As Pens the Lotion Slut says, "I AM DRINKING BEER."

It has not been a beautiful day in Nurse Jo's neighborhood. Not at all.

Because the person who directs my Clinical Experience is a little.... .... ....well, she's weird, I had got to go to a two-part ACLS class this week, rather than renewing in April at the six-hour test-and-megacode extravaganza that I'd normally do. That meant two days of long classes covering things that I really don't ever want to have to deal with, and then a megacode at the end of the day today.

Followed by another megacode.

Yes, my friends, we tested *twice*. Once on a nice, boring, nonanimated dummy, and once on an animated dummy that costs a gazillion bucks and has no bones to speak of (the dude running the lab got really exercised when I bent the dummy's leg backward and said "Look! Osteomalacia!") and could speak and blink and breathe and all that happy shit. This was because the group I was in got selected randomly for a study on who did better in a code--a group with a nonanimated dummy, or a group without.

My hands and shoulders are sore as hell, because there were two very capable women in the group who were both unfortunately the size of my little finger, one guy, and me. Guess who got to do most of the compressions on both code tests? If I tell you that my private nickname for the guy is "Mister Lazy ThinksHe'sAmusing," will you guess right?

And if I tell you that I was, at one point, stuck for more than an hour and a freaking half in a room with Mister Lazy ThinksHe'sAmusing and another classmate whose nickname is HandsyMan, will you pity me? Will you hand me another beer? Please say yes.

Oh, never mind. I just got one on my own.

For some reason, since I've been single again, I've been attracting the sort of men one usually only sees in sitcoms and bad Craigslist ads. If he's got a girlfriend, he's hit on me. If he's an instructor in a nursing program and has a Marine Corps symbol (although if he's been any closer to the Marines than I've been, I'll eat my socks) dangling in his chest hairs, right above where his potbelly begins, he's said something inappropriate to me. If he's married but handsy, I've had to duck out from under unwanted shoulder-rubs, Angela-Merkel-style, more than once in the last month. And the topper came, as I was telling the Brother in BFE the other week, a couple weeks ago at my favorite bar.

My favorite bar is a class establishment that attracts only the finest folks--dames like myself. I was minding my own business, tucking into a poblano-stuffed chicken breast or some of the shrimp enchiladas that Antonio makes, or maybe it was a burger, when a drink appeared next to me.

I looked across the bar. There were three possible drink-senders, none of whom looked real promising. So I asked the bartender, Ray, who'd sent it. "The guy with the bad hair" she replied.

"Which one?" I asked.

"The one who doesn't look like he's bathed for a week."

Yes, fiends and neighbors, the dude with the bad greasy black hair, the corduroy Sansabelt-wannabes with the patch pockets on the front, and the reindeer sweater had sent me a drink.

He'd asked Ray what I was drinking. She'd told him single-malt Scotch, so he'd sent me Maker's Mark.

Oh, dear.

Ooooohhhhh, deeeeaaaaar.

I smiled, toasted him silently from across the bar, and returned firmly to my book. A few seconds later, somebody cleared his throat right next to me. Damn. Sansabelt Reindeer Man. So I thanked him politely and looked interested politely as he proceeded to try to make conversation. After all, they know me there: if anything untoward were to happen, Ray and her barback would throw the guy out on his ear. And he was really sweet, if kind of inert in a geeky way, until--and here you have to take a deep breath--he comingled the Star Wars and Star Trek universes in a way that showed me he was ignorant of both.

The way I figure, if you're living in Mom's basement, you have time to study these things, to work them out. Don't try to impress the girl who knows Yoda's middle name (it's Heironymous). Don't try to snow me with yammering about how we could go where no man has gone before if I'd just take hold of your lightsaber. Okay, it wasn't quite *that* bad, but it was close.

I've learned a lot of things in nearly forty years. I learn a lot of things from each guy I date, and I learn a lot when I'm single, too. And I've learned a lot--a lot--from this internship.

What I didn't expect to learn at any time was how to avoid weirdos in bars and how to avoid ass-pats while doing compressions.

*sigh*