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Happy Canada Day from Vancouver! I really miss Ottawa a lot today. Canada Day in Ottawa is one of the best celebrations I have been to, and if I am going to be in Canada on July 1st I really want to be there in the nation’s capital. I think this might be the first Canada Day I have spent in Canada NOT in Ottawa. SO WEIRD!

I started a new rotation at work last week in the stress lab. We put patients on treadmills and watch them sweat. It’s very busy in there and it was a pretty overwhelming week. I dropped a drop of MIBI on my shoe in the hustle and earned the nickname Hot Foot. I had to put my shoes in storage for two days until they were not radioactive any more. Haha.

We had breakfast at Brioche with my friend Jason (who I camped with in Bowen, Australia) and his girlfriend. They were on their way to Vancouver Island to visit his family. My avocado, brie, and smoked salmon omelette was pretty tasty but the foccacia was super hard and it was kind of expensive. Booo.

The first day of the month seems like a good chance to review my summer goals list, so here we go……

  1. Finally paint the cheapo wooden drawers we got from IKEA.
  2. Make delicious popsicles in my new popsicle mold. once (strawberry lemonade).
  3. Go swimming in the ocean for the first time in Vancouver.
  4. Ride the rides at the PNE.
  5. Watch fireworks.
  6. Finish my Settlers paintings.
  7. Sell a pair of shoes or a shirt or a painting.
  8. Go to one of the night markets in Richmond. already done! twice, actually!
  9. Regularly visit the farmers market on Saturday mornings. once.
  10. Read some books while I actually have the time. reading Insurgent at the moment.
  11. Make a nicer looking menu planning board.
  12. Find a new person to play board games with.
  13. Try a new fruit.
  14. Do a successful venipuncture on a real patient.I’ve done two so far.
  15. Make a new blog header.
  16. Take more pictures.

Clearly I still have a lot to work on. I’m putting away my computer right now!

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Last night Rosemarie and I went to the other night market in Richmond with a few of my classmates. It is called the Summer Night Market, not to be confused with the Richmond Night Market that is in the summer. To make it even worse one moved in to the location where the other one used to be up until this year, and also one used to be the only one but then shut down and only re-opened this year. It’s all very confusing and I wouldn’t be surprised if people end up going to the wrong one by accident.

Anyway they are both really similar but the Summer Night Market doesn’t have an admission fee, plus the food is a little cheaper. BUT there are less food booths. BUT there are more shops. So… I don’t know which is better.

Hurricane potatoes were only $2! We had parmesan and garlic flavour. Rosemarie REALLY liked it!! (So did I.)

Papaya salad. I looooove papaya salad from Thai restaurants so I was pretty pumped to se this being sold. It was pretty tasty but not as good as I hoped. $4 (was supposed to be $5 but I bargained.)

Waffle fish thingy filled with custard. $1. This thing was really good!! But it was sooooo hot we didn’t really enjoy it to its maximum potential.

She looks happy there but that was before she got to the burning hot lava centre.

Pork siu mai on a stick! A lot of the market food was on a stick. Good for eating while walking around! These were decent. $3.50

Can you tell what this is?? When Rose saw this her eyes lit up and she said she HAD TO HAVE IT.

A hot dog covered in sweet potato fries. Bahahahaha. It was pretty weird. I didn’t mind the one bite I snagged, but I would never buy one just for myself.

We also shopped around in the non-food area. I got a new little dangly thingy for my phone. We tried to convince each other into buying lip tattoos…

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DRAMATIC THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN HAPPENING

We called the cops on the neighbours! TWICE! Their fighting was worse than usual and one of the ladies was yelling “CALL 911” and stuff, so we did. They arrested the other lady! The cops got people to give statements this time. I wonder when the lady will come back, and what will happen next. I’m glad stuff is going on the record now.

I did my very first real injection on a real live patient. It went well! Well, except I was just so relieved to have successfully finished the injection that I put the hot (radioactive) needle in the cold sharps bucket. Haha, oops. So we had to take the whole sharps container and put it in the storage cupboard.

In less dramatic news: I won at Agricola and Carcassonne on Saturday, I had a lovely brunch with some internet friends on Sunday, and Rosemarie moves in tomorrow! FUN SUMMER TIMES!

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Rosemarie and I went to the Trout Lake farmers market this Saturday and picked up some bread, raspberries, local strawberries, peppers, new potatoes, and a zucchini. The stuff wasn’t exactly cheap or anything but I make myself feel better by reminding myself that the produce is FRESH FRESH FRESH and we’re supporting local businesses instead of THE MAN.

Anyone who knows about me working for Shouldice for three years knows how I feel about local strawbs. I can’t get enough!!!

The bread was hazelnut and fig bread. OOO how fancy. I wasn’t that impressed with it plain at first though because the hazelnuts are WHOLE and crunchy and weird. But later I topped slices of bread with some deli turkey and some mozzarella and broiled them, and that was REALLY yum. The figs are delicious. Figs are becoming one of my new favourite food things.

Dinner plate of market foods and leftovers. A mini-quesadilla with peppers, salsa and cheese, hazelnut and fig bread with turkey and mozzarella, plus fruit and veg. I was pretending I was on Masterchef and tried to make each plate look the same, haha.

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I am sorry for not writing anything personal in so long. For the past few weeks I’ve been going through some kind of career and life crisis and maniacally wondering if I am really doing the right thing or maybe I should quit BCIT and go to med school instead, and I wasn’t really ready to talk about it. End result: I’m just going to keep doing my nuclear medicine/MRI thing for now. There are approximately 8 billion different factors involved in this decision and I still don’t feel 100% confident that it is the right decision, but at this point I think it makes the most sense.

I may write the MCAT at some point in the next year or so though anyway… just to see.

Things that have been on my mind: student life, stress levels, insomnia, mental health, $300K salaries, personal life, debt, moving, Canada, Australia, babies, traveling, 8 years, careers, boredom, prestige, homework, rotations, pre-requisites………… and on and on and on.

In other news Rob was back in town for a few days so we had him and Rose over for a little pizza and games night. We ate homemade chicken basil pizza and played 4 player Carcassonne (with 2 expansions) and MAGNETS. It was delightfully nerdy.

AND>> today we had venipuncture training at work and I am now allowed to inject patients starting tomorrow. SO SCARED. I hope my patients have gigantic veins. I will keep you posted. So far I DO have a 100% success rate, hehe. All four pokes.

Well that’s pretty much me all updated. What’snewwit’you?