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I don’t have a lot of pictures of my mom. It doesn’t/didn’t occur to me to take pictures of a constant, and mom was always there for us. I can’t believe it’s been five years since she’s gone.

I like this picture. It’s from one of our lunch breaks while skiing in Italy. I like that Rosemarie is eating a big piece of chocolate with her mittens on… it was a special treat when mom let us eat junk food on those trips. I like all the sandwich bags on the table and the squishy juice bag: evidence of our lunches that mom made us cram into our jacket pockets in the morning. I like that mom is looking at Rosemarie with love. I like that mom looks relaxed and content.

I’ve missed my mom SO MANY TIMES in these last five years, but at the same time I’m grateful that I had the privilege of having her in my life for 21 years. I hope she would be happy with the choices I’ve made without her. I wish life wasn’t so mean. Cancer sucks.

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The first day back at school this year was a bit of a mess. Half the class (including me) had a schedule that said we needed to be there at 11:30, but actually we were supposed to be there at 9:30. My leisurely morning was cut very short after I got that text from my classmate saying “WHERE ARE YOU!?!”. Yeesh. I found out later that September 5th is Be Late For Something Day so really I was just being festive, I guess.

The rest of the week went a lot smoother. It was nice to see all my classmates again. Everything was back to exactly like last year, haha.

So far we’ve pretty much just had each class one time. My initial impressions:

  • Applied Physiology (17 hours per week): OMG. This class takes up half of our time at school. 9 hours of it is labs! It is going to be intense. It’s the class that is going to teach us all the stuff we directly need for work. It should really be called Nuclear Medicine 3.
  • Physics (6 hours per week): Barry is back! He’s a really good teacher and we don’t have labs so I’m not overly concerned about this class. I think we’re going to be learning a lot more about the cameras and the reconstruction that the computers do with the images we take, particularly the 3D ones.
  • Pathophysiology (5 hours per week): The study of all the diseases that nuclear medicine generally sees. The notes seem extremely disorganized so far but I think the subject matter will be super interesting.
  • Human Behaviour (2 hours per week): Our other teachers call this class “Feelings”. Our teacher is a psychologist and we are going to get marked on BREATHING. In our first class we had to write down some social norms that exist in our class, so I wrote down things like “Don’t rub your face on other people” and “Don’t lick other people’s stuff”. I wonder if those will make the typed copy she said she was going to make for us.
  • Communications (3 hours per week): Not sure about this one yet. Topics include how to write emails and how to write a resume. Also apparently we are going to have to give presentations AND BE VIDEO TAPED AND REVIEW THEM WITH OUR CLASS AFTERWARDS. OMG that is my worst nightmare. HOWEVER, the teacher seemed pretty good so maybe the class will actually be useful. He is new. His Powerpoint was very snazzy and he did speak very very well, so hopefully we can learn from him.

Yep so that’s 33 hours of class a week. This year we alternate between two weeks at school and two weeks at clinical, but the clinical weeks are not going to be much of a break because they’re going to give us a lot of work that we are expected to finish during those weeks, plus we’re pretty much going to have multiple midterms every school week. Coming home from work to study and do labs is not going to be fun.

Bummer post. I just have to remind myself that I only have to suffer through this for one more year and then I can have a career (I mean, hopefully). ONE MORE YEAR.

Magnetic nail polish. Difficult to photograph… but COOL IN REAL LIFE! Magnetic nail polish is not magnetic itself (as SOMEONE *COUGH* ROSEMARIE thought), but you probably already know that because I am way late to the magnetic nail polish trend. But anyway what you do is paint one thin coat on every nail, then one nail at a time you do a pretty thick coat and then quickly hold the special magnet that comes with the nail polish up to your nail and it rearranges itself into patterns. It looks pretty neat in real life.

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After lunch we continued on to the Seattle Premium Outlets in Tulalip (just North of Seattle). We shopped for a couple hours but didn’t buy a whole lot. I got a pair of tall leather boots, Scott got a couple collared shirts from J. Crew, and we got a cheapo mandoline slicer that is now in the garbage. Piece of junk. The boots and shirts are nice though!!

Yeah there are some good deals to be found at the outlets but the truth is I don’t really need a lot of new clothes so I didn’t feel like buying anything. Things were still a touch more expensive than I am comfortable paying. Now if there was an H&M outlet somewhere… that would be different!!! (Is there such thing as an H&M outlet???)

On the way back we stopped at Trader Joe’s in Bellingham. SO FUN! We found so much good stuff there. It’s like Whole Foods, except NOT ridiculously expensive.

Our Trader Joe’s haul: Parmesan and rosemary rolls, papaya mango salsa (so good), falafel chips, 3 wedges of ridiculously cheap cheese, frozen ahi tuna steaks, cheap eggs, and milk chocolate covered potato chips. OM NOM NOM. Everything we’ve tried so far has been super tasty.

I was in to the potato chip bag even before we left the parking lot. :D

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The day before my school we rented a car and drove down to Washington to do some shopping. The line ups at the border weren’t too bad but then we had to go inside so Scott could get finger-printed, so it ended up taking us over an hour to cross. Bummer.

It was pretty funny after we crossed the border when Scott was driving 70 km/hr until I suddenly remembered that the speed limits are in mph, not kph. Haha. I bet people laughed at us. TAKE YOUR TIME GRANDPA, EH.

We got off the highway to get me some Taco Bell right before Tulalip but I changed my mind when I saw the Five Guys sign. I had heard about Five Guys before on the internet and really wanted to try it!

We got a small size burger each and one small fries and one small drink. The guy at the cash actually told us to just get one fries and one drink. They are so generous there they give you tons of toppings on your burger lke mushrooms and peppers and a bazillion fries and unlimited refills on drinks! It was definitely tastier than any other fast food I have had, the burger tasted like real meat and the fries were perfecto. They had one of those wacko pop machines with dozens of kinds of pop. We tried Lime Fanta, Mello Yellow, and Grape Sprite.

The people working there were super nice too. The guy at the cash noticed that we must not have been there before and asked if we wanted him to explain the menu to us (which we did!). Also he made sure to tell us that if we wanted more fries to take with us in the car they would refill the bag for us. And to take as many peanuts as we wanted. He even came out to the patio when we were eating to ask if it was good and reminded us that we could have more fries!


The small burgers were so big we didn’t need any refills of fries, haha.

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I had a really great long weekend. Warm weather, lots of food, a bit of travelling. It was a fantastic way to end the summer. 

Horseshoe Bay, BC

More Horseshoe Bay, BC

Me and the nosebleed shirt on the ferry

On Sunday I took the ferry out to visit Lesley who lives on the Sunshine Coast (HI LESLEY). We pretty much spent the day catching up (she was out in Nanaimo for the whole summer) and eating tons o’ snacks and BBQ. It was lovely. We watched a movie too. I can’t remember any other things we did but that’s not to say it wasn’t a fun visit. I would totally go back!

British Columbia is pretty

I stayed overnight and then we took the ferry back together on Monday afternoon.

BEFORE

I FINALLY painted our wooden IKEA Rast drawers. I have been meaning to do that for like 14 months!!

AFTER

I think they turned out decent. Not super beautiful or anything but kinda neat. At least they are more personalized now and not just ‘cheapest option at IKEA’. BTW, I am gradually turning our house into a rainbow kindergarten.

Yesterday Scott and I went to Washington, but I’m going to leave that for a separate post.

I have failed miserably so far at my photo of dinner every day plan, it’s September 5th today and I have a grand total of ONE dinner picture, and it’s from today. OOPS. I’ll wait until I have a few and then post them all at once I think.

All for now. Posts to come: our mini road trip to Washington, a back-to-school update, and MAGNETIC NAIL POLISH pictures.