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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?

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Today is the first day of summer, which seems like a very appropriate time to make a list of SUMMER GOALS.

  1. Finally paint the cheapo wooden drawers we got from IKEA.
  2. Make delicious popsicles in my new popsicle mold.
  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!
  9. Regularly visit the farmers market on Saturday mornings.
  10. Read some books while I actually have the time.
  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.
  15. Make a new blog header.
  16. Take more pictures.

Summer lasts until September 22, so I’ve got until then to complete my list. We’ll see how I go!

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For the next four weeks I start work at 7:00 AM, so I spent today prepping a bunch of breakfast foods so that I hopefully don’t have to wake up much before 6 AM. I made 12 oatmeal chocolate chip muffins this morning, and just finished making 10 breakfast burritos this afternoon. All that combined with bagels being on sale for $1 a bag at No Frills means that our freezer is totally ridiculous right now!!

Is it weird that I took a picture of my freezer? Probably.

Last week at work was enjoyable. Things are becoming more familiar and I’m getting better at dealing with patients. There really are a lot of details I need to eventually know!!! I’ll be on a new camera for the next two weeks, similar to what I was on before but with only one camera head instead of two. This camera also gets a whole lot of different scans scheduled on it so it will be another two weeks of randomness.

In other news, Scott is home! He worked something like 140 hours over the last two weeks in Edmonton so we’ve been taking it very easy this weekend. We’ve been watching a lot of Australian Masterchef.