The Sun Has Got His Hat On

... but I didn't so now I have a sunburnt scalp. This matches nicely with my sunburnt shoulders and sunburnt chest. Thankfully being bright red just sets off my ginger hair even more. Suncream is never enough. Next time I'm covering myself in something thick and impenitrable to the sunshine... like cement perhaps?!

Essay is halfway through so I have tomorrow afternoon and wednesday afternoon to bash out 2000 words. I'm quitely confident that while in a state of panic that will be completely obtainable.

Lily xXx

All Over The Place

Bank holiday's always mess with my mind. I always end up thinking that Tuesday is actually Monday, and then when the Tuesday things happen I get all confused. My body calender has been completely fried.

To make things worse public transport was a nightmare today. The rain slowed up all the trains, and half the trains to Waterloo this morning didn't even turn up. To make things worse my waterproof Primark coat is far from waterproof so I got completely soaked.

As if an omen of rubbish things to come I also found out that a close family friend (so close my family lived with their's since I was 15) may have a serious illness. Totally and utterly unexpected. I don't really know what to think. He's got more tests to confirm it tomorrow so I don't want to be all doom and gloom until things are 100%, but it's quite hard not to be. It makes it really hard not being home at times like this.

Lily xXx

Cannibals

I've come to a slightly scary conclusion. My neighbours are cannibals.

Why do I think this?

Well... All the flats where I live are pretty small. About 15 people walk into their flat every day, but I NEVER see anyone coming out. All I can conclude is that the flat is either a tardis or they're eating all the people who go inside. Until last night I hadn't made up my mind which it was. Then I heard it.... Chanting. Okay, maybe it was just some children singing, but with my vivid imagination I've now decided. They're cannibals.

Lily xXx

Last Presentation... Done!

This morning I did the last presentation of this academic year. Woo! I got 9/10 on this one too, which has made me pretty happy. Two 9/10's in one week can't be bad. I've also finally got a little more sensible about about this essay, which is now due in 2 weeks and I'm getting on with it. I've also made the boyf promise to bully me into doing most of it this weekend just in case I try and skive.

The reason I need to get most of it done this weekend is because most of next week is going to be a write-off because of my birthday. I have plans all the way from Wednesday - Sunday. Not that all of them are birthday related, but it's lots of stuff I want to do, and lots of people I want to see. For that reason I really want the first draft done by Monday evening at the latest. It also means I'll be able to hand back the huge pile of library books taking up space on my floor.

Lily xXx

Procrastination Queen

Yet again I'm spending this evening procrastinating and not doing any work. However I feel that I have a right to tonight. I've done a fair bit of work over the last 2 days and even got 9/10 in a presentation. I've also looked up all the stuff to do around 1000 - 1500 words of my essay, which I should be able to churn out in an hour or two tomorrow. Helen is definitely right when she said I should set myself a couple of hours to do some work and I'd probably just carry on... so that is the plan tomorrow. I'm making myself do 2 hours of essay and if it carrys on then bonus, I should get loads done, and if it doesn't 2 hours is still a lot of words when I have all the research sitting there ready in front of me.

Tomorrow I also have another presentation to do, and this should really be the last one of this academic year.... thank goodness. In a couple of weeks I'll need to be concentrating on revision and not presentations and essays.

On a random unrelated note... bovril on toast = amazing. I don't have it for a couple of days and forget how good it is, but it really is amazing. In fact I'm actually quite upset that I only discovered it a couple of months ago and thus have wasted over 21 years of my life without experiencing bovril. It's so nummy.

Lily xXx

Birthdays Everywhere

The boyf's birthday dinner was a total success. I made prawn and apple cocktail, boeuf en croute and hot chocolate fondant pots. Surprisingly everything went completely to plan, the only bad thing to happen was that I smashed a glass in the kitchen. Fortunately I only got a teeny tiny piece of glass in my foot.

After dinner, where we both put on about 10kg, we had a relatively early night so we could get up and clean the flat properly for the boyf's Dad coming over. The flat was surprisingly easy to clean. I realise it's tiny, but I always overestimate tidying up time. It's so nice to be in a tidy clean flat. It was lovely seeing his Dad too. Later that afternoon we drove to the seaside to go and see his Mum and go out for drinks with his friends, so overall it was a busy, but really nice weekend.

Unfortunately it means I've done no work and I have 2 presentations this week, a load of psych stuff to type up for a psychiatrist and I want to get 1000 more words of this essay done. Fun fun fun...

First presentation is a neuro one tomorrow with no powerpoint, so that shouldn't be too major. I have a patient in mind I just need to write myself a few cues and a couple of definitions if I get asked questions about things.

I really really really cannot wait for the next few weeks to be over even though it's my birthday in less than a fortnight because I have so much work to do. Weirdly it's the boyf's sister's birthday and two of my best friend's birthdays in the next fortnight too. I'm actually spending a small fortune in birthday cards!

Lily xXx

Stupid Phone

About a month ago I got a new phone. An XDA Ignito. Either the phone is totally rubbish or I completely cannot work it. In fact this morning it very almost got thrown into the wall.

I was wondering if anyone else knew how to work this phone?! Just in case here are the things that puzzle me...

1. The alarm. How do you turn it off?! Even when I turn it off it still goes on. I have to turn the phone off and back on to get it to stop. Very frustrating at 6.30 am.

2. Locking it. Sometimes when I put it in it's case it manages to open stuff and call people. Othertimes halfway through a text when I pause to think the whole thing will lock.

It is a puzzling machine.

I'm going to have quite a busy today considering I have no uni. I'm actually going to do some more essay. On top of that I'm meeting a friend for an hour or two AND I'm cleaning the flat because the boyf's Dad is visiting on Saturday. Unfortunately the flat is always a tip which just makes things worse as it looks so rough from outside. The lack of a lift at the moment doesn't help either.

Lily xXx

Exhaustion

Have I used this as a post title before?! Probably.

Yet again I'm really exhausted. It's not that I'm not enjoying uni, or am feeling overworked by it, it's more the fact that I can't seem to get a full night's sleep.

On the plus side I got 7 sign-ups today. That's about a 1/3 of what I need to get in this rotation.

I'm also slowly improving in sqaush. I've gone from not being able to serve at all, to being able to serve quite well some of the time. I reckon in a couple more weeks my service will be pretty good most of the time and then I might have a chance of winning a game.

Those who follow this blog will probably be bemused to know that I still haven't finished writing my essay. I'm determined to knuckle down tomorrow afternoon and Thursday, when I have time off to get a big chunk of it done. Fingers crossed I'll be able to self motivate.

Lily xXx

Haircut

I have a new skill. A skill good enough to give me a back-up plan if I completely fail the rest of university.

I could be a barber.

Today I cut the boyf's hair. It actually looks pretty good. This may just be because I was so convinced I'd have his scalp off with the clippers that anything short of a hair studded blood bath is amazing, but even he thinks it looks good. Or at least he's telling me that so as not to hurt my feelings.

Lily xXx

Presentation Tomorrow

Every rotation we have to present cases to the rest of the group in a power point presentation. Every rotation I end up volunteering to do the first one out of some strange misplaced sense of guilt. I just hate it when noone volunteers for something.

Yet again I'm panicing about presenting a patient in a topic I'm nowhere near comfortable in. To make it worse my computer charger has died so I had to do the presentation against the clock after drafting it on the boyf's computer on word as he doesn't have powerpoint. A clear sign that he isn't a student.

Anyway tomorrow morning I get it out of the way and if I get a good mark it's the last powerpoint I'll have to do this academic year. If I don't get a good mark then I'm allowed another go because by doing the first one I'm putting myself at a disadvantage. Fingers crossed my firm head will think good things and up my overall mark for being a little bit keen.

Lily xXx

Toast

Whenever I am hungry in the slightest (which is most of the time), I can't seem to help my tummy making hugely loud rumbles. Toast for breakfast seems to make this worse. Why is it two slices of toast fill me up for barely 2 hours?! It's all about cereal, but unfortunately I've run out of nice cereal. A shopping trip is seriously needed.

Hampering my needs to go shopping is the fact that the car is still broken. It finally went into the garage today and may cost anything from £300 - £1000+ to fix. I'm horrified. What's even worse is that the boyf can't take any more time off work so as of tonight is staying at his Mum's so he can get to work. That makes him around 65 miles away from me. Thats much more than the 65mm distance we usually have. He's only been gone a few hours and I've already started talking to Teddy C...

Lily xXx

Last Term Lethargy

Even though this is a new rotation I am definitely experiencing last term lethargy. It seems that because of exams the only proper relaxing holiday time I have is the couple of days once my exam is over, so I'm never getting time to fully chill out and relax. I'm really looking forward to the end of this year so I can have a couple of weeks to myself. It's also exciting to think that I'll start my penultimate year in September.

Even though I'm feeling a little lazy and possibly not as motivated as I should be to start learning neuro bits and bobs I am really getting into psych. It's soooo interesting. Geekily I can find myself reading a psych book and actually getting lost in it. Maybe psychiatry will be the career for me. Who knows?!

Unfortunately I can't seem to bring myself to sign up for a night on call. A bad experience in my first term where everyone just made my clinical partner and I feel as if we were completely in the way for hours and noone would let us see anything interesting has kind of put me off. Tomorrow I'm going to have a pow-wow with my clinical partner to decide what we should do.

I made the time to play squash again today, instead of going for a run. I really really like squash, but I just can't seem to master serving. Once the ball is bouncing around I'm pretty good for a newbie, but the ability to serve just eludes me. Fingers crossed this squash and running will help me drop a few pounds. Tried on some summery 3/4 length trousers on the weekend and they were nowhere near doing up even though they fitted fine last summer. Disaster!!!

Lily xXx

Car Trouble

As per usual car's have been causing me problems. The boyf and I decided to go home for the long weekend to see our families and enjoy the fresh seaside air. Saturday morning I got up and went for a run (don't be too impressed, it was only 1km). After coming back, having a shower and getting dressed I was all excited about going home. The boyf and I ran down to the car, buckled ourselves in... and then disaster!! The clutch was broken. No warning signs, no anything, just a broken clutch.

Understandably on a bank holiday weekend it is impossible to get a new clutch. So the boyf and I were stuck. No car, no seaside, just smog.

Sometimes I can get quite down where I live. It's by far not the nicest borough of London. I haven't been raped or mugged here so it can't be the worst, but it's very tatty and oppressive sometimes. I was not happy about being stuck here all weekend.

After an hour or two of sulking and swearing about how rubbish everything was we resigned ourselves to no seaside this weekend and instead got on the bus. Now I realise it was actually a blessing in disguise that the car broke. The boyf and I have spent all weekend sitting in the sunshine in parks, walking around the pretty parts of London and enjoying glasses of wine on the riverbank. In fact I don't think we could have asked for a more perfect weekend. Rather than going home, rushing around to see our families and spending no quality time together we had the best weekend we've had in ages.

This really nice long weekend has put me in a good frame of mind for next week. I'm going to get on with that essay I keep talking about. I have another month until the deadline so rather than rushing I could actually do something really high quality. I also have a presentation about a psychiatry patient to do on Friday which will be good to get out of the way so early on in the rotation. This week I also want to master how to test all the cranial nerves. The hardest thing about neuro placements in my opinion is the fact that the overall examination is so complex.

Today I'm going to have an indoor picnic because the weather has taken a turn for the worst. Over the last fortnight I've developed an obsession with sandwiches again. I make an amazing apple and cumin chutney (oh look... I'm being modest again!), which is amazing with mature cheddar. I also have an addiction to chorizo sandwiches. Anyone have any ideas for yummy sandwich fillings I might not have tried?!

Lily xXx