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First day of August = time to review my progress on my summer goals again.

  1. Finally paint the cheapo wooden drawers we got from IKEA.
  2. Make delicious popsicles in my new popsicle mold. once (strawberry lemonade). twice (strawberry frozen yogurt).
  3. Go swimming in the ocean for the first time in Vancouver. done!
  4. Ride the rides at the PNE.
  5. Watch fireworks. done.
  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. done. twice, actually!
  9. Regularly visit the farmers market on Saturday mornings. once. twice. does that count as ‘regularly’? not sure.
  10. Read some books while I actually have the time. Insurgent (Veronica Roth), Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (Jenny Lawson), currently reading The Art of Fielding: A Novel (Chad Harbach). I <3 you Kindle.
  11. Make a nicer looking menu planning board. done!
  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 about 60 now.
  15. Make a new blog header.
  16. Take more pictures. definitely failing at this so far.

Getting there!

I’m totally looking forward to this upcoming long weekend, and 9 AM start time at work for the next two weeks. Two more days of early mornings and busy days giving injections.

We’ve been asked for our top three choices for hospital placements for the fall and winter terms (we alternate two weeks at the hospital and two weeks of classes for all of second year). So many factors to consider… commuting, convenience, hours, friends, educational experience, potential jobs, etc etc. I’ll let you know when I finalize my choices.

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I can’t believe it’s already Wednesday. I can’t believe it’s already nearly the end of July. The days and weeks are just slipping by me!! Another month-ish and I’m back at school???!!?!?!

Work is pretty tiring every day because everything is new and I have to be alert ALL THE TIME. By the time things start to feel a little routine it’s time to start a new rotation!

Hot lab rotation has been pretty fun so far. I’ve done about 20 injections in the past three days. :D I saw the images from one patient I definitely remember injecting and it was perfecto – no hot spots in the elbow from a bad injection. WOOT. I don’t get to see all of the images so I’m not totally sure how I’m doing though. I’ve had a couple failures for sure, but I’m getting better I think.

Yesterday I cooked lamb shoulder in the slow cooker. I chopped everything up for it the night before, then Scott dumped it in and set it for 8 hours before he left for work yesterday morning. When I came home in the afternoon the ENTIRE APARTMENT BUILDING smelled like lamb. Not just OUR apartment, I mean the hallways, the lobby, etc. HA.

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Thanks to our friend Stew, we got to go to the Florence + the Machine concert last night for free. :D We are lucky to have nice friends with connections. The show was in Deer Lake Park in Burnaby. Lucky it didn’t rain.

The show was pretty good! She was running and prancing and jumping back and forth all over the stage. Also she sings really HARD, she must have muscular vocal cords.

I finished my fourth rotation at the hospital (two more to go). By the second week of it I was doing a lot of the work by myself. It was just the same thing over and over again so it wasn’t as challenging. Next rotation I’m on the hot lab shift and I already know it’s going to be intense. Lots of new things and lots of injections. O_O Scared.

We bought a popcorn maker for $10 and a hand mixer for $7 from Superstore today! How is it so cheap???! Hopefully they don’t start any fires. I am excited to make popcorn at home. Now I just have to figure a way to get a little salt to stick on without using a lot of butter. Any ideas? Is coconut oil popcorn a thing? (I mean using coconut oil as a topping, not to pop the corn… it’s an air popper.)

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Saturday was our second anniversary. It was a beautiful hot cloudless day in Vancouver so we spent the whole day outside.

First we had lunch at Boathouse in Kitsilano. We shared a pitcher of delicious lime margarita.

The whole restaurant is pretty much a big patio with great views and fresh air. So lovely on a nice day!

I had lobster grilled cheese benny and it was amazing. Big chunks of lobster, nice bread, poached egg, cheese…. OM NOM NOM. It was very rich and it made me really full. I would totally order this again if I ever get to go back.

Scott had ahi tuna. He liked it a lot too.


After lunch we went down to the beach and read our Kindles in the shade for a couple hours. I did go for a quick swim in the ocean (another summer goal checked off!!) but didn’t stay in too long because it is boring swimming by yourself.


After swimming we headed home to shower and get ready for my work party. There are ten people in our department that are turning 30, 40, 50 or 60 this year so they had a big birthday party for all of them at our bosses house and the students were invited as well. It was Mexican themed and pretty fun. I liked all the appetizers and the cakes were super cool. Each cake was personalized for each person in their favourite colours AND type of cake!

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Wahhhhhh Rosemarie has left the country. :( :(

It was very nice having her stay with us for the last 2.5 weeks (although she wasn’t here for lots of that time). I liked having her living in the corner of our living room. We played a lot of games and watched a lot of Seinfeld! Plus she did the dishes and took out the garbage, hehe.

Last night her and I went to see the movie Collaborator. I had won tickets to see it from the newspaper. I thought it was so-so and at the end of the movie we all got trapped into this semi-awkward Q & A session with the star of the movie. Although he was fine in the movie and I recognized him from the show Weeds (Peter Scottson), I just wanted to go home.

Some tasty sushi the other night from the Sushi Garden near our house. We were planning on eating at the restaurant but there were TWELVE groups ahead of us! So we got take out instead. The sashimi was awesome and the rolls were all quite good, although very large in diameter which makes for tricky eating.

I’ve been very busy at work this week. Learning a new camera, a new scanning protocol, learning bone density, doctors reading sessions, plus lots of difficult patients. I am learning heaps and sometimes struggling with all the jobs, but I think I am still doing pretty well overall. By the end of all our clinical placements I have no doubt that I will be totally ready to work as a nuclear medicine technologist.