ECB

Total Cost: $0.43

Transaction 5

Leftover ECB: $5.74 ECB

Buy: 3 Mars Chocolate Singles @ $0.75 each

Buy: 2 Holiday M&Ms large bags @ $2.50 each

Use: (1) $1/2 Holiday M&Ms coupon

Get: $2.25 ECB

Total Cost: $0.51

Transaction 6

Leftover ECB: $2.25 ECB

Buy: 2 Holiday M&Ms large bags @ $2.50 each

Use: (1) $1/2 Holiday M&Ms coupon
Buy: 1 Kleenex Cool Touch Tissues @ $1.50

Get: $5.50 ECB (1 ECB @ $4 and 1 ECB @ $1.50)

Total Cost: $3.25

Total Cost of Products: $32.41

I Spent: $8.18

Savings: 75%

Happy Savings!

By George, I Think She's Got It!

Eurekea! I've got. I have spent the past several months trying to figure out exactly what I want this blog to be and I figured out that that I should mix my two new hobbies together; nursing (yes, it's a hobby in addition to a profession) and couponing. Yes, I have been dragged into the couponing craze, and yes, it is addictive. While I have initially had to put some money in, I am already saving.

Today being Black Friday means that there are deals to be had and as we all know, Dana LOVES a good deal. Last night I was crazy or stupid enough (you decide) to stand in line at Best Buy when the store opened at 1 AM. I did meet some great people and it was something that I believe everyone should experience at least once in their lifetime. We got to b*tch out some linecuter and party it up for a few hours since I did arrive at 9:30 PM. While I was unable to score the 42" HDTV for $199 that I initially went for, but I did manage to get my hands on a $79.99 Blue Ray player for only $39.99. After spending all that time in line, I couldn't not get anything. I figure that when I do finally get a new HDTV, I will have a pretty Blu Ray player all ready to make the experience complete and a couple of Harry Potter Blu Rays that have never been played.

My other purchase today was the fabulous All You magazine. Every month this magazine is filled with over $75 worth of coupons. I figured that this would aid in my addiction. I purchased this magazine from Magazines.com through eBates. It's a truly fantastic system. eBates gives you cash back for shopping at certain retailers. Yesterday eBates was offering 52% back from Magazines.com. The purchase price for 2 years was $34 dollars. Through eBates I will get $17.68 back, meaning that 2 years is only $16.32 or $0.80 an issue. The magazine also has recipes and articles that should keep me entertained on the bus to and from school.

I hope to have my CVS shopping escapades published soon, but until then, toodles!

Sunny With A Chance of Humidity, Humidity, and...

You guessed it; more humidity!!! Today and tomorrow both have highs between 95 and 100 degrees F (35 to 38 degrees Celsius (for my European reader)) What sucks is that since the public schools don't let out for another two weeks, the town pool doesn't open until then. This means I am sitting in my air conditioned house when I would rather be out at the pool swimming and giving my skin some much deserved Vitamin D after a winter of being cooped up inside due to the ridiculous number of snowstorms that decided to dump a foot or two of snow in Boston every few weeks. I should be finishing my lab report for Chemistry, prepping the next one, and doing my homework, but that doesn't seem like much fun. Remind me again why I signed up for summer school? Oh right, in order to start nursing classes in the Fall I had to take Biochemistry. Luckily we are halfway done, and to tell you the truth, it hasn't been too, too bad, but during a week like this, I would rather be outside basking in the sun (with SPF 15+ of course). I'm lucky that I don't burn too easily.

I booked my 4th of July vacation this week. My class finishes on July 30th and I fly to New Jersey at 6:00 am the next morning. Once I land in New Jersey, I have an hour and a half train trip to the Jersey Shore, and then it will be a long holiday weekend of sitting on the beach and visiting with my friend, Emilie. I am really looking forward to relaxing and not having anything to worry about. We haven't decided where we are going to watch the fireworks, but we will either watch the fireworks down the Shore or the NYC fireworks. Usually I go to the Jersey Shore in mid-August, but since Emilie is applying for teaching jobs, she doesn't know where she will be come mid-August. I will have from Friday to Tuesday down there, I will come back and work a short week, and then I go up to Northern Vermont for a week of golfing and good food on Lake Champlain. I am taking advantage of vacationing and relaxation this summer, because come September I will be in school for the next 20 months and I won't have the summers off.

Anyways, I should return to homework. Toodle-oo!

Nurses Are Real Medical Professionals

So, my alma mater has an anonymous site that students can post questions, thoughts, secrets, etc. and people can post comments to the original posts. The site can be toxic. Every several months I will visit the site to see what is on the mind of current students and current happenings at the school. I will preempt what I am about to write by saying that Mt. Holyoke does not offer a nursing major/minor. The closest would be either the pre-med program or the certificate in Public Health with the consortium that Mt. Holyoke is part of with 5 other schools. MHC students tend to be a bit elitist. Anyways, on my last visit to the site a student had posted a comment about nurses not being real medical professionals and that nurses should leave helping people to doctors. Last I checked, nurses do a fair amount of helping people. I was furious at the comment. How can someone be so ignorant. She went on to say that she was the daughter of a doctor and that she only uses specialists for her medical treatment. This girl apparently doesn't have a PCP, but rather a gynecologist, orthopedic surgeon. gastroenterologist, psychiatrist, ENT, immunologist, endocrinologist, dermatologist, and a neurologist (sounds a bit like a hypochondriac to me...). The comment of hers that scared me the most was when she said that her father, a neurosurgeon, was not even CPR certified. I definitely wouldn't want this girl's father operating on me. I expect my doctor's to be up-to-date on all their certifications, and her father doesn't sound like her is. At my doctor's office it is easier and faster to get in to see the PA or the NP than my actual doctor, and personally I think they do a great job. In addition to saying that nurses are not real medical professionals, she made the assumption that NPs do not specialize. When I was researching where to apply for my second degree, I came across a number of direct-entry programs. Every single one of them required the applicant to select a specialty at the master's degree level. Having come across that information, I would say that means that NPs do indeed specialize. I will end my post by saying that there were plenty of others that did stick up for the nursing profession and other medical professionals (not including doctors) and my favorite comment of all was the post saying,

Clearly you've never been in an Emergency Room, OP. Nurses run that shit.

BTW, I'd like to see a doctor getting their hands dirty triaging patients at a fatal multi-vehicle accident on the highway at 2am. Or performing CPR on the floor of someone's home surrounded by their hysterical relatives. Or carrying a 300lbs CHF patient in respiratory distress down 2 flights of stairs. Or delivering a baby in a moving vehicle going 70 mph. It was a boy, in case you were wondering. :)

I hope you didn't graduate this year, because I'll keep your opinion in mind next time you call 911 in South Hadley and I show up to take care of you. ♥

Until next time...

A New Blog; A New Dream

I will begin by saying, this is my fourth blog to date. The early ones date back to high school on the LiveJournal network when I wasn't at a good place in my life. My third was short lived, as it was one I kept during my semester abroad in Amsterdam to keep family and friends up to date on my escapades, but here I am beginning my fourth blog.

A year and a half later and my dream of nursing school seems to be finally within reach. I am only 2/3 of a class away from actually beginning this dream. When I was let go from my job (which I HATED) in late Fall 2009, I didn't know where my life was headed, but now I seem to know exactly where my life is headed. It all started in January 2010 when I began taking the prerequisites for nursing school. I had to start at the very beginning (cue song from the Sound of Music) with Intro Biology and Intro Chemistry. They were like any intro class; boring, but necessary. Summer 2010 included a trip to Italy to visit fabulous Haley (a college friend who is also an avid blogger about life in Sicily, Italy), but the rest was taken up by an accelerated Into to Psychology course. You would have thought that having been an education minor at Mt. Holyoke that I would have already taken Intro Psych, but somehow I managed around that requirement. Fall 2010 brought me to my Microbiology and Anatomy & Physiology I requirements. It was the first time I felt like truly I could see my goal. I had finished all the intro classes and now I was on to more specialized classes. This was also the semester I applied to nursing school (apparently a 4 week turnaround meant 3 months). This past semester (Spring 2011) brought me even closer taking Anatomy & Physiology II and Life Span Development. I survived finals week while suffering from gastroenteritis, and I made it to the summer and my final prerequisite: Biochemistry. The class is only 6 weeks long and we just finished week 2. It is moving fast and I am learning a lot. I feel that I can actually touch my goal now, so here's to an excellent summer term and to starting my nursing classes in the fall.

Two weekends ago I had my first college reunion (2-years) at Mt. Holyoke College in Western Massachusetts, right near where the tornadoes hit on Wednesday afternoon/evening. My heart goes out to the people out there and I hope that things will go back to normal soon. Going back to my alma mater is always a positive experience. Being surrounded by successful women and knowing that they have made a difference in the world makes me want that for my life, too. There is a hallway in the library connecting the older section containing the stacks with the newer section containing the technology. Along that hallway are pictures of famous alumna and their contributions to society. Some of my favorites are Virginia Apgar (Apgar score for newborns), Frances Perkins (1st women appointed to a presidential cabinet), and Florence Schorske Wald (nurse, dean of Yale School of Nursing, and founder of the hospice movement in the U.S.), just to name a few. It is so empowering to walk this hallway and being surrounded by all these people made me realize that I don't just want to stop at my RN-BSN, but I want to get my NP, and maybe a master's in Public Health. Who knows, I am still young, but that weekend away relit the fire inside of me to become great.