Red Rock - Four Days Off!

I got four days off in a row this week so we headed over to Red Rock National Conservation Area to check it out (mainly because one of Dave Matthews Band's best live concerts took place there) and it was amazing! It is a gorgeous area of mountains and fun place to hike. On Thursday we hiked a trail full of rock climbing and scrambling and got a wonderful view at the top of mountains and the city. It was odd to be immersed in nature and mountains and see Las Vegas when we got to the top. We also met a few native mid-westerners on the hike and talked for a while about the birds of Michigan. We had to go back since it's only a half hour drive from our hotel (and I had to test out my new hiking boots - there are 2 REI stores in vegas!) so on Saturday we headed out again. Being immersed in people, lights, city, and noise at all times it is odd to find yourself in the middle of nature and quiet - totally worth the drive. Our second hike was even more amazing being surrounded by large trees and green plants that I've never seen before; we're definitely not in Michigan anymore. Seeing cacti surrounded by snow is an interesting sight. We found a great spring with lots of rocks and waterfalls and forged our own trail (along with another thrill-seeking hiker) along the creek. I felt completely at peace and could go there every day. We found a perfect rock jutting out over the creek to sit on for lunch and we played a round of chess (which Matt is teaching me and I haven't won a game yet). I don't think I could handle vegas for more than 3 months but I think I could live in red rock if I had to.

~L

p.s. thanks for the hiking shirts mom and dad Hall, I felt like a professional in my comfy yet functional outfit - we match too!

I have a night off!!!!

I haven't thought much about anything besides work, sleeping, and work related requirements in the last two weeks, but I finally have tow nights off in a row! To fill everyone in, I was offered a 6 week contract at the hospital Centennial Hills which is great because I actually get to know the floor and the way things work instead of hopping from one floor/hospital to the next every day I work. The hard part is that it is a 30-60 minute commute depending on traffic and number of accidents on the way. The commute did spur the purchase of a GPS (fun new toy) because of the hour and a half it took me to get home one day due to unmoving traffic on the highway, which led into me (with poor directional sense and very little knowledge of Las Vegas roads) exiting and trying to take the streets home. I'm pretty sure that I did a full circle around city before finding the right end of the street I was looking for. I came home a very exhausted and frustrated Las Vegas nurse. Matt went out that day and bought a GPS for our car (which was on sale) and I LOVE IT!! It is so wonderful for finding anything we need here and it will be great with all of our uprooting and moving for the next few years.

Anyway, that's been the excitement for me unless you want to hear some fun stories and gory details of nursing, but I'll have to call deb or emily for that. I am liking the paycheck since I've been working overtime every week and I get paid double time for any overtime. I think it's worth living in a small hotel room for a few months.

Beginner's Luck

So...I wasn't going to gamble.

So many good reasons not to gamble. The odds are absurd, and I can do basic math. I don't see the fun in carpal-tunnel inducing repetitive pulling of a handle. I'm not Rain Man. The casinos are full of tobacco smoke and pickpockets. And to top it off, I have that great story about how I beat the house the one time I went to a casino in Michigan, and actually made a few bucks on the slots. I was going to walk away and be ahead of the casinos for life.

Cut to today- I was on the strip to buy tickets for The Lion King (I'll post my review of it Sunday). I parked in the MGM Grand parking garage, and walked through the gaming floor to get to the ticket counter on the strip. On my way back to the car I got turned around, as one tends to do in a casino. I had nowhere specific to go at the time, so I decided to find a penny slot machine and burn a dollar. I found my machine, put in my buck, and proceeded to play about 7 cents before becoming thoroughly bored with the process. The machine I picked didn't even have a lever; I was just pushing a button and watching my bet disappear a penny at a time. Really, how do people find that entertaining? I decided I was done, and hit the button to just bet the rest of my money all at once, figuring it wasn't worth the trouble to print out a slip and get it cashed out.

As soon as I pushed the button, the bells started ringing and the lights started flashing. I still don't fully understand how slot machines decide whether or not you win; the symbols that came up didn't match, so it must have been some special sequence. Regardless, I won. Not a lot ($3.80), but I did roughly quadruple my money and extend my winning streak against the casinos of the world. So that was fun.

(Expletive Deleted) Las Vegas

My bike was stolen from the rack outside the hotel. Someone cut the lock, and took my bike. I'm sick of this. Three times in a month, Laura and I have been the victims of theft, in three different cities, and three times we've gotten a polite "We''ll take a report, but you're out of luck" from the police. We went out and bought a bike rack for our car, drove 2200 miles with a bike obscuring the view out the back window, and within the first two weeks, some ne'er-do-well steals my bike. And the cherry on top of the theft sundae is that our insurance won't cover anything, because no individual theft was over the $500 deductible.

The worst part of being stolen from isn't the actual cost of what's stolen. It's the feeling of violation, of impotence, of vulnerability. I'm sick of it.

So I'm a little grumpy right now.

On the upside, we found a great coffee shop that serves vegan food and has lots of quirky artwork, and it's a reasonable bike ride away...oh.

But on a brighter note, Laura's family will be coming to visit in a month!

Also, classicist Robert Fagles has come out with a new translation of the Aeneid. While this may not sound terribly exciting to anyone else, it's a source of great excitement for me and my geeky ilk. "Wars and a man I sing-an exile driven on by Fate..."

What to do in Vegas?

Is it a bad sign that I'm already bored with Las Vegas?

I'm sure Las Vegas is thrilling if you're into gambling, bars, and strippers, but not being a fan of any of the above leaves me searching for interesting things to do. This is made a pressing concern by the fact that I need to be out of our hotel room during the days when Laura is asleep after work.

I'm interested in many of the shows in town, but the prices are insane.

Most of my hobbies require either people (D&D, board games) or equipment currently in storage in GR (computer games, painting minis). Of the two, I can more easily remedy the lack of people. Or rather, a person with properly developed social skills could more easily remedy the lack of people. How does one go about finding friends? All my existing friends are either very assertive, pushy people who found me, or are passive people connected to me through the aforementioned pushy people. ( I say "pushy" with love, pushy people.) So how do I find people without passively waiting for new pushy people to find me?

I made a sign. I backed it with cardboard and made a stand for it. I'm going to set it up next to me in coffee shops as friend-bait. It says:

Talk To Me

My name is Matthew

My wife and I are new in town

I'd like to meet new and interesting people, but am far too introverted to approach random strangers. Hence, this sign.

If you'd like to talk, please sit down and join me. I'm shy, but nice, and actually rather talkative if you get me started. I'm a bit nerdy, but mostly normal, this sign not withstanding.

Thank you for taking the time to read my strange sign.

Whether or not you sit down to talk, have a great day!

I'm still not starting conversations proactively, but I'm increasing the odds someone else will talk to me. Hopefully. Maybe I'm just establishing myself as one of the many crazies who wander the streets of Las Vegas. The first test run this afternoon was less than successful, but I'm going to blame that on location. I was in a Starbucks near our hotel, and the other customers were mostly Japanese businessmen and retired tourists. Nobody under 40. Once I find a good coffee shop, I'm optimistic that someone will take the bait.

Until then, I'm getting a lot of reading done, and making progress on outlining my book.

-Matthew

My First Night - The Next Hurdle

Well, I thought I'd add to the news now that my 3 foot stack of paperwork inquired here is done (yay!!) and I just finished my first night of work. It was quite an interesting experience. My first night was at Centennial Hills Hospital (one of 8 hospitals I am eligible to work at in this area). I walked in, they gave me a badge and threw 3 patients and 3 new admissions at me within the first 2 hours!! That may mean nothing to anyone not in the nursing field, but that's a lot of work! Even with all the craziness, a new charting system, trying to read paper orders (which I'm not used to, we do it all by computer in Michigan) it went well; the nursing staff was very helpful, I loved the charge nurse, and I'm making money again!! It feels good to know all the work/paperwork was worth it.

Plus, all the miscommunication through separate parties and the agency I'm working for, it was a bumpy start when I got here. I was told incorrect dates and times for orientation, and did not have anyone to contact to schedule me for actual work while I was here - it's difficult to work if no one can tell me where to go. But it was all figured out (with more phone calls and paperwork) and just as I was getting very frustrated with the whole system I was called by the vice-president of staffing with a full apology and statements that she wanted to do whatever she could to keep me with the company. That was a great boost in spirit before my first night of work, so all is going well on this end. They also told me I can work as many days as I want because they are in a great need for nurses - hello overtime! We'll see how much energy I have with all of the new and exciting situations. I do want to enjoy the area to some extent. That's all for now thanks for all the calls, comments, and support!

~L

p.s. Matt got his cell phone charger back so he's contactable again! Thanks mom and dad.

Address

Our address is:

Matthew & Laura Hall

Candlewood Suites Room 247

4034 S. Paradise Road

Las Vegas, NV 89169

We'll be living here until April 2.

-Matthew

Evening coffee

Laura and I decided to go out and find a coffee shop to hang out at tonight; since our living space is so small, getting out regularly sounds like a good idea. After a bit of research, though, we found that the part of Vegas we're living in suffers from a severe shortage of coffee shops that don't feature mermaids on their cups.

We did find a listing for one promising looking shop that had lots of favorable reviews and was just down the street from us. We grabbed books and games and set out to settle in for an evening of relaxing and sipping coffee. Unfortunately, when we got there, we discovered that they closed at 6. Coming from a neighborhood where there were several coffee shops within walking distance, and several 24 hour shops within a short drive, the idea that there are no open coffee shops is astounding.

Rather than just wander back to our room right away, we decided to swallow our pride and find a Starbucks. We passed one that was closed before finding an open one. A few minutes after getting our drinks and sitting down, one of the workers came to our table to tell us they were closing for the night. 8pm, and they're done. Does nobody in this town need a latte after dinner? Is our only option for a place to hang out the casinos? We're vaguely near UNLV; I intend to find out if they have a decent coffee shop on campus.

PS- I forgot my cell phone charger in GR, so until it arrives by mail, calling me will not be effective.

-Matthew

A long post to get things started

Let me start out by saying that I've never been good at keeping a diary or keeping in touch with people, which doesn't bode well for my ability to keep up with a blog. Laura and I will try our best to post regularly, but there are no guarantees.

That being said, let me fill you in on what led up to our current situation. (Writing about the past - I have a degree in this!)

Laura and I decided a while ago that we would like to leave Grand Rapids for a while before we had anything (children) that would hold us in place for a couple decades. Since being laid off from the Public Museum in July, I've been a bit aimless and underemployed, and Laura has been frustrated with the work situation on her floor at St. Mary's, so we were both ready to go somewhere, anywhere, soon. We looked at several options for adventure, and ended up deciding on travel nursing.

While travel nursing, Laura will be working for a different hospital in a different city every three months. We'll get to see a lot of new places, and Laura will get to experience a wide variety of hospital environments. Housing is included, and the company helps pay the travel costs, so this is the most cost-effective way imaginable to see the country, one three-month block at a time.

We got the call at the beginning of December, just before flying to Alaska to visit my parents. The travel nursing company overnighted a book of paperwork to Anchorage, and Laura filled out several dozen forms. We had a few snafus with paperwork, but everything got sent and processed eventually. We hastily packed up our apartment, put most of our possessions in storage, and only took with us what we could fit in or on our battered blue Ford Taurus. Fully packed, the back of the car rode about six inches lower than the front, and we were a little worried about whether or not the car would die an untimely death in the middle of Arizona, but it came through okay. (Special thanks are due to cousin Peter Wiersma, whose prayer at the family Christmas party we credit with responsibility for our safe journey.)

We had a few bumps before setting out; while packing, we discovered that some of our camping gear had been stolen from our basement, and while we were in Chicago with Laura's family, her wallet was stolen, giving us a new mountain of paperwork to deal with two days before we were supposed to head out to Las Vegas. Additionally, the Streelman Christmas party seems to have been a nexus for the transmission of some sort of stomach virus, and Laura, Paul, and Abby were all ill while we were in Chicago.

Because of the last-second wallet-replacement paperwork, we didn't leave GR until about 2:30 last Thursday. We made it a little past St. Louis on the first day of driving. On Friday, we made it across Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, and half of New Mexico before stopping in Albuquerque. We drove across the Hoover Dam on Saturday and drove into Las Vegas around sunset. I'd throw in more interesting details, but really, all we did is drive for about 10 hours a day. I will suggest that you avoid the Budget Host Inn in Albuquerque. Compile every stereotype of a dirty motel into one poorly-cleaned composite, and you have the Budget Host Inn. Ick.

So now we're in Las Vegas. Laura starts orientation tomorrow, and I'm taking care of the remaining loose ends and setting up house before I look for gainful employment. The most common question I've been asked regarding this whole adventure, and the one for which I have the least definitive answer, is "So what will you be doing?" I will be keeping house, working on Grad School applications, writing a novel (something in the fantasy adventure genre), and looking for some sort of job. We're right down the street from a casino hiring center, so I'll start there.

We're living in a extended-stay hotel about a mile off the strip, in a tiny studio room. Having gotten used to our palatial apartment in GR, this will be interesting. We're going to need to be more diligent about keeping everything in its place, or chaos will erupt.

As I said above, we'll try to keep everyone up to date. Oh, and no, we weren't in the Las Vegas courthouse this morning.

-Matthew