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It is so so nice not having homework. And one benefit of very early morning starts is that I’m usually finished work by about 3PM. To make it even better the weather in Vancouver has been PERFECT for the past week and a bit. Life is good here, at the moment. :D

We saw Monsters University last weekend. Have you seen it? I liked it quite a bit. I laughed a bunch of times. Then the next night I watched Monsters Inc again. Cute.

I can see Canada Place from our balcony so I was planning on watching the Canada Day fireworks from here, but I fell asleep and missed them!! I actually did wake up from some booms and ran out onto the balcony but it must have been the very last ones from the show because I didn’t see or hear anything after that. Bummer.

I went to the gym with my skeleton friends on Thursday and my quads are STILL sore. We did bench press, front squats, power cleans, abs, and core. Chris pushes Matt and I to lift as hard as we can. I am still pretty weak but I am improving. BTW, they still haven’t announced the dates for BC skeleton tryouts yet and I still haven’t decided if I’m going to bother trying out this year or not. It might be kind of fun to do all the tests, but I’m worried that I would still be embarrassingly unqualified. I haven’t even tried any of the sprints or jumps yet. We’ll see, and I’ll keep you posted.

The end of last week was dramatic at work. We got a call near the end of the day on Thursday from a camera manufacturer that said we could no longer use their cameras until they have been checked out, effective immediately. The hospital exclusively uses that brand of camera so we had to cancel everything for the next day that we could and figure out how to get the urgent inpatients their tests in other facilities. I thought I was going to get the day off but instead they sent me back to the outpatient centre (that uses a different brand of camera). Friday was pretty chaotic with all the extra patients from other hospitals so I helped out with that. I’m not sure when things will get back to normal… hopefully by tomorrow but I’m not sure.

That hospital rotation really was exhausting and tough, but I ended up getting a very good review so I’m happy. I’m glad I got that rotation over with as well… the rest of the summer should go pretty smoothly.

Yesterday Clare and I went to see our classmate Gillian get married. We just went to the ceremony so we weren’t there very long. We got to see their first EVER kiss!! Gillian looked so pretty and I loved her dress. Congratulations Gillian and Bryan!

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My dad says all I talk about it food. Oops. It’s true that I think about food a lot, but I do have other stuff to talk about! I declare this post a food-free zone.

I am now in the 5th week (out of 14) of my summer clinical. Most of the summer I am at the outpatient centre in Surrey and it is awesome. The place was only built 2 years ago so everything is new and clean and lovely. The facilities are definitely good there. And to make it even better all the patients are in reasonably good health. They all come there willingly, from home. They don’t require too much extra work.

BUT…. everyone has to do a two week rotation through the hospital as well. It is old and dark and crowded. EVERY patient is an inpatient (admitted to the hospital) and requires LOTS of extra work. They usually can’t walk on their own so we have to transfer them from their stretchers to our camera beds and back. They also can’t get up to use the washroom. Or get something that they need. And to make it even worse lots of them have contagious infections. And terrible veins. AWESOME.

This week and next week I am at the hospital. Monday was bonkers. The last couple days haven’t been TOO crazy but it’s still lots more work than other rotations. My legs are killing me!

I am not looking forward to next week when Scott is gone and I have to cook for myself!! I see a lot of frozen pizzas in my immediate future. (Oops I’m not supposed to talk about food…)

Long weekend coming up though! We’re having a little housewarming party on Saturday and then Scott leaves on the Monday for Australia for Jessie’s wedding. He’ll be gone for two weeks. Hopefully we can get in some good quality patio time over the weekend before he leaves.

At least my next rotation after this hospital one is going to be very easy. Hopefully this crappy non-summery weather finishes by then too!!

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I’m not going to say too much here because… PORK. Speaks for itself.

june 2nd, 2013 – porchetta sandwiches with salsa verde

In all the excitement of having a delicious smelling crackling covered piece of pork in front of me I forgot to take a picture of my actual sandwiches. I am so so so happy with how this pork turned out, omg. We sliced the pork into thin pieces and put it on rolls with a bit of salsa verde. The crackling was crunchy and salty and the meat was super moist. It was definitely channelling Vancouver’s Meat & Bread. This porchetta turned out so well I think it deserves its own post. Coming soon.

june 3rd, 2013 – vegetarian green curry

june 4th, 2013 – maple dijon chicken with sweet potato and green beans

More after the jump…Continue reading

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a particularly cool looking lecture

SNMMI 2013 Annual Meeting Vancouver is now over. (That’s Society for Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, btw.) Oh how I enjoyed those few days of meeting new people and NOT having to explain what I’m studying.

I thought it was a pretty decent conference. I went to A LOT of different talks. Luckily Victor is about as nerdy as me so I had a friend to hang around with most of the time.


This half dude in the Siemens display freaked me out!! He had stubble! And arm hair! And his eye even twitched a little bit. AHHH! Lesley and I stared at it for quite a long time. First I thought it was a dude lying on his side half in the bed, with his head turned. Lesley thought it was an optical illusion. Then I thought it was actually a corpse (and was quite disturbed). Eventually a Siemens rep said that it was a very expensive model. SO CREEPY!!!!!!!!

Highlights of the conference included:

  • a talk about the effects of the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident on the population and food (apparently they are getting fat from being afraid of going outside, and the food is fine)
  • a really smart lady talking about dental uptake of I-131, which I had never heard about before
  • a session where we got to interpret diuretic renograms with doctors and vote with clickers (the doctors did terribly!!)

  • free dinner out on the patio at Canada Place
  • getting a free dinner from Phillips
  • a lecture about choosing to use or not use CCK in liver studies (aka a lecture that was relevant and not too complex)
  • getting free stuff in the exhibit hall (Lesley even won $50)
  • seeing new camera designs like a chair camera

Lowlights included:

  • hearing that 45% of people will get cancer
  • a talk where the presenter was pretty much eating the microphone
  • some overly technical talks that I couldn’t understand a single word
  • getting depressed because most of the stuff is not available in Canada and probably won’t ever be

It was also cool to bump into lots of techs that I hadn’t seen since being at their hospital for clinical. It was nice to catch up and hopefully they remember me a bit better now come September.

I am so grateful that the conference happened to come to Vancouver, and that it happened when we were still students (so we could go for free!). That was really lucky.

i take this as a sign that i am in the right field

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We finally have internet so I can blog again!

We’ve been REALLY busy for the last week and a half, which was a good thing because I don’t think I could survive without internet for so long if I didn’t have so much stuff to do.

Since the end of school we moved out of our old apartment and into our new place. We cleaned the old place. Went to the food convention twice. Went to Lesley’s house. Visited with Lauren. Went out for drinks. Got my hair cut. Water marbled my nails. Started my summer clinical placement.

Just this weekend I prepared and cooked a porchetta and finally unpacked the last of all our boxes. Lesley is coming over in a bit for patio drinks and Ticket To Ride. I still need to study a bit for knowledge testing tomorrow.

Sooo… lots of blog posts to come! Here are some of the pictures that didn’t fit into any of my other posts…

me on the patio the day we got our keys

when we first got everything moved into our new apartment

at church’s chicken for the first time

sunset view from the balcony

patio laptop and whiskeys

look what Scott found while cleaning the fridge at the old house!!! best surprise ever!!


I’m going to take some apartment pictures RIGHT NOW. :)