Today I bought a car! Finally. It was the second car I looked at. The first was from a used car dealer in South Melbourne who was having a little trouble distinguishing between a 3 door and a 5 door vehicle. After a long (and I mean long) drive to broadford the deposit was laid. It's been a while since I've been out to the country and I forgot how far apart the towns were. I'm used to looking in the Melways and the suburbs are literally next to each other. Not so in the country.

Other news is as we're currently without a home, we've taken up a 1 month lease in a friends house who has moved overseas. The conditions are suboptimal for reasons I will now list.

No toilet door
Years of smoke absorbed into the walls and carpets although its amazing what a bottle of febreze can do.
Lots and lots of dirt!

Anyway its been incredibly convenient for us to have somewhere to live (beats living on the street anyday)while waiting on replies from the nice places we've applied for. Speaking of renting we've been looking for somewhere for about a month now and whenever a decent place comes up there are literally 20 people lining up outside for the inspection. We've had to stoop to 'gazumping'by offering the landlord a higher rent. Last place we were outgazumped but I have a really good feeling about this next one.

I just got back from dinner and ate way too much apple pie. Whoa!

I've been pretty quiet for the past couple of weeks, exams have been approaching rapidly and I've been searching for somewhere to live, which has been so far unsuccessful. Maybe in a couple of weeks when exams are over, I have a place and a car and basically an organised life I can do some renovations to this page and write something a little more interesting.

Question.

Why are real estate agents so rude? I've been promised so many call backs which I have never received and minus 2 agents, it feels as if renting out a property is just such a hassle for them. Surely the sooner it's tenanted the sooner they receive their commissions. It's not like we're looking at crappy places either and we're both professionals with decent incomes and references. I can't imagine trying to find a place if you were a student with no previous references.

And now for the places we've been looking at. The last one which was otherwise perfect had a glass wall between the bedroom and the loungeroom. A tiny bit strange. If anyone knows the flat at MUCAPS it was just like that but obviously far nicer. Another place was perfect except for no door between the bedroom and the lounge, not great for two nightshift workers.

We did find two perfect places although it seems that the other 20 people at the inspection also thought they were perfect and no call back from the agent despite numerous daily calls to them.

Other news is that I'll be released onto the unsuspecting public as a paramedic (still technically a student though) next friday. We spent a great day with the CFA last week doing scenarios. We had people dressed up in makeup and old clothes (so we could cut them) and they cut up cars (while I was inside with a patient).

I can't believe they pay me to do this job.

The horrid communication techniques assignment has been handed in. Actually it really wasn't that bad, I just hate researching boring topics (but thank you to the kind souls in onlineambulance who shared some of their experiences with me), bring on the pathophysiology assignment.

I was helping another class member who tends to leave everything to the last minute. As we went to hand it in two minutes before it was due, I've looked at her Cover Page.
"Should I tell you now or later that you've mispelled Ambulance?" UH OH!

I hate football, until a few hours ago I didn't even know who was playing in the grand final.

I watched a doco on SBS last night on footy chicks. Highly embarrassing for the girls who were trying to come across as in control and modern women. Responding to players booty calls and obsessing over them. I don't know how anyone can be attracted to those kind of meatheads to begin with, Oh well each to their own. I apologise to any footy player who doesn't fit the stereotype.

Should I go to bed or continue with my assignment? It's 0130 on a Saturday night/Sunday morning, I'm going to bed. When did I become such a homebody?

I hate being sick, I hate even more that I'm sick on microbiology day. On the plus side it's probably the subject I'm the most confidant in so better to miss it. I'm snotty and gross. I haven't posted for a while because we had exams and lots of work.

On the upside we had our observer week last week. I've been out observing before when I was at VU but it's always a bit of fun. (Much more fun when you're wearing blue than green though cause you get to do more stuff) I put in my first nasopharyngeal airway and got to practice some other skills. You could see the renewed energy in everyones eyes when we came back to school on Monday morning. Only 6 weeks till we are unleashed onto the unsuspecting public!

For our group assignments we had to do a play/presentation which I think we did brilliantly. We were Patsy & Eddy from Abfab.We had a Narcan Fairy and a devil and lots of props. Very funny stuff. Our theme was communication techniques. Note the savers price tag still attached to my dress. I do have a better picture of everyone but you all but see up my dress so that wasn't getting posted on the web for obvious reasons.

Thank god today was the last yogalates class. I've made the executive decision that it is not for me. Maybe it's only cause I'm so crap at it. Anyway I think I'll stick to my regular gym workout.

On the upside, double episodes of Law & Order SVU tonight. And I wonder why I never get any study done on Mondays nights.

I was talking to a friend recently who cheated on her partner.

Although it depends on what your definition of cheating is really. She believes that it wasn't cheating because there was no kiss and they didn't sleep together. However they did sleep in the same bed and spooned all night and are now meeting up secretly, thinking that so long as their lips don't touch they're staying moral. She is deleting all his messages from her phone so her partner can not come across them.

I believe this is cheating, in black and white, no grey areas. An ongoing intimacy of this kind is to me far worse than a drunken kiss.

Just a bit of background on me, my last relationship ended with my partner cheating on me. Although I've always been against cheating I now feel ferociously against it.

Please if anyone can give me some feedback on what they constitute as cheating I'd be very interested to read some other opinions.

First a brief explanation on what drove us to this. We had our first practical exam on friday and we were all determined to excel. So we practised with the dummies again and again and again until it was perfect. We should have stopped at that because our brains were fried and needed a break, but no we thought we could beat perfect.

Here is a list of dumb things some of my classmates and I have done at MUCAPS this week. I apologise to anyone who is not familiar with the oxysaver as most of these examples refer to it.

Me:
I was trying to ventilate the dummy while the mask was not attached to the hose and wondering out loud why I couldn't get a seal.

Other classmates:
Attempting to attach the soft Y sucker to the rigid yankeur sucker and wondering why it wouldn't fit. (you get better suction if you attach it to the suction tubing)

Attempting to attach the hudson mask to the closed circuit and wondering why it didn't look right.

Reverting to the old CPR compression Ventilation ratio of 15 to 2 during the exam.

Walking all the way home from class with coffee mug in hand before noticing.


Now for anyone who is reading this thinking the next batch of paramedics to be unleashed into the Melbourne community are a bunch of nuf nuf's (maybe right). I promise we're all very competent and have learned our lessons about studying till our heads go on strike.

I feel compelled to write a first entry despite having nothing of any worth to say. There is nothing in my mind bursting to explode across my blank page so for today this is the beginning of my blog. At least it won't be hard to raise the bar for the next entry.

I should really be studying anyway.