9/28/2013

Well when I said I was done with projects I meant that I was almost done with projects. I had 2 business projects to do today. I got up early and did a literature review on supply chain management. I packed quickly and re-potted my plants then at 11am we were off camping for the weekend. I went with Billy(Kat's boyfriend), Bird(Billy's best friend), and Leila(Bird's girlfriend). Kat is home this weekend and going to see the Sydney orchestra perform lord of the rings. We went to Bird's favourite spot in lerderderg state park. It's a nice little spot with a fire pit next to a river in a beautiful gully. We got in around 3 and played cards while eating food all evening. 

9/27/2013

I woke up at 5 to finish my presentation before my Friday morning swim session. It was a very lazy swim session. We made it just over 1km in an hour. Totally enough of a workout to earn me breakfast :). I gave the presentation on the clinic that I had just completed and then went home to finish the paper that was due by 5pm. I only had to finish the reference list and the paper read well so I turned it in and was lazy for a few hours before dinner. Billy had a small dinner party that was lovely. It was great to be able to eat and catch up with friends without having to worry about assignments. 

9/26/2013

Last day of placement for the semester. I had a good day. I ended up with top marks and an invite for Shabbat dinner. Win! Not this week but soon. I took the evening off of writing my assignment to go rock climbing. I wasn't my usual agile self but it wasn't too bad either. After climbing we went out for Laksa. Tonight's was a spicy variant with extra spinach but less eggplant. It was great as I was eating it but by the time I was biking home it had given me terrible indigestion so instead of putting the final touches on my assignment I curled up in a ball and went to bed :(

9/25/2013

Three days after the race and my legs still hurt. They were getting a bit better so I agreed to an after work bike ride. It was just the thing I needed because after 40km on my good bike my legs were back to normal. After the bike ride it was back to writing my assignment. So close to being done.

9/24/2013

My legs hurt a bit less today but I really still couldn't walk. My knees hyperextended and I looked like gumby. I was at least going a bit faster and was able to bike with a bit less pain. Otherwise it was a busy but in exciting day as I worked and then came home to write more of my assignment. A friend of ours is moving out of the country so Kat and I bought some things from them. This evening our "new" clothes horse, vacuum cleaner and wine rack arrived so we cleaned just a bit to fit them in. 

9/23/2013

Back to clinic Monday morning. My legs hurt so much! It took me a full 20minutes longer than normal to ride to and from clinic. My patients were mostly understanding, well all except 1 who can barely walk the length of the gym with a walker. Her respond was, "8 hours! What did you do sit down in the middle and rest?!" I was offended but politely assured her that it was a very difficult race. I struggled to bike home in my lowest gear after work. Luckily I had an evening of writing assignments so that I didn't have to exert myself.

9/22/2013

So half my reason for going to Adelaide this weekend was to run a race. When my alarm went off at 5:40 I almost skipped the race and went back to bed. I got up and ready just in time to miss the train and have to catch a cab to the start line. The 300 person race was 56km up and down a mountain. No really it was quite hilly. Very fun though and absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. I started out strong and was enjoying the race for the first several kilometres. It was an ultra marathon on a trail but I decided to wear my 5 fingers. I had a bit of trouble with sticks and rocks when I poked myself but nothing too bad. It was totally worth all of the conversations that I got out of them. I ran almost the entire race with my friend Damien who had talked me into doing this race just 3 weeks ago. There were a few places that he got ahead of me but he waited at the next rest stop. He ran a bit slower than he could have and I ran a bit faster than I would have so in total it was 8 hours and 13 minutes of entertainment. I finished in the top half of the participants and 30th female overall. Not bad for minimal training. We got after race ice cream(rum raisin of course) and I hopped on a plane back home for work tomorrow. What an incredible day. 

9/21/2013

Sight seeing day today. I went out for a fantastic brunch at a hipster cafe for Adelaide's version of Mexican. It was nothing like Mexican but it was still good. On my way I broke my shoe. Walking around with a broken flip flop really is no fun. After breakfast I went in search of a new shoe at the market and found $4 flip flops with Australian flags. Works for me. So I tossed the broken ones and tasted all of the best food from the market.(yes just shortly after brunch). There were huge almond toffee meringues that were good but just a bit to much.  Next I got a free bicycle from the city's bicycle share program. I biked along the river and up to the penfold's winery. They are a very fancy and well known Australian winery. By that point all the exploring had worn me out so I went back to relax before dinner. I was going to have a lovely dinner date with my tall athletic friend from Adelaide at "From Orient" a chineese fusion restaurant but then we met Bob. Bob is a very opinionated, quite bogan salesman from Adelaide who is now living just south of Melbourne. He struck up conversation when he wanted to try our wine. We joked and declined to share but he continued to talk to us for the remainder of our meal which lasted another hour or so. Bob was funny but I could have handled a bit less of him.

9/20/2013

I'm going to Adelaide this weekend. To visit a friend and run a race. So far I plan on running 56km ultramarathon on Sunday. Other than that I was told "don't worry about it" It should be a good weekend. So today I was going to go on a bike ride but ended up not getting to go because it was raining this morning and my bike hates the rain.  I could have taken my other bike but I didn't feel like it. Instead I worked on some of the papers that I am supposed to be writing. I also painted my nails about 500 times. every time I thought that they were dry with a chip proof top coat, they would smear or chip. After an all day effort I got on the plane with 9 nice nails and a chip in the one on the little finger of my left hand :( I baked a cake to give to my Health Care group who went to Dookie Farms without me today. Chocolate chip. It's pretty good not the best cake I've ever made though. I found a website with locked recipes. You can see pictures and ingredients for free but if you want instructions you have to pay. Seemed pretty dumb since I only follow the instructions about half the time anyway. The cake turned out as expected so I suppose my guesses were close enough.  Kat drove me to drop off the cake and I went with her to repair a $500 coat for Billy. Fair trade.  She also drove me to the airport because she's the best housemate ever.  I'm quite excited to have taken my first domestic flight is Australia. It wasn't bad I'll have to do it again.
Adelaide is nice this time of year I had a lovely evening and went to http://www.andrescucina.com.au/ for dinner. Fancy and delicious. Adelaide and Melbourne both claim to have the most restaurants per capita but so far the food hasn't been bad.

9/19/2013

Last day of the week!  I went into clinic early and stayed late to get all my paperwork finished before the weekend. It was a good day and I managed multiple patients simultaneously with minimal problems. 

So I found out that my other supervisor worked in Israel for almost 10 years. We had a good chat and she promises to help me out when she can.

I went climbing tonight and made a new friend named Florian. He is Romanian. After climbing Ange and I said goodbye to our new friend and went out for Korean. It was delicious as always. So ready for the weekend!

9/18/2013

Well I was going to have a productive day in clinic but that fell through by 8:45. I was interrupted just as I was collecting notes to start my paperwork. Instead we had 2 seminars this morning both useful one was on acquired brain injury and the other was on depression and suicide in elderly patients. I lead a cardiopulmonary rehabilitation class this morning and I did one assessment before lunch, got a 15 minute lunch and then had another patient.  After that I tracked down community services and went to a case conference. Where I was told after the case conference started that I needed to have made and documented functional goals for a patient that I needed to talk about right that moment. In this placement I feel that my largest barrier is my supervisor's disorganisation and lack of time management. It is quite frustrating. On my bike ride home I thought about how I could take responsibility for my own time management.  I have decided that tomorrow when my supervisor starts talking at me instead of staring blankly ahead, I am going to politely remind him that I am endlessly behind on paperwork and ask if we can continue this discussion later. If I stack everything up and leave it for the end of the day hopefully he forget one of his points, realises how repetitive he is, or is anxious enough to go home that I save myself some time. I really wanted to go running this evening but it's cold and rainy so I opted for writing my paper instead. I completed several smaller projects and 500/2,000 words are written. I realise that I haven't had many pictures recently especially of food, so....dessert grilled banana roti with peanut butter icing and Nutella

9/17/2013

Hey it's halfway through my last placement of the semester! I'm excited. I did really well today. My patients are warming up to me and find that they like me better than my supervisor who is quite blunt, interrupts, and isn't personable. I had 2 patients roll their eyes at me once my supervisor barged in and then walked away. 

I got my half way feedback today. My greatest weakness is commitment to learning. That is normally one of my greatest strengths. It must be the glazed over look I get every time my supervisor starts talking at me about irrelevant topics. I shall try to be more polite or better at avoiding him. I was still working this afternoon when they kicked me out so that they could close the clinic. So much pointless paperwork!

On my way home from clinic I stopped by the police station and reported the person who hit me. I don't know that I'll get any money toward fixing my bike out of it but I'm tired of dealing with the driver who is being a jerk. I am fixing my bike myself so that the cost has dropped to about $100 but I feel that the driver should be taught to look twice and not throw people off their bikes and into traffic. And that ignoring phone calls, not showing up to meet me and hoping that I go away is not the right way to treat someone who is doing you a favour. 

I didn't make much progress on the projects tonight. I'm hoping I have a burst of productivity tomorrow.

9/16/2013

It rained and rained and rained today. Probably because I had washing out on the line. Clinic was good it was a bit intense and I didn't finish all of my paperwork but I will get there early tomorrow and try to catch up with the things that I am missing. My supervisor talks my ear off about pointless things and I don't have time to do my work.  I may try to get in early tomorrow so that I can get caught up. After clinic when I got home soaking wet, Kat and I watched the newsroom to avoid doing work. It was so epic! We then re-watched our favourite scenes another couple times. I avoided school work for the rest of the evening doing chores that had been piling up over the weekend. I guess I will have to start the hard work for the week tomorrow and maybe go for a run...

9/15/2013

I started my day with a bike ride. I wasn't feeling it when I got out of bed today but I managed to pull myself onto my bike. Steph did the same and we rode quite quickly for 123km. Our fastest section was between kilometres 80-90 where we picked it up to 40kph for 15minutes. It was a beautiful day and a fantastic ride. After riding I came home to take another crack at the left overs. Steph came up for some as well...I still have quite a bit of food. I took my laptop on the train to work on some projects and collected my white commuter bike from the bike shop.  The shop has said that it is to damaged and are refusing to fix it. So I ordered the parts to fix myself. I came home and finished 3 of the projects that I had meant to do over the weekend.  By the time I finished it was 11:30pm. I did have a break when Kat realised that we had 5 types of ice cream in our freezer to have an ice cream break. Vanilla, chocolate-hazzelnut, apricot-almond-honey, red wind, and olive oil...All homemade except for vanilla. We didn't make much of a dent in those either.

9/14/2013

I had inspection style Yom Kippur dreams last night. I had a dream that I was having a dream that I accidentally ate some corn. (Why is there so much corn in my dreams?) I was so relieved when I woke up and had not broken my fast. I went to Yom Kippur services at the synagogue in the city. It still isn't my favourite but it is more convenient than the others. They also try to be student friendly. Services ended at noon and didn't restart till 4:45 so I went home. I stopped at the grocery store on my way home to pick up food for break fast. I was avoiding using my phone but I must have been sending out mental distress signals because Kat came and saved me as I was struggling home with 4 bags of food. I spent all afternoon cooking and had 5 friends over to help me celebrate break fast. One of which is a Jewish but didn't fast. My day and fast was rather reflective and meaningful and I was very happy to have friends to celebrate with. For break fast I made: strawberry basil tart, banana cake, quinoa stuffed baby peppers(I changed that one a bit), spinach dip, jalapeño cheese bread, tomato mozzarella polenta, pizza pinwheels, apricot-honey ice cream, broccoli fritters, and peach guacamole. We did a pretty good job of it but there were still plenty of left overs.

9/13/2013

I went on a run this morning to meet with the guy who had hit my bike. I got there  and waited for 45 minutes and never saw him. After that I went on an 84km bike ride. Then back home for a very quick lunch before going for another run. Why and I running so much? Because my bike is getting fixed and feet seem better than public transport. So I ran into the city for a meeting. On my way home Billy's co-worker Monica called and invited me over for Kol nidre with her and her family. I rushed home to showed and change as fast as possible and came back in to meet her and go to her parent's for dinner and the to synagogue. It was a lovely dinner and services were at the synagogue where Stan had taken me when I first moved to Melbourne. It was more enjoyable this time. I was so thankful to have someone to go with. I really miss home during the high holidays.

9/12/2013

Today was a much better day at the clinic. I started the morning by meeting with one of the head physiotherapists for the hospital. It was very helpful and got me back on the right track of thinking through problems and enjoying treating my patients.  The person supervising me is still weird but I am now treating patients how I want to treat them and getting more out of the clinic. 

End of the week so I went rock climbing tonight. We did some hard climbs but it was quite fun and we went out for steak afterward. Mmmm steak.

9/11/2013

Today was a pretty easy day in clinics. I started with falls&balance clinic, treated 1 patient, and went to a case conference. All in all it was a useful but slow day. I meant to go home and work on a paper but instead I washed my bike, cooked, and learned Hebrew. 

9/10/2013

Day 2 in clinic. I got to watch an assessment in Cantonese today. It was interesting.  I also saw several patients with balance problems and one man with post-polio syndrome. He was 80 and doing quite well, bad shoulders though.  The days are longer than they were in the nursing home with shorter breaks but it seems to go much faster. I took the long bike ride home. I kept day dreaming so it took about an hour but it is still a really nice ride.  I did some work on my projects when I got home. I actually did quite a deal of work on my projects when I got home.  I finished one project and got a start on the next.  Only 2 more to go before next week! Billy came over and made dinner for me and Kat unfortunately I have terrible study brain and was not very conversational.  It was still delicious. They are totally the best.  A little more work then off to bed.

9/9/2013

First day in my new clinic. It's an outpatient clinic. I'm thrilled. My patients on my aged care placement have been younger than the ones that I had on my chronic disease placement. It looks to be a much better 3 weeks than the last placement. I dislike having to learn a whole new set of systems and computer log ins but it's do able. The new clinic is 15-10km away depending on the route. It also goes past my favourite bike route in the city 6km of steep hills. It's a good ride but I wish I didn't have a backpack. 

I was very tired when I got home. Busy weekend and an early, I suspect. I went to take a nap before starting on my projects and ended up sleeping for a full 12 hours. Oh well, hopefully I'll be more productive tomorrow. 

9/8/2013

Today was running day. I ran 20 miles in 3 hours.  I was quite impressed at my effort especially since this is only my 3rd run this month(I've been lazy/biking).  I was hurting by the end but it could have been worse. I also recovered surprisingly well afterward.  This is looking good for my upcoming races.
This afternoon I had a belated party for Rosh Hashanah.  I made cake and had apples and honey and a friend brought bagels&lox and donuts.  I was initially quite worried about my cake because of the sweetness and dryness that it had yesterday, however this cake sets very well and was absolutely delicious today.

 Everyone went back for seconds.  It was a good afternoon of watching AFL, eating and playing games. So happy to have friends for the holidays even if only one of them is Jewish.  I finished up and submitted 2 of my projects today.  Only several more to go. 2 due Friday,  1 due Monday, 1 due the following Monday, and a few others with flexible dates coming up as well. Working hard. I start my aged care placement tomorrow, can't say that I'm looking forward to it but at least I'm working with one of my friends.

9/7/2013

I started the day with a very long bike ride.  I think that I went about 160km in 6 hours but my phone which I was using for time, distance, and pace died at 14km so I didn't get the final distance.  My new bike is pretty sweet I went the same total time on a training ride with dozens of traffic lights and steep hills as I did during the ironman last year with no stops and perfectly smooth, flat road.

After my ride I put on my new yellow dress then proceeded to bake and clean my bike. Bad choice. The dress is currently soaking. I hope it comes out.

When I got home around 2pm and started working on a cake for a Rosh Hashanah party tomorrow. It is a 7 layer honey cake and the recipe is all in hebrew.  There is a translate function on google but try reading it. The directions don't really make sense.


I finished the evening by working on assignments.  I have so many to do. I feel like my life is a constant stream of projects.

9/6/2013

I was miserably stiff when I woke up. I tip-toed around trying not to move. I was supposed to swim today but was a bit slower than expected. I pretty much just moved passively through the water. It's ok it did help to loosen things up. I had a muffin for breakfast and headed to services. Day 2 services are always my favorite. I stayed until after the shofar. I am still going to the orthodox synagog because it is the only option that I have found close to the city. It's not exactly what I want but it isn't to bad either. After services were group projects, errands, and home to work on papers. 2/4 are now in the editing process. I'm getting there very slowly. 

9/5/2013

 שנה טובה! 

I didn't get to attend services today because it was my last day of clinic. On my way into the nursing home today I got doored. By that I mean someone opened their car door as I was biking past and pushed me into traffic. It was quite scary for a few moments. I'm pretty sure I got a bit of a concussion because I was a total space cadet for the rest of the day. Other than that my injuries amounted to a scratched elbow and a stiff neck. After exchanging details with the driver I continued to clinic. I was a zombie but I enjoyed my last day. I got good "grades" (they don't actually count, it's just pass/fail) and they bought me lunch. I stopped to get my bike checked out on my way home. $510 to fix everything. I need to get in contact with the driver. I can get my bike fixed on insurance but only if I get a police report. If I report the accident to the police the driver gets a $300 citation and may still have to cover part of my repairs, so maybe he'll just give me the money? 

I tried to do a bit of work when I got home but with a fuzzy head it was pretty hopeless. 

9/4/2013

I went to Kew today because the other facility had gastro. I had a different supervisor today. She was actually quite good. We did no massage just assessment and exercise. Best day I've had so far in the nursing home. I conducted 2 assessments as well and my supervisor backed up my decision to the activities co ordinator. I felt cool. I had one guy with dementia that I thought was going to break my finger but I managed to get away safely. After work it was more effort on my projects. 1 is being edited, another needs reference help and a good edit. #3 has been started. The last one I hope to start before Monday.

9/3/2013

Today my placement was discouraging. I had a couple of good chats with my supervisor which will help me to finish my assignment but the patients make me sad. The lady that I have been doing my project on had a bad day so she was grumpy, smelly, and had terrible oedema. She was feeling out of sorts so was sitting in a bad position, eating candy with no compression garments. All of my hard work over the past few week. Reversed :( 

After work went for a run10miles around the river. It hurt a bit more than I would have liked but it was a nice run. After that I made Gillie's favorite broccoli fritter recipe and settled in for another evening of writing papers.

9/2/2013

Back to the clinic again today. I was not thrilled but I did get to do quite a bit of treatment on my own so it wasn't all bad. I ran an exercise class and arranged some independent exercise programs. I'm working hard trying to get my projects finished. I have 4 coming up this month. After work I continued to compose assignments for a few more hours. I called it a night and had dinner with Kat and Billy while playing board games around 9:30. So much work! 

9/1/2013

Long bike ride today. I started off with Steph but she had to turn around to be home by 10. I kept going for another hour and made it a total of 110km today. The wind was absolutely brutal but I am still loving my new bike. I got home and did quite a bit of work on the assignments that I have coming up. I need to write 4 assignments this month each 2,000 each so I need to get a solid start on them. I finally gave up on writing papers around 8pm so that I could do some laundry and learn Hebrew. I am also working on travel arrangements all over the place so if you want me to visit, want to visit me, or want to be my travel buddy let me know so I can book you in. 

8/31/2013

I was supposed to go for another long ride today but I was feeling kinda sick so I wimped out. Luckily I did because I also had footy today and it was in Glen Waverley which is 32km away so I got my 60km ride in anyway. The seniors played today. They are my second favorite of our 4 teams. Footy was good but the team lost and their season is over:( I didn't realise how excited I still was about the other team winning last week until someone asked me today. Yeah it's pretty cool! I got home just in time to got our for dinner and drinks to celebrate my friend Denushita's birthday. His wife had arranged a surprise party but couldn't keep quiet so it wasn't much of a surprise. It was fun anyway. We ate tons of dumplings and then added a bar to the list of places that I'm supposed to check out in Melbourne. It was called double happiness and had a Chinese theme. I got a German drink called a Dunkle flip for my friends Doug, Christie, and baby Connor Dunkle

8/30/2013

Friday off! Nothing to do so I swam, went out for breakfast, went on a 85km bike ride. I finally did a bit of work after I got home but by that point I didn't have much time before I went out for dinner. So it was a mostly unproductive day. I did have a delicious Parma for dinner at a friend's going party so it was a good day.