Buckets

Yeah, this weekend was a blur. Too much drinking deadens the mind. Went to my school show with a bunch of people from class. Was going to invite someone else but said person isn't talking to me anymore. Sucks. The show was pretty good, much better than last year, but really, anything is better than last year's show. Saturday night went to a house party where the drinks were "buckets", which I guess are what you drink in Thailand. Met some cool people, and even managed to meet the guy who lives across the hall from me. Totally random...small world. I started internal medicine today. Have been dreading it for like....forever. It's like I have to actually use my brain 24/7 now, and study all the time. Sucks....I'm getting burnt out. Today's clinics were good, although I didn't see any patients on my own and looked stupid because I didn't prepare ahead of time (didn't get the schedule...can't help it).

Have to learn haematology/oncology for tomorrow's clinic, and all I want to do is go to sleep. Sucks.

Not my lucky day...again

GOSH!! IDIOT!!

I don't know WHAT went wrong today. Perhaps lack of sleep and too many non-school related things on my mind. Today I had two exams, one in emergency and one in anesthesia. Pretty underprepared for both, but confident in at least passing. Well.......if it weren't for my IDIOT moments I would feel a lot better about things right now. First exam was emerg and I almost walked in late (it's been so long since I wrote an actual exam...about 4 months...forgot how long it take to walk to school). Then I totally forgot to answer the last page, which had 4 questions on it, until the last minute and I had no time to think OR realize that the ECG rhythm strip was indeed Vtach and NOT SVT (if you actually know what those look like you'd be saying GOSH! IDIOT! too). So needless to say the rest of the questions I got wrong too because they all dealt with managment of above condition.

Ok so recovered from that....onto the anesthesia exam, where we wrote it online. At the top of the exam it says specifically not to hit "enter" if you are not typing in an answer box because that will prematurely submit your exam. Well, being the paranoid person that I am, I actually covered up the Enter key so that I wouldn't accidentally use it while I was doing my exam. Everything was going really well...I like to leave ambiguous answers blank until I go through the exam the second time so I can think about them....so as I was getting ready to go through again from the top, I somehow sighed, dropped my elbow on the table, and my hand GRAZED the OTHER Enter key near the number pad and submitted my exam. Just like that. I was in shock. No way to retrieve it. Gone.

:( Oh well, I don't think i had TOO many questions left blank..although...there were only 10 questions....
I'm going to go do some heavy drinking now.

Not my lucky day

Well I didn't win $24 million, but at least I did win two free tickets, which only set me back $3. Not bad. I think I'm going to have to change my money-making strategy a little.

A weird weird day

This morning I unfortunately woke up at 6 am, probably because I was used to waking up at that time for the entire week. I had just awoken from a crazy dream where I was in Hawaii and instead of seeing everything from the ground, I was viewing everything from the air. The scenery was amazing and surreal, kind of like that scene in Contact where she's communicating with the aliens. Checked my e-mail to find one from A., who after six days of not answering his phone nor returning any of my messages was completely oblivious to the fact that I was extremely upset and frustrated over it (I'm a girl, what can you say). Not even to say hi...no e-mails, nothing. And if you're reading this A., shame on your for having time to read my blog but no time to call me back (This will be edited out of course as soon as we are talking again).

Today I felt that it was imperative that I leave my apartment in any hopes of getting studying done. So, I headed to Indigo to try and find a seat. Of course I did a little detour to Payless shoes first, just to check things out. Good thing nothing fit. So onto Indigo where the goal was to get some heavy duty studying done, because really, I had nothing else to do today. Who knew this would be the longest time I have ever sat in a coffee shop studying (nearly 6 hours!). Luckily there were lots of empty tables at Starbucks. I was peacefully studying for about half an hour when things started to get REALLY busy...and this old lady was looking for a seat so I said she could sit at my table. BIG MISTAKE. She decided to strike up a conversation, which seemed harmless at first, but the as soon as she started talking about Jesus I got really scared. Not that I have anything against him, but having someone try to convert you into overt Christianity for half an hour is not my idea of fun on a Saturday afternoon. She also complained about the "woman" who took all the seating away at Indigo and how she couldn't understand what kind of example this store was setting for our youth by selling "smut and lies". I almost burst out laughing.

She did have some interesting theories and stories about the bible code and how it predicted the Oklahoma bombing and 9/11, but then I started to lose her when she said that the Chinese army was going to march itself to Jerusalem to take it over and how the lord was going to destroy them all. I was kind of offended actually. And I'm not quite sure what to make of the fact that she said she was there when terrorists hijacked 4 planes in Tel Aviv. Needless to say, I will NOT be watching the Christian television network like she asked me to. Okay I hope I am not offending anyone right now, but I just didn't believe everything that she said. I told her that too. I thought about challenging her on some of the things she said, but then I just wanted her to go away so I could get back to my books. She left about an hour later, and was replaced by this hot guy for the next 4 hours. I think even more tragic was the total lack of conversation that occurred there. I justify it by the fact that he had a girlfriend and there was no point cause I just wasn't that interested.

Anyways, back to studying.

Uhh, grab the crash cart just in case

I think that life has been pretty hectic as of late, but I find that the only way to get through life's hard times is by keeping in touch with those who care about you. It has been rather hard lately, since when I'm feeling at my worst this is when everyone magically disappears. Oh well, not really a substantial or validated complaint, since I'm pretty sure I'm not available to everyone who needs me ( although...who really needs me anyways?).

Today we had a "simulator day" at the hospital, where we got to pretend we were anesthetists putting a patient to sleep in the operating room. The simulator mannequin, or sim man for short even talks back to you (well ok, someone in the next room is talking to you). My partner and I got our patient off to sleep quite well (got it down after only one day of anesthesia ever in my life!)...but of course when the patient started crashing we had no idea what to do. Luckily our patient didn't die on us and we got to shock him back to life. Way to go team!

A couple of nights ago some guy called my cell phone and started talking cheeky with me, all the while not realizing that I had NO idea who he was. We played the..."um...who is this?"..."It's me!!"...game for about a minute or so, interrupted by a few creepy "Are you in bed yet?" comments. Finally, it dawned on this guy that I had absolutely no idea who he was, and that in fact he had called the wrong number. End of story right? No...seizing his small window of opportunity he proceeded to invasively ask questions about myself (which I either deferred or lied about) and even went so far as to ask me if I'd go out for dinner with him (insert psycho moment here). Uhh, no thanks. Why didn't I just hang up ages ago you ask? Well, considering it was the most exciting thing that had happened to me all weekend, I decided to play along for a while.

Last night I watched Napoleon Dynamite. That has got to be one of the weirdest movies I've ever seen. If anyone has ever seen it please let me know, cause I need to someone to share that wicked Canned Heat dancing skit with.

Happy Chinese New Year. Please make all the Valentine's day propaganda go away.....

Vancouver

Well it's been a week since I was in Vancouver, but I thought I'd round out my trip stories. Coming to Vancouver was great, since the weather was above zero and it was the last of my interviews. I had some fun hanging out with people from my class, ate some West Coast sushi, and did some shopping. Went up to Whistler for a few hours...it's amazing how many people love skiing so much they'll go to the mountain when it's raining, foggy, and brown.


Brown muddy yuckiness

Anyways, the trip was fun. *Almost* missed my flight, but hey, need to add a little excitement to my life right? The flight home was awful...seats were so uncomfortable. And I was so tired I missed both movies (Cellular and ....totally can't remember the second one right now).

Life back in Toronto has been busy and boring. Finished my ER shifts on Thursday and I have just successully wasted my 4 day weekend (well almost, but tomorrow I'm sure I will waste). Went out a couple of times only to realize again that clubbing in Toronto is expensive and stupid unless you're drunk.

I have rented Harold & Kumar and Napoleon Dynamite. Those should be fun movies to watch. Too bad I have to watch them by myself. How pathetic.

Edmonton....

This is all I have to say about Edmonton. Dirty looking. I had my 60 minute massage there at the hotel and it was GREAT. Went to my interview (blah), then hit up West Edmonton Mall...only spent 1.5 hours there and saw this ugly fish with teeth:


Here fishy fishy

I have been reading a book called "The Devil Wears Prada". It's hilarious. Good read.

Halifax part 2 (read the other one first)

....I don't think any of my other classmates made it that weekend...Apparently Natasha Henstridge was at the airport. I didn't see any hot aliens around though. So, nothing was OPEN for almost my entire trip. Except the Tim Hortons...good 'ol Timmies. I got bonus points for my interview for actually making it into the city. Too bad I don't want to come here anymore, I mean...just look at that view!!!


Try going outside in THAT.

I actually tried to explore around outside. Froze my ASS off. It took a while to navigate the streets, er snowbanks, down to the harbour. When the wind wasn't blowing it wasn't that cold actually, but too bad the wind was blowing constantly. Some guy asked me for change because he "lost his bus pass". Whatever. I gave him a loonie cause really it was -30. Besides, he probably would have mugged me if i refused. I think I melted the radiator in my hotel room.

Halifax
Waking up at 4 am isn't that hard, unless you've only just gotten to bed at 3:30am. Only passed one accident on the way to the airport. Was blessed with a guest pass to the lounge at the airport where I had some breakfast (arrived too early for the good stuff) and watched a little Fashion File. A little worried about flying to Halifax in the middle of a snowstorm but hey, why not have a little adventure in my life right? Luckily the plane is arriving from Calgary to pick us up from Pearson, and it's +5 over there. Nevertheless, we were an hour late taking off. Something important like de-icing.... I had changed my seat just prior to boarding because it had two empty seats next to it and just my luck they were full by the time I got on the plane. I think there was an empty seat beside my old one. Whoops. Doesn't matter since I slept for about 95% of the flight. When I came to they were playing Fashion Television on the TVs ....sweet life! The entire flight was nice and sunny until we hit Nova Scotia. Then it was flying through a raging snowstorm. Landing in a raging snowstorm is not fun. Neither is trying to make it to the hotel in a raging snowstorm. My flight was the second last one to make it into the airport before this happened: