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Yesterday was such an awesome day!

Well it didn’t start off that way. Work was boring as usual and I still couldn’t get in touch with the BCIT lady. I had to email Toronto by about lunchtime to accept my offer and time was ticking. I never reached her so I had no choice but to accept Toronto.

Scott got an interview this week for a new job that pays quite well. Even more reasons why I desperately wanted to get in to BCIT! Also I’d looked up truck rentals and gas prices the night before and it looked like it would cost $2500+ to drive across to Toronto. Ack.

I actually started tearing up at work because I was so frustrated and anxious with anticipation.

At 4:30PM I left work to head to Brian’s to watch the hockey game. I’d just left the building and saw that I had a missed call and a voice mail on my phone, and it was from the BCIT lady!!!! I went back up to the office to use the phone and hyperventilated! She said that she had been away on a conference and didn’t get back until today and that YES they considered me a strong applicant and wanted to offer me admission! She left me her cell phone number so I called her back and she repeated all that stuff and said she will get my offer sent out on Monday IF I WANTED IT. I was like YESSS YES YES YES I WANT IT!

I was giddy with excitement as I fought through the crowds in the city (CBC.ca says estimated 100,000 people gathered on the streets!!!) We all watched the game at Brian’s. It was incredibly stressful. We were all tense right up to the last second of the game since I think we were all remembering all the other games where horrible things happened in the last moments of the games. Canucks did it though and won! Everyone expects them to lose again in Boston though and then we’ll have game 7 here in Vancouver on Wednesday.

They might lose though because Scott has to shave his playoff beard on Tuesday night now for the interview!! ;)

After the game we went out to the streets for a few minutes but everyone was really moving around a lot and it was a bit rough in the crowds so I didn’t like it. I tried Japadog (and loved it) and then we went home. My mouth is burnt and scraped from the delicious hotdog but I’m so relieved and so much less stressed and feeling a lot better than I have in a long time. Oh and the Toronto dude wrote back and cancelled my acceptance so we don’t have to pay $500.

More later.

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Blossoms on our street.

Another week gone by, nothing from NAIT.

Nothing from BCIT either yet, but since I did the bio challenge and finished the first half of physics (I got an A) I should hear from them any day now.

We just want to make some plans!!!

Ah Canucks in the Stanley Cup finals! We watched the last game downtown. It was nutso, as soon as they won people started screaming and honking their horns everywhere downtown. It was crazy noisy! We all rushed down to Granville Street where everyone was singing and cheering and high fiving each other. Apparently 20,000 people flooded Granville Street! That wasn’t even the finals!!

 

We took some videos too. Maybe Scott will post one on his blog IF HE EVER WRITES AGAIN.

Work has become very very very boring. I’ve mastered all the different documents so nothing is challenging any more. I could do it with my eyes closed. Well not really, but almost. I’ll obviously keep at it for the next couple months but I will admit I have been dreaming about my last day for a while now.

Well time to do something productive now… so I’m off!

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STUFF I LOVE #1

Audiobooks

I recently decided that I LOVE AUDIOBOOKS! I read listened to an entire book in two days, WHILE WORKING. How’s that for multi-tasking.

I’m sure I could have curled up in bed and read the whole book in two days too, but who has time for that!? Now I can earn money and “read” at the same time. I feel like I’ve opened up a huge new chunk of day for me to take advantage of. Plus it was also kind of… comforting… like the old days when dad used to read to me at night time. A nice feeling.

I was listening to Terry Fallis’ The Best Laid Plans which he podcasted one chapter at a time a while ago when he was having trouble getting it published. You can get it for free off iTunes. Then it won the CBC Canada Reads 2011 contest and I’m sure he’s doing a lot better now. It’s a good story, check it out!

I suppose some books are better for listening to than others. The Best Laid Plans worked well, but we also downloaded audio files of Jasper Fforde’s books and now I am thinking that they might not be as good since he does a lot of clever things with different fonts or intentional ‘myspelings’, which would be lost.

I’ve also listened to Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything which was also quite interesting, but that was a serious time commitment since it really is not short at all. Now I need some kind of audiobook library (does that exist? probably) to pick what next! Any suggestions?

The question is, does listening to a book have the same educational benefit as reading a book? It certainly is a lot more passive. But I think I personally absorb more from listening than reading.

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SO COLD THIS WEEK.

Not only has Vancouver been having colder than usual weather (-3°C?????!!!), it was -15°C in Calgary on Wednesday. I forgot how going out into super cold air makes you cough. Ha.

I am super spoiled and was lucky enough to have my friend from Dal not only pick me up from the airport, but give me a mini tour of Calgary, stop for hot chocolate, AND pick me up from the school and drive me back to the airport!!!!! So nice! It was awesome to catch up with her, after like three years!

However the interview was not as nice. I was expecting one-on-one traditional style interviews but 30 seconds before I had to go in I found out it was MMI style. I was SO not prepared. There were 4 of us and we had to go to 5 different tables. At each table you got 2 minutes to read over a scenario and some questions, and then 4 minutes to answer. The problem was I thought some of the scenarios were so simple that there is no possible way at all I could talk about it for 4 minutes (ex. You are an imaging technologist at a small clinic with one other technician and a secretary. You notice the secretary has been repeatedly making the same mistake. What do you do? Ummmm…. nicely go over the mistake with the secretary?? WHAT ELSE COULD I SAY?? If I notice a mistake I’m not going to creep around it.)

This made me very nervous and a little rambly and just… unsure. Which is probably the exact opposite of what I should have been. It is REALLY weird talking to someone who is totally unresponsive. I only figured out they were probably told to me like that several hours later.

Anyway after the last table that was it. ‘Interview’ over.

Blargh. It’s really frustrating that I don’t feel like I rocked it. I knew about this style of interview (they use it at Michener) but I just didn’t know this one would be like that and instead of practicing public speaking I focused more on my history, my customer service experience, the course requirements, and challenging situations I have had to deal with.

Who knows, maybe I did ok. The other girls didn’t use up the whole 4 minutes each time either.

My flight back ended up being delayed 2.5 hours. The worst part was that no other flight seemed to have been affected. Even the next WestJet flight ended up leaving 15 minutes before mine. :( So instead of getting home at a reasonable 7:30 I got home at 10:00 and talked with Scott a bit and went straight to bed. I was so tired and had super bleary eyes at work the next day.

Work is challenging again. I’m not doing the old forms I am so used to that I could do in my sleep, and now have to learn 50 million new rules and things. Maybe soon I won’t have to type any more.

Oh and I’m still off dairy. I had some when I was in Calgary and I did feel a little sick that day so I went off it again. It’s just really hard to tell if I feel better without dairy or the same. The differences are so slight and inconsistent I still haven’t been able to reach any conclusions. I made quiche this morning with a store-bought crust (it uses cheapo oils instead of butter), and soy milk. It was good.

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My mind is a bit jumbly so I think I’ll just do point form today.

++++++++++++ I got a raise at work!!!

++++++++++++++++++ I got a uni interview at SAIT in Calgary!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
— they only gave me a week notice! It’s next Wednesday!
+ I still managed to get cheapish flights
+ my boss didn’t seem to mind giving me the day off

That email had perfect timing. I had come from work all anxious and stressed and feeling like a failure because sometimes I feel like I screw everything up in life and then I saw the ‘Congratulations!’ in my inbox. I’ve been really worried lately that I wasn’t even getting considered anywhere and now I feel a bit more optimistic about that, which is good.

++ playing Settlers with new friends was fun. I hope they invite us over again (HINT HINT haha) and I’ll bring baked goods and we can try the expansion pack.
+ we also bought our 4th Groupon this week for a games store so we can buy our own set for cheap.

++ we finally gave Agricola a try and it’s fun. After playing it three times neither of us have any idea how to actually win (even though I won twice and and tied once). It’s not as complex as we thought though and both of us like it.

—- As I mentioned before I am off dairy this week to see if I am lactose intolerant. This makes me very sad. I thought breakfast was going to be difficult but actually I quite enjoyed my english muffin with hummus, and my egg wraps with salsa and avocado. I just learned this week that you can cook ‘scrambled’ eggs in the microwave in 60 seconds. Yes they are kind of spongy, but if I’m mixing them with something else it’s ok.

Dessert is difficult though! Rosemarie is coming over tomorrow and I am in charge of dessert. Brownies (cocoa, egg, oil, water etc.) seems like it could work, but I may have to make them from scratch. And other than that I’ve got no ideas except jello. Doesn’t help that I don’t like coconut or cooked fruit.