Easter........a time of new growth

Easter is traditionally seen as a sign of new life - both religiously, and also with its position in the year, near the start of spring (though to be fair with it being so early this year, and the northerly winds and snow, one could be forgiven for wondering if it was Winter).

Thus it is a time when one is supposed to think of pruning back deadwood and clearly out some of teh rubbish to create room for the new shoots. So today I did a load of filing - bank statements, credit card statements, O2 Bills, Electricity, Student Loans Rubbish, BMA stuff, Bectu stuff, old Somerfield pay slips etc. Now my 'to do' tray on my desk only has Uni stuff in it. that means a fair intensive 10 days of uni notes and such like to do before Uni starts again.

My first challenge therefore is to actually make it into the Library most days this week fairly early in the morning, possibly even before 9. Let's see how I do....

Holiday, what holiday?

As most of the medical faculty wind down slowly towards the easter holiday, which starts tomorrow or Friday, I am preparing for a short weekend off!

You may remember (see here, and here) that the GP Dept had decided that due to a shortage of GP's taking students this year, they would be not giving placements to those of us repeating 3rd year. thus we do not have to attend GPO Community Practice, nor complete the LCP.

However, we still have to sit the OSCE (albeit formatively), and thus in order to give us some refresher training in the examination etc skills for the OSCE, we get to visit a GP practice for 5 2 hour sessions. Due to GP and student availability, the only time we are all free, is Tuesdays and Thursdays over easter.

So my easter break from Uni will be spent partly in GP land doing clinical skills, partly in the Med School doing the same, mostly in the Library/SL trying to notify all my PBL scenarios thus far, and partly house-sitting for a friend (more later).

Oh and hopefully also meeting up with some friends for food or coffee.

Due to the cancellation of tomorrow's PBL session (facilitator on holiday), my easter begins at 12.30 tomorrow, and ends at 5pm on Monday, when I get back from a weekend away.

Bargains

Bargain Number 1
My local Borders have Gray's Anatomy textbook (a facsimile not the DVD) for the Bargain of £7.99 - its 150 very large pages with lots of text and pictures (b&w line drawings).

I was very impressed and bought it. It looks like a nice read for when I have time.

Bargain Number 2
The second bargain is more related to my hobby as a tech at various charity & christian events. We often need to preview a DVD and have good control of what chapter we play etc. Often this means a separate screen with complex splitting of signals. However at the easter event we did 10 days ago, Someone provided us with a portable DVD player instead - the inbuilt screen gives a preview of the output, and the controls are push buttons on the Unit.

Thus I have spent some of my sunday buy out money from work to buy one for myself - oh and it has the added bonus of letting me watch DVD's on the move.

Cushions

The wadge of money I mentioned in Back to Uni needs some explanation I think. At Res 2007 at the weekend, the organisers realised that the concrete floor might be too cold / hard for people to sit on - the event was 2h20 long and not everyone in the standing area might want to stand that long.

However, they would have to pay VAT on each cushion sold, so we invented a plan whereby I would by the cushions and sell them and donate all profit to the organisers to help cover the costs of the free event. I then phoned IKEA in Edinburgh who could only offer us 300 of the IRMA cushions. Since we had some seats, but were expecting another 2-3000 to be standing, we wanted more cushions. We thus phoned IKEA in Braehead, and ordered another 100 cushions from them.
Having spent £300 on my debit card, I was happy when we sold most of the cushions - mainly thanks to my wonderful volunteer sales team (it is amazing what people will do to get a free ticket into a free gig). Thus the pile of money is to go into the bank to cover the initial outlay to buy the cushions. We discovered interesting things, like 300 cushions fills the back of a Renault Megane (ssadly not mine), and Ikea have 525 on each delivery pallet.

I have 64 left if any wants one...or two...or twenty.

Pain..

Ow I woke up this morning with my head tilted to the right. Any attempt to tilt it to straight or to the left results in amazing pain. However, I can rotate it to the left, albeit at a tilt.

I'm not sure if you can spray deep heat onto your neck to relax the muscle.
Edit - I tried and it didn't help a bit..

Either way I hope it goes away before tomorrow as its all systems Go for two days doing tech stuff at Resurrection 07 at Ingliston - no not the Rave, but Scotland's largest Easter Sunday church service.

Last year's event in the Usher Hall was great and let's hope 2007 is as well.