No School = Cool

Hello!

Wow, sorry for taking so long to post again…I’m sure there are a ton of people just dying to hear what has happened to me in these last 18 days! *sarcasm*

Heh, so anyways, a lot has actually happened. I’ll start with school, since it is now OVER and I will NOT be blogging about school until September. Finals went fairly well from what I see my marks are. I did well in Maternity which was my main class of the semester as it was 6 credit hours whereas my other classes were only a measly 3 credit hours. With 2 very crappy midterms I still managed to get 84%. I know it ain’t all that exciting, but for the amount of work which was required for this course as well as my other courses I’m happy with that grade. I managed to do very well on my religious studies class (New Testament) and also did Ok in my psychology course as well. I didn’t do as well as I had hoped, but I definitely managed to meet the nursing requirements and am still trucking on in the program! Next semester I will be doing psyc nursing and I’m hoping I find it a little more interesting than maternity. I don’t feel a strong pull from God towards the maternity field, but I did learn a lot from the whole experience and did learn some new things about myself.

I think I mentioned something about my car story in my last blog… Not much has changed since then except me spending 700 dollars (probably more…) on the prelude that I have now. That has been a little frustrating because I haven’t even been able to make a payment on it due to these expenses and then rent has also gone up because my room mate left and I also had to give him back a damage deposit. Anyways, the car runs great when its running properly and hopefully after I put in the new alternator tomorrow it will run like a top once again. I’m kind of anal about cars and when something goes wrong it is a huge source of stress for me. I’m kind of thinking I will sell both my cars (the busted-up-which-is-soon-to-be-fixed 240 and the prelude) and get something newer and more reliable and also CHEAPER to fill up at the gas station. Both the 240 and the prelude are rather thirsty cars so something that is a little more fuel-friendly will be a good choice and something with 4 doors so the wonderful insurance corporation of BC can take a few fingers out of my pocket. I’m not sure there is any point in having insurance because it sure hasn’t done much for me in the 2 accidents I’ve been in. One with a person pulling out on me on a highway, and the other being side swiped by some bone-head doing probably double the speed limit…both instances apparently I was 100% at fault. I’m so glad I pay two thousand hard earned dollars to a multi-hundred-million dollar company and then have my fate be decided by a guy that sits on an office that reads 2 incidence reports. Obviously I’m at fault if there is any question, because I am the younger, less experience driver that also owns a sports car. THANKS.

And howabout these gas prices! I should get a license plate that reads: BEN_DOVER because that’s what I do when I pull into a gas station. I bet there are one or two people that are getting filthy rich from this retarded mark up, along with a few huge corporations. Or maybe it is the government because afterall, over 65% of the money you pay for gas is used for a tax, which is then taxed over and over again to pay for something like making half-assed repairs on already very crappy roads and building bridges that are too small for the flow of the city in the present and future, and I’m sure there are even more stupid things that our money is wasted on. I’m thinking about investing in 2 giant jerry-cans so I can go across the boarder and save myself almost 15 bux on a fill up. American’s are griping when their gas prices shoot up over 3 bux a gallon, but our Canadian prices are well above 4! After you factor in the exchange rate and the gallon to liter difference, it is actually $4.10US/gallon!! Crickey, that is a load more and then going the opposite way, I am filling up in the states at their current “high price” for $0.87CAN/L. So, in a ~48L fill up, that is a total savings of $15.84 per tank!! Pretty close to my estimate of 15 bux. Over a year, that is a load of money and well worth a 30 minute drive round-trip to get the gas across the 49th.

Sorry to bore you with these dumb things…actually, I’m not really sorry, because you could have just skimmed it over if you got bored :P

Now onto jobs…
The whole UGN thing is thus far a bit of a disappointment. I can’t wait to start my position, but I have to wait until the 23rd!!! Orientation is very late at my hospital and I was a little miffed because I really looked forward to a schedule instead of my casual on-call crap. I will also be dealing with less crap in general because I will be a nurse, and not a care-aide. Sometimes the care-aide shifts can be ruthless in the fact that they are extremely boring, or extremely busy. There aren’t many shifts that have been in-between that. So, I really look forward to be doing more of a nursing role with more responsibility and all that jazz. In the mean time, I will be trying to take as many ruthless care-aide shifts as I can handle and pray that these next 2 weeks go by very fast. This is another crappy thing about not having a car that works this weekend because my altenator died in the prelude and I haven’t been able to fix it so I miss 2 solid days or work with possible overtime and that means almost 800 dollars in lost wages (had I worked a bit of OT). Bleh, oh well, it was a good excuse to not have to drive all the way to new west to do a job that I don’t really like doing. Next summer I should have enough practical experience with my clinical that I can get my LPN thingy and do that. Then I will have no hour restrictions (like UGN’s have) and will be able to work more regularly (unlike care-aiding). Sounds good in theory, so we’ll see how that pans out.

Wow, it’s almost 2am so I should really start to wind down and get ready for bed. I had a great day today spending most of it with Danielle. We also finally got to go to church together and really enjoyed the service. This pastor is a very good speaker and the worship music is also mostly familiar to us so I think it is a good fit for us. The only kinda bad thing about it is the fact that it is in Coquitlam which makes for a bit of a commute. However, I know a few people that go there from TWU and we really enjoy the services so I think we will continue to go there. We (Danielle and I) also will try to get plugged into a young adults care group. I kind of miss being a part of a care group and look forward to it.

Good night!


PS….COMMENT :) and that pic with the dirt bike was of last weekend when I was in Kelowna. Borrowed a buddies bike and went out with Matt for a fun weekend of dirtbiking. FUN!