by ·0 Comments

We all had to put in our top 3 choices for our summer placements this week. It was a difficult choice, I had to make a pros and cons list and I asked a lot of people for advice.

I ended up choosing Surrey Memorial, VGH, and Lion’s Gate.

Why? The outpatient clinic at Surrey Memorial is brand new and SO nice. Plus everyone was friendly there and it seemed like a great place to learn. It’s also pretty accessible by transit. VGH is Vancouver’s main hospital, it would be very busy and I’d get to see a large variety of patients every day. And I chose Lion’s Gate because they do a lot of brain scans and I still really like brains, but I kind of hope I don’t actually get placed there because it would mean commuting an hour each way every day to North Vancouver. Ew.

It was really hard to come up with a third choice. Every option had at least one significant downside.

I don’t know, we’ll see what I end up getting. Probably every one of us has 2 out of 3 choices the same as everyone else. :/ If they can’t find a way to make everyone happy it ends up going to a draw so I still have a chance of having to go to Vancouver Island for the summer.

We are supposed to find out by the end of this month.

by ·0 Comments

I guess it’s been a while since I wrote a real update. The last few days before March Break were absolutely killer. I had three midterms and I think know I did terribly on two of them. Everything I looked up in my notes after the test I got wrong. And wrong in a way that I don’t even think I will get many part marks. I’m great at assignments, terrible at tests! It wasn’t ALL bad though because the third midterm was easy and I’m pretty sure I’ll get nearly perfect on that. Unfortunately the two I did bad on are our two most important subjects and the one I did well on is a pretty puny course. Bleh.

Anyway now I’m on March Break and have just been bumming around. I love being at home, I wish I could just be a housewife. What delicious food we would eat every day!

We went out for cheapo sushi on Friday, over to Rob’s house for a boardgame night on Saturday, relaxed on Sunday, skied on Monday, went to go see Goon last night, and I went shopping today. I bought a few pieces of exercise clothes since we do seem to be sticking to our new exercise plan. We’re now on level 2 of the 30 Day Shred and it’s pretty hard. So many planks.

I’ve also spent a lot of time on this new website. It’s been pretty easy to set up everything how I want, but it does take some time.

Something is wrong with my eyes. They’ve been really sore and itchy for the past week. I think it might have been from spending too much time on the computer and reading notes? I got some better eye drops under recommendation from my optometrist friend, and have been wearing my glasses pretty much all the time now. This seems to be helping a bit but they still don’t feel totally better. Perhaps it’s time to make an appointment with an eye doctor.

by ·0 Comments

Scott, Rosemarie and I went to Mt. Seymour last night, with a friend of mine from class. They have ‘ladies night’ on Monday evenings so Rosemarie and I got our tickets for free.

We did a whole big equipment switcheroo, which I think is pretty awesome. We started off with:

  • me using Rosemarie’s ski boots and skis
  • Scott using my old snowboard and his boots
  • Rosemarie using her snowboard boots and her snowboard

but then Scott’s boots were too big for my old snowboard so Rosemarie and him switched boards. So everyone was using someone else’s equipment! Funnily enough we were all happier that way than with our own stuff.

Anyway the conditions were pretty abysmal. Well that’s not entirely true, the snow was lovely and there was no ice on the ground, but the visibility was TERRIBLE.

Night skiing + snowy ice + fogged up goggles is a terrible combination. I could only see out the bottom 1 cm of my goggles, and only when I was right underneath a lamp, basically. I spent a lot of my time blindly skiing towards the light.


It was my first time skiing since our family trip to Whistler, in 2003, I think. It all came back to me though and I really enjoyed it. Skiing was 98327987827323 times more fun than snowboarding at Whistler, so I think I’m going to switch back.

I really like that picture of Rosemarie!

I should have spent more time with Scott. He was really struggling by himself, but then at the end of the night I went and found him and gave him a little lesson on turning and even linking turns. By the end of the run he did 6 turns in a row! This was a breakthrough moment. I’m not sure anyone had ever really told him what he should try and do so he was doing some kind of weird switching back and forth thingy before, left foot forward one second, then right foot forward the next. Anyway I think he’s doing quite a bit better now and hopefully understands what to do a bit more. Too bad we might not have a chance to go again this year.

by ·0 Comments

On Sunday we made homemade Montreal style bagels. I used this recipe, and they turned out pretty nice! I was surprised at how simple it actually was to make our own bagels. We just had to make the dough, knead for 10 minutes, cut up the dough and shape it into bagels, then boil for 90 seconds, dip in sesame seeds, and bake for 20 minutes.

Before baking:

I forgot to take an after baking picture. They puffed up a bit in the oven and got a nice brown colour.

by ·1 Comment

Well, I’m back.

What happened? It’s kind of a long story. My old website was set to expire at the beginning of April. I didn’t renew it because I was planning on switching over to self-hosting during my March Break. Then my account got auto-renewed even though I had that disabled. I complained, and instead of WordPress refunding me money they cancelled my whole domain. Now jornakat.com is in a weird limbo period where it can’t be registered again until the registrar releases it, which could take up to 35 days. Ugh. Anyway so I decided to start a whole new website because I am impatient. Plus I kind of wanted to get away from having my name all over the place, so this is better.

Welcome to Grated Expectations!!!

I have transferred over some of my old posts but not all. I tried to get all the ones that were semi-popular posts, but didn’t bother with the day-to-day posts. They do still exist, at jornakat.wordpress.com, and that’s good enough. This is where the future will happen!