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WORK/SCHOOL – My summer has pretty much revolved around this. I feel like the majority of my summer has been working, commuting, studying or sleeping (and going to the gym). I’m two weeks away from finishing clinical though so it’s all good. After clinical ends we have a couple weeks to study our butts off and then we write the national certification exam on September 17th.

HOME – We still really like this apartment. Our neighbour situation at the moment is pretty ideal too now. We used to have really loud neighbours to the right. They did things like leave their alarm clock beeping from 10PM to 5AM straight, or have loud arguments on the balcony at 10PM, or have loud parties on Wednesday nights. Then a while ago we noticed we hadn’t heard anything from there for several days. We peeked around the divider to look and all their stuff was still there, but it seemed like there was no one in the apartment for a whole month. Then mysteriously one day all their furniture was packed up and gone, except for a few knicknacks here and there. THEN we noticed that the patio door has been wide open for at least a week now. WHAT HAPPENED???!!! Did they die in there and now they are airing it out?? I don’t get it. (ps I hope no one actually died)

FOOD/DRINK – New favourite drink: strawberry lime cider. Six for $11?? Love this province and their ridiculously cheap cider. Today I baked cheesy garlic bread… FROM SCRATCH. There’s more than one baker in this house!!! It was delicious.

FRIENDS/FAMILY – I’ve been enjoying bubble tea dates and game nights and chatty lunches and hanging out on the patio. We should have another party asap. Friends: just come over any time!! Also I miss Rosemarie a lot and am counting down the days till she comes “home”. At least it seems like she is doing really well in New Zealand (office work weekdays and outdoors for the whole weekend, the usual).

FITNESS – I’ve still been going to the gym 2-4 times a week. Still doing mainly weightlifting but today I did my first attempt at HIIT. I like that HIIT only takes like 15 minutes. I bought a bikram yoga Groupon last week too. Thought yoga might help with my core which will help with skeleton. It would have made my mom SO happy if I had told her I decided to finally try yoga, haha. I’m also thinking about getting back into swimming. I’ve been meaning to write a big post about my foray into fitness so that’s all I’m going to say about exercise for now. New post coming soon.

HOBBIES – What’s a hobby?

 

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Only 5 more weeks of clinical to go! One more week of hotlab, two weeks doing PET at the BC Cancer Agency, and two relaxed weeks back at the outpatient centre. So close to done.

Still no word of any jobs though. Our class ended up being really unlucky. The union is forcing all the hospitals to switch to a 5 day/week, 37.5 hours/week schedule and it seems like no one is going to hire anyone until all this change happens. Luckily the change is supposed to be finalized by the beginning of September, but unluckily I don’t know if there is going to be as much need for casuals any more. And I would not be surprised at all if things get delayed. :'(((((((((((. Things are a little grim.

I don’t really know what Plan B is at this point. All I know is that I REALLY REALLY want a job so that 1. I can get some work experience under my belt and 2. I can afford to do skeleton this winter.

It hasn’t rained a drop at our house in 4 weeks. Almost all our plants are dead and all the grass in the city is yellow. Fantastic patio weather though! I really enjoy eating our dinner outside on the patio and it’s been great not having to worry about moving the chair cushions and stuff.

Summer is passing by quickly. A lot of it is being spent commuting. :( PS A HUGE thank you to Lesley for lending me her car for my whole hotlab rotation (I start at 6AM and can’t get to work by public transit for that time). She rules and I owe her big time.

We have been squeezing in some fun activities here and there but I’ve been horrible about taking pictures. Worst blogger ever at the moment.

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Scott and I celebrated our 3 year anniversary last weekend. We had a really nice day, except for the 20 minutes we accidentally spent right in the core of the downtown East side. Yikes it’s pretty bad there in the summer!!!!

Anyway, first we overloaded our senses on the FlyOver Canada ride at Canada Place. It’s like one of those 4D theatre rides they have at amusement parks where the seats tip back and forth and they spray water on you except this one is REALLY WELL DONE. The big curved screen covered our ENTIRE peripheral vision. You really feel like you are flying through the Canadian landscape! It had smells and mist as well. It was so short though, I wish it was like 5 times as long. And they skipped right from Newfoundland to Toronto! Poor neglected Atlantic Canada. I have pretty high standards for things like this and other than the length I thought it was great. Really cool!

After the ride we headed over to Dark Table for dinner to deprive our senses. It’s one of those restaurants where the waiters are all blind and you eat in complete darkness. When we arrived at the restaurant we were given menus outside and directed to a bench on the patio to pick what we wanted to eat. You actually only pick the main course, the starter and the dessert are always a surprise. You can choose for the main course to be a surprise too, actually. I picked the prawn dish and Scott went for the mystery main course. Please don’t worry about me spoiling the surprises because they are supposed to change every day.

When they say dark they mean DARK. There is not one bit of light coming into the place. Our waiter led us to our table in train formation. We sat down and then he left us for a little while, I guess for us to settle down and figure out the lay of the table. It was sooo funny trying to figure out what was going on. We touched everything, haha. I kept worrying that I was going to knock over a flower vase or something but that’s pretty silly… obviously they don’t need table decorations. You keep expecting your eyes to adjust to the darkness but they really do not! It took a bit to realize that if we didn’t say what we were doing or thinking the other person has no idea what you are doing or thinking. We had lots to talk about though, like trying to figure out how many other people were eating there as well, or a packet of butter that you found on your side plate, hahahaha.

The starter dish.

I’M HILARIOUS.*

We got salads for our starter. Salads are hard to eat in the dark! I brought an empty fork to my mouth so many times, haha. Eventually I just used my other hand to ensure I actually got something on my fork. Classy.

Main course. Hehe.

My prawns and risotto were very nice. I was relieved to find that they had removed the shells for me. I wasn’t sure how I would do that on my own. Scott still isn’t sure if he had chicken or pork (I think pork.) Sharing bites of food was NOT EASY. Scott dumped his prawn sample on to his shirt. I got sauce all over my hand.

Dessert. Is this joke old yet? Hope not cuz I’m still laughing.

Raspberry cheesecake! It was tasty and I appreciated that it was not chocolate (chocolate late on a worknight is not ideal for me).

After eating we got led train style to a semi-lit room to pay the bill and then led outside into the BLINDING LIGHT. It was funny to see the damage to Scott’s shirt and my arms, haha.

Overall very funny experience. Definitely will be a memorable anniversary. The food was good but not the greatest thing I ever ate or anything. I recommend going there though, it’s a pretty unique experience.

Dark Table Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

*Actually Rosemarie is hilarious cuz she told me to post those “pictures”.

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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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It was my birthday on Wednesday. :) I didn’t do anything too crazy on my actual birthday, just ordered some food and relaxed in my hammock. I was pooped from another long day at the hospital (which thankfully did not involve any actual poop). I got lots of phone calls from family and emails from friends and Scott had hidden some presents all over the apartment, so I still feel like I had a nice birthday. HELLO 27.


Nice candle, Scott.

We actually had a party the weekend before Scott left. A housewarming/birthday/goodbye party. It was a really really hot day so everyone was out on the patio. We had tons and tons of snack food and then fired up the bbq for some sausages and bacon wrapped chicken and corn. And DQ ice cream cake!! (PS I just ate the last piece tonight, yum.)


I didn’t take any pictures. Whoops. Too busy sweating and mingling. Thanks Clare for making us take this one!