Snoopy's Christmas

Happy Christmas Eve eve you guys! Its very nearly Christmas, and my god I've had so much food in the last two weeks that Im so very very pleased that Christmas is just once a year. It would be horrible to be completely sick of Chocolate 365 days a year (is it bad that i had to pause for about ten minutes there to try and think of how many days there are in a year??). Yup, Im sick of chocolate. If i see chocolate EVER again (for at least 4 days) I will throw up. A large amount. And probably of chocolate. And then I will see THAT chocolate and it will make me feel sick and then I will throw up again and it will be just a vicious vicious circle. It wont be pretty. Which is why its good that Im home by myself tonight.


Yup all by myself, Shelle has already gone to her parents house, and I dont want to leave Pepper here all by herself for too long so I'm staying here for a bit longer, only going out to the parents for a couple days (are you listening burglars and whistling murderers? you better be quick with the robbing and stuff, coz I'm not giving you a large window of opportunity).

So tonight I'm watching crappy Christmas movies on tv. Because Shelle hates them. Sadly the choices are limited. Theres gladiator on tv3 (Gladiator? Really? coz seriously TV3, nothing makes me think ho-ho-bleurgh than Russell Crowe. Theres NOTHING good about that movie, even Joaquin Pheonix doesnt look good)and Fear Factor
(yup, Christmas idiots) followed by National Lampoons Christmas Vacation on 2, and Midsomer Murders on 1. Murders? Its CHRISTMAS EVE EVE tv1! Its supposed to be variety concerts and cheesy movies, not murders! Better be people killed by mistletoe or you're fired!

So yay.... Chevy Chase movie is clearly the only option. And there is but one time of the year that I will ever say that. Chevy Chase is an awesome name, but sadly not so awesome an actor. But he is cheesy (nearly cheesier than Bob Saget) and its the season to be Cheesy (oh my god, the constant mention of cheese is making me feel queasy, I cant believe it).

So since I last posted (crap... when did I last post?) Ive eaten lots and lots of food, got a million and one christmas presents and thrown up nearly every day. Doesnt that sound awesome! So tonight I gave in to ALL my cravings. Now, if you know me you are going to be pretty surprised by the cravings.... check out the list

• Walking up hills -- yup, I seriously felt in the mood for a walk. And then a walk on the flat wouldnt suffice. So I walked up to Victoria University and had a wander around and then walked further up the hill into Kelburn. It was pretty, but COOOOLD
• Cleaning things -- I cleaned out my wardrobe because i really really wanted to. But then of course this craving ran out so I just shoved everything back in, and its back to messy
• Spinach -- I NEEDED spinach! seriously, I needed it. It was very very important. So I had a spinach salad with unsalted almonds and a little bit of chicken. Bland, very green, and it hit the spot by far. I think I maybe needed brocolli too, but the heads of brocolli in the supermarket werent appealing.
• Water -- lots and lots of cold water. No fizzy, no sugared drinks, no energy drinks, just water
• Milk. And I hate milk.

So there you go, apparently at Christmas I turn into the anti-Hilarey.

Oh, and my shameful secret of this afternoon - I watched "It's A Wonderful Life" and I cried. Bawled like a little baby at the happy ending. I was just so happy for Clarence and George and Mary and Harry and all the little kids, and the angels and the bells and the tree... And I got to thinking (although, seriously, its not like I want to end my life or anything) but would anything really change if I hadnt been born?

I mean think about it... In the movie George had managed to run a business where he made homes for the unfortunate. He swindled the rich guy who was trying to take over the town. He saved the life of his kid brother, who then went on to fight in the war and stop a transport ship full of soldiers from getting bombed. He had kids, and him being alive stopped his mum from being all alone. If i werent around, not a whole lot would change. And yes, I know there are people who love me, and I know I do a good job at work, but I've never really changed the life of anybody.

Is it too cheesy to make that a resolution for the new year?

Only in my dreams....

So guess what I did on Sunday?

I think it would have been slightly harder to guess if I wasn't so proud of the fact I remembered I could upload a picture.

Yup, I walked the bypass. It took all of 40 seconds, but now I can say I have walked up two major roading structures on their open days since when I was 5 I walked the Moonshine Bridge just when they finished making it. Sadly, there were no clown, no balloons, no unicycles, and really not much of anything. Apparently at some stage there was protesters, but since I never saw them I guess they weren't very effective protesters.

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So this week has been a busy one! On Thursday I had so many parties to go to that I ended up on a gigantic sugar high that i spent all of Friday feeling awful about. I also had a significant amount of champagne at the respiratory Christmas party dinner Thursday night. Margaret asked if I would like a glass, so of course I said yes. She bought me a whole bottle of special reserve blanc de blancs. Who am I to refuse such generosity? Its not like she could send it back. Plus we were on a boat (we took the Wellesley Cruise around the harbour, and it was a beautiful night, but still rocky) so I was already feeling a little drunk and somewhat heady (and i desperately needed to use the head, but I actually never found it) so why not get a little drunk. Although perhaps the sensible adult inside me was yelling "WORK CHRISTMAS PARTY... DON'T DRINK!" but I never listen to her anyway.

So aside from the small turnout, the inadvisable amount of alcohol, and the semi-average food, the cruise on Thursday night was awesome! We got guided back into harbour by several dolphins, the view from all sides was amazing, we could see the heads, and we went slowly around Somes Island and several bays, and the water was as flat as we could ever possibly have hoped for. If only I wasn't so tired it would have been perfect

Why was I so tired I can hear you wondering from upstairs (Linda....) well, I've been having strange dreams again. In one of them I was feeding deer, and one of them had a big red nose. I didn't think anything of it until later when I got the letter from a very bitter Santa, informing me that I was solely responsible for the poor children getting no presents this year. My deer food was so good that Rudolph opted not to go out on Christmas night, and with nobody to guide the sleigh Santa had driven into a tree and caused irreparable damage to all the presents. Oops.

Then later in the week I dreamt that my boss was forcing me to do Lung Function tests on a baby elephant. And if I didnt get good results she would fire me. I spent ages trying to get the nosepeg on that little trunk, and then trying to convince her to put her mouth aroud the mouthpeice was a trial as well. And as for her blast technique.... well, lets just say if your boss ever asks you to test an elephant, its a thinly veiled excuse for firing you.

At least I didnt have such a strange dream as one of my patients. She is on anti-depressants, and I think that might have caused it. She dreamt she was married to George Clooney (well, really, who hasnt) but she caught him having sex with her sisters dog (who was, of course, pimped out to him by the chemist). She forgave him and all that, and everything was all fine, until she developed dog aids. And then there were all these tests and treatments and it was terrible. So I guess the moral of the story is, If you are going to marry George Clooney, make sure you never let him go to the chemist alone.

Joy to the World

Wow, a new post, and I'm sure its been less than a month since the last one...

Um, not a lot has really been happening, except that I just switched to blogger beta version, and apparently its a lot easier to do things, only it was never really hard to do anything to start with, so I'm not really that excited about it. Oh, and thanks to Schnozz over at schnozzfest
(http://www.schnozzfest.com/blog/ check out her NaBloPoMo story, its awesome) I also have Google reader, which makes checking blogs at work that much easier. So woohoo for that, a new, easier way to avoid doing work. Like I needed one.

We went to the Christmas Carols in the Stadium on Saturday. Very cool. They were using the PA system that had been set up for the Elton John concert tomorrow, but they were clearly unprepared for such a system because golly gee that was LOUD! Deb and I couldn't hear anything but fuzz out of our ears for hours afterwards. The carols worked much as they always did, all the people that were there purely to be seen were down on the grounds, wandering back and forwards, back and forwards, back and forwards (there was a lot of walking clearly) wearing completely inappropriate clothing and being scorned by those sensible among us who were there for the carols and were dressed warmly (and also secretly envied because of the self confidence and large groups of friends, two things I never really had). Nick Tansley (a local radio "celebrity") was running the show and basically every carol was set to some random beat he had found on his electronic keyboard. I bet you never heard "Away in a Manger" as a march before...

Anyways, the best part of it was that the brass band section were all dressed up as super heroes. There were the usual culprits, Batman, Robin, Superman, and then there were the ones tailored for the younger crowd, like Mr Incredible. Then there were the less usual culprits, Virgil Tracy from the Thunderbirds and Zorro. And then there were two completely new superheroes. There was Pink Super hero woman lady thing... and Captain FartyPants. Now, Fartypants' had a very obvious super power, but I'm not sure what Pink Super Hero Woman Lady Thing had as her superpower, but perhaps it was the power of wearing pink. Because there was a lot of pink. It would definitely blind her enemies.

Oh, the other best part (shut up, you can too have several best parts, its not a competition) was the fireworks. We were right under them and couldn't see them. But I'm told they were good. If only they had pointed them out to us before they sang Mariah Carey songs over the top of the bangs (Mariah Carey can drown ANYTHING out, even a sonic boom).

Hmmm... what else? Oh, on Saturday we had people round, and after they left we discovered poor Logan (the backwards eared bunny) had been tied to the top of the Christmas tree. People, this is not the best way to convince the kitten-cat not to attack the tree. You cant tie her favourite toy to the top and then expect her to leave it be. So the only way to stop her trying to climb the tree was to make the tree come to life. Its very hard to attack something that shakes and growls at you in a very big boomy voice.

Also, I baked. But we had none of the real ingredients, so I improvised a bit. Or, a lot. We didn't have eggs so I used Greek yoghurt, I had a banana I needed to get rid of so I put it in my blueberry muffins, we didn't have baking powder so i used a teensy bit of baking soda. They still turned out edible. But my hokey pokey cookies were the best. The recipe (not from the book obviously) is as follows....

Hokey Pokey Cookies

• Some random amount of margarine (we didn't have butter)
• Approximately 1/4 cup of milk (recipe called for a tablespoon I think)
• Lots of golden syrup
• Some sugar (recipe said 1/2 cup, I used around twice this)
• Flour
  
  Put margarine, half the sugar and milk into a pot. Squeeze in a generous amount of golden syrup. Turn on element. Wait for margarine to melt.
  30 Minutes later realise margarine isn't melting, notice pot isn't getting warm. Wonder what is wrong but decide to give it some more time.
  20 minutes after discover smoke coming from element next to pot. Realise wrong element is turned on, and that hot element has some crusty leftovers on it that are just about on fire. Turn off hot element hope it doesn't catch fire, turn on element under pot.
  Stir until margarine melts, taste ingredients, add copious amounts of golden syrup. Taste ingredients. Mmmmm syrupy. Add rest of sugar. Stir until sugar melts. Add more golden syrup. Taste. Yum. Heat until nearly boiling. Taste. Ouch hot, run cold water and put tongue underneath
  Take pot off stove. Hunt desperately for something to put hot pot on but, since unable to find anything, hold pot for twenty minutes waiting for ingredients to cool.
  Prepare to sieve flour into pot. Discover that you have no sieve. Decide to use colander instead. Discover colander not a good replacement for sieve.
  Clean flour from bench. Add some fresh flour to pot. Stir. Add more flour. Stir again. Add more flour. Stir some more. Keep adding flour until you have a consistency that will allow you to roll it into a ball. Add more golden syrup. Taste. Discover slight floury taste. Add more golden syrup. Taste. MMMM good.
  Roll into balls of varying sizes, put onto an oven tray. Crush balls with a fork (laugh evilly as you do so). Realise you have forgotten the baking soda and this is the biggest your cookies will go, squash some more.
  Put oven tray into oven. Cook until you become impatient. Take cookies out of oven. Eat one. Run water and place tongue under it. Leave cookies to cool.
  
  There you go, hokey pokey cookies. That taste like squishy fortune cookies. Yum.

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

Whoops, its been a while. For those of you who are wondering, no, I didnt get eaten in Canberra. I came home, um.... several months ago now, and then I moved house and I forgot about the whole blogosphere entirely.

So... I guess I finished with the plundering. It was great fun, but eventually you have just got everything you possibly can out of one tiny little country. Had a couple of days off the couch, spent with Tim and Sarah-Margaret who are both awesome people and excellent hosts and I want to go back often but I cant afford it. Even if Smgt did spoil one of my stories by discovering that the snake we saw was really a possum.

So Im back at work. I dont love it. Well thats not entirely true, I do like my job, i love the interaction with the patients, and the fact that I never have to give out results, so I'm never the bearer of bad news, and so people generally tend to leave my office reasonably happy. Thats a pretty good way to spend the day. Its just some of the workmates I could do without. Theres really nothing worse then having to spend the whole day with people you have overheard bitching about you. And then they ask if you want to go to the christmas party. Oh yes woohoo count me in. Or maybe not.

In less bitchie news, Shellie and I have a new flat. Its a lovely warm house, which Pepper adores and we are pretty pleased about it too. It has a dishwasher! Our bench is constantly clean, we can SEE it! Which is reasonably helpful when it comes time to cook. My room is HUGE! And I've totally managed to fill it with crud, but thats not surprising because its me. Im never having children, they would get lost on the floor under the piles of junk. Since moving into the new house strange things have been happening though....

Okay, one night, I had this dream. There was this pirate, he was tall, reasonably handsome with just enough stubble that you could see he was manly but not enough that you would ever get stubble rash from him. He had ripped jeans, a peg leg, bare feet, and a torn white muscle shirt, and looked remarkably like a cross betweeen Jensen Ackles and Hugh Jackman (if ever a man lived, Kate and I would kill each other trying to get to him). Anyways, I was standing on the deck of a giant pirate ship, there was fighting going on all around, and every so often there was a whistle in the air as a cannonball JUST missed the ship. There was a fire on the deck, and to the left there was a plank for walking, and you could see the water just teaming with sharks. And I was fighting the pirate (why i would ever fight a handsome pirate is anyones guess, I suppose it was easier than coming up with some suave pickup line) and I kicked him. Hard. On the peg leg (coz of course, why would you kick him where it would actually hurt... D'oh). And i woke up with this terrible pain in my foot, which turned out to be broken toes. Im still confused as to what actually happened.

Another night I dreamt that someone broke into our house and stole part of my mattress. Just a little part, it kind of looked like a bite mark from the top and the bottom. And i was SO upset about it. I woke up in crying hysterics, absolutely certain it was true and really happened and wondering how I was supposed to ever sleep. It didnt occur to me that I was lying on my mattress at the time....

And last night I was feeding deer, one of them had a red nose. And it was boxing day, and Santa sent me a nasty letter saying that I had ruined christmas for all the children. Apparently the food i was giving the deer was soooo good that Rudolph didnt want to go back to the North Pole to guide the sleigh, and Santa had crashed into a tree. I woke up convinced that I was no better than the grinch. Very upsetting.

Oh, and in other, completely unrelated news, in the paper the other day there was a picture of our bus driver (from the previous Steve/Charlie story) and he was credited with being "Bus Driver Steve.... something". So he was completely lying to me when he called himself Charlie!!!

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"

The wheels on the bus go round and round

Some people seem to beleive that when they are in a bus seat nobody around them can see what they are doing. Take for instance the girl this morning. She got on in Kilbirnie, and looked around shiftily (shiftily is SO a word) then out of her bag she got a bowl, and a packet of coco-pops and some milk. Then she commenced to eating her breakfast right there on the bus. Unsurprisingly the first time the driver went round a corner, milk went everywhere. I was actually pretty impressed that she got that far without spilling anything.

Theres also the girl who waits until she is on the bus to do her makeup. And some days, it looks like she has done it on a bus beleive me. But most days, the way she confidently brushes her eyelashes with the thickest coat of mascara known to man is just something to behold. Once she started with the mascara about 5 minutes after getting on the bus, there was quite a bit of traffiic so it took us about 45 minutes to get into town, and she was going at it with that little mascara brush the whole time! She must have had the heaviest eyelashes in the world that day. The muscle power required by her eyelids just to even blink would have been amazing. If she had that power proportionate in all her other muscles she could have rivalled Superman. And that would have been cool because we need more superheroes, but I just dont think "Mascara Girl" is a name that strikes fear into the hearts of evil-doers


Then there is the guy that gets on, looks around shiftily (the more times you use it, the more likely it is to become an actual word) then starts picking his nose. EVERY morning. And not just a little "oh, Ive got an itch at the end of my nose that needs scratching" pick, this is a full on finger right up the nose pick. And its not a small nose, if he isnt careful he could actually lose his finger up there. When he is done he wipes whatever yummy treats he finds up there on the seat. If you are ever catching a bus in Wellington, do not sit in the third row from the back. Unless you like other people's snot, in which case, well.... EW!

When Kate and I used to catch the bus together there was this couple that was always on the bus with us. They got off somewhere around the centre of town, usually before us, and would always say "thanks Steve" as they got off the bus. Using our brilliant powers of deduction we decided that clearly, the driver's name MUST be Steve. Well, duh of course it must be. But then one day I was going back into town late in the afternoon and Steve got on the bus and sat down in the seat across from me. We commenced to chatting, and I at some stage said "So, your name is Steve right?". He looked at me pretty strangely, and answered in the negative. Then of course he asked why on earth I would think that. I mentioned the couple and their "thanks Steve-ing" and he burst out laughing. "I KNOW!" He said loudly, making me jump "They have been doing that for 6 months now, every morning, and I dont get it. My name is Charlie by the way". Kate and I had a good giggle about that, but then sadly one day, the Steves stopped catching the bus. And we thought all our amusement had gone away

About a week later a very nervous looking platinum blonde lady got on, pushed people out of her way and acted like a general ass, drawing attention to herself straight away. So we had to make snarkey comments because, well, who wouldnt really. She had these giant glasses on, she looked like a fish. And she was wearing a black power suit with a lime green top. Right out of the eighties. As she got to her desired stop she pushed the button to alight, marched in the direction of the door, and stood there looking huffy as the driver maneouvered his way into the stop. As the doors opened she strode forwards, tripping on the metal bit in the doorway, as she stumbled to the pavement you could hear, very definately if a little mumbled "Thanks Steve". And I'm sure she heard us burst out laughing as Charlie looked at us in the mirror and winked.