It’s funny, too, because just yesterday I was looking at the beautiful river view I have from my new apartment and I thought, “I wonder what Dad’s eyes are seeing right now?” Even though we didn’t have confirmation of it until my mom got the letter yesterday, I was pretty confident that my Dad’s eyes had been transplanted into people who needed it and it gives me some comfort to know that a little bit of him lives on – that he was able to help someone out one last time.

Had my first exam of the MBA program this past weekend: accounting. Now, I do have to say that while accounting is not my favourite subject in this program, I have actually liked it *a lot* more than I thought I would. I can now pick up the financial statements of a company and have an idea what they mean and roughly what shape the company is in. I can do a cost-volume-profit analysis and tell you how many widgets you’d have to sell to break even. I can even tell you why a company being “profitable” doesn’t necessarily mean that they are doing well. Not bad for a girl who didn’t know the difference between a stock and bond before she started this program²

What, you don’t have CVP formulae on the whiteboard in your living room?

Now that the accounting exam is over, however, I think I’m done with you, Pratt³. I’m moving on to the new love my life: Berk, Demarzo, & Stangeland. I foresee a lot of intense, long nights with you in my arms!

1. Well, technically it wasn’t Pratt per se in my dreams, but I did have a few accounting-related nightmares in the last few weeks. True story.
2. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that and I’m really hoping that none of my classmate are reading this posting! With any luck, they all have far too much homework to do to be checking out my nonsense!
3. Well, I’m done with you until the Core Program integrated final exam in the fall. And the post-core Accounting modules. Then I’ll come crawling back!

Because who wouldn’t be cheered up by robots and flames? No one, that’s who!

And who doesn’t need such pictures adorning their work computer to make them all happy, all the time? No one, that’s who!

Thanks, sister! I love my robots with flames!

Of course, I wanted to get the kangaroo, because, seriously, how many of you have eaten kangaroo before?³, but the guy at the butcher shop counter said that the bison and ostrich were much more popular and we should really start with one of them. Talking us out of buying the kangaroo seems liked a bad marketing decision on his part, but I’m only 4 months into my MBA, so what do I know? Anyway, we bought the bison burgers and I have to say that they were pretty freaking delicious.

You can’t see it, but trust me when I say that there’s a delicious bison burger in there.

In related news, bison makes me think of Boots and Cats, my nephew’s favourite Youtube video. Boot and cats and boots and cats and a beefy bison! I dare you to watch and then try not to have the song stuck in your head!

1. Even more lame than your average mall – and I am an avowed mall hater, so if I think it’s much worse than most malls, well, that’s saying something.
2. Including a few hole-in-the-wall looking places that will either have the most amazing food ever or will give us food poisoning.
3. Erika & Paul, if you haven’t eaten kangaroo yet, I will be gravely disappointed

If you are interested in issues affecting early career scientists – and you know you are – I encourage you to check out The Black Hole over at its shiny new home on the University Affairs site!

Eating celery. Ever so healthy!

Now, because anything worth doing is worth putting in a spreadsheet³, and because it makes me feel more accountable to be reporting out on, I give you this link to my spreadsheet where I’m tracking this stuff: May Health Challenge spreadsheet.

Also, since it’s only 5 days in and I’m struggling to come up with creative ideas for physical activity on days when I don’t have time to go out and run 5 km or go for a bike ride – and because the equipment in the exercise room in my building inexplicably has been pushed to one side and covered in plastic (as if they are going to renovate the room, but there’s been no notice put up about what’s going on) – I came up with the brilliant idea that I should resurrect my goal of doing the 200 sit up program ⁴! I could have sworn this was on my list of 101 things to do in 1001 days, and I was all prepared to be all “look at me, I’m killing two birds with one stone⁵, but I just checked that list and it isn’t there. At any rate, I just downloaded the “200 situps” iPhone app, so that pretty much guarantees that I’ll do it, right?

1. Not necessarily the *most* healthy breakfast every day, but nothing too terrible.
2. The stairs in my building are locked up like it’s freaking Fort Knox, so I can only take the stairs from my parking garage level to the main lobby. So annoying, because I would really like to be able to walk up the 6 flights of stairs to get to my place every day instead of taking the elevator!
3. Note to Dr. Dan: “Anything worth doing is worth putting in a spreadsheet” totally needs to go on a shirt
4. As I’m already doing pushups as my anti-procrastination mechanism
5. where “May Health Challenge” and “knocking an item off my 101 list” = the two birds

So the other day when I saw Dr Dan’s blog posting about the May Health Challenge, I immediately responded, “I’m in. I’m so very, very in.”

The May Health Challenge, started by Dr. Julie and Dr. Mark (friends of the aforementioned Dr. Dan) is pretty simple. Pick something – or maybe two things – to do every day for the first 30 days in May to make your life a little healthier. Seems pretty simple, right? Of course, with my typical “Go Big or Go Home” mentality, I immediately thought of 27 different things I wanted to do: pack a healthy lunch, do 30 minutes of exercise, no sweets, 30 days of yoga, take a 30 day vacation on a tropical island. But then I remembered that the reason I’m in my current predicament is because I have no time – I’m already getting waaaaay too little sleep – which is bad for your health and, not-so-coincidentally, insufficient sleep is linked to overweight & obesity – so adding 27 new things to my plate is not going to healthify² me. So I thought long and hard about what small things I could do to get myself back on the right path – things that are doable, but that will have an actual health benefit. And here’s what I came up with:

1. Eat breakfast. For many, many years, I was not a breakfast person. But at some point I realized that I really should become a breakfast person, because it’s really important to get some nutrition action in the morning, and so I started making myself eat breakfast. At first, I really didn’t feel hungry, having gone so many years without breakfasts, but once I got used to it, I really started to like it. It makes you feel a lot better with some food in your belly in the a.m., and then you don’t end up overeating at lunch and dinner. Unfortunately, with my schedule being all messed up from the aforementioned scheduler messer uppers, breakfast seems to have fallen by the wayside. But it’s time to take back breakfast! Hard boiled egg and toast! Yogurt, fruit and granola! A homemade Egg McMaster! Even a bowl of cereal will do. For the next 30 days, I pledge to eat breakfast every morning (and picking up a muffin at the coffeeshop is not allowed!). I mean, if I’m trying to get back on track with being healthier, why not start with the first meal of the day?
2. Do some form of physical activity every day (beyond my incidental walking and stair taking). It doesn’t have to be big long run or bike ride, but it does have to be more than just the incidental activity I get from, say, walking to the Skytrain Station, or taking the stairs instead of the elevator at work. After all, I’m getting that exercise now and it’s clearly not doing enough. For the next 30 days, I pledge to do some sort concerted physical activity every single day. Maybe it’s a trip down to the exercise room to ride the recumbent bike as I read a chapter of one of my textbooks. Maybe it’s a bunch of pushups during homework breaks. Maybe it’s stretch break every half hour in the office³. It will include at least a few runs along the boardwalk/yoga classes/trips on the bike path that my friend Patrice just told me about, but knowing my constraints, especially on days when I have classes, I intend to use this 30 days as a time to think creatively about how I can incorporate physical activity into my routine.

In addition, as coincidence would have it, my workplace just started offering a program for employees to work on their own health and part of the program is that you get to work with a health coach who will help you figure out things you can do be more healthy. I’ve already filled out the initial assessment and have been assigned a coach. And my first phone with my coach is in the middle of May – so I’ll be sure to report back to y’all on that as part of my May Health Challenge!

1. Seriously. I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I can’t fit into most of my dress pants right now.
2. Healthify is too a word. I read it on the Internets!
3. I do entirely too much sitting all day, and sitting all day is bad for you!

And now – a bulleted list¹!

• My mom, sister, and baby nephew came to visit last week. And I totally didn’t blog any of it because I suck. Or perhaps because we were having way too much fun to spend time blogging. Yes, I think it was latter. They were only here from Friday to Tuesday, which was waaaay too short!  But we did manage to have such adventures as fish & chips for dinner on Friday at Cockney King, checking out the boardwalk at the New West Quay (since I now live near there and all), a trip to Granville Island, and, because my family is so awesome, finished setting up the apartment²
• We also had our housewarming party last weekend which I also failed to blog. It was super awesome to actually be able to host a party³ and to be able to show off our lovely view – which was the first thing that pretty much everyone commented on when they came into the apartment. And Devon got to show off his mad bar tending skills, which were also highly appreciated. Thanks to everyone who came out and made it such a great party. Also, we somehow seemed to have ended up with more booze than when we started, so you all need to come back again to drink said booze.
• Another thing I failed at was taking photos while my family was visiting was taking photos. I took a grand total of one – it’s my mom holding my baby nephew Thomas, who in turn is holding a pint of Guinness⁴:

• My nephew Thomas is the best baby in the whole wide world! He’s adorable and hilarious and extremely brilliant⁵. He also loves to watch kitchen appliances in action – especially the mixer and the coffee grinder. Seriously, he lost his little mind anytime the coffee grinder was turned on – wherever he was in the apartment, as soon as he hear the coffee grinder, he’d crawl as quick as a flash into the kitchen and insist on being picked up by whoever was closest to the grinder. And then when it was done he’s stick his hand out towards it, which is his baby way of saying, “More! Grind more coffee! This is the most entertaining thing in the entire world and I MUST SEE MORE OF IT!” Now I can’t grind coffee without feeling guilty that Thomas isn’t here to watch it.
• In class this weekend, we spent some time with students visiting from Shanghai, where UBC has an MBA program (known as the “International MBA”), which was pretty cool. We had lunch with them at the Hotel Vancouver and then they joined us for a discussion on a case study of a trade dispute between China and the US over solar panels. It was pretty cool getting to know the students and hear about what they are up to in China. We will see them again in just under 2 weeks to do another case study – this time on Cirque du Soleil!
• I have sooo many more things to blog about⁶, but it’s way past my bedtime, so those things will have to wait!

1. Somehow bulleted lists make my lack of coherence seem less obvious than if I tried to write paragraphs with segues and suchlike. Or so I like to tell myself
2. We had only gotten the key to our storage locker just a few days before they arrived, so it was actually a bit of a miracle that we got our place *mostly* set up before they got here, but there was a coffee table to put together, furniture to rearrange, and things to clean!
3. As the vast majority of people would never come out to my old place. Not that I’d blame them!
4. For the record, in case anyone is thinks I’d actually give a baby a pint of Guinness, let me clarify that that was a stress ball in the shape of a pint of Guinness – also known as a “stress pint.”
5. Not that I’m biased or anything.
6. Note to self: Those things include, but are not limited to: my new plants, my new t-shirts, the May Challenge, Prosper, a whole bunch of photos that I have collected here, there, and everywhere

In my ongoing birthday series of Things That Important People in My Life Have Taught Me, it’s time for a birthday shout out to my brother-in-common-law¹, Jeff.

What Absolute Niceness Looks Like

The very first time I met Jeff was on a trip back to Toronto for Christmas. I arrived during the day when my sister was at work, but since Jeff works from home, he was there to greet me and right from the get go, I could tell this was one of the nicest people I’d ever meet. And for Christmas that year, he made me a  Flying Spaghetti Monster. Now, remember, this is someone that had never met me before, yet he spent untold hours designing and creating the best FSM I’ve *ever* seen – and which I always get compliments on whenever anyone sees it – for my Christmas present. He also built a spreadsheet to crunch all my financial data to help me figure out the best way to get my student loans paid off and my RRSPs built up. Jeff is the guy that will help anyone out without even thinking twice. He’s the guy who fixes a hole in the neighbours’ basement when a raccoon got inside – and these are neighbours that he barely even know! Jeff is the guy who goes over to my cousin’s place for lunch and ends up fixing their washing machine. Jeff is the guy who spends his weekends doing runs to the local dump to help my mom clean up my dad’s stuff. And he really, truly never expects anything in return.

That One Can Be Talented At Many, Many Things

Computer geek. Chef. Crafter  (Did I mention the Flying Spaghetti Monster? And my niece’s amazing Halloween costumes?). Camping guru. Home renovation specialist. Jeff is an expert at all these things and more! And his multi-expertise inspires me -whether it’s to make one of his delicious recipes for dinner or to craft a FSM of my own!

What a Great Dad Looks Like

Jeff’s kindness, combined with his brilliance at many, many things, lead him to being one of the best parents I’ve ever seen. He’s so patient and such a good teacher and he always seems to know exactly what his kids need when they need it. Whenever there’s an issue, he helps my niece figure out how to solve it – teaching her important things like problem solving, creativity, and responsibility. And fun! If I get to be a parent, I’m definitely going to be applying all the things that I’ve learned from watching Jeff with my niece and nephew!

Happy 38th birthday, Jeff!

1. i.e., my sister’s partner

Showing off my post-immunization band-aid!

In case you haven’t heard, there’s an outbreak of pertussis – a.k.a., whooping cough – going on the Lower Mainland of Vancouver. And, in case you didn’t know it, pertussis vaccination is one of the vaccinations you need to get a booster shot of if you haven’t had one since you were a kid. Which I hadn’t. But I rectified that today!

Also, might I add, I absolutely hate needles. They make me queasy. Even ones like this one, which is just a little poke in the arm that didn’t even hurt at all. But I felt it was really important, because pertussis can be quite a dangerous disease to little kids and how bad would I feel if I caught pertussis and passed it along to a baby?

In case you think that pertussis is not a big deal:

About 1 infant out of every 170 who gets pertussis (whooping cough) will die from it. Most deaths (4 out of 5) are babies under a year old.

-From the ImmunizeBC website

One out of every 170! That’s a lot of babies. And the thing is, pertussis is a vaccine-preventable disease. And the best way to prevent outbreaks is for everyone to get vaccinated! When enough people in the population are vaccinated, the disease can’t spread – we call that “herd immunity.” So today, I’m happily part of the herd!