Sheila and I finished most of the work on our wedding-related website last night. After she went to bed, I stayed up and fixed the Montreal page. Everything should be working now. The site the first link the navbar on the right, or just click here.
I thought I should add this. The picture turned out well despite poor lighting conditions.
As you can see, the blog has received a bit of a renovation in appearance to reflect its new mission. Sheila and I are now engaged and began working with this blog to change it into a kind of joint enterprise. I will add my own reflections and comments with periodic contributions. My writing is distributed between this blog, which will be dedicated more towards posts concerning the two of us and our outlook, and my original blog, my Exospective, here.
I hope you like the new look. I'm not completely done modifying the style document and the graphics could potentially receive further tweaking. A few colors might change, but otherwise our new look is ready. Please feel free to leave comments or suggestions.
So I am engaged. Those of you who follow my blog probably already know this and I'm not offending any of you by not personally telling you and/or giving you a play by play of the proposal. Square Victoria is now one of my favorites places in the city.
It's still kind of hard to believe that I'll be moving out in a month and never moving back in. It's still kind of hard to believe that I'm a big girl now. Of course, there have been life events that have indicated this to me: going into university, getting my undergraduate degree, getting accepted into medicine, working my first job as a health care professional, signing a lease for an apartment...but none so striking as getting engaged and moving out. Big first strides.
Working this summer though has taught me, among other things, that I'm not cut out to work in geriatrics. The constant reminder of death, the morbid conversations, seeing people who appear to have lost their souls to the ravaging disease of dementia...the nursing home is a sad sad place. I hope I never end up in a place like that. It's also a powerful reminder of the importance of relationship - the residents who have constant visits from friends and family, people who care about them...they are the most blessed.
I feel like the summer is running out on me. So many wedding preparations to take care of still, so much packing and planning to do. I am busy and the summer is disappearing.
Yes, I've been delinquent in my postings. Yes, I've lost the motivation for blogging. Hopefully that'll soon change.
I signed the lease on my first "real" place a few weeks ago. A nice 2 1/2 in Hamilton right in between McMaster and the downtown core - a good distance between both. Close enough to the GO train station that it won't take me forever to commute into Toronto to travel to New York or home. Picture:
That actually looks nothing like the place that I have.
You get the idea.
So here I am flipping through IKEA catalogues and looking at AC units in the Canadian Tire flyer and looking up moving trucks online.
It's funny to think that I won't be coming back home.
It was great to relax for the month of May. The free time I took after undergrad just to refresh and refuel, to spend time with my boyfriend and make exciting life decisions, was much needed. Am I copping out by blogging photos?
The month started off with a little of this:
Followed by some New Yorking:
A splendid afternoon at the Biodome:
Interspersed with quiet moments at Cafe Castel:
Fun sunny days in the park:
And of course my convocation:
And now life is settling down again. A full time job for the summer at two long-term care centers...more about my job to come.
So life takes unexpected turns.
For those of you who didn't get my super-ecstatic-going-crazy email about being accepted into Mac: I'm accepted into Mac. In three years, I will have an MD from the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine. Just like Calvin, but without the heart-lung transplants. Exciting? Unexpected. I feel like the interview went horribly; it was the most brutal interview of the three. Twelve stations of two minute scenarios followed by eight minutes of my response to the scenario or question, speaking to an interviewer that for the most part had a blank, stony facial expression. I feel like most of the time, my answers were so inadequate or childish or naive or I just ran out of things to say. I walked out of half those interview stations with my face burning with embarrassment at how poorly I'd answered the question. Maybe I'm too hard on myself, but somewhere in there, they found something that told them I'd made a good Mac medical student.
So now I'm furniture shopping and apartment shopping and looking up uHauls and interesting places to do my clerkships. I guess what sucks the most about this program is that my summer vacation next summer is only a week long. The past month of summer vacation has been good though. It's given me time to relax and celebrate my BSc.OT, sort through my notes from the past three years of undergrad, clean out my room, have margaritas with my girlfriends and make another trip to NY. Big pluses: hanging out at Coney Island and picnicking in the park. Dinner with Noah at Room Service and shopping on 5th Ave. What wasn't as fun: packing and pushing huge blue bins full of my boyfriend's stuff down Broadway to mini-storage in the rain (don't worry hun, I don't regret coming!). Next trip to NY: weekend of June 13th with Angel.
To do now: stop procrastinating and do my laundry.
