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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.

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We have been mega busy in the last four days. I’m pooped.

While Scott looks happy in this picture, Canada Day in downtown Vancouver was a disappointment. It was crowded and there was nothing good going on. There were some food carts but they were too expensive and there were trucks giving out samples of chocolate milk and stuff but the lines were too long. And the lumberjack show was too slow paced and boring. So we went home.

On the Monday of the long weekend Scott and I went mattress shopping. Our old mattress has just gotten too soft unfortunately, even though it’s only two years old. I have been waking up with a sore back for a while, from sleeping in a canyon, and Scott snores more now!!! >:( So we got a way more firm mattress on mega sale and it gets delivered on Sunday. I CAN’T WAIT. We checked out all the stores nearby to get the best deal.

We also played many many games of Agricola over the weekend. THE BEST GAME!! Check out this game where Scott sucked so bad he lost 38 to 10. Even if you don’t know the game you can see how badly Scott did. He doesn’t even know what went so so wrong, hahaha.

My board.

Scott’s board. HAHAHA.

Tuesday was MY BIRTHDAY! We had a really good dinner at Phnom Penh. We had tons of food including their famous chicken wings and butter beef. My favourite dish of the night was the deep fried squid though… man oh man it was SO TENDER. That was the softest, non-chewy squid I have ever had. I don’t know how they do it! Unfortunately a lot of the dishes (including the squid) were extremely salty though so while I’m glad we finally tried it, I don’t know if I will go back again.

Rosemarie got me a nanaimo square cake and Scott made cookies. I got awesome presents this year including Ticket To Ride from my Aussie family, and a Kindle from Scott!!! I am spoiled!!!

Us playing Ticket To Ride on my birthday. Rosemarie won.

Then yesterday was Rosemarie’s goodbye party. I had parmesan and herb wings and a cocktail called a Rocket Pop. It was good but I think I ate too fast and felt really nauseous so that’s all I had. Rosemarie had a lot of friends show up. I think it was a good goodbye party for her.

I’ve still been having to wake up at 5:45 AM for work this week too, but tomorrow is the last day of that for a while. I don’t think anyone should ever have to wake up at anything before 6:00 AM. Cardiac stress lab has been my hardest rotation so far. There is lots of stuff happening and the same time and you don’t really get to stop moving until the afternoon. I’ve done 5 injections so far but that’s it. Not the right rotations to do a lot of injections unfortunately. And next week won’t have many either. Boo.

ANYWAY that’s me all caught up I think! I’m looking forward to this evening bumming around with Scott and playing some more Ticket To Ride once Rosemarie gets back from her errands.

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Happy Canada Day from Vancouver! I really miss Ottawa a lot today. Canada Day in Ottawa is one of the best celebrations I have been to, and if I am going to be in Canada on July 1st I really want to be there in the nation’s capital. I think this might be the first Canada Day I have spent in Canada NOT in Ottawa. SO WEIRD!

I started a new rotation at work last week in the stress lab. We put patients on treadmills and watch them sweat. It’s very busy in there and it was a pretty overwhelming week. I dropped a drop of MIBI on my shoe in the hustle and earned the nickname Hot Foot. I had to put my shoes in storage for two days until they were not radioactive any more. Haha.

We had breakfast at Brioche with my friend Jason (who I camped with in Bowen, Australia) and his girlfriend. They were on their way to Vancouver Island to visit his family. My avocado, brie, and smoked salmon omelette was pretty tasty but the foccacia was super hard and it was kind of expensive. Booo.

The first day of the month seems like a good chance to review my summer goals list, so here we go……

  1. Finally paint the cheapo wooden drawers we got from IKEA.
  2. Make delicious popsicles in my new popsicle mold. once (strawberry lemonade).
  3. Go swimming in the ocean for the first time in Vancouver.
  4. Ride the rides at the PNE.
  5. Watch fireworks.
  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. already done! twice, actually!
  9. Regularly visit the farmers market on Saturday mornings. once.
  10. Read some books while I actually have the time. reading Insurgent at the moment.
  11. Make a nicer looking menu planning board.
  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 two so far.
  15. Make a new blog header.
  16. Take more pictures.

Clearly I still have a lot to work on. I’m putting away my computer right now!

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DRAMATIC THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN HAPPENING

We called the cops on the neighbours! TWICE! Their fighting was worse than usual and one of the ladies was yelling “CALL 911” and stuff, so we did. They arrested the other lady! The cops got people to give statements this time. I wonder when the lady will come back, and what will happen next. I’m glad stuff is going on the record now.

I did my very first real injection on a real live patient. It went well! Well, except I was just so relieved to have successfully finished the injection that I put the hot (radioactive) needle in the cold sharps bucket. Haha, oops. So we had to take the whole sharps container and put it in the storage cupboard.

In less dramatic news: I won at Agricola and Carcassonne on Saturday, I had a lovely brunch with some internet friends on Sunday, and Rosemarie moves in tomorrow! FUN SUMMER TIMES!

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I am sorry for not writing anything personal in so long. For the past few weeks I’ve been going through some kind of career and life crisis and maniacally wondering if I am really doing the right thing or maybe I should quit BCIT and go to med school instead, and I wasn’t really ready to talk about it. End result: I’m just going to keep doing my nuclear medicine/MRI thing for now. There are approximately 8 billion different factors involved in this decision and I still don’t feel 100% confident that it is the right decision, but at this point I think it makes the most sense.

I may write the MCAT at some point in the next year or so though anyway… just to see.

Things that have been on my mind: student life, stress levels, insomnia, mental health, $300K salaries, personal life, debt, moving, Canada, Australia, babies, traveling, 8 years, careers, boredom, prestige, homework, rotations, pre-requisites………… and on and on and on.

In other news Rob was back in town for a few days so we had him and Rose over for a little pizza and games night. We ate homemade chicken basil pizza and played 4 player Carcassonne (with 2 expansions) and MAGNETS. It was delightfully nerdy.

AND>> today we had venipuncture training at work and I am now allowed to inject patients starting tomorrow. SO SCARED. I hope my patients have gigantic veins. I will keep you posted. So far I DO have a 100% success rate, hehe. All four pokes.

Well that’s pretty much me all updated. What’snewwit’you?