1 down. 3 more to go.

Another rotation done. Yippee!!!! After 4 weeks of working 11-hour shifts, I am definitely glad to be done! This has been my best rotation so far, and not necessarily because I did better on this rotation, but it's more on what I learned and how I learned from this rotation. My preceptor has been the best preceptor I've had. She not only taught me pediatrics-related topics, but also taught me how to be a better pharmacist, by sharing with me tips and techniques that she was taught and teaching me good habits to cultivate in terms of working up patients. I wish I had had this rotation earlier in my residency program.

Yesterday

Very busy day at work. Busy but productive.
Napped x 2 hours after work
Tacos for dinner :)
Swiffered and vacuumed
Sorted all my stamps
Scrapbooked my photos from Vegas :) Inspired by rainbow colors and music...

Just like riding a bike

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.

Proverbs 3:5-6

Restarted reading today and I came across this verse. One of my all time faves. Also found a receipt with rebate info that I thought I had lost slipped inside my Bible. Can't get any clearer than that.

31

1. Happy birthday from Danni at 12 midnight
2. Long chat into the night about high school and boys
3. Enough sleep
4. A beautiful summer day
5. A nice relaxing facial the day before :) 
6. Studio Calico order for this,
7. this,
8. and this.
9. Great church worship and service
10. Let your glory fall in this place, let it go forth from here to the nations. Let your spirit come to this place, as we gather to seek your face.
11. Awesome birthday greetings from friends old and new, near and far
12. Good Chinese food for lunch
13. This sweet face                                                
14. This                                                                   
15. And this                                                        
16. Drove with Danni around the neighborhood. She tried parking. Still lots of room for improvement but she's definitely getting the hang of it!
17. A nap! 
18. Want to learn more about economics, politics and finance after watching Collapse with Michael Ruppert.
19. Yummy pasta dish for dinner. Thanks Ma!
20. Homemade Swiss roll for birthday cake.      
21. Topped with peaches and vanilla ice cream. So good!                                                                                                          
22. A red envie from my dad!                                                     
23. Washed the car. Inside and out. Thanks Dan!
24. Gilmore Girls 
25. The Big Bang Theory
26. Quality time with K - Mikimoto and Montecristo
27. Spilled the beans to Danni about Taylor Swift concert tickets
28. A good hair day                                                
29. A good fun birthday all in all. :)                   
30. To be alive and well
31. This one is just the icing on the cake!

Psalm 8

¹ LORD, our Lord,
   how majestic is your name in all the earth!
   You have set your glory in the heavens. 
² Through the praise of children and infants
   you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
   to silence the foe and the avenger. 
³ When I consider your heavens,
   the work of your fingers,
   the moon and the stars,
   which you have set in place, 
⁴ what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
   human beings that you care for them?
⁵ You have made them a little lower than the angels
   and crowned them with glory and honor. 
⁶ You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
   you put everything under their feet: 
⁷ all flocks and herds,
   and the animals of the wild, 
⁸ the birds in the sky,
   and the fish in the sea,
   all that swim the paths of the seas.
⁹ LORD, our Lord,
   how majestic is your name in all the earth!

This is it!

Finally made up my mind on a blog theme last night after weeks! Sheesh...
I decided to move my pharmacy e-portfolio from Google sites to WordPress. With the number of themes available on WordPress, the selection process was long and drawn out as you can imagine. Anyway, it is up and running, and I've managed to post a few things on there as well in the past few days. It's still not complete. I still need to update the 'About Me' pages and that sort of stuff but at least it's there. Trying to make it a repository of everything pharmacy-related. Here's a link to it if interested.

Lesson learned...

Received my cellphone bill and was shocked to see that I had been charged $90 for data roaming charges while in the US! Yikes! Called Rogers up, talked to a nice guy named Dylan and he gladly charged me half of the roaming charges. Phew! Total bill is now $93 instead of $138. Still twice my normal cellphone bill but better than $138. Lesson learned. Turn off 3G when in the States!!!

A nice little surprise greeted me when I came to work this morning and opened my locker. Made me smile. :) One of my co-worker reads voraciously and she donates books she's read to Goodwill. So I happily said that I would take them. 

With this, a couple of serious decisions needed to be made. First, what happens to my pharmacy reading? Hmm...have to come up with a plan to continue reading my pharmacy stuff and of course, make room for all this wonderful reading. Secondly, which one to read first? I've heard a lot of good things about The Help. I was leaning towards starting with that when I came across this.

Doesn't that look interesting? So after work, I picked up a Starbucks gift card (work-related) and decided to treat myself to a Strawberries and Cream Frapp, drove home, turned the dryer on (for laundry done this morning), did my 20-minute cardio, then sat on the front steps of the house and read.

I love days like today.

Today

Church
Lunch at meat market and deli in Vancouver (Victoria Drive)
Mamma Mia at the QE with I-ki 
Birthday dinner at The Keg
Chapter's

Heaven!

Yesterday a co-worker asked me if I had known that he had gotten married. To which I answered, Ummm...yeah. When? Ummm...2 weeks ago? Who did he get married to? What's her name? Do you know her? Talk about twenty questions.

Today finding a package in my mailbox made me smile. :) Photos I had ordered. Looking forward to going through them and scrapping away. Speaking of which, I SB'd last night for a few hours. Made 2 pages. Been feeling inspired lately...

Read this today and this quote is resonating with me.

“Don’t think of the coming year and what it will bring, rather settle into the now of this season. Rest, reflect, prepare. Listen. There is a story the earth has to tell you.” ~ Patrick Lane, There Is A Season

Gilmore Girls marathon
Refresh yourself theme at Toastmasters
Coke and Pepsi
Quiznos sub beef and cheese
The color green
Cobalt Blue
Feeling the rustiness of my fingers when I played the piano
Drugs, chemo, stomach cancer, medications, IV antibiotics, Sinemet toxicity
Sunshine
New sheets
Brandi Carlile

running home to you
..... your warmth
..... your smile
..... your crinkly eyes
zooming past
..... the amber signs
..... that say 30
..... the tracks
..... that slow me down
you're waiting

running away from you
..... your shadow
..... your ghost
..... your memory
racing past the grief
..... the heartache
..... the loss
you're no longer
and i'm running into my new me.

Tasting Rain and Seeing Signs

When I finished my Palliative Care rotation last Friday, I took the liberty of browsing my preceptor's extensive library of palliative-related books. This little book caught my eye. Tasting Rain. It's an easy read. Kim Malchuk writes the way she speaks, or at least the way I imagine she speaks. Although I do not agree with all of the ideas she presented, I could understand some of the emotions she described when her husband passed away. I am not a widow, nor have I ever been married, but I sure know the heartache and loss when a loved one leaves.

I am so thankful to be where I am now. Past the heartache and grief. I never imagined I would get here, that this would be possible. It's amazing. It was about 2 months ago when I found out that he was getting married. I was in the car with a common friend. She was giving me a ride home from residency night. When she told me (and she didn't know about our history), I felt like my lungs collapsed, as if the air in the car disappeared. Wow, that was fast, I thought to myself, doing the math -- 2 years. I didn't sleep well that night. I called my sister S and I cried. Why wasn't he ready to be married to me 2 years ago? He still isn't done his program. He has a few more years to go. What's different now?

A part of me was upset with myself that I was still so affected. I hadn't counted on that. I had thought that I was past that. After a few days of mulling over things, I realized that I was making it into something about myself, when it wasn't. It was about him and her finding each other and being ready to take that next step. It had nothing to do with me. When I made this realization, I felt so much better. But once in a while, it would still creep in.

Until one day, about 2 weeks after I found out, I was having dinner, by myself, and I remembered how it all ended, how he couldn't even find the time to speak with me, when everything was going into shambles. I remembered, and I had this sudden sense of a big thick book being slammed shut -- as if a chapter had been written and done with. And that's when I felt it -- this feeling of closure, of freedom, of air, of light. That's when it happened for me. Two years later.

When I think of it now, I think, 2 years. In those 2 years, he had found somebody else, had flown to HK (last year) to have prenup photos taken, had made another life for himself. How easy it was for him. Whereas I spent the 2 years just getting over him. What a lame-o. But wait, I shouldn't think of it that way. I spent the last 2 years making myself stronger, getting to know myself, loving myself, and forgiving myself. I wouldn't be here now, emotionally and mentally, without those 2 years behind me.

As I finished reading Kim's last few paragraphs, she talked about how the movie Forrest Gump had a special meaning to her, how she found a single white feather on the side of the road where her camper was parked, while she was pondering about the movie (having just seen it). And I thought, that's such a lovely ending. And then I looked up, and I saw a beautiful formation of birds flying in the same direction. I noted that they looked like little crosses from where I was sitting on the back porch. It was beautiful. God showed himself to me once again.

After the breakup, I was out one day and saw a robin in my backyard. It made me sad and reminded me of its namesake. But something inside me said, no, from now on, whenever I see a bird, I will think of God. And since then, a bird would always show up whenever I was thinking of God or whenever I was in the middle of a situation that I needed an answer to. He is so faithful. So so faithful to me.

These days...

...I'm taking a class from Simplify 101 called "It's About Time."

...I'm using my planner again.

...I'm addicted to Brandi Carlile. I keep playing this one.

...I'm planning to reread the Harry Potter series.

...I'm enjoying the down time from being off residency.

...I'm getting into the habit of waking up at 6 am everyday. How brave, right?

...I'm going to be spending some time in the studio. :)

...I'm starting to exercise again.

...I'm thankful for a lot of things -- Las Vegas trip recently where we spent a day at the Grand Canyon.

...I'm soaking in the written Word.

Awesome message here from Dr. Brene Brown. It was just what I needed to hear. Funny because a friend had recommended her book to me, The Gifts of Imperfection, just recently. I haven't had a chance to get it but definitely plan to. Looking at her website, I'm interested in reading her other books as well.

Check out the site as well, as they're giving away $40 to everyone! I'm thinking of getting a book and a poster.

Off to the studio now to play. :)

Speech 8: Paris

I gave my 8th speech today at TM. It was project 6 from the CC manual, focusing on vocal variety. Yup, I have left this one this late. It's one of the things I struggle with. Vocal variety has been a mainstay of the evaluations I have received ever since I've been a Toastmaster. Well, how did I do tonight, you ask. Hmm.... just okay, I think. I could have donebetter, I know that. It was a half-baked speech, having prepared it only a couple hours before the meeting. I realize that that in itself is an achievement, that I would have the gall to actually speak in front of an audience with a speech as half-baked as what I had, but I still think I could have done better, pushed myself harder. Oh well, there's always the next speech right?

Anyway, tonight I talked about Paris and showed some of my SB pages on Paris. I'll share some of them here as well.

Matoi Sushi Lunch

Because our sushi craving wasn't satisfied the other day, we headed to Matoi yesterday after church. And what do you know, it wasn't open! Again! it was around 11:15am. They open at 11:30am so we hung around. Anyway, I'm glad we sticked around because mm-mm the food was yummy!

I got sashimi teisyoku and agedashi tofu.

And Danni got this beautiful bowl of chirashi. I had a taste of it (couldn't resist!) and it was yum too. :)

Would definitely go back again and try their other sashimi.

And then for dinner last night, I had this:

Isn't that a beautiful thing? My mom made it! It had lettuce, potatoes, shredded carrots, mangoes, strawberries, grapefruit, corn, chicken cubes, and this wonderful heavenly dressing! Thanks Mom!!

Late Entry: Cora's

We went to Cora's for a snack. We wanted to go to Matoi for sushi but at 4pm, they were closed. We headed to Cora's instead to give the sunny resto a whirl. I got this -- banana

hazelnut crepe. Yum. :)

Dan got a crepe as well, called Raspberry 4 Lucie.

Unfortunately for her, it looked better than it tasted. :(

I tried it and it was too sour for my taste.

She also said it had cream cheese inside that she didn't particularly like.

I don't think she enjoyed her dish. :(

Mom and Jaja decided to share this big plate of yes, crepes again, with fresh fruits on top. Yeah, we should have ordered something savoury as well, instead of getting all fruit-y dishes. Oh well, next time we know.

And as for Olivia, after studying the menu for a long time (while playing with her Mr. Big)....

She decided on a cut up bowl of bananas, compliments of the manager. :)

As soon as the bowl was placed in front of her, she grabbed a handful of bananas and placed them in her mouth!

Overall, a nice place to have breakfast or lunch. A bit pricey but I wouldn't mind going back again to try their omelettes or any other savoury dishes.

Ahhh....

I finally got around to sorting the towers of papers and binders not-so-neatly stacked on one wall of my computer room. The papers made their way into binders, the binders made their way to the shelf, the labels made their way onto the binders. Not fancy labels, but they do the job. My desk looks much clearer too! I can actually see the green floral paper underneath all the paper. Ahh... finally, some breathing room!There's still stacks of paper right now on the floor, but they're neatly stacked and sorted, and properly labeled. That will do for now. My only regret is that I didn't take 'before' pictures.

I made baked shrimp bruschetta. Off of the Kraft magazine after a trip to Save-On to return my recyclables. So yes, a pretty efficient day. Also did laundry and washed my favorite pair of suede boots that has seen better days. It looks quite good again. :)

Speaking of boots, I have been stalking shoe sites. Cole Haan, Nine West, Macy's, and Piperlime. Oh my...I wish they shipped to Canada, and that if they did, the shipping fee wouldn't cost another pair of shoes! Oh well, I guess better for my wallet this way...

It is hard to see the day by day of things but trust me God has a reason for everything. Your story matters and one day that story is going to matter to someone else.

Blast from the Post...I mean Past

I got an email from some random person who left a comment on my Friendster blog. Friendster blog! Good heavens, who knows how old that is.....Well, I found out it's less than 6 years old. I started blogging in November 2005. I had a chance to read some of the entries. Fun times...Made me want to start blogging again, or at least writing. No matter where. In here, in my journal, anywhere. But I guess that's what makes it harder to see if I have been writing, as I've been writing in many different places. Currently, I have a residency blog so I post more there, as my life revolves around that (for the most part) now. Anyway, I think I will try to maintain both my residency blog and this.