Virtual Tour of My Apartment

I woke up early this morning to pack my stuff up in my hotel room to make sure I'd be ready to move first thing this morning into my new apartment in town.  The moving company that trucked all my stuff up to Hay River for me called last night to let me know they would be delivering it today, which happened to work out perfectly since I'd actually have a place to move it into! Like I said, I woke up early to pack. I set my alarm for 7 am so that I would have time to pack up my hotel room and be ready to move first thing.  However, I had only been in the hotel room for 2 days and I only had one duffle bag with me - I did not have a lot of stuff, and the majority of it was still folded neatly in my duffle bag. Plus I hadn't actually confirmed with the landlord that I would be taking the apartment yet, I had decided to think about it over night to just make sure I was happy with my compromise. I had eaten breakfast, and was completely packed by 7:30 am. 7:30am is too early to be making phone calls so I had to hang out watching tv for a few hours until it was late enough to phone people. I called the landlord around 9am and she said I could move into the apartment anytime, to just stop by the office and get the key.   Yesterday she mentioned she would pick me up since I don't have a vehicle, but today she didn't mention it.  I looked in my good ol trusty Yellow Pages but there were no cab companies listed for Hay River. Eek!  I now had no way to actually physically move, other than lugging my stuff all the way to town which was really really unappealing.  So being sneaky like I am, I called the landlord back to ask her about the existence of cabs with the hopes that she might just offer to shuttle me.  Two good things came out of this exchange: 1) She gave me a ride and 2) As I was waiting at the door for her to come get me, a cab drove by and I was able to put the number in my cell phone for future use.  I scored a ride and the cab info! I was appreciative of the ride, even though she forgot about me and I had to text her to remind her I existed over an hour after she was supposed to pick me up. It all worked out though and I got to my new apartment about an hour before the moving truck was due to arrive.

All my stuff arrived in one piece! It also arrived frozen solid. I had heard horror stories about expensive groceries up North so I packed a lot of food with me.  It's all currently thawing in my cupboards.  It is so so so nice to have a pretty much fully stocked pantry upon moving into a new place. There is nothing worse then having to spend a million dollars on condiments and spices and staples that you're used to always having on hand. It's so nice to open the cupboards and have them be full without having just been to the grocery store. Best thing I could have done for myself moving up here!

I start work tomorrow! It's been nice to have a few days to get settled and to move in and everything but I am ready to get working! Specially since I just paid a deposit and one month of rent...my bank account needs me to be working. I'm a little bit terrified of being incompetent but I'm also giddy with excitement at having a real, honest-to-goodness grown-up job!

I'm quite cozy in my new apartment now that I'm all moved in!  When you first walk through the door, there is a bit of an entry way with the door the the bathroom on your right and a big closet to your left. Take a few steps forward and you're in my bedroom slash living room!  There is a bed, a chair, a tv and a hutch and 2 big closets. At the far end and to the left of my room is the teeny tiny kitchen.  It's a bachelor apartment so it's really all just one big room, but I think it will suite me just fine over the next year.

My Boarding Pass from Edmonton to Hay River....please note that its hand written!

Downtown Hay River - North Mart is the Grocery Store.

Looking from my kitchen into the rest of my apartment.

My teeny tiny kitchen (with fully stocked cupboards :)

My little reading / tv nook.

My Bathroom - shower and tub are to the left of the toilet.

I'm off to aerobics again tonight with Stacey (my coworker who is also a new grad, from Newfoundland)!  Hopefully I'll be flailing a bit less this time. On the bright side, based on Monday night I can only improve!

Hay River, Northwest Territories

I’m really looking forward to the next chapter of this blog! I finished my Dietetic Internship a little over 2 weeks ago and have since moved to Hay River, Northwest Territories for my very first grown-up job! I’ll be working as a Community Dietitian for the next year as I cover a maternity leave position. I’m really excited to start working! Obviously it will be nice to finally get a paycheck after working full time for 40 weeks for free, but mostly I’m excited to get experience working in my field. My job will entail seeing clients one on one in the office, as well as getting my hands dirty within the community through presentations and workshops that I’ll be giving.

 I’ve only been in Hay River for 2 days, but so far so good! I flew from Toronto to Edmonton to Hay River on Monday. The flight from Edmonton to Hay River was on a tiny plane that only had 16 seats on it, 6 of which were occupied. The flight attendant sat in the cockpit with the pilot and gave us crackers, cheese and kielbasa as an in-flight snack – best in flight snack ever!. The airport in Hay River is one room. The luggage belt is approximately 6 ft long and it only takes 2 minutes for the luggage to make it from the plane to the belt. I couldn’t help but think that this is what it must feel like to be a movie star with a private jet...if any movie star in their right mind would decide to travel to Hay River. 

Last night after I got to the hotel and dumped my stuff, I went to an aerobics class with a co-worker. I was the one flailing in the back. I’m incredibly uncoordinated and generally avoid aerobics classes, but it was actually fun! Plus it was a great way to meet some people. I took the opportunity to ask around about car pooling to the ski club and inquiring about different programs that were offered in the community. Specifically I’m looking for a swim team and a book club to join. There’s no swim club, just lane swims, and apparently the library will start up a book club if I mention it to them and they can get other people interested.

 “Downtown” is a way more happening place than I thought it would be! There is a grocery store, a library, a drug store, several apartment buildings / hotels, a brand new community center with a 25m pool and hockey arena, a bowling alley, liquor store etc. We even have a movie theatre! (I say we as if Hay River is my hometown even though I've been here for a mere 48 hours) It’s one of only two theatres in the entire Northwest Territories! I expected it to only play super old movies, but the current options are the newest Twilight and Tower Heist…not half bad!

 I spent the day apartment hunting. Housing is quite expensive here. I ended up settling on a bachelor apartment. It’s fairly small but at least it’s my own space. I had to find a balance between price and space. There was a one bedroom apartment I liked much better and that had a TON more space, but it was also several hundred dollars more each month. There was also a bedroom in a 3 bedroom house up for grabs that was WAY cheaper but had shared kitchen and living spaces. The bachelor seemed like a good compromise - not as much space but it's my space, and the price was in the middle of the two other options. I’m only here a year, and the leases are just month to month so I can always change my mind and move somewhere more spacious if I start to get cabin fever in my tiny bachelor.

 When I wasn’t apartment hunting, I spent the rest of the day lounging around my hotel room reading and watching tv. I’m not going to lie, I’m already sick of television! Except for the Victoria Secret Fashion Show, which I am currently indulging in as I type this. I also took the time today to read the Yellow Pages from Cover to Cover just incase I found something fun to do in it that I hadn’t already considered. Mostly I just learned about how much cool stuff there is to do in Yellowknife relative to Hay River. But I have a feeling I’ll keep myself busy nonetheless!

 It’s only been two days but I already feel like I’ve learned some valuable lessons!
 1. When looking to rent a place, make sure you indicate that you don’t have a car. As soon as renters realize you wont be using electricity to plug a car in then the price drops dramatically.

 2. Regardless of how cold it is, you will sweat while walking in a Canada Goose Coat. Your legs however, if covered by only one pair of pants, will not. In fact the skin will freeze solid in a matter of seconds.

3. It is possible for your nose to run even though your snot and nostrils freeze solid the second you walk outside.

4. Short socks and big boots result in socks that fall off and ankle blisters that bleed.

Pictures to Follow Shortly!

*Written November 29th, Posted November 30th*

The Apprenticeship Beegins!

Two years ago, my Dad decided that we should have a beehive in the backyard. We all thought he was joking but he was very persistant and kept talking about it. I was actually excited, which doesn't come as much of a surprise because I tend to get overly excited about things that are suggested, most of which never end up happening. I like to think I was slightly instrumental in his beekeeping endeavours since I always encouraged the idea and I bought him "Beekeeping for Dummies" to read on a long flight to Peru a few years back. We actually did end up getting bees the following spring! We had the bees for two summers, and even gave away honey as wedding favours at my brother's wedding this past October, but unfortunately the colony didn't survive the winter. I love the idea of having bees, and I've read a beekeeping textbook to try to learn more about bees, but since I wasn't home last summer, I haven't really had much of a chance to learn how to bee-keep. Since our colony died over the winter, my Dad decided to replace them with not just another colony, but two more. When I learned that we were getting new bees, I decided that I would be my Dad's unofficial apprentice this summer and learn as much as possible about keeping bees so that I could have my own colony when I eventually have property of my own. Since the weather was so crappy at the beginning of the summer, it wasn't until two weeks ago that we actually got our bees.

It seems strange that you can buy a colony of bees. Strangest of all, the bees come in a box. We literally bought two boxes of bees, that emit a low hum that is somewhat calming until you start to actually think about it, at which point it gives you goosebumps, especially when they're in the backseat of the car with you. The boxes each come with a Queen in a plastic casing so she doesn't get lost and 3 frames of her royal subjects. When you open up the box of bees, you transfer the 3 frames into your beehive. When you take the Queen out and place her in the hive and seal it up, her followers stick with her and make the new hive home since that's where their Queen is.

Two Boxes of Bees!

Beehives have layers (supers), and each super has 10 frames. The bottom super doesn't produce honey because it is usually left for the bees to use for personal use (winter reserves, etc) and then you can take the honey from the upper layers. When you first buy them, you only get 3 frames full of bees, but as the hive matures, all ten frames in the bottom super fill up with bees and when you add honey supers they fill up too as the colony expands.

Getting the Smoker Ready for the Transfer

Transferring a Frame From the Box to the Hive

Even though we only got the bess two weeks ago, we opened up the hives to see how they were doing a couple days ago and already the colonies have expanded exponentially! The 10 frames are not quite full but all contain bees and the hives are buzzing happily. I love bees! This post wasn't very technical but I'll be sure to post about all my adventures in apprentice beekeeping this summer!

New Lead

I went in to have my defibrillator tested out on Tuesday. The procedure meant having my heart forced into arrhythmia just to see if my defib will shock it back into a normal rhythm. They put you to sleep while it happens and it only takes about 2 minutes so it's not nearly as bad as it sounds. The pre-admission for this test includes going to the pacemaker clinic where they checked out all my stats. I use my pacemaker about 3.5% of the time, but they found out that one of the two leads that go from the device to my heart muscle, has dug too deep into my heart muscle and was at risk for perferating the muscle completely. There was some fluid built up around the lead on the outside of the heart from the irritation. My cardiologist recommended that I get another echo just to check everything out. Based on the echo, the cardiologist thought that the perferated lead could cause issues in the future and that I should really have the lead replaced so that it can't poke through the muscle completely in the future which could cause bleeding and all sorts of problems. These meant surgery all over again!

Since I've been home for the summer, I joined a half marathon clinic at the Running Room and have been running 3-4 times a week. Our distance is up to 16 km already! I also borrowed a road bike and have been biking several times a week and swimming several times a week in hopes of participating in my very first sprint triathelon laster this summer or early fall. After having to give up everything at Christmas to recover from the initial surgery when the pacemaker and defib were put in, I finally felt like I had my groove back and like I was finally getting back into shape. I was happy! I had a routine and training buddies (who all happened to be men in their 50s..but at least they were reliable and always showed up for practices and swims!) and events to train for. Having surgery again, and having to take off 6 weeks AGAIN and losing the ability to lift more than 5 pounds or move my left shoulder AGAIN after finally getting to do all that stuff again was more than a let down, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't cry when I found out. I could have opted out of surgery, but with the risks of internal bleeding and punching a whole in my heart with this wire, there really was no point in ignoring it. I figured if I needed the surgery I might as well get it over with and get it done asap. Plus since I was already admitted to the hospital, they could rush me through and get me in asap instead of being put on a wait list that was a few months long.

I was admitted Tuesday night, spent Tuesday night in the hospital, got to go home on pass for Wednesday and Wednesday night,and then went back in Thursday night for surgery on Friday. Surgery went well and I got to come home today (Saturday) and am taking a weekish off work (probably less..). So far, the day of surgery was WAY worse this time than last time because I had a general anesthetic instead of the local anesthetic I had last time, but the day after and recovery seems to be much less painful. I've only taken 2 percosets since the surgery as opposed to the 1 or 2 perks I was popping every 4 hours at Christmas.

It's incredibly frustrating to have another 6 weeks without being able to do anything just as I was getting back into sports and finally feeling like my old self again. Not doing anything athletic or physically active made me feel sluggish and grumpy and really unhappy. I felt so horrible about myself because I wasn't fit anymore, I couldn't run very far or very fast anymore, I couldn't lift any weight and my clothes weren't fitting. I was definitely in a funk, and it took getting back into training to get me out of it. I'm hoping that I can find a hobby or something to prevent me from going back into the funk. I'm not good at being bored or at sitting at home staying immobile while everyone else I know is out training and being active nad doing fun stuff. I'm hoping that the second tiem around is easier than the first.

4th Annual Souris Village Feast

I have to admit, I'm always a lot less motivated to write blog posts when I'm at home. If you go through the timeline of posts, you will notice that whenever I am home for a week or more, there are huge gaps in my posts. I don't know why, but I'm always uninspired and unmotivated to write when I'm home. A lot has happened in the last three weeks!

First, I went to PEI for the Souris Village Feast and

Canada Day. It was incredible and one

of the best weekends I've had. I arrived on Friday and went straight to Tuck's for a Canada Day BBQ and drinks, then we all went downtown to watch fireworks at Victoria Park and then to Peakes for a dance party. Saturday morning we spent chopping vegetables and shucking muscles at Chef Michael Smith's house. We were feeding 1200 people the next day and had to do all the prep work for the seafood chowder and potatoes. Luckily there were a lot of volunteers and lots of people to help out. The military and the local biker gang were among the volunteers. After chopping veg, we went to Basin Head Beach to waste some time before going back to Michael's house for a HUGE feast prepared by the 8ish famous chefs that Michael had flown in for the occasion. They were all guys he worked with at the Vancouver Olympics, and they did not disappoint! There were about 12 different dishes, and each were mouth wateringly delicious. Needless to say we left for home stuffed, tired and very happy.

Sunday was the big show! The 4th annual Souris Village Feast. The Feast is a giant steak dinner with all the trimmings prepared by famous chefs. Tickets are sold and a

ll the proceeds go towards buying a cookhouse for a school in Kenya. They also raise money for the food bank in Charlottetown. Tuck and I got involved with this because we gave a presentation to the Feast committee last winter to talk about the impact these cookhouses have on the kids in the schools and the community at large since we spent all last summer working in the communities and with the schools that have received cookhouses in the last few years from the funds raised by the Feast. We were asked by the committee to speak to the 1100 paying guests plus the volunteers about the cookhouses back in the spring and we happily agreed and I booked my flight to PEI for the weekend. On Saturday, we were also asked to speak to all the volunteers, chefs and military guys about the impact of the cookhouses as a pep talk once everything was all set up and before paying guests started to arrive. They wanted the volunteers t

o be emotionally committed to the cause and t

o really understand what we were accomplishing by raising the money to buy the cookhouse. To add to everything, the Food Network happened to be filming a documentary on the event! I was more nervous to give the pep talk than I was to speak to the 1100 paying guests! We had a small group of people's undivided attention and cameras in our faces! It ended up going really well though, and we even had people coming up to us after to congratulate us on the work we had done, and on speaking so well. I think we managed to pull a few heart strings which was exactly what we were asked to do! We had more aprons made to sell at the feast, and we me

ntioned the apron project in our pep talk incase anyone was interested in buying some. The Food Network director came up to us after and said that our apron project embodied everything they want the audience to feel during the documentary and asked if they could interview us for the documentary.

We ended up selling about 100 aprons and still have more to sell. I'm really looking forward to seeing the documentary which airs this fall and I hope to have a screening party of some sort when it airs. If I was smart, I would have written about this a few weeks ago when it actually happened because soo many little details get blurred over the weeks. When we were getting interviewed, the light being reflected onto our

faces made my eyes water hard-core, so it's probably going to look like I'm crying throughout the whole interview!

On Monday, in the morning before

my flight, I waited outside the confederation building and got to see Will and Kate! Their plane was parked at the airport when I was there too which was kind of cool!

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!

Rubber Gloves, Hairnets and Puree

After sitting around at home being bored out of my mind for a few weeks, I finally started my foodservice internship placement! I'm working at a long-term care facility in the West end of Toronto for ten weeks, and then moving on to my clinical placement in September.

So far my placement is awesome. My supervisor is pretty chill but has been in the business for a really long time so I've been learning a lot from him, and the rest of the staff have been great. They laugh at me a lot as I attempt to do things as efficiently as they have learned to do everything but they're always willing to help me out which is nice, specially considering how many questions I ask them all every day about policies and procedures and the tasks they do on a daily basis.

The first two weeks of my placement were dedicated to learning the jobs of the Dietary Aids, who serve the meals to the residents, wash dishes, and make sure the serveries on each floor are fully stocked with the copious amounts of prune juice, high energy-high protein milk and bran muffins that are requested by and prescribed to the residents for meals and snacks. I must admit...I washed A LOT of dishes over the last few weeks! I don't really mind washing dishes, but with about a quarter of the 128 residents on pureed diets, it makes for a very messy clean-up. It's Ministry policy that the foods that get pureed and served to those residents requiring that texture are exactly the same as what the residents eating normally textured foods get which means we literally just put the food we are serving in a fancy food processor (the Blixer-6V). This includes bread since toast is served for breakfast. I never thought I'd be scooping up and serving bread with an ice-cream scoop, and I really hope I never have to eat it.

The Dietary Aide uniform includes an apron, a fabulous giant white hairnet and big thick green rubber gloves when washing dishes. There was a bit of a learning curve when I came to washing dishes...there is a big sprayer to spray and pre-wash the dishes with before they go through the dish machine. The sprayer works by using very hot water with a lot of pressure to scrap the food of the dishes. The pressure is so high that it ends up spraying everywhere and if you're not careful when spraying bowls and cutlery, you get a face full of whatever it is you're attempting to spray off the dish. I learned this the hard way when on my first day I ended up with an eye full of pureed tuna salad sandwich which left me blinded for a few minutes and severely wanting a shower for the rest of the day.

The residents are actually hilarious. Most of them are fairly healthy compared to the typical long term care resident and are more than happy to tell me stories about their lives. One resident used to be a model and was telling me all about her career and it's ultimate demise and her stint in rehab. Another resident used to work for the royal family and always has a story to tell me over breakfast. The residents are also always happy to tell me what the kitchen is doing wrong, how their food should be prepared and what they should be served. There is a Food Committee consisting of a handful of residents and I went to their monthly meeting last week. The only people that showed up are the ones with nothing good to say about the food and the ones who love the food. Since January, when my supervisor took over the kitchen, resident satisfaction has gone up about 20% to almost 90% satisfaction rates. Despite this, there are still a few very vocal residents who seem to think we're doing nothing right. Somehow, in the middle of the meeting, the group got side-tracked and since they were mostly women, started talking about how unfortunate it was that almost all of the men in the building were married. They suggested that the home should start a dating club so that all the single people in the building could get together and meet one another. I guess the food can't be THAT bad if their main concern is finding a date.

So much happens everyday that I've been making notes and meaning to blog on a daily basis about the day to day workings of a longterm care facility kitchen but I have yet to get a round to it. I have only had an ipad for internet this past week and for another week which makes it hard to post. I joined a Half Marathon Running Clinic, have taken up road biking, its war canoe season and I've been working part time so things have been a bit crazy since I have yet to settle into a regular routine. I'm hoping to post almost daily now that I'm interning and will catch up on my intern adventures soon so stay tuned!