Well, I’ve had a few requests from people that I need to update my blog more. Oh well. Fine. I guess if I must.

What have I been up to for the last - umm, month and a bit (yipes! It really has been a while).

Mostly school. Plenty entertaining, but most definitely very stressful. Mainly because I have a whole semester of maths. Chemistry, physics, and mathematics itself.

The reason this is so bad is that maths is not my subject. Biology is - or English and social. None of which require a full understanding of say - conics sections and how they are derived from a formula. It’s a series of numbers and variables. I still honestly don’t understand why and how you can get a graph from a list like that. I mean, I understand the rules - I can do it. Just - where did these rules come from?! Unlike physics, you can’t really prove them on any scale that actually has any importance (or at least I can’t) which is the biggest frustration for me.

Still, I’m doing fairly well in the math course. Which is strange, because I didn’t do that well in the previous level. It’s chem that’s the worst right now. Which again I’m not sure of (I think I’m running a few days behind the rest of the class or something.) I get everything, and then don’t manage to do so very well on the unit exams. But once we start the next unit, which builds on the last, everything suddenly clicks, and works. Redox equations for example. The unit on just the theory of them, I just passed - quite miserably I must say. But now we are using these to actually build electrical systems (aka batteries) I can work with them just fine!

It’s annoying me no end.

Anyway - enough about school. What else have I been up to.

The Canadian Ski Patrol System’s First Aid course.

It’s pretty awesome. Definitely the BEST First Aid course I’ve taken so far (and I’ve taken the Red Cross, St. John’s Ambulance, and the Lifesaving Society’s Lifeguard certification). Plus as a bonus, we actually did multiple casualty simulations, with full triage. It was awesome! The first night I was a rescuer. We went through three scenarios. The first two were - okay. I was the second/third patroller in, and basically tested how well I can hold C-Spine. The third scenario was the most fun - set at the Fringe, I was the first responder in. I kind of forgot the most important question - what happened? - but of course, that’s why we do this. So that we can test ourselves, and see what we need work on. Besides, I’ll remember this trial by fire, and won’t forget it when it actually matters. Still, we did okay. I called for the rest of the patrollers, and we treated everyone successfully - but it took longer than it should have to catch some of the injuries. Just have to remember that the noisy ones are probably the ones that are the best off.

But the second night I became a victim.

That was really entertaining. I was a drunk patient in a beer tent at the Fringe, with a three inch laceration across my palm, and I was on Coumadin (a blood thinner). Actually, the Coumadin was one of the things that I didn’t catch when I was doing triage for this scenario on Tuesday, so it was kind of interesting. It took most of the groups a while to catch it - there was one guy who got to that question right away though. Kudos to him.

On another note, one of my friends has given me a challenge, and I hereby do accept this challenge.

In a period of one year, starting on this day (November 4) I shall read no less than 50 full novels. And when I say novels, I mean the full books that actually take some reading - so Asimov’s i,Robot or Foundation - good as they are - don’t count for this one. Besides, I’ve read them more than enough in the past four months. Comics aren’t going to count either(although, I only have one of those anyway.) I’m also going to add on to this that anything assigned to my by school does not count, but anything non-fiction I read for my own enjoyment is completely fair game.

Besides, this will sort of force me to update my blog more often because if I don’t, I can hardly keep a list of all the books I’ve read. (Well, it will be once a week at least. The quick maths show that I basically have to read one novel a week.)

0 / 50 Novels. 0% done!

I think I’ll start with Knife of Dreams (book 11 of the Wheel of Time). We’ll see how that turns out.

And one last quick note before I go.

We have snow! Okay, it’s not that much yet (somewhere around 2 inches) but it’s white, and starting to provide a base for skiing. Here’s a quick toast to the ski season, may she be long, white, and stay at about -15C!