Weird times

So the last few weeks have been a bit more than just hectic.

For starters, my priority order is “Family – uni – paid work – unpaid work”, so this blog and a few volunteer things I do have fallen by the wayside.

Starting with family – my Mum is in the process of buying a new house, and is asking for our input a lot. This has been rather time consuming.
Then, the new job that Hubby started fell through. He is now in the process of transitioning back to being self-employed (which he hasn’t been for several years) and THAT has me worrying about how the hell we’re going to pay all the bills while we sort it out.

Uni – I’ve been on prac for the past 3 weeks, so I’ve been working full-time hours and not getting any $$ for it. I also had to do an essay and study for an exam in that time. I’ve just finished prac, and now I have 2 more essays to write in the next 10 days.

Paid work – referring back to the ‘Family’ section, it appears that once again, I am going to be the primary source of income until Hubby gets work sorted out. This is more than a little scary, as pay day is offset from worked weeks by about a fortnight, so my next pay isn’t for nearly 2 weeks, and it will be from the single shift I’ve worked in the second half of prac.

The result of all of this is that I’ve spent the time that I’m not sleeping or on prac planning and re-planning the bill payments for the next month, and worrying about it all. My sleep has suffered, which has had knock-on effects for my mental and physical health.

I currently feel like absolute crap, but I’ve now got 3 weeks where I can pick up extra shifts while I don’t have classes. I also have to catch up on my reading and study from the start of semester, and get to work on the volunteer stuff I’m supposed to be doing.

I’m kind of over everything at the moment, and I’m stressing out over the money thing, so I don’t know if I’m going to be able to post much, but I’ll do my best. Hopefully it all sorts itself out soon, and life can get back to *somewhat* normal.

~K

My “process” has been disrupted

Hubby broke his finger last Saturday at work.

He wouldn’t even let me strap it until Sunday evening (after I called in the “big guns” – our doctor friend), and then he avoided going to the doctor to get an X-ray until Wednesday.

The tip of his right ring finger is crushed, and he is now off work for the week.

This is annoying for me, because I have a process, and now he’s in the middle of it and not helping :S

Case in point – Friday morning is when I wash the sheets and towels, but because Hubby is home, he’s still in bed asleep. So I can’t wash the sheets. There’s no point putting the towels through on their own, the load would be too small to be worth it in our machine.

I’ll get back to doing my essay now I’ve had that rant. We are at t-10hrs until it is due.

~K

I officially hate norovirus

And it’s not because I’m sick WITH it.

It’s because I have to write an essay about the transmission and nursing care practices associated with it.

UGH

I hate essays as well. So, double whammy.

~K

What’s been happening?

I’ve been sort of absent for a little while – many apologies!

I’ll try and get you all caught up with what’s been happening here in that time.

Uni
Semester 2 started, and we’ve got even more reading than last semester! I’m a bit behind on the readings, but that’s to be somewhat expected. We get 4 weeks break from classes from mid-September to mid-October, and during that time we get 2 study weeks and 2 weeks of prac. Looks like I’m going on prac during the second 2 weeks. I’m planning to catch up on all my readings during that time, because between now and then I’ve got 2 assignments and an exam. Thankfully, the exam is open-book, so I just need to know where to find the info.

Health
My physical health has been really good (except for good ol’ hay fever – the wattle started flowering about a week ago and my sinuses hate me right now). My mental health has been reasonably good too, except for the day I forgot to take my tablets, and the week when I overclocked my ability to deal with change.
I haven’t really been riding to uni much this semester (only ridden twice in the past 5 weeks), mainly due to horribly inclement weather – it’s been very wet for this time of year, and the nice days have pretty much only been the days when I’m NOT at uni.

Home life
Our washing machine appears to be on it’s last legs – Hubby pulled all the outsides off to fix some stuff a couple of weeks ago, and it seemed ok… Until yesterday, when it started making weird clunking noises during the spin cycle again. I REALLY don’t want to have to replace it, but we might not have a choice if the problem is what Hubby suspects.
Other than that, I’ve managed to mostly keep up with the housework, and I’ve been reasonably good at actually sticking to my meal plans. I also got an AWESOME new toy for my birthday – the slowcooker/ricecooker/etc magic machine that I’ve been wanting for ages 🙂 It’s having its slow cooker maiden voyage today – I’m making Chicken Teriyaki, and I’ll put the recipe up once I’m done. I’ve kept my little rice cooker as well, because I figure I will probably need it occasionally when I want to serve rice with something I’m doing in the slow cooker (like today).
Hubby and I have been doing date nights a little more often as well over the past few months, which has been really nice 🙂 Hopefully we’ll be able to keep that up for the rest of the semester.

Now, I’d better get back to studying and working on my assignments.

~K

Uni update

Got my marks back for my Clinical prac assessment!

I got 78.5%, which is a Distinction/6 🙂

My calculations tell me that this means my overall mark for the subject is a Distinction/6 as well – I’m pretty happy with that!

Now just to wait for my other 3 classes to release their marks.

~K

To-do List 19/5/15

List progress for today:

• dishes
• watch week 11 Clinical Health lecture 
• watch Neurological Assessment video
• research for presentation
• finish uni “catch up” list
• cook dinner
• clean paintbrushes

Now I’m off to do the dishes, so I can make them dirty again when I do dinner hahaha.

Then, it’s off to do some more set painting tonight (hence cleaning the paintbrushes). I always forget to clean my brushes properly after I use them, so I tend to just wash the worst of it out and then clean them properly a few days later. This time it’s been a whole week :S I need to replace a few though, out of a starting set of 7 (rounds in sizes 1, 3, 5, square in 2, 4, 6 and 10) I only have the round 3 and square 6 & 10 left. Others have gotten lost along the way, or I’ve left them too long without proper cleaning and they’ve gone solid. I’m managing with just these three atm though, so I can wait for replacements (white taklon brushes are expensive :S).

Now, I should GET OFF TUMBLR and WordPress and actually go do the dishes.

~K

Exhausted

I had a plan for today. I was going to get up, do a few hours of work on my assignment before Mum came over for lunch, then kick her out again at about 4 and finish my assignment.

NOPE.

We got a phone call at 8am from Hubby’s mum, saying that we were doing lunch today for Hubby’s dad’s 60th bday. So I then had to call MY mum and reschedule. (This is not unusual for Hubby’s family – organisation seems pretty much impossible for them, and it frustrates the HELL out of me.)

The day ended up being – get up, get ready, do a tiny bit of work on assignment then off to lunch with the in-laws and the rest of the family. Finished there at about 4, then straight to my Mum’s to sort out stuff, then leave at 8:45 (original plan to leave at 8) and get home by 9:30.

Now I’ve got to finish all the assignment by pretty much 7am tomorrow, because I have a Mental Health workshop from 9:30 until 3:30, and the assignment is due at 5pm.

I suspect I will end up pulling an all-nighter tonight, despite my determination NOT to do that any more.

I’m already so tired from all the human interaction today, I just want to go to bed.

~K

Bloody t-tests

It’s been at least 3 years since I did ANY sort of statistics class.

I’ve officially forgotten how to interpret a t-test. So I googled it.

Only problem is, it would appear that I’ve missed something important somewhere, because the data we’ve been given to write up makes NO FREAKING SENSE.

Pretty much everything I’ve read suggests that accuracy on a Stroop Task should improve w/ caffeine consumption. According to the data, it increased to a 100mg caffeine consumption, and decreased again for 200mg. Meh, could be possible. Could have fluked with who was in what group.

Then we get to reaction time – EVERYTHING, literally EVERYTHING says that reaction time should improve. NOPE. No significant differences anywhere according to the t-tests. And then it gets weirder – if I look at the simple analysis, the mean reaction time actually INCREASES with caffeine dose. AAAAAAAAAAARGH

Now I’m not sure if I’ve misinterpreted the data, or whether it is just totally whacked out.

I need more coffee.

~K

Research…

I’ve been sitting here for the last 20mins thinking there’s something wrong with my eyes because I’m having an INSANE amount of trouble focusing on the text in this article…

NOPE, it’s just a really crappy, low-quality digitised file. My eyes aren’t blurry, the article is :S

Ugh I really hope this is actually useful for my assignment, otherwise I’ll have given myself a headache for nothing.

~K

Assessment craziness

I’m aiming to get assignment 1 finished tomorrow, so I can do a bit of final exam review on Friday before the exam on Saturday.

I’ll then finish assignment 2 over Saturday night/Sunday.

At least, that’s the plan. Hopefully it works out that way. I’m thinking I’ll skip my Friday A&P lecture and just do exam prep, and then catch up on the lecture recording next week.

I had a furry study buddy for a little while tonight, but when Hubby went to bed, he left too 😦 so now I’m up doing my assignment all on my own.

I’ll have to head to bed soonish though, because it rained quite heavily this arvo so I’ll be getting Hubby to drop me at uni tomorrow – annoyingly, I have no way of knowing if the bike path is under until I get to it.

Looks like it will be the same until at least Wednesday next week too, as it is supposed to rain pretty much non-stop from now until Tuesday if the weather man is to be believed… I like rain, but we’re supposed to be heading into winter now!

But good news – I got 57/60 on my last assignment, WOOOOOOH!!!!!! So far, this means that I’m maintaining a GPA of 7 (for non-Aussies, we grade from 1 – 7, with 7 being the highest you can get. A 4 is a pass, and anything less is a fail)!

I know it’s the “I told you so” dance, but let’s just imagine it’s my Happy Dance 🙂

~K