I've got to admit, it is a "White" Christmas here in London

Happy first day of winter everyone...and hurrah, the shortest day of the year is now behind us!

I have now checked in online for my flight tomorrow, and Virgin's web site says their services have not been disrupted by the fog. I looked out the window at one point today, and because of the density of the fog...or something...for a split second I thought it was snowing, a white-out of small flurries, falling fast and furious. Of course, almost instantaneously I realized how ridiculous that would be in London, but boy, was it still a disappointment to come screeching back to reality! (Incidentally, it was hard to take the new movie The Holiday all that seriously, with what looked like a good 3-4 inches of snow on the ground in Surrey. Ah, what I wouldn't give to live in Surrey- my parents had a good life there.) But hey, if there's a stereotype of London weather that people think of, this is it...pea soup fog. And I'm lovin' it for that reason-- especially since my flight is not grounded ;)

Planets, Planes and Potter News

I apparently missed this...one of the papers has done a review of 2006 in today's issue, and around August, Pluto was demoted. 70 years after it was discovered, Pluto has lost its planethood.

In other news, for those of you Harry Potter fans, check out her website, jkrowling.com to find out the title of the upcoming 7th and last book in the series.

As reported by MSN, "If you go to her home page, click on the eraser and you will be taken to a room — you'll see a window, a door and a mirror.

In the mirror, you'll see a hallway. Click on the farthest doorknob and look for the Christmas tree. They click on the center of the door next to the mirror and a reef appears. Then click on the top of the mirror and you'll see a garland.

Look for a cobweb next to the door. Click on it, and it will disappear. Now, look at the chimes in the window. Click on the second chime to the right, and hold it down. The chime will turn into the key, which opens the door. Click on the wrapped gift behind the door, then click on it again and figure out the title yourself by playing a game of hangman."

However, you have to do all these things in the order listed, or they don't work. Yes, I've tried it, I'm not ashamed to admit I'm a kid at heart!!

And finally, no, Heathrow is not closed, and no, I don't expect to be stranded here for Christmas. Whilst we are in the midst of a pea soup fog that apparently will not lift until Sunday, it is domestic and some European flights that are being affected. Heathrow was operating at about 60% of its normal flight volume today, according to news reports here, and I have it on good authority (the sister of a colleague for works for the airlines) that thus far, flights to the US are doing just fine. :-)

I love these--

"Look at you, you Nice-ish thing

To all appearances you’re a nice enough sort, but scratch the surface and there it is— a bit of the naughty itching to get out. (Pardon the pun, but that’s just the kind of thing you nice-ish folk are into, isn’t it?) You can be trusted in most public situations, but once behind closed doors—heaven only knows."

I'm a member of the Virgin Atlantic flying club, and built up a fair amount of miles over the years, especially during the four years my parents were living in England. I was in Oxford for one term in the winter of 2004, and after I left, I came back almost immediately to visit in May '04, using 50,000 miles to avoid having to pay for my ticket. Except they never took those miles from my account (wahey!!!!), and I am now using them for the second time to go home for the holidays, since my ticket was so last minute and I couldn't afford the fare otherwise. Anywho, Virgin sent me an email to take their Naughty or Nice quiz, and the results are as above. A fair assessment I would say ;) Here's hoping they forget to take the miles out of my account again this time...

"A beautiful sight, we're happy tonight..."

...walkin' in a winter wonderland.

Well, we pretty much had our first frost overnight/this morning. The Epping Forest area looked just gorgeous on my walk into work, with everything covered in a light dusting of white. The only way it could have been better would have been if it had snowed. And this- this is what I'm talkin' bout!! This feels much more like Xmas weather. If it's warm, it just doesn't seem like Christmas somehow. Maybe I should wear my PJs inside out tonight, like I did when I was a kid hoping for snow days from school- it makes it snow if you wear your PJs inside out, you know ;)

David Bowie, Goblin King

I was out shopping locally yesterday for a Secret Santa gift for work, and one of the places I checked out was HMV. The way we're doing our Secret Santa, we didn't pick names out of a hat, we're just bringing gifts in, and it will go by number...with the twist that some people like where the person who draws second can choose to keep their gift, or steal the gift from the person who went first, and so on. I wasn't sure what to buy, since I didn't know who I was buying for at our 5 pound limit, so I settled on a DVD of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, Jim Carrey version. And as I walked down the aisle, I couldn't believe my eyes, I came across a DVD of the Labyrinth! Also for a fiver. Let me see if I can jog some of your memories...David Bowie? Jim Henson? No? Well, it has always been a favorite movie for me, even though I hadn't seen it in years and years, so I bought myself an early Christmas gift. And it's my little piece of happiness today :)

Party Pooper

8 Days Til Christmas! And less than a week now until I'm home for the holidays! And I think the only gift I don't have is one for my cat, Gerry. But I can just stop at Petco on Christmas Eve and take care of that I should think ;) And Jenn and I have managed to salvage our relatively new tradition by cooking our gourmet feast on Christmas Day as opposed to Christmas Eve, yay!!

Let's see, Friday night I was out with the stroke team, both current and alumni members, for a Christmas tapas meal/night out. It was an extremely entertaining night for reasons I can't share on here, but I'll be home soon enough to tell y'all about it in person. And last night was housemate Nicole's big birthday extravaganza. Something strange has been going on with me on and off this weekend, where I've been getting nauseous and light-headed, but I thought I was ready to go for the night out, since I was starving when we set out for dinner. We had a fabulous thai dinner in Soho, and from there headed over to Waxy O'Connors in Leicester Square. We'd been there about 20 minutes or so, and I suddenly felt really light-headed and slightly nauseous. I tried to tough it out for a few minutes, but finally went upstairs for some fresh air with a sympathetic bouncer watching over me (no, I wasn't feeling like that from alcohol, I'd had one glass of wine with dinner, and one sip of my rum and coke at the bar). Dave (Nicole's boyfriend) came looking for me after 10 minutes or so, to tell me they'd moved to a different part of the bar, and I decided to give it another go. Luckily, they'd found a little area where I could sit down, which was worlds better. I announced myself to be the designated Party Pooper, and bowed out of rounds, but had a great time regardless being chatted up. But eventually, the group decided they wanted to try another part of the bar, to which I said, no way, unless I can sit down-- so Nicole and another girl Jo ran off, and came back to say they'd found the Princess a stool, so we moved. And I was affectionately-sarcastically referred to as the Princess for the rest of the night. Which was rather ironic, considering the "stool" they'd found for me put me at about knee height with everyone else. There's a pic of it below, because hey, if you can't laugh at yourself...

From there,we went on to the Comedy Store at midnight. Everyone but me was battered at this point, but that didn't stop them from going through pitcher after pitcher of beer at the comedy club...including our housemate Leeanne, who heckled and shouted at and screamed with laughter at the three comedians in the first part of the show, and then abruptly decided she was bored at intermission and left. The show was really really good, and everyone had an ace night, which made my job as babysitter (by default being the only sober one) very hard. It took forever to get everyone out of the club, and to find the night bus. While we were traipsing around London I played referee to fights (verbal spats) that were only happening because people were drunk, and somewhere lost the quarter inch cap off the bottom of the left shoe of my favorite and most comfortable pair of high heels, lol. I also had to prevent Dave from trying to get off the night bus twice because he wanted to get onto the tube, being too drunk to realize the tube wasn't running. Our night bus driver by the way was tearing around London like the night bus in Harry Potter, and I was holding onto the grab bar for dear life, most of the way. But we finally caught a cab at Liverpool Street Station, after managing to convince the driver to take 6 people for an extra tenner on top of the metered fare (he was only insured to carry 5), and we walked in the door just after 4:30am. What a night!

The Princess

(on my little foot stool)

The Housemates

the girls

Dave and his brother Andy

At the end of the night, at the comedy club.

Meet the Stroke Team

We had a birthday party for the lovely girl in the middle of this picture. Because of confidentiality, I can't tell you much about her, although I will say she didn't have a stroke. But she needed an intensive inpatient rehab program, and we had a bed, so through a funny twist of circumstances, she came to us on the rehab stroke unit. You'll notice several of the girls are holding purple Quality Street candy boxes...she came with gifts for all of us on her birthday! Her family is absolutely lovely, and her dad took lots of pictures, talking about how important all these memories are for his daughter.
Ok, so this picture is here because I've gotten a lot of compliments lately from people both at work and outside of work on how I look when I leave my hair down. I almost always have it up at work in a ponytail or clip, because it just gets in the way otherwise, and I guess I've gotten so used to it, I tend to twist it up when we go out too...especially if I know we'll be dancing, and I'll be getting all sweaty. But I've got a hair appointment lined up for when I'm home, and I was planning to chop it all off, in the short style that I had for a long time. I've been afraid to go to anyone here, so it's grown long since I saw my hairdresser in NJ at the very beginning of this year. I'm not asking for a vote, since I already know I'd be going against popular opinion here, but I think I'm still leaning toward chopping it off-- it'll grow out again pretty quick anyway. Oh, and I've never put pictures up before, but you can see a little bit of my room in the background...

Straight No Chaser (name of the group) & "12 Days"

Ok, even if you are not a big fan of a cappella, you have GOT to watch this video, all the way through. Believe me, it's worth it, I PROMISE. (Oh, and click stop on my MP3 player to avoid competing audio, ugh.)



And if you liked that, check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKx_BTj_-IE

Scary stuff

There's a serious manhunt going on over here right now, for a serial killer they're calling the Suffolk Strangler. He (the papers are all calling the person a "he") has killed 5 victims in 6 weeks, which is apparently unprecedented in speed, and forensic psychologists believe he is taunting the police, dumping the bodies practically under their noses. Scotland Yard is involved, to help the Suffolk Police close the net. Eerily, the victims are all prostitutes. Jack the Ripper killed five prostitutes in East London over a period of 8-9 weeks in 1888. And as you all know, he was never caught. In Ipswich (Suffolk), just as they did back in Jack the Ripper's day, prostitutes are continuing to ply their trade in the red light district there, in spite of the danger...for whatever their personal reasons or habits to support, they say they need the money.

Gorillas

Have I ever mentioned that sometimes I get really jealous of Tressa? Well, this would be one of those moments. She went on a gorilla trip, and got to see the Sabyinyo group, which has the largest silverback gorilla in the world, at 450 pounds. Plus 3 wives, 2 blackbacks, and 2 babies. Here are a couple more of her photos...

Happy Birthday to (housemate) Nicole!

Inner Peace

"I am passing this on to you because it definitely worked for me and we could all use a little more calmness in our lives. By following this simple advice I heard on the Dr. Phil show, I have finally found inner peace.

Dr. Phil proclaimed, "The way to achieve inner peace is to finish all the things you've started and never finished."

So, I looked around my house to see all the things I started and hadn't finished, and before leaving the house this morning, I finished off a bottle of Merlot, a bottle of White Zinfandel, a bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream, a bottle of Kahlua, a package of Oreos, the remainder of my old Prozac prescription, the rest of the cheesecake, some Doritos and a box of chocolates.

You have no idea how freaking good I feel. Please pass this on to those you feel might be in need of inner peace."

Hahahaha! Courtesy of Jean Aveyard (Mom #3)

nature's beauty

I saw a big beautiful red fox on my walk home from work today, in the strangest place. There's a big traffic circle (roundabout) in the middle of my walk, and they built an underpass for cyclists and pedestrians...it has various kinds of grass, brush, and small trees, and it's a very large underpass. But still, it's in the middle of this huge traffic circle. And I was walking toward the exit, I saw this rather large fox come trotting toward me under a bridge/overpass along the path, as if it didn't have a care in the world. He veered off into the bushes before he got anywhere near me, but I wasn't afraid, and he was a gorgeous creature. Just wanted to share ;)

pictures? what pictures?

for those of you asking about more pics from the thanksgiving weekend, i'll see what i can find, but i'm taking the 5th on most of them...i'm not all that photogenic, and my housemates made me promise to delete certain ones, from both our big night out on friday, and our big night in for the house party on saturday. it was a crazy, silly batch of pictures, in a nutshell, and i reserve the right to not publish! ;)

hey, time is flying: only 2 weeks from today til Christmas!!! (hope everyone's almost done with shopping!)

the christmas party

I have a couple of pictures of my co-workers from the day hospital (my original rotation, before the stroke unit), from the Christmas dinner we had on Friday night. We went to a Greek restaurant, where the food was excellent, the restaurant was jam-packed with long tables full of very drunk people from various offices, schools, and in our case, the hospital, and the entertainment was a belly dancer, a traditional Greek male dancer balancing towers of glasses on his head, and cheesy good-time music from a DJ. Christmas dinners/parties/balls are a huge deal over here, everyone has them, and everyone "lets down their hair" big time, no matter what part of the hierarchy their job title places them in. It really is a British thing...I was thinking today about how we always invited our rehab director and manager at the hospital in NJ to the happy hours and BBQs, etc that we had, but they always politely declined. And additionally, while I can happily remember some all-out holiday bashes my father's company used to sponsor back in the day when I was little, including magicians, bands, and someone dressing up as Santa, Christmas parties don't happen like that any more in the States (except for maybe the big money law firms). So this year I am happily taking advantage of the myriad Christmas do's that are such a cultural phenomenon over here...great fun!! Oh, and the pics- well, I'll post them when Blogger stops acting up and lets me.

"Oh yes we need a little Christmas, right this very minute..."

I have updated the MP3 player in my sidebar with Christmas tunes, both contemporary and classic. Hopefully there's something for everyone. Sometimes it takes a little time to change over to the new playlist, but by tomorrow you should hear them. I wanted to include "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" but the site where I put my playlist for the MP3 player is refusing to accept it due to something in the file name, grrr! I'm doing my best to get into the spirit as much as possible, though unfortunately, I don't really have Christmas decorations over here (but I did buy a pointsettia to brighten up our living room), and I can't do all the baking I would be doing at home...ie sugar cookies, as is traditional! Not to worry, I'm sure my mom will have cookie dough ready for when I arrive, right Mom? ;) I will also have a marathon Christmas movie watching session, since all I've got here are The Santa Clause and The Santa Clause 2... in particular, the Muppets Christmas Carol is traditional for our family, over and over and over again, as well as Chevy Chase in Christmas Vacation. Classic!

Weather Watch

The weather has been all over the map today. This morning it poured rain, then there was a blue sky and sun. Then it hailed and poured rain, then the sun came out again. Then the winds picked up, to the point where whistles and moans could be heard on the wards and in our offices. And just now, as I've been sitting here in the office, trying to catch up on discharge report paperwork, we've had two powercuts due to the high winds. And let me tell you, it's not fun sitting on an abandoned ward, alone, in the pitch dark. Luckily, they didn't last for long. I'm here because I'm running the once monthly relatives' group this evening, after which I will brave the elements to attend a Christmas thing with Nicole at a famous bar in trendy Shoreditch. I have heard, from some of the family members who are already here, that the news stations have been reporting a tornado touched down somewhere in North London earlier today. Well, they do say the weather is very changeable in London ;)

The down side

I've been struggling today with the recent development of clinical depression in one of my patients, and the role we played in "causing" it. This lady is 85, presents with right-sided neglect, and decreased sensation on the right side, but she has full range of motion and good strength. In certain routine daily activities, the right side automatically comes into play, as it also does during therapeutic intervention that we structure to bring her awareness to that side. However, there is more on this patient's problem list. We believe there may be some visual field problems and referred her to the orthoptist- we're waiting for the appt. There are definitely some visual perceptual problems including figure ground, object constancy, and depth perception deficits. She perseverates a lot, and cannot easily divide or alternate her attention. And as if all that weren't enough, she has both expressive and receptive speech aphasias, although she gets the general idea during conversational speech, and sometimes manages to get out what she actually means to say.

Put all of this together, and we had to have a case conference last Thursday with her family to say that the prognosis is not good-- that even if she makes improvements with functional transfers and walking, she will need 24 hour supervision due to the cognitive deficits. Although she'd only been with us a little over 3 weeks at that point, we felt it only fair to give her family time to absorb this, ask any questions they might come up with, and begin to make a very difficult decision about whether they could look after her as a family, or tell us to begin the process of finding her a place in a residential or nursing home. Now, although this patient did not by any means follow along in the meeting, point by point, it was clear she understood the concept that we were discussing a "home" for her, and were saying she could not go back to her own home. She was very distressed by this, and kept repeating "But they love me, we all love each other. " (Referring to her family.)

Prior to the case conference, she was always motivated for therapy, always bright and pleasant. On the Friday following the case conference, she came with us to the gym for therapy, but was rather agitated. She then had the weekend with no therapy, and apparently, according to nursing staff, her family has been visiting a lot less frequently. So this poor lady knows we were talking about a residential/nursing home for her, probably doesn't understand why, doesn't understand why she can't go back home, has little to no control over her environment due to her long list of problems, and may very well feel like her family is pulling away/abandoning her. On Monday, she was a completely different person. We were told by the nurses she wasn't sleeping at night, she's not eating, she can't sit up straight in a chair, is tired all the time, couldn't be roused to keep her eyes open let alone get her transferred into a wheelchair to come to the gym for therapy, and kept repeating "I wanna go home, I wanna go home, they love me." Tuesday, the same, at which point I said to the nurses, the SHO, and anyone else who would listen, this lady needs help urgently, she's showing signs of clinical depression directly related to what we told her in the meeting. Today, the matron of the ward came to me for an update on all the patients, and I repeated myself again, and apparently today this lady's been delirious, so they finally paid attention to what I was saying.

Although I've been reassured that we did the right thing by including her in the case conference, it would not have been right to keep her ignorant of discharge plans because she would have to have been told eventually and would have had the same reaction then, I still feel awful. Just horrible. It's night and day, her emotional health and personality before the case conference, and now. But I guess even if we'd only told her family, so that we could continue to make progress in therapy, all that progress would have been lost when we did tell her. Well, that and we could never have predicted she'd have this reaction in the first place. You just never know with stroke patients, the brain can be such a delicate thing, and maybe the only thing she was holding onto in what is now a confusing world for her was going back home, where everything would be alright. Seems to be how a lot of our patients feel, actually, although for very few of them is it actually the case that they go home and everything is alright.

On birthday plans and cold wars

I've had a great idea for my upcoming birthday, but am rejecting it due to costs: the Eurostar offers a "party train" fare...you leave at 4:30pm and must be back on the train to return to London by 10:30am the next morning, for 38 pounds. Pretty nice! So I was laying in bed, having one of those nights where your mind won't stop so you're just tossing and turning, and suddenly I thought, hey! I know- the cabaret! A live burlesque show! in Paris! I mean, what more could you want for a birthday?! The trouble being, the cabarets seem to all be in the neighborhood of 75-90 euros. And with that, the train fare, and money for drinks, that's just too much to ask of people. :( I can't tell you how sorry I am to be dismissing that plan...

In other news, I have declared war on my cold/being sick. Today I have had pomegranate juice, multivitamin juice, a spicy curry for lunch (and some garlic in the form of garlic-stuffed olives), chicken soup for dinner (to which I added chili pepper flakes), I have drunk all kinds of hot and cold beverages, I bought echinacea and was talked into an elixir that boosts your immune system at the health food store, not to mention the traditional cold & flu meds, cough syrup, cough lozenges and vaporub. This evening, I did not do the strenuous portion of my gym routine, only participating in the pilates-based class instead (which I did not enjoy, generally speaking when they're called pilates-based I don't like them) because I'd been advised that things like running on a treadmill should be avoided during a cold. I have had enough of having colds! I will get rid of this one, and there will NOT be another one lurking around the corner again!! So there. Oh, yes, and I will not be having more than one or two drinks at the various Christmas do's on Thursday and Friday this week.

Sex

Knew that title would get ya! Haha! Read on...It was an interesting day at work today-- half the team was out on annual leave for one reason or another, so it was just myself and two physios trying to manage the whole unit caseload.

For the first time as on OT, I addressed the subject of sexuality today. We had a case conference with a patient (who is going home Dec 21) and his spouse to discuss the details of his discharge. He is 57, and I believe she's 10 years younger, and by the time we'd come to the end of our conference, I just felt like I had to bring it up. For those of you non-OTs, although we aren't really told how to do it, it is stressed as part of our OT training that since we focus on holistic treatment, we should always be aware of how important sexuality is. Even more so because no other rehab professional will address it with the patient. And when you think about it, it's true, if everyone on a rehab team ignores such a major issue as sexuality, your patient may go home with lots of questions and no answers, because it wasn't something they felt comfortable bringing up. So it's our job as OTs to break the ice, and make it ok for them to ask questions. I have not had to figure out how to do this until now, as I've dealt mainly with elderly, frail patients. But today, when everything else had been said, I told M and his wife that although I'm not an expert, I'd be happy to provide information and resources if they had questions about their intimate life with each other, considering M's post-stroke deficits...and as I said this, I could feel myself going bright red. Which they and Bettina, the physio, thought was hysterical. This couple is very down-to-earth, very straightforward, and I don't know why I flushed as I was speaking, they were the perfect people to help me start figuring out how to address the subject. But on the other hand, to illustrate my earlier point, even being such a "hip" couple, they had not brought up the subject with anyone on the team, so it really is my/our responsibility to open the lines of communication so that people know they can talk about it or ask questions if they want. I just have to figure out how to have the conversation on a clinical, professional level, so that my face doesn't keep giving away the fact that I feel like I'm pushing my boundaries!

News from Rwanda

I forgot to mention on Friday that it was World AIDS Day, you'll find a new widget on my sidebar if you're interested in making a contribution. But I thought I'd copy and paste from Tressa's latest email update, hope she doesn't mind, as it's to with HIV. Oh, and Happy December everyone! 21 days to Christmas!!

"Hello all,

Friday was World AIDS Day. I'm not sure how much coverage it gets in the US, but it tends to be a big deal in Africa since the prevalence rates are very high in many countries. It's only about 4% here in Rwanda, but big donors (various foreign governments and UN organizations) like to give a lot of money for it. Partly because it's a very popular cause right now and partly because donors still feel guilty about the genocide and are willing to show it with money. On World AIDS day, you're supposed to hold lots of public events to education people, and show support for the cause.

CRS planned a day-long event at one of the centers we support here in Kigali for street kids and kids who are already household heads (lost their parents to the genocide or AIDS or something else). There were about 250 kids, from 8-22 years old. There were several speeches and we had some games for the kids; mostly questions testing their knowledge about HIV. The winners were given backpacks with school supplies in them. They did some traditional Rwandan dancing for us and presented a skit they had created showing the dangers of unsafe sex. The dancing was pretty good. I've seen it done by several times before and it takes a lot of energy and concentration! One of the best parts however, was when it rained for 10 minutes. Everyone ran under the awning, and the DJ put on some American hip hop music to pass the time. Two of the younger boys ran out into the rain and started dancing by themselves, just because they love to dance. They were definitely a hit.

Then we ate lunch, which some of the kids themselves had prepared. At this center, they have professional training courses for the kids. They can enroll in carpentry, metalwork, cooking, or tailoring during the year. CRS helps with small income generation projects for the center itself, so it can work towards being self-sustainable. We given them cows and training on how to manage them. We used to contribute their grains and oil to feed the kids, but our donor has cut its funding. After lunch was the big football game between the kids and CRS. So we played against teenagers who probably practice every day and I was by far the youngest member of the CRS team....we lost some very large number to 1, but at least we scored! And we know now who on our staff is remotely in shape (not to mention who knows the rules); it was highly entertaining at the time and I suspect will continue to provide some laughs in the re-telling.

I hope everyone is doing well. I'll be stateside for christmas and new years, which will be nice.

Love,

tressa"

The word, on Sunday night

So, this weekend...I cancelled my plans for Friday night, came home and slept. I have yet another cold (after finally getting rid of the one that lasted more than a month, I was "healthy" for maybe 3 days before showing symptoms of this one)...I've been such the social butterfly for so long now, saying yes to everything and thus having really late Friday and Saturday nights every weekend (involving alcohol, naturally, see my previous post on how over here, social event=alcohol), I think my body just decided enough is enough. I slept for a solid two hours after work, woke up, sent my apologies to the people I was supposed to meet, had dinner, and went back to bed. However, I did join up with Nicole and Rob and a whole bunch of their friends, plus housemate Nicole and her boyfriend Dave, last night for a great meal and then drinks...it's hard to say no when you're having fun, so it ended up being a late night once again. Luckily, today being Sunday, there was plenty of time for a lie-in.

In other news, let's see...I've been a busy bee getting together Christmas gifts, both homemade and bought. It's a bit more difficult to come up with ideas for things you know people really want or will really like, when you're not around to pick up the hints they drop in daily conversation. And I've always been someone who hates to say, "Ok tell me what's on your list, give me an idea..." But I think I'm managing! However, housemate Nicole's birthday is coming up in a little over a week, and I'm a bit stumped on that one, even though I live with her. And Dave has not been of much help, grrr. Hopefully I'll think of something really soon here...I've got a bit of a grace period since we're not actually celebrating her bday until the 16th, even though it's really on the 12th.

And at work, I am still very happy, which still seems to continue to amaze my supervisor. I guess in the past, she's been used to some basic grades being really stressed out, not liking the rotation for some reason, or only really settling in and realizing that they like it when the 6 months are almost over. Apparently, she heard ahead of time how much I was looking forward to starting on the stroke unit, and she was afraid it wouldn't live up to my expectations. But I'm a little different from the other basic grades, given how much experience I already had in rehab world before moving across the pond, and I already knew I wanted to specialize in stroke, had worked with stroke patients, knew what I was getting myself into. I explained to her that, professionally, doing this kind of work is why I made the move. And I'm loving every minute of it, even the hard parts of it. Nothing like taking on a challenge, and overcoming barriers. I wrote a little bit earlier about how much I enjoyed my first Bobath module, which took place on Thanksgiving and Black Friday. I am so looking forward to the next two pieces, plus I am putting in my application for the three-week Bobath course. Apparently, even though it is supposedly offered worldwide, there are no Bobath courses presently in the States...and I am now looking into the Senior II position at Whipps, which has a rotation on the acute stroke unit, and apparently I have a very good shot at securing. There are only two basic grades with enough experience to apply, me being one of them, and there will be some vacancies shortly. Good thing too, as with my work permit situation and the current OT job shortages, I can't get a Senior II job anywhere else.

Fun Facts

from London's various free newspapers. There is a new study out claiming that women get a natural "high" from talking and shopping, because that's how our brains are structured. Some of the figures quoted:

A woman will speak 20,000 words in an average day; a man will speak 7,000.

Men think about sex every 52 seconds, whereas it crosses a woman's brain only once a day, on average.

British women will spend an average of 8+ years of their lives shopping.

And one that will amuse many of you-- "Women have an eight-lane superhighway for processing emotion, men have a small country road."

Dr. Louann Brizendine claims that women have larger cortexes in their brains than do men, and conversation stimulates a rush of a dopamine, therefore talking is a natural "high" for women. Men on the other hand, don't get a response from their pleasure centers from talking, and therefore are less social. However, their brains are set up to think about sex more regularly.

Now, I don't know about you all, but I have known some guys in my time who loved to hear themselves talk...so I'm not sure what conclusions I should be drawing here ;)

A group pic from last Friday night, as we made our Thanksgiving celebrations last all weekend...;)