Cross posted at Big Hit Box on 24 November 2009

Since my crib sheet format seems to  be quite popular, I thought I’d produce a short form of the retribution paladin info.  Much shorter than my other guides, and the EJ guide.  But packed full of information.

Specs and Glyphs

• Without DSac 5/9/57
• With DSac 5/11/55
• Use Major Glyph of Judgement and Major Glyph of Consecration.
• Use Minor Glyph of Sense Undead, Minor Glyph of Lay on Hands, Minor Glyph of Blessing of Might.
• For your last Major slot use Glyph of Seal of Vengeance if you are NOT expertise capped from gear.  If you ARE expertise capped from gear use Seal of Exorcism.

Abilities: DPS

• Your ‘rotation is FCFS or First Come First Served.  Hit the best of the abilities that is available to you at any given time.
• Priority order without 2P t9 set bonus from best to worst: HoW, CS, Judgment, DS, Cons., Exorcism, Holy Wrath.
• Priority order with 2P t9 set bonus from best to worst: Judgment, HoW, CS, DS, Cons., Exorcism, Holy Wrath.
• Only use Exorcism with a 2 point Art of War proc.
• Only use Holy Wrath on Undead only.
• You can only use Hammer of Wrath after the mob is below 20%.
• Always stand behind the mob if possible.  This means it cannot parry you.  But only if standing behind the mob won’t cause you or your tank to die horribly.

Abilities: Utility

• You can dispel magic, disease and poison and you should.
• Spare CDs and Art of War procs can be used for Flash Heal.  So can non-spare ones.  You can’t dps if you die.
• Use your Sacred Shield to reduce the damage you take.
• Lay on hands is good.  So are bubbles, Hand of Salvation, Hand of Sacrifice, Repentance, etc.  Learn how to use all your utility in a fight.

Gear

• Your hit cap is 8% hit (263 or 230 for Drenai).  You should ensure you are always capped.
• Your expertise cap is 26 or 214 rating (lower for Humans and Dwarves with certain weapons).  You should strive for this.
• After those stack strength, followed by crit.  Haste and  Armor Pen are meh – don’t stack them but don’t avoid them.  The same is true of Agility and Attack Power.  Spellpower and Intellect are bad.
• To see how your item rates against possible drops check out the Retribution Paladin Gear List.

Gems and Enhancements

• Use the Relentless Earthsiege Diamond meta gem.
• Use one Nightmare Tear +10 stats gem to activate it (this gem is prismatic and so counts as 1 red, yellow and blue).
• Use any hit/expertise gems to help you reach the cap.
• Use Bold Cardinal Ruby +20 strength gems in all slots, unless you have a yellow gem slot that will give you a +6 strength socket bonus or more.  Then use an Inscribed Ametrine +10 strength/+10 crit.
• Unless you have a profession that provides a better enchant, or are enchanting for caps, enchants and enhancements are:
  • Head: Arcanum of Torment (Knights of the Ebon Blade – Revered)
  • Shoulder: Greater Inscription of the Axe (Sons of Hodir – Exalted)
  • Chest: Enchant Chest – Powerful Stats (+10 stats)
  • Wrist: Enchant Bracer – Greater Assault (+50 AP)
  • Hands: Enchant Gloves – Crusher (+44 AP)
  • Waist: Eternal Belt Buckle (Made by BS, BoE)
  • Legs: Icescale Leg Armor (Made by LW, BoE)
  • Feet: Enchant Boots – Greater Assualt (+32 AP)
  • Weapon: Enchant Weapon – Beserking

..  Agriculture returned to the human scale.

If you are interested in some of the below have a look inside, ideas about them and their combination will show up eventually:

…

What/How/When:

• Earth
• Gardening
• Soil building
• Cover crops
• Green manures
• Rotations
• Seasonal everything
• Agrarianism
• M’ore’ganic  agriculture
• Nutrient dense food
• Cottage/artisan farming
• Home-steading
• Permaculture
• Square foot Gardening
• Intensive gardening methods
• Extensive gardening methods
• Kitchen gardens
• Monastic gardens
• Medicinal/herb gardens
• Orchard
• Pature
• Woodlot
• Chickens
• Small-scale grain
• more to come..

Who/Why

• Albrecht
• Gene Logsdon
• Catholic rural life movement
• Steve Solomon
• Eliot Coleman
• Christopher Alexander
• Charles Walters
• Dick Raymond
• Mel Bartholomew
• John Jeavons
• Wendel Berry
• The Agrarians
• Victor davis Hanson
• more to come..

I think I’ve been gone more than I’ve been home lately.  Here’s what I’ve been listening to in the car, in no particular order.

1. Blur – Blur (Virgin 1997)
2. The Sexy Accident – Mantoloking (independent 2009)
3. Spiritualized – The Complete Works, Volume One (Arista 2003)
4. Sam Billen – Headphones and Cellphones (The Record Machine 2009)
5. DJ Shadow – Private Press (MCA 2002)

DJ Vibe – Rotations Antena3

Mirror

Mirror

Mirror

Rotation #01

Artist: Utada Hikaru

Song: Easy Breezy – Language: English

Information:

This song is from Utada Hikaru’s first english album, Exodus. Incidentally it was also the first CD I owned from a foreign artist and so in honor of the Blog name and it being my first CD, I decided to upload this song first for rotation. Despite being Japanese, Utada’s english vocals are crisp and clear – she’s beyond fluent in english and she has such a strong,  pretty voice. This album was a hit and miss with people, but I personally liked it a lot. This song is light and bouncy and just overall fun.

[ Download ]

He’s a big, bad, monster deep within Dar Narbugud. It’s a tricky, Thrang-style fight. We’ve been at it a few weeks (I think would have been a bit faster with a fixed group, but our kin practices ‘rotations’ so we often have people new to the fight with us). We can now easily get through 1st and 2nd stage and yesterday got him to 38k on one attempt and then 28k on the next (from 500k). We’re making progress. And soon, it’ll be second nature to handle the transitions.

But for now, he’s my biggest frustration in LotRO. Captains, in our kin, are a rare breed at max level and radiance-d out. We get to go to most raids, which is quite a bit deal as every other class has to rotate between 3-4 players (we have more guardians but one is sitting out the rotation). I’m not a huge fan of rotation on such a wide-scale, but it’s meant to be fair to those who want to raid. Strictly, we’re very close to being able to run two raid groups, just not every week, and we’d be missing the Captains. So it’s a Catch 22 situation.

My personal views of rotations aside, what the situation does mean is that I get to see the fight every week, with both new and old people. I get to judge when I feel it’s gone better, when we’ve taken a step backwards, and I also get tired of the content faster, I imagine. For me this is attempt who-knows on the Blind One (we’re going again tonight after such close shaves), most people know how many times they’ve been. It’s blurring for me. And even if we do it tomorrow, there’s no guarantee we’ll do it next week. I worry I’m burning out a little. I still concentrate on being the best I can be when the fight starts, but I’m not enjoying it like I once was.

Would be nice to finish Dar Narbugud before Mirkwood comes out. I think and hope we will. The boss after The Blind One is supposed to be a lot easier, and is the last boss. I’d kind of like the armour set, as the Captain bonus is actually a decent one for once. Funnily, I’m not usually an ‘achiever’ in raids, I tend to go for the social aspect. Maybe skirmishes will fill that hole soon… though who doesn’t want to go to Dol Guldur and kick Nazgul butt!?

/ramble off.

I’ve decided to pare down my rotation posts to just five lucky albums.  Here they are for this past week or so, in no particular order.

1. Built to Spill – You in Reverse (Warner Bros. 2006)
2. David Bowie – Low (RCA – 1977)
3. Sal Paradise – Welcome (Tooth and Nail – 1996)
4. Guided By Voices- Human Amusements at Hourly Rates (Matador 2003)
5. Neu! – Neu! 2 (Brain 1973)

Since when did DKP become a polarising factor? I quite like it, and I’ve seen a few different versions. Each DKP system  can be tweaked for a specific raiding group/guild, it’s up to you how you award points and how to spend them. But it seems people either love it, or despise the very concept.

Dragon Kill Points. Something we’ve all become aware of since the old Everquest days. Who knew they’d become so fixed in the MMO world?

In the days of massive raid numbers in Dark Age of Camelot we had a pretty simple system going. Turn up for a Sidi raid, get 10 points. Spend points each week bartering for items that dropped at the guildhouse of the guild running said raids. Either save up points for armour or weapons (at say 40 or 50 points per piece), or spend 10 points on the cheaper loot, such as respec stones. Perhaps from this I started with a good opinion of DKP.

What makes it less fair?

1. Bind on Acquire loot that requires not just your presence, but the presence of the character you want to have the item in the raid on the night/day it drops.

2. Non-fixed groups in the days when raid size is mandated by the game. So if you’re not lucky enough to be picked for the raid, but you signed up for it, is that rewarded or not, and at what level?

There’s probably a thousand other little nuances of unfairness… being docked points for turning up a little late through no fault of your own, or for mucking about during the raid. As I said at the start, each DKP system can be tweaked to be that little bit different, depending on game and group.

If I was doing a LotRO Moria one, I’d probably award points for helping people get radiance gear, but that already gives benefit to those who can play more often and have the time, or those with especially useful classes. All things you don’t and shouldn’t think about when picking a character class you love and want to spend time with.

Our kin in LotRO doesn’t use DKP. It uses something called the Suicide Kings method. I hate the name. It was, of course, devised for World of Warcraft and is supposed to suit casual raiding where loot isn’t the primary concern. We have separate SK lists for barter coins and set gear loot. But anything that isn’t covered, such as jewellery ends up being rolled for because everyone knows that if you choose not to ‘suicide’ over it, it goes to a roll. It’s not the most satisfactory system, and I have a few problems with it. But it’s hard to think up a DKP system for our kin that would work.

Why? Because we’re a supposedly casual kin (and in many ways we are casual), but we also have a core of raiders, such as myself, who have both the time and the desire to hit raids hard. Currently our pool of raiding-geared characters means we have quite a rotation system set up, and we need a specific member of the kin to decide who goes and on what night. It’s not ideal, but it lets the widest pool of people participate in the raid. Of course, it also means some of the more focussed raiders have to sit out, and don’t really get to choose what nights they sit out on.

And, at some stage, we’ll have enough geared up people to run the raid twice, but who wants to go on the discovery (ie. full of wipes) raid, when you can go with the established group. It’s a problem that isn’t going away. In trying to please everyone on both sides of the casual/more hardcore divide, we’re left with a compromise raid. It’s working, but it’s definitely more of a slog.

Lootwise, I generally don’t care too much about loot. But it always makes me sit back and wonder what the truly fair way to do it is. It isn’t fair to be told you can’t go even if you have the time and commitment to. But then it also isn’t fair that I ended up with a class that gets to go every time I want, more or less, purely because Captains are seen as raid-desirable and very few people in our kin have managed to get one to 60 and geared them up. While recognising it’s not fair, I also like it, from my perspective. I don’t get time to forget the fights, I see it work with different sets of people, and of course, I keep my place on the SK list. 

I can sometimes show my hardcore colours. I’d like a loot system that rewarded punctuality, helping others, sitting out if you have to, participating, coming with a full set of potions, tokens, and having traited appropriately. Less so the first kills, because it’s no longer in anyone’s power to decide if they get to go on the night we kill something. Multiple wipes would be nice to reward, as they cost a fair bit in LotRO – I’d rather reward those than the first kills, I think. But, I’d also like the full Captain set, and that ain’t going to happen anytime soon. Shame, it has a nice bonus – which not all the sets do. 

I wish I had the time and energy to work up a DKP system I felt would work for our kin. But truthfully, many people don’t see any problem with SK. They raid when they can, and get gear in some kind of rotation made fairer by the intervention of the raid leader.  And while that’s the case, there’s no real push to change things.

It’s a bit of a ramble. But I mainly wanted to spew my thoughts out to see if anyone out there had any kind of solution to a raid looting system for a casual-ish raid with rotating members, I don’t really think there’s one out there. But it’s been a while since we went and looked, and I want to be fully prepared to suggest something better for the Mirkwood raids on Dol Guldur, if possible.

ps,. this post is made more awkward by the fact I know some of my kinmates read this blog. Don’t take any offence anyone, and don’t read into this anything other than what it is, a consideration of how much I dislike SK for our current loot distribution system. With the new, revamped NtC blog, I’m spending very little time considering other people’s opinions and this is just me, on the moment I write the ramble! Liable to change my mind in 5 minutes, but unprepared to change what I write to save any hurt feelings.

The second year of medical school at UNE runs by systems: hematology, cardiology, respiratory, etc. Thus far, we’ve completed Neurology, and we’re presently in the psychiatry system (and if you’re wondering, next is musculoskeletal). I spent the better part of last year totally convinced that I wanted to be a psychiatrist when I grow up. But last summer changed that—I worked in an oral surgery office and got to do quite a bit of hands-on stuff… I really liked it. I realized that I really do want to work with my hands (and while not impossible in psychiatry, fixing things with one’s hands isn’t the primary goal). I probably should have realized this previously, considering that I elected to go become a D.O., but sometimes it takes me a while to catch on to completely obvious things.

I also fall in love with just about everything in medicine. Of course, there are subjects that I don’t totally love, but I don’t know if I could operate in a specialty without getting really bored. Psychiatry is fascinating and I look forward to treating patients with psychiatric illness, but I also love nutrition and reproductive health and infectious disease and adolescent medicine and loads of other stuff. I’m starting to think that the only answer is to go into primary care. I don’t think that family medicine would be for me, and going into internal would allow me to sub-specialize in adolescent medicine, if I decided that is what I enjoyed. But who knows; it’s not for a while that I make the decision, and I still need to get through third year.

And speaking of third year, Thursday night, there was a “hospital showcase” for the second year students. Each of the hospitals that we can rotate at gave a short presentation about their site. Matt and I had been thinking about trying to stay in Portland, but after hearing Providence’s presentation, I think that it would be a much better fit. As much as I don’t look forward to having to move again, I think that it would be the best choice for us… Matt’s commute to Boston would be shorter, and I’d get to rotate through a couple of hospitals that have internal medicine residencies, so I’d be able to get a good sense of their programs. As Matt has pointed out, we’re practically packed and ready to go at a moment’s notice since so much of our stuff couldn’t be unpacked (due to space constraints), anyway, so I suppose it wouldn’t be all that bad.

One semester down!

Well… we did it! Six courses done in 15 weeks and two clinical rotations under our belt. How exciting to be a third of the way through! It has been quite the test but we made it through. And the best part has been getting out there in our clinicals to do some work with patients and families alike.

I can’t tell you what a great feeling it was to hear a charge nurse tell a patient or a family, “Urvi is going to be your nurse tomorrow.” Nurse? Me? I can’t believe I can actually get out there and offer total care to patients; of course, under the guidance of an instructor. I am no longer a volunteer. I actually have more responsibilities and am taking a bigger part in the healing process.

Now, as we all depart for a lovely week off from school… I leave you with a few snapshots of happy nursing students.

Outside triangle we construct triangles such that , .
Prove that and .
IMO 1975

Did I seriously just have my midterm review for my Mental Health clinical? Wow time flies so fast it’s frightening. You press snooze on your alarm clock once and before you know it, a week is gone!

It has taken me probably all the way up until now to really get back into the swing of things, but ready or not, the car has shifted into high gear and we’re rolling! Such is life that assignments, exams, papers, etc, all seem to pile on within moments of each other. I’m not sure my perfection at procrastination is wholly to blame, either. Those darn conflicting syllabi and clinical schedules getcha every time. So, as I write this blog, I am also writing a nursing care plan, a 10-minute therapeutic conversation and analysis of one of my mental health patients, a 15-page paper on separation anxiety disorder in children, AND studying for my first Mental Health exam. (and of course I have to check my Facebook every now and again too!) The art of multi-tasking has taken on the challenge of painting a masterpiece.

This rotation in a locked down pysch ward was daunting to say the absolute least! I came home the first day, threw on my tennis shoes, blasted my iPod in my ears, and went running. It was intense. It was too much to handle. It got better.

Mental Health is not exactly my cup of tea, but that is not to say I haven’t gotten some profound insights out of it. Until you are talking with people with these types of disorders, it’s hard to understand who and why they are. Just like high blood pressure and cancer, mental illness is another chronic disease, but, unfortunately, society doesn’t see it that way. Society sees these people as outcasts, as parasites, as almost non-human. The purpose of the facilities like the one I am working in is to stabilize the patients, to get them consistently taking medications that decrease symptoms of their disease, and therefore, benefit not only themselves, but also people around them whether strangers or worn-out caretakers.

I did have to take a moment to step away from the milieu room one day as I looked around the room at the scene I was in the middle of. It was like something out of a movie. I’ll just let you use your imagination on this one.

I had the opportunity to watch electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), and I guess you could call that modern day shock therapy. It was fascinating. Leads are placed to read the heart and the brain, IV meds are given to paralyze all of the patient’s muscles except one leg, and a seizure is induced which can be seen in the one leg. It is not as invasive or violent as one might imagine, and the patient is not aware of the seizure, but it still creeps me out and 4 days later I still can’t express exactly how I feel about it. It does seem to be a miracle procedure for many patients who don’t respond to medications, but I wonder…

Nursing is all about flexibility. We found out without much notice that in the middle of this particular clinical rotation, we would have to switch over to a whole different facility – a nursing home to be exact. What?! The facility I have been in is switching computer systems and doesn’t feel that they can handle having students at the same time. We were all very disappointed, but we have no choice but to make the best of it. Rather than doing typical patient care in the nursing homes, we will seek out those patients that have mental health disorders such as Alzheimer’s, depression, and dementia and work with them in similar ways we have been working with the other patients. I’m even going to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting!

Another thing I must tell you: I am so blessed that I am able to keep my job with Kaiser part time through this semester. You can imagine that all my travels this summer drained my bank account, and not only do I need the money, but I am able to still get experience working at the clinic. I love the team I work with; they are so good to me.

Better get back to that paper and studying for that exam….

It’s been a busy week, with working and some other events that I’ll discuss as this week goes along.  I have had a lovely soundtrack to it all.

1. Genesis – And Then There Were Three (Atlantic 1978)
2. Genesis – Invisible Touch (DVD)
3. Thrushes – Sun Come Undone (Birdnote 2006)
4. Fugazi – In on the Kill Taker (Dischord 1993)
5. Paul Weller – Heavy Soul (Island 1997)
6. Buffalo Springfield -box set, disc 4
7. Tears for Fears -Mothers Talk 12″ (Mercury 1985)
8. Destroyer – Bay of Pigs 12″ (Merge 2009)
9. The Church – Uninvited, Like the Clouds (Cooking Vinyl 2006)
10. Hammock – Maybe They Will Sing for Us Tomorrow (Darla 2008)

Look for a wild episode of Radio Free Raytown on Friday…

My last post talked about all of the Death Knight changes in the latest patch, in particular, Scourge Strike becoming viable again for Unholy Death Knights.  However, what has turned out to be even more interesting is the unexpected changes to the new cookie-cutter talent specs and the different rotation.  Unholy plays like an entirely different animal now.

There are actually four viable Unholy specs now, consisting of some combination of 2h vs. dual-wield and blood presence vs. unholy presence.  Yes, you read that right; unholy presence.  As far as I’m aware, unholy presence has never been viable until now and let me tell you, it’s damn fun to play.  I’m getting ahead of myself though.

Here are the four basic builds:

2H Blood Presence – 16/0/55

2H Unholy Presence – 14/0/57

DW Blood Presence – 3/13/55

DW Unholy Presence – 1/13/57

The biggest difference between all of these and past Unholy specs is that Reaping and Epidemic are no longer worth taking.  The reason for taking Reaping used to be that by converting blood runes to death runes, you could substitute a Scourge Strike for two Blood Strikes in the second half of a 20-sec rotation.  However, after the patch, two Blood Strikes do more damage than one Scourge Strike.  Therefore, the death runes are useless and so is Reaping.  In the case of Epidemic, it just turns out that the old 20-sec rotation, made possible by longer disease duration due to Epidemic, provides less DPS than a new 10-sec rotation and spec that includes filling out Necrosis and Desolation in place of Epidemic.  This new rotation does end up clipping the end of your diseases, but that also provides some flexibility in fights where you have to break your rotation to react to threats in encounters.  It also does slightly less AoE damage as a result of missing out on the one Blood Boil every 20-sec that was part of the old AoE rotation.  The bottom line though is that the simulations and live testing support that these new specs and rotations outpeform the old ones.

The new rotation is basically the same for all four specs.

Single Target
IT – PS – SS – BS – BS – DC – (HoW, if necessary and off CD) – DC
Dual wield substitutes Blood Boil for Blood Strike, with the exception of performing Blood Strike once per 20 sec to keep Desolation up.

AoE
IT – PS – Pest – D&D – DC – (HoW, if necessary and off CD) – DC
IT – PS – Pest – BS – SS – DC – DC

For all specs, auto-attack will account for the largest amount of total damage, followed by your ghoul, and Death Coil. Death Coil will be your hardest-hitting ability.

One of the open questions from my last entry was whether the revised Bone Shield would continue to last 5 minutes or 1 minute.  It indeed lasts only 1 minute now, which is a bit of a pain to work into the rotation.  However, so far, I haven’t had too much trouble remembering to work in a Blood Tap-Bone Shield once per minute.  I insert this in place of a Blood Strike  using the following macro:

#showtooltip Blood Tap
/cast Blood Tap
/stopcasting
/cast Bone Shield

You could also show the tooltip for Bone Shield, but I found this confusing as it showed the ability as being on CD because there is no unholy rune available.  So at first, I sat there waiting for it to become available, but in fact, it should be available as what you really need is the blood rune first,  THEN the unholy rune.

So how do you know which spec is right for you?  2H and dual wield are very close, with dual wield being slightly ahead in BiS gear.  I recommend choosing a spec based on whatever is the best weapon(s) you’ve currently got.  I actually found the difference between blood presence and unholy presence to be significant for the level of my gear, which is averages between ilevel 213-219.  Granted, I tested on a target dummy with no buffs other than Horn of Winter, but I saw a 300-400 dps advantage for unholy presence over blood presence.  Another benefit of unholy presence, and ultimately the one that had the most impact for me, is the fact that it plays so much faster because your GCD is reduced from 1.5 sec to 1.0 sec and your rune cooldowns are shortened.  After playing in Unholy presence, switching back to blood presence seemed agonizingly slow to me.  Blood presence is going to scale better with raid buffs, which will draw the two closer together.  The point at which it seems to make sense to switch to the blood presence build is when you have 200-300 haste, basically when you’re doing Crusader Coliseum regularly.  In fact, once you switch to the blood presence build, haste has a surprisingly high stat weight; higher than everything except strength.

Another question that is logical to raise is whether we should forego Unholy altogether and pick blood or frost instead.  I’ve tried the others and personally, I’m just more comfortable with Unholy at this point, so I’m glad that the numbers seem to be pretty close between all the trees.  Blood and frost do seem to provide slightly better single target damage.  However, Unholy occupies a special niche when it comes to raiding.  Our damage in fights that require sustained AoE is extremely high.  The whelps in the Onyxia fight is an extreme example, but demonstrates our AoE potential.  As a debuff, Ebon Plague provides the greatest raid utility of all the trees.  13% increase to all magical damage and 30% increase to all disease damage is significant.  This is even more important in 10-man raids where you’re less likely to have a warlock or moonkin to provide a similar, but ultimately inferior buff that can only be spread at great cost to their DPS.  Finally, bone shield, while intended as a tanking talent, is both a near-constant 2% damage increase AND provides 20% mitigation from ALL forms of damage.  Bone Shield contributes significantly to your survivability in a raid environment.  Blood and frost simply don’t have a talent that compares.

The new face of Unholy is here.  It looks quite a bit different, but it’s a good-looking face nonetheless.

This’ll be a short post, as I’m off to see a much-needed concert in a bit.  However, this will be our last week of Lab preparation before we go out into the hospitals.  Ridiculous how fast it’s going.

We had our 2nd medical calculations exam this morning, and again I passed.  One more to go and all is well.  This week there are a lot of “things” due:  vital signs assessments; two more CAIs; chronic disease interview; online hospital orientation; PDA assignment.  After this the schedule will quiet down (sort of) and things will be a bit more consistent.  My schedule will look as follows, after this week:

• Monday:  8AM-5PM (classes)
• Tuesday:  8:30AM-12:30PM (classes), 12:30PM-1:30PM (S.A.N.L.O.P.)
• Wednesday:  2PM-10PM (hospital rotation)
• Thursday:  2PM-10PM (hospital rotation)
• Friday:  off
• Saturday:  off
• Sunday:  off

And there you have it.  So my 3-day weekends are nice, but I’m sure those will be spent preparing for that killer Monday.  I plan on using Monday as my day off from going to the gym, and go the other 6 days (especially once it gets colder, where I can’t exercise outside).

Speaking of the gym, it’s really very nice.  Hopefully I’ll get to do some cardio work in the pool they have, but for now the bike will be just fine.  It’s always pretty crowded, except for the times I’ve gone right when they opened.

Had a good discussion today during our lecture in Intro to Professional Nursing.  A lot of people chiming in on various issues, but the main issue was the stereotype as nurses as uneducated, or as “doctors’ handmaidens.”  This turned into a discussion on respect, teamwork, and feminism among other things.  Needless to say, I remained quiet.