3 Down, 7 To Go!

3 weeks of my 10 weeks placement are officially dunzo! The past few weeks have been unreal! I absolutely love my internship placement and learn new things and am challenged everyday. This past week I spent a day working with the morning cook who prepared breakfast and lunch. I know I shouldn't have been surprised but pretty much everything that is served comes preprepared and in buckets of boxes. The cooks pretty much just heat things up and pour pre-made batter into muffin tins or cake pans. Although this job doesn't sound particularly challenging, I had to admit that the cooks complete these tasks with an efficiency and finess that I severely lack. I ended my first cooking shift with splatters of every single dish on my shirt. Both only does each meal consist of 2 separate meat, veg and carb choices, but each of these choices needs to be both minced and pureed for those individuals requiring texture alterations. My job for the day was primarily manning the Blixer-6V (AKA fancy food processor) and mincing and pureeing everything. It's soo time consuming! I've decided that out of sympathy for the cooking staff, when I become an RD I am going to do everything in my power NOT to prescribe minced diets or pureed diets.

I have a love / hate relationship with HR. As a manager, you have to deal with employees all the time. You make schedules, you deal with discipline, you have to hear about all their complaints. It seems as though no matter what, every single day there is a staff member in the office with a silly issue that needs to be dealt with. I hate this. I hate that so much time gets wasted dealing with silly little things that shouldn't need dealing with, such as "this person didnt help put the groceries away or that person stole my butter knife from my floor" etc etc. Like really? This past week, we had a cook chop the end of her finger off while cutting lettuce for coleslaw. Policy indicates that all staff using knives must wear a no-cut glove, which this staff member wasn't. She pretty much cut her finger nail right off the top of her finger, so she couldn't finish her shift, and ended up going to the ER to have it coterized (spelling?). Because it was a workplace incident, the company takes 200$ from our account as punishment for not ensuring all staff were following safe workplace practices and the employee has to be disciplined. It sucks for the employee who chopped her finger off but it also sucks because it's now a few hours of paper work that needs to be dealt with.

I got to work the other day and had it pointed out that my pants were split a few inches along the seam in the outside of my leg. I have no idea how I missed that, but I had to strategically staple my pants back together and try not to move very much all day. I was worried that as soon as I sat down the staple would buckle so I did everything I could to give myself busy work that required that I be standing to do it.

I've joined a Running Room Half Marathon Running clinic! I've been running 3 times a week and have even made a few friends through the clinic. A couple of my new running buddies happen to be men in their late 50s but they are super keen and are training for a triathlon. I took up road biking a few weekends ago when the owner of the restaurant I work at's husband mentioned he wanted a training buddy and had an extra bike he could lend me for the summer. I also decided to train for a triathlon and do one with Rach when she gets home from the states in August. I think those plans may have changed but I'll be doing one in either August or September or both! So I've been biking and swimming with my new training buddies and loving my life. Now that I'm working and training for something I feel a million times better and am finally getting back into a groove of sorts. It's hard to be home and not training for paddling during the summer, because I never have been home and not training before. It's taken a while to find a groove but I'm super happy now that I have! I'm still paddling war canoe this summer so it's like the best of both worlds!

I'm at the airport right now about to board a plane to PEI for the Souris Village Feast! We're selling our aprons there and speaking about our projects and the Food Network is filming a documentary about the event. Should be a really good time! I'm moving back home on Monday from where I was house sitting so I'll have my laptop and internet access again so I can post regularly again!