Hurricane Arthur swept through last night. This about sums up my feelings on the matter:

Okay okay, it did get quite windy and a lot of people (including myself) lost power. But that was just an excuse for me to read more junk instead of anesthesia notes for Monday and go to bed at a decent hour. The power was back up this morning and I made a good sized breakfast and have been lounging in my PJs ever since. I think I'll go to the track to watch the ponies go this afternoon (was cancelled last night) instead of reading for anesthesia.

Speaking of my next rotation, I'm really going to miss community practice. On Thursday I spayed a cat and it went really well and on Friday we did a feral cat spay/neuter clinic and I got to spay two and neuter one. These two spays were really difficult: one was lactating and had a cystic ovary and the other was pregnant. Everything went well, it was just a little trickier than the simple one I'd done the day before. And although surgery still isn't my cup of tea, I feel a lot more comfortable with it having gotten to do three spays and a neuter by myself. So that's nice :)

In other news, Danny is coming to visit in a little less than six weeks, yay! I'm starting to think about stuff we can do over the long weekend - it'll be nice to finally see each other when the weather is good for a change (it's always winter in Maine when we meet up and invariably snows at least part of the time). Two more blocks to get through, first!

I think (I hope) that spring has finally sprung on the little island. Yesterday was a warm (well, about 40F) sunny day and today it's actually raining instead of snowing! Just the last two days of above freezing temperatures have helped melt some snow and even though that means a lot of puddles and flooding, I'm happy to say goodbye to the snow and the cold.

According to my countdown app, I have nineteen days left until I go home for my short vacation. Because I don't have classes on Thursdays with radiology being over and because we have Good Friday and the Monday after Easter off, I have only five days left of classes! A lot of my friends are getting antsy and nervous but I feel kind of...normal? I guess it's because I have the first block off but I'm not too stressed about starting clinics just yet. That, or my brain is trying to pretend it doesn't know that I'm going to be shouldering a heck of a lot more responsibility in a little over a month.

What I'm getting impatient for is going home! They've been having beautiful weather and I'm already planning some fun things to do - hiking some of the extensive trails at state parks, visiting Arlington National Cemetary (and other historical stuff I've never done despite living right outside DC all of my life...whoops), catching up with my family and my sister, celebrating my first anniversary, going skeet shooting and just having the time to take a little breather before I launch into the beginning of the end of vet school. I can't wait to actually have nice weather, get outside and soak in some vitamin D! (Speaking of health stuff, I started a 30 day ab challenge and a 30 squat challenge. I think I'm going to regret these decisions quite quickly, heh.)

Now I just need to get through those final exams.

Winter continues to drag on, coldly oblivious to our cries for spring. Tomorrow is the first of April and still a solid layer of snow remains on the ground, the temperatures hover around freezing and the precipitation continues its relentless onslaught. We're due for another five to eight inches of snow tonight, paired with a nice side of freezing rain that is sure to create the most beautiful of sparkling winter landscapes to awaken to tomorrow.

I feel my composure slipping away the longer the dreary season goes. There isn't so much as a ray of sunshine to give us hope on the island and at this point, I'm pretty damn sure I'll spend half the summer watching it all melt. All I can say is I am damn glad I don't have to be here for another winter!

In the event of another snow day tomorrow, there is plenty I need to do and plenty I probably won't even bother accomplishing. I've stocked up on books to read and there's always something on TV...just a matter of getting through the day and hoping you get to see other human life the next day at school. Only four weeks left until I go home for my mini-vacation and I cannot wait!

It has finally stopped snowing, the winds have quieted down a bit and I am still toasty warm. I think I can confidently say I have survived the blizzard! As of 5:00am, Charlottetown had reported 53cm of snow - that's over 20 inches in a little less than 24 hours. There is an enormous drift in front of my porch steps but because of the wind, the driveway is relatively clear. It's going to be a hell of an effort to get myself dug out for school tomorrow (good thing we have this second day off so I an be lazy about it...)

Did a bit of residency research yesterday as well as some relaxation and getting more and more excited for my trip home and the start of clinical rotations. I have a decent amount of stuff to do when I get home (visiting friends, spending time with family, banking, doctor's appointments, etc.) so I know it'll probably fly by but after that, the next time I come home will be for good :)

As promised, a quick update about my "spring break"! I had a busy start to the week with a lab animal club meeting with our club advisor on Monday, an animal care committee tour on Tuesday and a fish health final exam on Wednesday morning. I'm excited about the club because we got some good wet lab ideas hashed out and we're going to start the process of applying for ASLAP student chapter membership! It would be so awesome to have the club be recognized that way. The ACC did a tour of multiple animal use facilities looking for things that didn't align with the Canadian Council on Animal Care standards for animal use; these tours are done by the ACC twice per year and they submit recommendations for improving animal facilities as needed. I can't really share more about it as it's a confidential thing but it was really interesting to get to see the facilities in more depth and ask the university vet a bunch of questions. Then we had our fish health exam Wednesday morning which I felt woefully underprepared for but turned out to be OK.

After that I hit the road for Portland! I was exhausted but made it to the hotel around 4pm. Danny's flight wasn't due until later that evening so I had some Chipotle (always my first stop there), read my book and took a bubble bath. We were worried that Danny wouldn't make it in that night because DC was due for a whopper of a snowstorm but he squeaked out just in time even though his flight was delayed. Whew.

Having been to Portland numerous times already, we'd already visited a lot of the places (still open, that is - like PEI, much is closed up over the off-season) and were content to watch the Olympics and visit nearby stores like Cabellas (where we did some target practice) and the L.L Bean headquarters (where I swooned over flannel sheets). Portland got its own share of heavy snow but fortunately their plow guys are amazing and we didn't have much trouble with it. We had dinner out on Sunday night as a make-up for Valentine's Day (we aren't really big into that kind of stuff) but neither of us was very hungry with thoughts of having to part ways again the next day.

I dropped Danny off at the airport early on Monday morning and headed back. The roads weren't bad until I hit New Brunswick and when I finally made it to PEI around 2pm it was a mess (not helped by the heavy snow coming down!) I made it to my place safely and curled up to read and watch the Olympics. It's kind of bizzare to watch them in another country, though - they interview the Canadian athletes and keep track of the Canadians in the standings! Which makes total sense of course, but after all this time watching summer and winter Olympics are home...it's just strange :) I started to feel crummy last night (really tired, achey, stuffy, etc) and I'm not looking forward to studying for our renal midterm exam tomorrow morning. But there is snow in the forecast so maybe we'll get a bit more time to study. Fingers crossed!

Today is one of those days that I consider to be perfect, weather-wise: gloomy and pouring down rain. Most people don't enjoy the rain, and I admit that when I have to get up and slog through it to get to class, I don't much enjoy it either. But there's something about rain (especially in the morning/all day and on a weekend) that makes me feel cozy and productive. Double-bonus for today: it's the first week of NFL football, and there is nothing better than curling up on the couch watching football all day while the rain patters on your skylight.

I've been checking my planner daily like I said I would, and I'm actually feeling some semblence of routine starting to descend. The Lab Animal Club is starting to come together nicely: we got good survey responses on which topics would interest people most, a handful of people have already responded to the monthly contest and I'm going to meet with our club advisor on Monday morning to go over the semester and see what we can get done. Once everything starts to settle with LAC, I'll feel even less stressed about the semester as a whole.

If I look at the semester, though, it's really surgery that worries me. I've said it before (though I try not to say it to my surgery professors!): I have no interest in surgery. I recognize its importance as well as the skill and knowledge necessary, but I just don't find surgery to be particularly interesting. I guess the fact that so much of it seems to be relatively routine - spay, neuter, mass removal, fix broken things - makes me think I'd get bored with it. But the fact that I have to remember where everything is, what to cut (or what not to cut!), and doing it all in as atraumatically as possible (and finishing up with some excellent sutures) scares me. I think the best thing I can do is prepare as much as possible - know my anatomy, have my sutures down pat and fake some confidence. Essentially: control what I can to the best of my ability.

Anyway, I was not nearly as productive as I should have been yesterday, so I'm off to clean up the house a bit and probably work in some more studying (blech). Happy NFL Week 1!

I almost started this post by saying "I can't believe it's already half-way through the second week!" and then realized how many times I've mentioned my disbelief at the passage of time in my last few posts. So I deleted it to spare you all my shock and awe at a process that has been happening at the same speed since whenever it started.

It is an absolutely gorgeous day here on the island after some clouds over the weekend. I think tomorrow it's supposed to rain most of the day and cool down - hopefully the humidity decreases too because I've had to get a lighter blanket to sleep under at night and turn the fan on. It's just a matter of time before true autumn hits and it's rain all day and wind all night. I know I should go out and enjoy the day but I've got a few things on my plate that need doing and the more I crack down on myself now, the more hope I have for an organized semester (or so I hope...) Which reminds me: September's mini resolution! As I have so much to do this semester (to the detriment of my other MR ideas), I'm going to keep it simple and say I will look at my day planner EVERY DAY when I get home from class to stay on top of all that needs to be done. Shouldn't be too hard (famous last words, eh?)

On my plate today: sending out the Lab Animal Club's Lab Animal of the Month contest questions. September's questions are on the guinea pig :) It's a new thing I'm trying to keep people kind of engaged in the club between wet labs and lectures, plus it offers a prize which people always enjoy. Then I'm going to work on our assignment for next week's junior surgery lab on canine anesthesia (drugs, animal evaluations, equipment, etc). Dishes need doing and the house needs straightening (again?!, sigh) so I'll finish up with that later tonight.

To finish on a happy note, Fergus is doing quite well! I went out on Sunday and bought him a new, glass, 2.5 gallon tank to live in with a lid but no filter. The one in his 1 gallon tank was too strong and it wasn't worth paying the extra money for. So I'm going to wait until this weekend to give him time to fully de-stress for the original transplantation before moving him to his new(er), big(ger) digs. He's so happy to be out of his pet store cup, though; I came home to a big bubble nest in the corner of his tank! Not ready for a bunch of betta babies just yet, little man...

Temperatures like we've experienced this week should be what summer is. None of the unbearable heat and humidity that is par for the course for east coast summers. Instead: sunny, warm, a slight breeze coming through with a couple of thunderstormy afternoons (like we're having today) for good measure. I think I would just move into a tent in the yard at that point.

I spent this morning in the stunning (I'm running out of adjectives...) weather - slightly overcast, warm enough to break a sweat - planting my mom's tomato plants.

You have to understand something about my mother: she has all of the best intentions in everything she does. She loves to buy flowers, garden and set up sweet accommodations for the resident wildlife (which consists of birds, squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits and one portly woodchuck. But mostly squirrels.) The problem is, she is such a busy lady. She gets up before 5am every weekday, hops around to her exercise video for a while, sits in a crapload of traffic to get to and from work and isn't home until usually 7pm. At which point she's exhausted and just wants to eat dinner and go to bed. So her weekends get jammed up with stuff that she doesn't have time to do on the weekdays. She always goes to visit her mother on the weekend and almost always has a nap, and by the time she turns around the weekend is over.

Every year she buys tomato plants. Every year, she doesn't get tomatoes, mostly because of pests (cough woodchuck cough) but also because she never waters anything. Once she tried that weird hanging basket thing but squirrels just busted into the basket and made a nest. So when she told me she was going to get her tomatoes this past weekend, I decided that I would take over the tomato scene.

Danny constructed her a pen with metal stakes that hold up a coated chicken wire, about two feet high. Around the base are railroad ties sunk into the ground (pre-existing for my dad's fence) and we figure/hope/pray that it should be critter-proof. This morning I went out and churned up the dirt soil, shoved some composted cow poop manure into each of the four holes and planted those darn plants (which had already begun their death march after being neglected on the patio table for a week. Sigh.) I gave them a good soak (and it should be raining this afternoon) and came back in. Tomorrow I'm going to give them some MiracleGro stuff specially suited for tomato plants. And then I will water them consistently and hope for the best.

Keep your fingers crossed, folks. I have a feeling this won't be as easy as it seems!

Finally decided to change the template for the blog. I really love the other one but this one feels more springy which is in accordance with the absolutely gorgeous weather we're having today. Sunny, cool, slight breeze coming through...literally a perfect day.

I told myself last night that today needed to be more productive than yesterday because I did not get all that much accomplished. I don't feel quite so bad with the possibility of summer employment becoming more and more likely (but shh, we aren't going to jinx it!) but I still don't want to sit around like a slug all day doing nothing. So I went grocery shopping (food is so cheap compared to PEI - it's glorious!) and used my new "Just For U" account with Safeway. If you haven't signed up for this already, DO IT NOW. They offer you extra savings on top of the in-store sale prices and it isn't just for weird shit that nobody buys, either. I think I literally had a coupon/special offer for everything that I bought today. Woohoo! Then I went to Chipotle because it was in the same shopping center and dammit if I don't deserve Chipotle whenever I damn well please after going months on end without it. The good news is I'm stuffed and don't have the munchies like I did yesterday. Add that onto the healthy food/snacks I got at the store and I'm feeling more optimistic for my June goal.

To maintain today's level of productivity, I'm going to continue making the move to the basement. I want to get everything settled down there before I actually "move in" officially, but my goal is to be down there by this weekend. I'm also going to write some more wedding thank you notes and perhaps water my mom's garden. I also need to order my sister's birthday present and touch base with a friend I might be seeing this weekend. Plenty to keep my occupied, I'd say.

Wednesday was the first official day of spring. Spring and autumn are my two favorite seasons, mostly because they're they "in between" times - neither the extreme heat and humidity of summer nor the bitter cold bleakness of winter. It's kind of funny that I come up to the lovely Prince Edward Island for school in the off-season (although the last two months or so before winter hits are just gorgeous) and then go home to Washington, DC where the humidity makes the heat even worse. Spring and autumn usually bring rain, which is my favorite weather of all, and you can get little peaks of summer or winter every now and then which are nice.

Spring in PEI has thus far consisted of two snow days. Yes, you read that right: two snow days over the first three days of spring. I've written before about how Canada has significantly dampened my excitement over snow (although really, it's beautiful outside when its quiet and peaceful and the wind isn't blowing everything into a giant white-out), and this doesn't help. What's worse is that we were scheduled to take our toxicology midterm this morning and then midterms would be over! But no. Now I will spend the weekend feeling guilty about not studying for tox because I stayed up late and learned it well last night. Grumble.

I have plenty of cleaning I can do around the house, wedding planning to work on and a giant as-yet-untouched Steven King novel lent to me by a friend that needs reading. I guess it won't be so bad.

Today is a gorgeous spring day by PEI standards - sunny, about 40F and the snow is steadily melting. It's amazing what seeing the grass after months of white can do for one's outlook on things (nevermind the fact that it's supposed to snow tomorrow night...ugh). Anyway, this kind of weather always brings about the "spring cleaning" mindset and I think I need to get started on that. The house always goes to hell when midterms and finals roll around. It's a bit counterintuitive since a clean, uncluttered atmosphere helps me de-stress and focus but I just can't be bothered to clean religiously when there are hundred of pages to cram into my head. It will be nice to have something other than spoons to eat with, no more dog fur tumbleweeds and the fresh scent of Lysol and Febreeze instead of stale winter air.

I've decided to take the day off of school tomorrow, prolonging my weekend and hopefully increasing the number of things I accomplish on my immediate to-do list (inlcuding but not limited to cleaning the house, sending out my wedding invitations, studying for toxicology, numerous social events, etc). Don't worry, though - Fridays we only have two classes, and tomorrow our second class has been canceled. I'm not going to drive into town for just one class. I'm going to sleep in and it will be glorious.

The past two days (and tomorrow, if the forecast can be believed), PEI has gotten its first taste of spring! I was just reflecting the other day that my sense of temperature has changed since I came up here- freezing is no longer cold compared to the below-zero temperatures that I've dealt with this winter. It's supposed to rain all day tomorrow but get up to 50F. I may have to leave my jacket at home!

School is going pretty well. I received grades back on four midterms exams and I'm pretty pleased with how I did :) There are still two more midterms to be taken (theriogeniology and toxicology), though, so I'm not quite out of the clear yet.

The only thing not going well is my lower eyelid, which is painful, swollen and red. I went to a local walk-in clinic yesterday evening because the university's health center's doctor was on vacation for the week. Doctor figures its an infected gland in my eyelid, advised me to use a hot compress a few times a day to open the pore. If that fails, I have a prescription for antibiotic eye gunk that I can try. The only thing that's frustrating is how painful it is. I've tried taking Advil but it's not effective. I hope it resolves soon :(

My March resolution to be more eco-friendly is going OK. I keep forgetting to bring my extra plastic bags to the grocery store with me and I've made a few extra trips into town, using more gas that I should. But I've been doing well with keeping the heat low and only turning on the lights when there isn't much daylight left, so that's good. On the upside, I'm continuing to be successful at eating less meat. If I can just find a way to remind myself to bring the plastic bags with me to the store next week I would feel even more accomplished!