The biggest thing that happened since my last blog was that I was released from my calling at church as Young Women president. I finished off my last week with the girls creating a Mormon ad video and later in the week I got to take some of the youth out for dessert for winning a previous bake-off competition. It was bitter sweet. The reality was that I was burning out with all the work and I believe it was the right time. It's mostly just really difficult that my world doesn't revolve around the girls anymore. I miss them!
My new calling is Self Reliance Specialist. The church has really made an effort to help members know about the self-reliance resources. I basically help everyone to be more spiritually and physically self reliant by utilising the courses and resources that the church provides. There's also other programs I oversee including mum's pre-school, and an English class. It's a lot more flexible and I have my nights back so I'm excited to try something new.
Another big piece of news is that I finally have working internet! As cable internet was faulty I had to find an alternative plan. I finally found a company that uses 4G wireless for internet purposes and they have an unlimited data plan! They are called Vivid Wireless and when I got my modem and I was pleased to find I get about 11mbps on average. That is nearly 3 times the speed I was getting before! So I can now download, scan, and watch videos on the internet without buffering or long delays.
Other events include a couple of work dinners. For June we went to Teppanyaki and surprisingly my favourite menu item was the Kangaroo steak. It was so juicy. The next dinner in July was my turn and I chose the local Brazilian Churrasco restaurant called Rio's. The meat and sides were tasty, but the atmosphere wasn't ideal for talking to people. Near the end they do a show with scantily glad dancers and it went on too long for my liking. Then they just play music and let people dance which makes it too loud to talk to anyone. So far I think my favourite work dinner location was the Chinese restaurant we went to where we all fit on a round table so it is easy to talk to everyone.A while back I went to a home show and got tickets to a property conference. Matt and I attended it at the end of June and it was awesome! We got to see all of the different kinds of strategies in property investment that are available. We really wanted to get into renovating, but now is just not the right time for investing. I don't want to start any major strategy unless I am confident we can dedicate enough time to learn how to do things properly.
So after our issue with the internet we discovered our blu-ray player was actually having issues and needed to be replaced. As most of our DVD's are from the US we need a multi-region blu-ray player. Somehow I was able to get our first one from the store and it was region free. Replacing it was quite difficult and I had to buy one online. The good news is that the old one was under warranty and they gave us cash back for returning it. Sweet!
In July is when Matt and I first learned about Pokemon Go - a week after it started. Our friends Brock & Kaytlin came over with their baby Ronan and told us about it. Sure enough Matt and I started playing. For the next week we went out nearly every night hunting pokemon. It was great because we spent a lot of time together, got lots of steps, and we went out to eat at a couple of new places. I also really enjoyed seeing new places and noticing art and other locations that were marked as pokestops. Matt has really taken it to the next level and even gets up early to take over gyms. At least he isn't all consumed, cheats, or spends heaps of money to get ahead in the game. Unfortunately there are a lot of people that are very extreme so it's hard to compete with that. The area around my work is terrible so I rarely find much when I go on my walk for lunch. Oh well. I can at least say I now regularly get 10,000 steps a day! |
| While searching for pokemon we found a couple of possum's. |
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As I've mentioned before in previous posts, I've struggled to know where I'm going in life since my dream of being an animal behaviourist died. I decided to work on my plan B to be a psychologist. Since making that decision I continue to feel better and better about it. I've been doing an online course on Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (it was a living social voucher) just to learn more about the techniques. Then I hope to send in all my qualifications to get assessed. Well it happens that friends of ours have two housemates that are doing their psychology internship. While Matt discussed the painting they wanted to do, I got to have a long conversation with Eve about her program. She was super helpful in helping me understand how the program works. It made me nervous to hear about the assessments and how each case study with clients has to be perfect. Nevertheless, after discussing my previous studies and what I hope to achieve Eve confirmed that I should really go into Clinical Psychology. She helped give me the confidence to pursue that dream, and I was happy to learn that the internship program can work well as part time.
Besides all the other things going on, I had some fun things at work over the last month. The operations manager went on leave for over a week so I shared part of the role with the boss. It was a week where I felt like everything went horribly wrong, but somehow we all survived. Needless to say I decided planning deliveries is hard! On a different note, on my lunch break at work I dropped my phone onto a very rock path that completely shattered the screen. I was surprised that my tempered glass screen protector didn't really protect it at all. I was able to get a company to pick the phone up from me at work the next day and then the dropped it off after fixing it the day after. This was the first time I have ever broken a smartphone screen so I'm glad it was fairly simple to fix, although $200 is a lot to just fix a screen!
On a better note I have finally finished all 14 books in the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan! I also finished a bunch of shorter books. I finished Think & Grow Rich and As a Man Thinketh regarding thought changes behaviour and the power of positive thinking. Similarly I finished Who Moved My Cheese about learning to adapt to change. I also finished two books written by a neurosurgeon and his near death experience and scientific evidence of heaven called Proof of Heaven, and Map of Heaven. An unusual book was The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time written from the perspective of a teenage boy with mild autism. After all the self help books I'm in need of a fiction so I started reading Passage to Zarahemla and am loving it! I'm love technology which makes it so easy for me to listen and read books wherever I go!
It's been a good couple of months, but I am definitely ready for my holiday in the US!! I'll post details on that when I get back but here's a general overview - 1 week in Oregon with friends and Matt's family, 1 week on a cruise to Alaska, and 1 week in Utah with my family. Matt hasn't seen his family in three years! This will also be our 5 year anniversary trip. Just one more week!
