Recruiting

A year ago I was asked to be in a recruiting video for Fraser Health. They had a full production team, including a make-up artist (I love having my make-up done!), and I was interviewed on camera. 

And then I never heard anything about it and thought maybe the project had been dropped with the recession.

Last summer I found out I was on a Fraser Health banner that they use a recruiting fairs (they took a still from the film). 

Then, out of the blue I got a letter last week telling me that the videos were done and posted on the site trying to recruit nurses from across Canada. They made 8 videos highlighting various specialties and aspects of Fraser Health and I was featured in two of them!

Fotoshop

In case you haven’t seen this yet, check it out! It was made by a guy I used to go to school with, Jesse Rosten, and it is GENIUS! It’s a faux-mercial mocking society’s impossible beauty standards.

Enjoy!

Fotoshop by Adobé from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

Writing project

I recently had the chance to contribute to the Association of RNs in BC. My thoughts about the NCLEX (american Nursing exam) coming to Canada are up on their blog now so check it out! I’m hoping to write some more posts for them as well and will post here if I do.

Yikes!

The new quarter started today, and I already feel overwhelmed! Last quarter was 9 credits and this quarter I’m taking 12. It’s going to be a crazy, intense 10 weeks! I’m sure that once I get into the classes it won’t be that bad, but right now even the syllabus is making my head spin!

The courses look interesting.

The assignments are many, but each seems relatively small.

The reading list is daunting!

See you all in March. That is the next time I will be coming up for air.

Happy New Year!

I realize it’s been a while since I updated here, but I have a good excuse this time: I’ve had nothing to write about. Life has been good and busy, but nothing really exciting. I go to school and I hang out with Dean. I love doing both, but they don’t make for overly exciting blog posts!

So here is a recap of the past few months:

Finished my first quarter of grad school. I’m so grateful that I’m able to go to school from home! All of my lectures are recorded, and then I watch them online. It’s amazing! Dean goes down for a nap, and I go to school! I even get to take my exams by proctor at our local library. This coming quarter I need to be in Seattle one morning a week for a lab. They will be crazy days, but thankfully I recently found someone in Bellingham who is in the same program so I have a carpool buddy!

Trips to Oregon. We visited Phil’s parents in Oregon for Thanksgiving and the weekend before Christmas. It was a great time of relaxing and being with family. Phil’s mom particularly enjoyed the time with Dean. She now refers to herself as “Grandma Skype” because that is how Dean usually sees her.

There’s going to be a wedding! A few weeks before Christmas, my bro-in-law popped the question to an amazing woman and she said yes! I’m so excited to have Megan as a sister-in-law. We get along great, and she’s a nurse as well! Those Snyder boys know how to pick ‘em! No wedding date set yet, but some time this year we will be flying down to sunny southern California (where they live) for a great party.

Dean’s first Christmas. We got to spend Dean’s first Christmas morning at home, just the three of us. It was a great family time and Dean loved the wrapping paper and boxes. We then went and had a wonderfully relaxing day at my sisters house.

Busy. I had three weeks off from school and hoped to spend lots of time napping, reading (for pleasure, not textbooks) and catching up with friends. Alas, the 3 weeks went by in a busy blur. Writing this blog post is the last thing on my to-do list for the break and once I hit publish, I’ll be attacking the mounds of reading that are already piling up. School starts tomorrow.

So there you have it – 3 months in one blog post!

School so far

Oy! One month since I updated. Oops! I always have great intentions with this blog, but they don’t always pan out. Maybe I just don’t have that much interesting to say these days

The past month has been very busy. At the end of september we hosted 9 different people in the space of 10 days! It was chaotic, but fun to have the house full.

The big news and change for me is that school has started! I feel so blessed that my program is available online! Thankfully, it’s not the online type where I read a whole bunch, post on a forum, then respond to other students. I don’t learn very well from that set up. The school of Nursing at UW has an amazing set up where they video the lectures, then post them online later that day to be watched! So I sit at my desk when Dean is down for his naps (and sometimes when he is in my lap!) and watch my lectures from the comfort of home. No commuting!!! Yay!!!

My classes are busy, but mostly with reading so that is nice. I always hated the busy work of school, especially when the assignments were not very productive in terms of learning and were more “make work” type projects. The reading is intense though! Ridiculous amounts! I’m perfecting my skimming skills.

Dean is growing by leaps and bounds! I can’t believe how big he is getting so quickly. This week I visited a friend who just had a baby and I was amazed at how tiny and floppy this little baby was. Hard to believe that was Dean just 3 short months ago.

Hopefully I’ll be back here to update again soon, but who knows. I do have some funny stories to tell…

What I’m loving

One of my friends does a post called “what I love” and posts products that she is currently loving.  It inspired me to do this post, however instead of “things” I will be posting about websites/services that I love.

Amazon
Love, love, LOVE Amazon! I have for quite a while. Last year I did about 3/4 of my Christmas shopping on amazon. For those that still think that Amazon is only books and DVDs, you are sorely mistaken. They have EVERYTHING!!!! What makes Amazon even better is Amazon Mom. My favorite part about this is the free 2 day shipping. I usually try to make my orders over $25 to get the free shipping, and the items would usually arrive in a week or two. If it’s not something I need in a hurry, no big deal. But when I do need something soon (ex  a birthday present for the party in a few days!) then it didn’t work so well. But enter Amazon Mom and free 2 day shipping and life is so good!!! Knowing that my item will be there at a specific time is so helpful and has saved me SO MUCH time!!! For example, last week I needed two birthday gifts. I could have packed up my little bean, drove to Target, walked around Target to find the items (and inevitably a few extra items as well), then drove home. Or I could go online and click, click, click be done in less than 5 minutes!

*Little tip: I’ve started keeping an Amazon wish list of little things that I need/want, but am not in a particular hurry to get. Then, when my amazon order is less than $25, I just look through this list, add some stuff and I reach $25. Otherwise, I always ended up buying a book I didn’t really need or something else in order to get my order high enough for free shipping.

Netflix
We’ve had Netflix for years now! I love that they carry every DVD under the sun and having DVDs delivered to my door was great. It got even better when they introduced their online content. Sure, a lot of it is C rate stuff, but there is some cool foreign films, tons of documentaries (I’m a dork, I know), plus quite a few full series of TV shows (every season of Ally McBeal, plus lots of star trek for hubby). They recently changed their pricing structure so that DVDs and online content are separate. Since neither of us were watching anything special or particular on DVD, we decided to drop that portion and stick with the online. Especially since we have discovered….

Redbox
The best way to describe this is a vending machine for movies. The best part $1/day!!! Cheap and easy – just how I like it! (for those of you that are snickering right now about my wording – love that you have that kind of sense of humor). They don’t have the biggest selection, but they have most new releases, plus some other stuff.

WordPress
This blog is written on wordpress. For a long time I was a Blogger girl, but then wordpress had a better iPhone app and it has a lot more ability to customize. So I made the switch, and I love it. (It also helps that I ran a blog for work on WordPress for two years so I’m quite familiar with it).

Pandora
Personalized, online radio! Put in a song or genre that you like, and it will start to play music. As songs play, give them the thumbs up or thumbs down, and Pandora will continue to customize your station so it only plays what you love! Don’t feel like listening to a song, just press next. It’s genius!!

Evernote
I’m a post it notes addict! Evernote in many ways acts as my online post it note. Anytime I see something I like, but don’t want to buy at that time, I just clip it to evernote. I keep lists of gift ideas for my family, as well as for myself in here (because when my mum asks me what I want for Christmas I can never think of anything!). The best part is that it has an iPhone app (yes, I’m addicted to my iPhone) so I can easily access it when I’m out.