Days of Rest

Saturday night, I got together with a few of the lovely women I worked with on this last clinical. Pictured here is my former clinical instructor (CI), getting a kick out of Kari's poodle, Hugo. Kari is an OT, originally from New Mexico.
It was so good to spend some down time with them. The last time I saw them was the week before graduation, at work. So this was great. They encouraged me in my study efforts for the boards, which was helpful.

Sunday was going to be a full day off(!) for both Colin and me; so I planned out plenty of things for us to go do outside--from visiting the city flowerbed gardens to renting canoe at the marina to swimming at the lake.
And, of course, the best-laid plans of mice and men....

We both got up late yesterday. It probably had a lot to do with
1. Colin getting to bed late after coming back from a conference in Virginia
2. Me not used to getting up with my alarm these days, and even if I had awakened,
3. Colin's phone is temporarily disconnected, due to an "auto-pay" disfunction, so I couldn't have called him to wake him up.
4. It was dark outside, even at 10am, because
5. It was raining cats and dogs all night, and still drizzling most of the day.

I suppose some extra sleep isn't the worst way to spend some of your designated "day of rest." But that meant we did not make the hour-long drive to go to this parish we finally found (I just registered last week). Instead, we went locally ...then went out to breakfast ...then went to Dick's and bought me a tennis racket ...then went to collect treasures at Home Depot ...then went back to Colin's house where:

There was much rejoicing, as this plant was on sale, and it also happens to attract tree frogs, which are some of Colin's favorite creatures (besides geckos and skinks and salamanders and birds and snakes and moths and spiders and ferrets and dogs and cats and hippopotamuses...)



It's only about 5:30pm here! We're not used to it getting dark until around 8:30pm or so. It was a funny day....
Hurray! One down! And you can sort-of see the butterfly bush in front of Colin's left knee that I am going to inherit, since he says it will be happier at my place with more sun... :)

To finish off our Day of Rest, we ordered some Hawaiian pizza, drank some Colorado-brewed beer, and watched Dream Girls.

Today I'm taking my car to the Saturn dealership, since it collected water in the backseat and trunk during the rainstorm. This is not the first time it's happened in the trunk, but it IS the first time it happened in the backseat. I read online that Saturns with sunroofs tend to have this problem. I hope to get it fixed in order to prepare it for the wet climate of North Carolina. The season of humidity has only begun--and I don't need a moldy car!

Wish me luck, 'cause then it's back to the grindstone...!