Vacation continues along much the same.

On the visiting front: On Thursday, I visited my old place of employment and the coworkers who are like family to me. My supervisor has been back full-time since about February (after her crazy hospital stay) and her spirits are so much better! They're awaiting their AAALAC accreditation visit (which I helped with!) later this summer and are looking forward to a new facility (to start construction in about a year's time)! The current building will be demolished, which is sad, but the facilities they'll move into will be AWESOME and as they're expecting about a three year construction period, it's a secret hope of mind that they'll be looking for another veterinarian. That would be my dream job :)

On Friday, I had a girly day with my sister. We got our eyebrows done and pedicures, caught up on each other's lives over Cheesecake Factory lunch and shopped for new clothes for my rotations. I'm not the stereotypical shopping woman, so it took a lot out of me to even get the few things that I did! I also got to visit with my dog-niece (Trudy the Boston Terrier) before heading back home.

This weekend was a busy one, too. Danny and I headed out to where he lives when I'm not around so that he could cut their grass (they're out of town); I read one of the four books I picked up at the library earlier in the week (Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace, which is of course wonderful, as it was written by MA). I thought of all the people I know that say they just don't have time to read for pleasure during the school year (to which I always mentally reply, "I make time!" because really, I can't not read for pleasure. Pretty sure I am always reading something.) and hoped they were finding more time to read because it is so very wonderful. I also picked up Dan Brown's Inferno which I started this morning, a new Barbara Kingsolver book (The Poisonwood Bible and a couple others having made a good impression of her to me) and another new thing by someone I don't know (I rarely read for the author, despite having chosen the previous three by their authors alone...hm). I'm not sure I'll be able to finish them all in the two weeks I have left, but I'm certainly trying as the weather is perfect sit-outside-and-read weather.

(Not sure how this got derailed into an "I love books!" post. All we need now is a lab animal segue...)


Saturday night was filled with more friend visiting, as tends to happen on my breaks.

Sunday was a beautiful day for Mother's Day - sunny and warm and spring-like - and we went out to a late lunch at a new place in Frederick (Firestone's) for some excellent food and a beautiful second-storey corner table with a view of the bustling street below. Downtown Frederick is really dog-friendly so we saw tons of beasts out enjoying the nice weather. Danny (with a bit of help from me) had made a new dish for my mom's birdbath (the other had split in half completely unexpectedly earlier in the week) using cement and some plant trays for a mold and damn if it didn't turn out well! I think the feeder locals are still a bit suspicious but a lady sparrow or two have christened it already so hopefully the rest of the neighborhood will soon catch on.

Lots of babbling on my part, per usual. I'm looking forward to starting back at school just so I can get into it and be done, but I'm trying to enjoy the last true time off I'll be having for a good long while.