(Now) We Don't Need No Steenkin' Badges

Odds and ends found while looking in drawers for something else entirely.

1. You need a permit and an identity card to go mudlarking on the banks of the River Thames in London.  It sounded like fun so when my brother and I were over in 2010 we did all the necessary paperwork.  And then somehow it got left back in the States!  It had to be sent to our lodgings, a very rustic back packers hostel/pub on the edge of nowhere.

The picture has faded with age.  I also have to some extent.

2. Eight years later.  This was my first time back to school in retirement.  Helpful hint, don't wear a white shirt when you will have an ID photo taken.  I look like a floating disembodied head.  I did enjoy my time as a Tech School student.  At orientation I could tell that people were looking for the 18 year old kid that I should have in tow somewhere.

3. Working ER is fun but slowly drives you mad.  Strange hours, strange people, a growing sense of the world falling apart.  In the early morning hours when you have to be awake there is always stern black coffee.  And for some reason there was always chocolate pudding cups.  Also a drawer full of stickers for the kiddies.  At various times my ID badge had Spider Man and Barbie on it.  I think the occasional young patient believed my claim to be the former as I was suturing them up.  It helped that I used a sterile marker to draw "webs" on the back of my gloves....