Leavin' On A Jet Plane

Im in Canberra! Visiting Tim and Sarah-Margaret, and spending a lot of time on the couch relaxing and being a pirate. And plundering Gibraltar a lot. No wonder I'm so tired and have issues leaving the couch. But since I'm now currently serving a jail sentence in Havana, i figured maybe I have time to catch up on some blogging! Bet you didnt know that they had computers in Havana jails did you.

So first things first, I need to lament about the terrible state of affairs regarding the complete suckiness of the fact that these guys have 4 peg people! 4! And they are all different colours! I have two, just a meagre old two, and they are both yellow. Not that I dont love jibber-jabber and magneto, because I do. They are my two yellow peggy people of happiness. Pepper loves them too, they are great for chewing and dangling and swatting and all that stuff. They havent yet been used to hang up clothes, but really none of the pegs in our house ever are. But I want coloured ones!! Pretty little varieties of colours. I feel left out with my poor two little yellow ones.

And yes, my peg people are named. And yes their names are Jibber-Jabber and Magneto. They are awesome names, not to be mocked.

And do you know TV in Australia is really quite sucky? There are no good soaps at good times. Or even bad soaps at good times. All the game shows are on at the same time, and all the tv programmes worth watching are on the same day. And the ads show things that are oh-so tempting, but finished and not being played anymore. Thus the need to be a pirate.

My trains of thought are all completely haywire right now, they are going all over the place, its like a major derailment. Guess its what happens when i turn my brain off for a little while.

I went to a thing called Floriade today. There were a million or so tulips there, all just growing and being pretty, and occasionally being in patterns and themed and stuff. There was also heat, many many photographs, crunchy seeds, hundreds of bugs, and teacups. Like in Disneyland, with the spinning and the throwing up and the stuff. But we didnt go on those because Sarah Margaret is a chicken. And also they were too small and designed for children and it was time to leave so Smgt could go to work, but mostly because she is chicken. So I now have a billion and one little pictures of tulips on my phone to be used for backgrounds. For all of ten minutes.

So I caught a plane over here on Saturday. Then Tim took me shopping. And he took me to a bookstore, and a CD store. Ohhhh things we dont have in NZ.... no, wait...
And then we went to a pharmacy, and a McDonalds. Again, not exactly amazing and enthralling things. But oh well, its the company that matters. Right?

Had a brief tour of Canberra, saw basically everywhere that bad things happen. Seriously, if you want a tour of Canberra, ask Tim and Sarah Margaret, you get to see death and poverty, and get lost and find out how you too can die and get lost.

Last night we went out to dinner. And then up a hill in the freezing cold to look at the admittedly beautiful lights of Canberra, there was a lot of pointing and explaining things, but have you ever tried to follow someone elses finger to where they are pointing? I can tell you the names of many things here, but not what they look like or where they are, but I can tell you whats next to them as well. Im the resident expert...

Tonight there seems to be TV watching, waiting for food to come home so that we can have dinner, and there is talk of going up a large tower to see some more lights. As you do....

Creep

Well, its been ages. I always knew blogging would be something that i would be sporadically prolific at though, so not surprising.

So, anyways, we have been trading interesting hospital stories at work lately, and there were a few that were pretty gross, so my first thought was of course that i should totally share them with the internet. Coz I'm generous like that.

The other day we had a patient who had a 24 hour heart monitor on. I was the only one available to remove it for him, which we should have known would spell disaster straight away. I ALWAYS get the interesting patients. So I was disconnecting him from the wires, taking off all the electrodes etc, and I pulled at the cords to get them away from the patient, assuming that like most people he had just tucked the excess into his pants. Of course you should never assume in such a situation.

"Hold on a second dear" He said, beginning to sweat and reaching into his pants

Eyebrows raised and ready to run from the room I said "Um, ok" and dropped the leads

A couple of minutes later I was glad I have had lots of practice at not showing any expression as he turned around and said

"The cords kept falling out of my belt so I have looped them around my testicles" And handed me the cords.

Later, as I was downloading the data and adding the details from the patient diary on to the computer I noticed this entry

"After a series of bowel motions of a very loose disposition I went to bed"

followed by

"Diarrhea"

and I got up and washed my hands again. And washed the monitor again. And ran out to tell my workmates. And AJ summed it up nicely with "hmm... and he had it tucked around his testicles yeah? Wow, I hope he wipes front to back"