Tonight I went to the Red Cross office in Santa Clara to get recertified in First Aid/CPR. I passed! Yeah!

There was a 50 questions written test (I got three wrong :-( ) and then skill demonstration. The examiner made up some scenarios and I had to react: "You enter a room and you see an adult unconscious on the floor. What do you do?". I then had to demonstrate the full rescue protocol three or four different times with different reactions each time from the "patient" (a mannequin). The most difficult for me was the infant patient. For one thing the infant mannequins are more realistic: the adult ones don't have limbs. For another, it's just more difficult to think of infants in distress that you might have to rescue. But I managed nonetheless to adequately demonstrate my skills and thus earn my recertification.

One of the reason I got recertified is that I will need it for the Divemaster certification. But I think there might have been another reason. I first took the First Responder class in 1998. At that time I had just returned to Apple after a rather miserable, but mercifully brief, return to France. I was back at Apple but work at the time was somewhat lackadaisical. As it turns out I find myself in a similar situation these days, although the reasons are different. I suppose I should remember that last time things eventually turned around and became interesting again. It's all part of the ebb and flow of work life. I'm definitely in the ebb part right now. Sigh.