Weekend Chores

Well the chimney did not get swept due to rain and wind. I may attempt it this weekend. For those of you that are curious here is what the equipment looks like





In other news, the Nursing Faculty wants to meet with our class to discuss how things can be improved for the class behind us. Not how to improve clinical, procedures or workload for us, but for people coming up behind us. I was on the committee last year and from what I can gather the first years appreciated the work that we did. That's great, but what about us? Apparently the class ahead of us did not voice concerns, and we are stuck with a badly planned second year experience. Let me outline my semester, the term starts and we have classes on Mondays and Wednesdays 8:30 to 4:00, we have approximately an hour and a have of free time during the day. For two weeks we have clinical labs all day on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. We start clinical institutional, Tuesday, Thursday and most Fridays of each week for 4 weeks. These are from 6:45am to 3:00 pm. Since my clinical is in chronic health and I am currently in Chronic health we have approximately 20 journal articles to read so that we have the required skills to provide competent care. I am enrolled in four other classes all with required work and readings. So far a normal, somewhat busy semester. Here's the problem, the faculty felt they would help us by making all of our term work due in October, yes two group term papers. At this point you may be thinking well that sounds hectic, but at least its group work, less work for all. Not true, we have no time so all the work is done the night before. October is also interspersed with midterms and CLATS. CLATS are how we a "graded" on our clinical. They take anywhere from 2 to 6 hours to complete, and very subjective. Oh did I mention the readings, one instructor assigned 15 chapters to be read before the mid tern. It was impossible to do all the required work, the readings were often left out. We tried to voice our concerns to the instructor's we were dismissed, some times verbal abused, and some people were marked as trouble makers. This is what lead up to the meeting yesterday, the second year coordinator was wondering why people from our class had not come forward to meet with the faculty. Hmm.. lets see, you don't listen, some of you are abusive and people who question you are trouble makers. Make sense? Now to be fair, not all of the instructors are like this, some are reasonable. One instructor even gave us an extension on one of the term papers. She is very understanding.

Anyway, that all I can write right now, I have a midterm tomorrow...

Later

STEPHEN HARPER SUCKS!

I am a slack ass blogger

My excuse is that I am super busy with school, but that's a total load. I just haven't felt like writing anything in a while.

Things have slowed down a bit with school, just three mid-terms coming up in the next week and a half. The mental health mid-term is of great concern, according to the rumor mill. So I'm of to the cottage for the weekend to study and do a few chores. I have to get the chimney swept, get some fire wood for the winter and hire a plow guy. The usual Canadian winter time crap.

Later

Some pictures from home

Bad news, good news and a change of travel plans

The bad news is that the closing date of the cottage my partner and I are buying has been pushed ahead to August 10th. We're both pretty annoyed with this for several reasons. Mainly the vendors have been very slow during the whole process and knew very little about the property. This has been the case because the vendor in question is the son of the owners of the cottage. There are 2 main reasons for the the hold up, one the son and the owners currently live outside of the province, and second the father who took care of everything relating to the cottage is in the late stage of Alzheimer's. Obviously we understand the difficulties of the situation and have been very patient and understanding with them during this whole process. We even went as far as conducting a land survey due to the fact that they were unsure of the property lines and the ownership of the shared well that comes with the property.

Our patience ran out this past Wednesday when we received a phone call for our lawyer asking if we would be willing to change the closing date from today to August 10th. We were both upset, as we had begun the process of renting a vehicle to move furniture, had begun purchasing large items (we live in a condo with very little storage) and had invited friends from various places to come up and visit/help fix the place up. After some prodding we found out the the reason for the delay is that the vendor and his lawyer apparently didn't know that you can't sell someone else's property without their signature or in lieu of that, power of attorney. This shocking revelation led to a frenzied attempt to give the vendor power of attorney. Not surprisingly the process is not as simple as making a phone call.

On to the good news, my partner's dissertation has passed muster and his defense will be scheduled within the next 2 weeks, yea! This leads in the the change of travel plans, we had originally planned to travel down south, but the dissertation has complicated that. He doesn't want to go on a "big" vacation before his defense because he feels he won't be relaxed enough to enjoy it. We won't have time afterwards because he's a professor and can't take vacation during the semester. So instead we are leaving for Newfoundland this Sunday instead. This is the province where I grew up and my family still lives there, so it's in part a honeymoon and part a family visit. So, I'm pretty excited, as is my family. For those of you not in the know, Newfoundland is a island Province in the North Atlantic. Know mainly for it's history of fishing, strange dialect and it's unpredictable weather. Sadly, Newfoundland has recently gained attention and notoriety on the world stage due to the yearly seal hunt. This is obviously a touchy subject for some people and I won't state my opinion now, but I will do so in a later post.

Anyway......

Waiting

I just cane back from the Dean of Admissions for the nursing program at UNB. They are still processing my application. This is after I had completed an up grade to my high school chemistry, in less than 2 months I might add. I was a little annoyed with the fact that I had to do the upgrade, being that the rest of my marks are fine, I'm a mature student and I already have a business degree from UNB. I guess rules are rules, anyway with any luck I'll be a student nurse in the fall.

I'm in the process of booking our honeymoon. We plan to go in the middle of August. I have it narrowed down to a few places. St. Lucia, Hawaii, or Orlando (Disney World). Any suggestions? I would like to go somewhere that's reasonably safe and gay friendly.

So that's my first written post, a little light, but I'm just getting into the swing of things.

Later