Yet another clinical skills session was cancelled on us. So really, I could've spent my entire day in my PJs and caught up on the anatomy lab I skipped today. I hate being the bottom of the totem pole...

So last night I wasted 45 minutes of my life chasing a black fly around my room with a bottle of hairspray in one hand and my vacuum cleaner in the other. The darn thing was ADHD and was bouncing off the walls and would NOT sit still. So I managed to coat my ceiling, my monitor and my floor lamp (I was afraid the hairspray might catch fire but decided a dead bug was worth it =) with a fine mist of hairspray. Then once I had finally succeeded in blasting him with the stuff (multiple times =), he wouldn't die! The bouncing just got a little less vigorous and I got tired of waiting for him to cross into the great beyond and decided to go to bed. When I woke up this morning, I put one foot out of bed and discovered that the darn thing had died and fallen on the carpet an inch away from my big toe! And then I had to spend 15 minutes cleaning the sticky film off of all my furniture.

I should just man up...

Wootwoot, my parents came to visit for the weekend. Despite the fact that Jessica and I had been slowly cleaning our apartment since Wednesday, within an hour of her arrival my mother had: killed a crab, cleaned my fridge, re-organized my kitchen, re-stocked my spice cupboards, criticized my cleaning skills then made me get down on my hands and knees to attack a lint-y tablecloth with masking tape and THEN!!! made me STEAM IRON the aforementioned table cloth so it would live up to its full potential.

After that she cooked us a gourmet dinner, washed the dishes, and got us all out the door so we could attend my sister's choir concert. After the concert she was a coffee-making, fruit-cutting, dessert-serving machine extravaganza and then she did the dishes again! And then the next morning she was up at 8 making us clam porridge for breakfast AND she had managed to do her homework.

Craziness. There are some days where I'm pretty proud of myself because I managed to make it through a few lectures without stopping for one of my many food/solitaire/internet browsing/sister-bugging breaks AND pulled together a meal by throwing a mash of meat, vegetables and spices into the toaster oven/electric grill/slow cooker. But everytime my mom comes through here she puts me to shame. To add insult to injury, she decided that it was necessary to show me how I could clean my bathroom in 10 minutes or less! And tonight she called me to make sure I mopped the floor after dinner. She counted the number of times I rinsed out the cloth for goodness sakes! And then made sure I had soaked the dishcloths in soapy water to get the oil out before the next day.

Other than having my housekeeping abilities completely undermined, life goes on as usual:

• Made the drive out to St. Albert today to visit an aboriginal addictions centre which incorporated a lot of spiritual healing ceremonies in addition to their addictions counselling. Really neat place and well worth the drive =)
• Lots of leftovers from the weekend. My sister ate all of the sweet potato fries from Dadeo's (she claims she didn't know I hadn't had any). I was righteously indignant, she was appropriately repentant.
• Beautiful weather today, haven't felt this cheerful in a while!
• Because I was feeling cheerful, I was nice to the maintenance guy in my building and he gave me a free carwash! Karma smiles on me today =)
• Amazing swim (my first one in a while). How was I ever satisfied with running on treadmills?
• Time to watch my show =) If I'm feeling industrious, will tackle another chapter of Ophthalmology afterwards but otherwise it's an early night for me
• 8 hours of clinical skills this week. I must not hate my group members. I must not hate my group members.

Must run and teach sex-ed in half an hour or so. Kids are awesome and we only teach for an hour each time, plus their regular teacher is in the classroom to enforce discipline if need be, so we get all the joys of teaching and almost none of the grief =) Unlike last year though, this class has very few colorful questions which is good (at least they're asking questions), but less fun for us.

After that is girls' sushi and movie night so I'm running to pick up sushi supplies. Then must come back home and try and work at least a little, then must run down to the south for Ophthalmology clinical skills, then time to run home and start prepping. Busy, busy, busy, not very much work getting done =)

Happy 24th Birthday to Sharon!

I realized this year just how blessed I've been to have met this group of girls, especially this one! She drinks coffee , she loves sushi, she always lets me copy her notes and she lives just downstairs so we can borrow eggs/mixers/food processors/textbooks. Some days we spend up to 8hr/day in the same classroom, in the same anatomy lab group, in the same support group, working in the same office =) And I'm still not tired of her!!! Lol....amazing =) Enjoy your last year before becoming a quarter-centurion =)

Neuro exam - Let's eliminate all the lectures and only teach them the clinical material in small groups. Then let's all tell them something different because we're all 'experts' in our various fields and our personal experience far outweighs whatever may be written in the manual. I know, let's half of us tell them that all they need to know is in the manual and the other half tell them the manual is complete and absolute bunk. Awesome. Now let's write an entirely clinical exam. Oh wait, except for you Dr. Johnson. Why don't you test them on minutiae because they their neuropathology roses haven't completely bloomed yet. Now it's perfect.

My absolute worst exam of all time would have to be my circle geometry final in Math 30 but back then, you could get standardized from a 52% to a 92%. This time, no such luck.

I'm not at all bitter =) And over the last few weeks, I'd forgotten what it was like to have a life =) This weekend us meds got all gussied up for our annual MedFormal. Half my pictures really didn't turn out but here are a few that'll have to do until my friends send me their pics!

So I'm supposed to be studying right now, but a quick dose of paranoia:

I happened to look at a profile picture of myself today and noticed that my front teeth are considerably more prominent than I'd thought. This worries me because like every other Jr. high kid who suffered through braces, I couldn't stop wearing my retainer quickly enough. So while I have a permanent retainer bonded onto my bottom teeth, my top teeth have been retainer-free since oh...the 10th grade or so. Really hoping I haven't undone all my suffering and my parents' hard-earned cash. Alright, now that this is out of my system, I'll stop worrying about irrelevant things in the past and start worrying about my very immediate exam.