Pete

For anyone who is interested in the humoural aspects of herbal medicine check out this lecture by Simon Mills, one of the authours of my main masters textbook.

BMJ 2003;327:1459-1461 (20 December), doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7429.1459

Hazardous journey

Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/327/7429/1459

Christmas was very nice indeed.

I managed to score 4 days off, two of which were paid without me asking for anything.

Christmas basically took place over three days, the first being a nice quiet one, the second being the big family thing and the third included a second Christmas lunch with (very) extended family followed later by a nice quiet gold class movie and a yummy dinner.

: )

in other news: *I NEED A FLAT MATE!!!!!!!11!!*

Apartment in Indooroopilly lease beginning rnd of January.

It is a really awesome location in Indooroopilly, hence the lack of desire to move.

It is *between* both shopping centers and the railway station on the corner of Coonan St and a side street. Only 1-2 minutes to any of these locations.

rent is about $130/ week, plus expenses, the bigger room is available.

DSL is already installed, we could look at adsl ii as well.

I will be lacking a fridge and a washing machine, but will try to fix that asap, although already having either or both is a definite bonus.

Yay for it is day three of my long weekend!

I've spent the past few days running around Terry White's putting in my resume and chatting to varios manager/ owners whih was quite fun as there was quite a bit of interest.

In doing this I also ran around in all sorts of new areas which was quite fun.

Gah, work tomorrow. Maybe I will take the last week of June off.

Business minded and a natural leader, you are a canidate to be embraced by the Ventrue clan. You can be rather dominant with a high stamina however, you tend to have obsessive compulsive tendencies...especially when it comes to your food. You are the clan the others look to organize groups and factions. Generally princes are among this clan. What Vampire Clan Do You Belong To?

Today was busier at work than pre-christmas! Just wave after wave of customers.

TF was quieter that usual (but busier than yesterday), so I managed to make inroads on the weigh-in entries to the database, having finished registration entries yesterday, woo hoo!

Mark (other naturopath at work) somehow managed to smash a car axle into his face, and looked surprisingly good, considering. He is going hard on herbs and homeopathy, which makes him look pretty much just normal externally, but the smashed tooth kinda gives it away. He may have fractured his right maxilla with the blow. Pretty nasty from the description.

We lost power due to a storm this evening- all computers and lights down. We all move to the entrances when that happens to prevent people looting/ nicking stuff. It is rather eerie, moving as a unit to prevent any entrance or exit from the store until the backup kicks in... literally holding down the fort.

Sam's engagement party tomorrow, so that should be awesome, and he got into the military! I am so happy for him!

Well, other stuff now. ;)

Today was interesting.

I had as interesting thing happen today, we had a lady covered in hives & scratching away come and ask us for help.

Basically she had just had an injection, and had also just eaten a fish meal.

Either way she was having a severe allergic attack, on closer inspection she has rent herself great holes in her skin and was bleeding profusely. One wound was a good two inches by 1/3 of an inch just inside her elbow.

Well, Winnie (one of the pharmacists) dosed her up with some antihistamines, and I offered just as winnie was about to ask, to bring the lady to the medical centre where her doctor resided.

She was in such bad shape that the 100m walk took 10-15mins, and we stopped a few times and I offered encouragement. Eventually we reached the centre and the staff rushed out to help her, and I wandered off back to work. She came back a while later looking much better, and with a script for some powerful antihistamines, and was very grateful.

:D

Some customers just make your day. It was awesome to be able to help a damsel in distress. ;)

I also decided to load up an old nwn2 savegame, lvl 10 as opposed to lvl 15. Basically to have crack troops at my kickarse strong hold, I needed to have done a few things earlier in the game. Much swearing later I settled on the fact that it is the journey that is the fun bit. ;) Besides, I get to rebuild my stronghold again! :D

Well today I activated my Visa debit card, huzzah! So now I can do internet and phone banking much more easily.

I also bought 'Dark Messiah' from eb. It looks semi-cool

I am about 2/3 though nwn2 & stupid gothic's main quest line seems broken.

I found out I am rostered for a long weekend, so three days at Pia's! It also means I don't have to get to the housewarming party on a weekend after work!

Today was fun. ;)

So it seems that little miss is much happier, and so long as she is, I will be. ;)

Girls are very strange.

( Rant about annoying customers )

By the way Becs, the 'customers_suck' group is very funny, even if it is filling my in box with random stuff. ;)

I am going to make something abundantly clear to all involved.

*I* will not put up with any bullshit.

The pair of you have made your bed, and now you get to sleep in it.

I will not be held accountable for your actions.

I am going to be royally pissed if I hear anything more about 'bristling at my name'.

That said, I hope we can develop a mutual understanding, if not friendship.

[EDIT]

Hrm, perhaps I am being too harsh.

As my mother used to say when my sister and I were little, if you can't play nicely, you can't play at all.

The reality is that we will be spending a fair amount of time together, so we'd best learn to get along nicely. ;)

It is a complex web that binds us together, but hopefully we can all rise above petty jealousy (myself included) and develop a decent, lasting friendship amongst ourselves.

I am tired.

Apparently today I told a customer that she could have her scripts for free, although I seem to remember saying nothing of the sort. Retail would be much better sans customers. ;o)

Tf was a fair bit slower today, so my day likewise was slower.

Oh, and apparently we aren't getting paid this week because 'someone' failed to have the form sent in on time. The powers that be arranged for people to be paid part to all of their wages in cash, so at least they took care of that.

Huzzah for the professionalism of terry white chemists. If any of us screwed up that bad, heads would roll.

C'est la vie.

I have reaffirmed the belief that women are a completely alien life form from men.

Oh well, show me the hoop and I'll jump through it! : P

Work is steady, slower than it should be this time of year. I hope it is not a sign that the next few days will make up for it.

It is my little sister's birthday tomorrow, she will be 22, so that will be awesome.

Well today dragged on for ages, but I have three days off now, so huzzah!

Pia will come and visit again tomorrow so that should be pretty cool.

If I hear the 10 millionth day of Christmas once more I will go even more insane than usual.

I have had about 18 hours sleep in the past week. Computer games (definitely not my lack of self-discipline) are evil.

Work was good, some customers just make your day in retail.

Rx were extremely busy today, the 'free' drugs run out at the end of the month.

Lisa (vitamin chicky) is back from hols now, so now I don't have to worry about vitamins as much.

I made a sign, so I feel important, lol.

I also had an epiphany today:

( There is Something Wrong with an Overweight Nutritionist (auto-rant alert) )

I. Do. Not. Want. To. Go. To. Work. Tomorrow.

Split up weekends are both good & bad, but Mondays are always lame.

Today was excessively lazy, which was excellent.

I updated msn, it is shiny but excessively advertisement-ariffic.

Cthulhu as Davey Jones (from the unspeakable vault of doom) is very a cool icon.

My visit on friday went well, the carvery in margate has really cleaned itself up form it's days as 'greasy joes flytrap', lol.

Yep, a Thursday.

TF is really dying back over December, although I imagine that January will more than make up for the pre-Christmas slump in sales, as people's enthusiasm for their New Years resolutions is still fresh.

The other sections of the pharmacy need my support shoring up straight out retail over Christmas anyway.

I bit the bullet, and told my boss that his occasional snarkishness is the only thing I dislike about his job, a statement he took very well. I think I may have actually reached him by just being concise, polite and direct. While I am quite replaceable, the simple fact is that I could be earning 50% more as a sales rep for one of the companies, or several times more if I went into private practice.

*shudders at the potential workload & potential profit* One day.

Well, tomorrow I shall have a visitor, so that should be interesting if nothing else.

What fascinating things have I been up to lately?

Work mostly, and trying to catch up on sleep.

My actual section at work is completely *arghem*. It is rather disturbing. I am keeping busy looking busy though.

Darren, my boss, had a knobbish day yesterday, and it destroys workplace morale. Yay for Wednsdays are his golf day.

The primo vitamin chica (my focus is the TF program) is on holiday, and naturally made a major order to cover her absence.

Once again I am really pleased that my workplace is a real team environment, when it comes to things like this we handle it like the Amish. Their mutual support is one of the best parts of my job.

A taxi driver gave me a free lift home, she lives a couple of houses down from me and was coming home anyway. She is interested in my program, and has not asked for anything, so I think I will do her a deal.

She has a white & black dotted wheelbarrow-garden in her front yard called 'Daisy'. To anyone else this would seem insane, but growing up with mum has made this kind of thing disturbingly 'normal'.

I wrote a poem for the first time since high school yesterday, which was very well received.

I started Gothic 3 again, much more fun sans cheating/ bugsploitation.

I bought some logitech earphones, so I can listen to music/ games without hassling the others, they haven't said anything, but it must get annoying.

I wish the wisdom tooth that is hassling me at the moment would cut through already!

I have to check when I next get a Saturday off.

Well, I think that's about everything that is interesting at the moment.

You are The Devil

Materiality. Material Force. Material temptation; sometimes obsession

The Devil is often a great card for business success; hard work and ambition.

Perhaps the most misunderstood of all the major arcana, the Devil is not really "Satan" at all, but Pan the half-goat nature god and/or Dionysius. These are gods of pleasure and abandon, of wild behavior and unbridled desires. This is a card about ambitions; it is also synonymous with temptation and addiction. On the flip side, however, the card can be a warning to someone who is too restrained, someone who never allows themselves to get passionate or messy or wild - or ambitious. This, too, is a form of enslavement. As a person, the Devil can stand for a man of money or erotic power, aggressive, controlling, or just persuasive. This is not to say a bad man, but certainly a powerful man who is hard to resist. The important thing is to remember that any chain is freely worn. In most cases, you are enslaved only because you allow it.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Well I had a freaking awesome time last night!

Pia & I met up with Bec, one of my best friends from uni, her sister who I have been chatting away with on myspace for some time, Bec's boyfriend Hayden (the lead singer), and a whole lot of new and old friends.

I haven't seen Bec it two years, far too long for a friend of that caliber, I will have to make an effort to see her & company again soon.

Pia seemed to enjoy herself, and the guy's really liked her. She handled herself really well surrounded by a bunch of people she didn't know. It is nice to meet a girl with *personality*.

I bought Dubdoubt's new CD, and also a shirt that the girl assured me would fit, only it's even smaller than the Pearl Jam one!

I had a dude come into work yesterday and inform me that i couldn't have possibly have been on the weight loss program that I run. Gee, thanks mate, that makes me feel really great about myself, lol. Oh well, i know i need to lose a little bit of weight.

I was going to have to wait for over an hour after work for a bus into sandgate(not enough time to to be worth going home and back), but my boss was kind enough to give me a lift into sandy, so i wound up in brunswick st like an hour and a half early, lol. Oh well, it was nice to have some time to myself, and to have a good feed. ; )

I met up with Pia then, and headed over to grab her some food Ric's (which has really improved since i was last there), and then we went over to the Zoo.

The music was awesome!

We had to bail pretty early unfortunately, she had work & I needed to get back to Redcliffe, so we had to call it about 10 minutes into Dubdoubt's actual act after Kafka warmed up the crowd. Oh, well I'm sure we'll all meet up again soon.

Trevor, my old mate the bus driver was nice enough to drop me at my door in his own car after he had finished his run because the blue bus doesn't stop particularly close to my house.

It really was an awesome night!

Well, thursday is late night at tezza whites, and it was an interesting one.

To set the scene of the melrose place that is my workplace, two of my colleagues have recently started seeing one another, and currently live together. There is this other girl who has the occasional spat with me (normally we all get along pretty well), who does a fair bit of work about the place.

Anyway, i get out to have my lunch and have it entirely spent listening to spatgirl whining that the couple's hours have been changed to accommodate their relationship. Which i thought was all fine and good until she started crying (of all things)because she had a daughter and had been told point blank that she could not take the shift and arrange leave at an earlier time to tend her baby daughter. Well that was pretty unfair really, seeing as not only would her hours remain the same, but she would have to take up the slack (certain tasks only certain people may do) that couple girl left.

I get on with everyone for the most part, so i am keeping right out of it.

Other than that, sweet little jilly bean became quite irate when i knocked her back on using a card to buy something worth a buck fifty. Oh well.

I bought some suspension files today to start filing proper, as we have expanded beyond the capacity of 7 a4 folders of registrations.

I gave a formal 'no' to the xmas party, too much hassle. coty will live.

I also printed out a huge amount of paperwork, as the stock controller was absent later at night, and for some reason gets antsy about me using the printer for 30mins plus at a time. ; )

But seriously it is a pain in the arse, i have an entire department to run that is very paper dependent, and the photo copier is completely useless & more expensive to use than the big arse printer out the back.

On other things, it was rather eerie walking home with all the street lights out. Curiously, the houses still had power. Not to mention the floodlights in the middle of the block on the local soccer field.

Perhaps the storm did some damage somewhere, a main pair of intersection traffic lights were out today.

Oh and i walked home with the rent, which i knew was a stupid idea, especially when a drunk came up and asked me for bus money at 8:15. Erm, excuse me mate, but the buses stopped running at 5.... I thought he might try to mug me, which would have been interesting seeing as i have been out of training for some time & he couldn't walk stright, but he was content with two dollars. Yay random derros.

Well, i am meeting a random internet girl tomorrow, so we shall see if i should have followed my own advice about meeting people on the internet....