Hey, What Happened to Saturday?

Actually, Saturday was pretty much shot as of about 4:30PM on Friday. I left work Thursday morning with one patient in the hospital and returned Friday to a madhouse. And it all went downhill from there. As if the heavy caseload weren't enough, the news services started announcing that the FDA is doing testing on pet foods from another contract producer in the big pet food recall.

As you might imagine, this ratcheted up the general hysteria and our poor receptionist was nearly in tears trying to keep up with all the phone calls from panicked people who decided that we must have some special insider knowledge. Because we manufacture the foods ourselves in our spare time, of course. One woman called at least three times because she didn't want to believe that her cat's food hasn't yet been affected by the recall. No problems with her cat, mind you, just trying to get a head start on whipping herself into a frenzy. Because it's not like we have actual sick animals to take care of or anything (FWIW, so far we've seen three cats that probably were food-related cases - no deaths yet, but certainly life-threatening illness).

Then at 2AM, animal control from a nearby town brought us 5 dogs and a cat from an abandonment case they'd discovered that evening - pet hoarders who abandoned the farm when the couple split up. The lone surviving cat appears to have survived by cannibalizing the cats who died. The dogs were scared, thirsty, hungry, and all looked like hell, but appeared to need TLC more than anything. There are many times when my job gives me reason to hate people, and this is definitely in the top 2 or 3.

Then to top it all off, a major surgical case came in right as my shift was ending and the waiting room was once again filling up and the phones once again started ringing off the hook, so I stayed on a few hours extra to keep my replacement from having a huge backlog once he got out of surgery. With a lot of caffeine and a nap at the halfway point, I finally made it home around 1PM, then to bed just before 4.

Sunny Days

The weather has been quite nice this past week, and although the dry air of the last few days has been murder on my hands and lips, it's dried up the mud nicely (just in time for rain, according to the weather forecast). I'm not the only one who's been enjoying the spring weather. Rosa loves being able to nap in the yard again.



She's not so thrilled about having her naps disturbed, though.

And although last night was a bust for knitting, I've been able to get a bit more done tonight on the second sock to the one I started way back in December as my holiday travel sock.



I'm halfway through the gusset increases, so I hope to be able to get the heel completed by the time we get home tomorrow from Boston. We're going to be making a day trip down to go to a GLBT wedding expo. It doesn't look like it's going to be a huge affair, but we wanted to see if we could get any ideas for the wedding. I'm also hoping that we'll have time to stop in at Woolcott & Co. while we're in the neighborhood.

Then Monday is my birthday, and I actually have the day off. Last year I was scheduled to work on my birthday but I got out of it by getting the flu. Not recommended, really. Scout is making me think maybe it's a 37th birthday thing, but Cate wasn't sick as a dog for hers last fall, so perhaps it's only a problem for us Arieses. Anyway, I think my parents may come down or meet us in Portland for dinner to celebrate, which should be quite nice.

I Thought 2008 Wasn't Until Next Year

There's been some debate going on in the comments at Joe's blog this week. I've really stayed out of it, largely because it's too damn early to really start adequately assessing the candidates. I have been reading Glenn Greenwald's blog on Salon, though, and today's post articulates and puts a voice quite nicely to why I've felt a real unease about Hillary's candidacy. After all, what good does it do us to perpetuate a system that doesn't really work for the people the way it should?