2023: A Year in Review

     It's been quite the year for me.  New adventures, new risks and very different experiences.  I spent nearly the whole year a travel Medical Technologist so I didn't spend much time at home.  From January to June I worked at Crouse in Syracuse.  I worked mostly in Blood Bank at the regions highest rated Neonatal ICU center.  It was a great refresher and learning experience as I'd never worked in an institution that focused and experienced with infant transfusions.  I also got to work in Clinical Chemistry with Siemens Atellicas.  When I left Samaritan in September of 2022 they were about to transition from Vistas to Atellicas.  I was able to get a jump on that and learn the Atellicas from someone who'd worked on them for years.  Traveling gave me the opportunity to reconnect with people I hadn't worked with in years.  From June to September I worked for Unity in Rochester.  There I worked in Chemistry and Hematology.  I worked with Atellicas and Sysmex which were familiar.  I also got to work with IL Tops for Coag, a Novus for Urinalysis and an ISed for sed rates, which were all new to me instruments.  Rochester was a good contract.  I met some new people, reacquainted myself with some old friends and got to experience a totally different LIS.  I think if I wasn't working overnights I would have stayed longer.  It helped me to realize I'm too old to do that to my body on a weekly basis.  From September to December I went back to Syracuse but this time at Operations Center of Lab Alliance.  The only new to me instrument there was Siemens for coag.  The Ops Center also has a whole line for Hematology from Sysmex.  So its the two instruments connected to the slide maker/stainer connected to a Cellavision for the manual differentials.  It was very nice.  The Ops Center also runs Aptio with their Atellicas.  SMC has an Aptio as well, so I was familiar.  Aptio is a track system that automates centrifuging, loading and storing of specimens.  The Ops Center doesn't utilize the Storage Module, which quite frankly made no sense to me.  In fact every time I had to go find a specimen, which was often, I though how much easier it would have been if they just had a storage module.  They also couldn't utilize a few other functions of Aptio because of the LIS they use, but changing to a new LIS is no easy feat, so I understood that portion of it.  Early in December I was told that Lab Alliance as a company would no longer be utilizing travelers.  I knew that finding a new contract in December was going to be either totally impossible or very unlikely to happen in the time frame I needed.  So I made the decision to go back to a permanent position.  Lab Alliance did offer to keep me on in the same position I was currently in.  I came to the conclusion early on that if I was taking a permanent position I was going to take one close to home.  I ended up taking the offer from the hospital just 5 miles from my house Carthage Area Hospital.  I've now been there for two weeks.  They use Roche for nearly everything.  I have little to no experience with most Roche analyzers.  CAH is a 25 bed critical access hospital so its miniscule compared to what I'm used to.  They do very basic and bare bones in-house testing.  They have an obstetrics wing and do minimal orthopedic surgeries.  Other than "rapid" Covid, Flu, RSV and Strep A testing they do not perform any microbiology testing in-house.  They also don't work up positive antibody screens in Blood Bank.  I am a generalist, meaning I work and have worked in multiple departments over my career.  But, I would say Blood Bank is where my strongest skills lie.  I've worked in institutions that do complex antibody identifications, so for me to go to a facility that only does type and screen is going to be a huge departure for me.  The LIS here is also one I've never worked with.  From what I was told in my interview, they will be going to a different one at some point.  I've worked with the one they'll be switching to and I didn't particularly like it, but now that I've worked with what they have; anything will be an improvement.  Alright, enough about boring work.

     Every year I utilize the challenge feature on Ravelry.  Last year I strove for 40 projects and I met my goal.  I suspect I'll have less knitting time, being home, so this year I'm going for just 25.  I also use tags to subcategorize my projects so I can visually track my projects by year or type.  I also do that with my Queue, so if I'm looking for something specific and I can filter my search within my own queue.  Here's a link to my 2023 projects:  2023 Ravelry 

     While I was traveling I found that I had more knitting time.  I also found the time to restart this blog.  I restarted back in July, right around the time I entered quite a few projects into my county fair.  I then found the Year of Projects group in August and decided to partake.  I started reading again and read 20 books in 2023.  This was starting at the end of August.   I hope to double that number this year.  I'll do a quick summary of the ones that stood out.

I read this one back in September.  It is science fiction romance, which I've found is difficult to track down.  This had some excellent world building and very compelling character building as well.  The FMC, Ferron, is a priestess trying to work her way up in the order.  She gets sent on a very important mission to retrieve a religious artifact.  She's never ventured off-world so she's very naive.  Her companions on the mission are another member of her order and three people from a sister world.  The mysterious helmeted Commander gets her attention right away and some... interactions occur.  The mission gets complicated, there are enemies out to get them all.  Ferron in injured and her true abilities start to show.  She slowly learns that everything the order had taught her is probably a lie.  When she gets back from the mission she confronts the head priestess and everything goes south.  It ended abruptly so I'm really hoping a sequel is in the works.  This book re-lit a reading fire for me.  Its been months now since I read it and whole scenes still live rent free in my head.

I would say this is a 2.5 on the spice scale.  This is one I fully plan to re-read in the future.

This is the first book in the Beasts of the Briar series.  This book blew me away.  This is a Beauty and the Beast retelling.  It's a pretty loose retelling, but the key elements are there.  This is a dark romantasy, but the really cool part of this is that the Vale exists in present day on earth.  The FMC, Rosalina, enters into the Fae world to save her father.   There she meets four Princes, one from each Fae realm; Summer, Spring, Winter and Autumn.  This first book follows a fairly predictable arc, that's not a bad thing.  The characterization of the princes is very in depth and complex.  There is a ton of world building, because its a huge world.  Seven separate but connected Fae realms and the small town of Orca Cove in the PNW that Rosie grew up in.  I enjoyed this book and the second in the series.  I had to wait for the third to come out and then devoured that one as well.  I would sat the first two are a 3 on the spice scale and the third book is a 4.  The third book Forged by Malice ends on one hell of a cliffhanger so just be forewarned if you get into this series.  (Its worth it though.)

This was my favorite read of 2023.  This book also introduced me to LJ Andrews.  This is a dark romantasy with a decent amount of potential triggers.  The MMC kidnaps the FMC but that detail soon becomes moot, frankly.  I love the way this story unfolds.  Its a slowburn, but a fast one as it occurs in the first book.  The world building in this is exquisite.  The plot twist even threw me for a loop, I didn't see it coming.  This book also ends on one hell of a cliff-hanger.  The next book should be coming out in a few weeks and I cant wait.  This book takes place in another realm of an already established world.  As soon as I finished this book I decided to read the other series that LJ wrote; The Broken Kingdoms.  I have not been disappointed in the least.  I would give this a solid 3 on the spice scale.  The two main characters are phenomenal and the love and devotion between the two of them is unsurpassed by any other couple I've read so far.  Erik and Livia are just an amazing love story and this is another series that is going on the re-read list.

 

This was the out of left field read for me.  This falls into the comedy horror category which far and away is not something I would choose to read normally.  It popped up in one of my Facebook lab groups as Marlene, the author, is a Med Tech.  I did a pretty in depth post about this book previously, so I wont drone on too much about it other than this book is very well written and highly entertaining.  I can easily say this was my second favorite read of '23.  There is 0 spice in this one.  But the science is spot on. 


 

This is the first book in the Broken Kindoms series.  I'm not sure if I would have stumbled on this series eventually if I hadn't found the Ever King.  I will say I could tell when reading this it was her earlier work, but just within two more books the writing level was up to where she is by the Ever King.  The first three books in this series focuses on the Northern Kingdom.  These first three are a Beauty and the Beast re-telling.  The curse and the dissolution of it are a very interesting take and I love it.  I have to say, so far book three is actually my favorite.  It's the conclusion of the story for this kingdom and this group of characters.  Valen and Elise are another absolutely amazing couple full of strength and devotion to each-other.  This series is much lower on the spice level.  The first book is a 1, the second a 2 and the third a 2.5.

I'm currently reading the fourth book in this series.  This one is a Cinderella re-telling.  Instead of two step sisters Malin has two step brothers and one is actually nice.  A few of the characters were introduced in the last book and two years has gone by from the third to the fourth.  After getting Covid a few weeks ago I've been finding it difficult to focus for any length of time so reading has really dropped off for me.  Knitting has also dropped off for me drastically.  I did finally start a project on Saturday, a hat.  I won a prize in Nerdopolis last round.  I chose a the pattern Hum Beanie.  I'm using Malabrigo Rios in Vaa.  It was already wound into a ball, so I grabbed that quick on Saturday before the family gathering.  I'm thinking this pattern would look good with the skein of Noventa I bought on a splurge.  

Here's what I've got so far:

I think the pattern would show up better with a lighter color.  I have some English Rose, I may try it with that yarn too.  

I participated in many swaps this past year.  I very much enjoy them.  I probably wont be doing many, if any, this year.  With taking a permanent position, there was a pretty significant pay cut involved.  I'll have to be careful about extra expenditures this year.  I have an extensive stash.  I was able to add to it quite a bit while I traveled so between knitting less and a good sized stash, I think I'll be well off in the near future.  

     I haven't yet thought about goals for 2024.  I just spent the last month scrambling to get a job that I could tolerate for the foreseeable future, then getting Covid, then starting said new job then Christmas.  December went by in a blink.  This whole year went by in a blink for that matter.  I'm looking forward to what 2024 will bring.  There will be some big milestones for me and Adam this year.  I expect a whirlwind of activity this summer.  Until later.  Happy Crafting!

-Q