Shearing Day & a Sad Weekend

Friday was shearing day, and I got home from work in time to video Spirit getting his hair did. In case you don't recall, Spirit has been featured in this here bloggie before. Remember this post? Anyway, he's a bit of a drama queen about getting shorn, as you'll see.



I wasn't around to see the sheepies get clipped, since they were done first thing that morning, but I did catch up with them to get their thoughts on it all. It's funny to see how much more forward Angus is than Shaun-Fergus these days, when the reverse was true before I castrated them.



Unfortunately, the weekend ended on a sad note. Mizzen, one of Paula & Wendy's maiden girls, died rather unexpectedly Sunday noon. She was bloated and colicky on Saturday but had seemed to improve. Then yesterday morning she deteriorated rapidly. We were concerned that perhaps she had suffered a fluke bowel torsion during shearing, but the post-mortem exam, I'm told, showed no such thing and no explanatory lesions.

Then tonight our friends Kit & Sue called me about their dog Alex, who we knew had terminal cancer of the liver. He was going downhill rapidly, so I headed over to their house near midnight to help him on his way. Mercifully, he passed on his own. Also mercifully, I managed not to hit any of the two porcupines, one raccoon, one opossum, and one deer who were in or alongside the road on the short drive to their house and back.

And with that, I think it's about time for bed.

What I Did on My Spring Break

Well, it wasn't actually a break, but last week I headed down to North Carolina for a three-day Public Health Leadership class, which kicks off my next graduate certificate program and which will all go toward my ultimate plan of a Master of Public Health. The course itself was phenomenal and gave me some useful insight into how I interact with others and tools to improve my communication skills. Even better, though, was that I got to visit with my sister and two youngest nieces, whom I don't see nearly often enough.

The course was over on Friday, and I stayed the weekend just to get in more visiting time. On Saturday, we drove down to Wilmington, where an aunt and a few cousins live, and went to the beach with two of the cousins (and spouse, and girlfriend, and kids). I understand that back at home there was precipitation, some of it of the frozen variety, but I'll confess that I didn't feel guilty. Not one bit.

The Time, He Fly

How in the world have two weeks gone by since my last post? It's not exactly as though nothing's happened. I had a birthday, I worked, I've been knitting some (albeit slowly). I think it's mostly that there's been a lot of same old, same old of late and not so much that's blogworthy. Unless, of course, you want to read all about the giant mountain of dirty clothes I schlepped over to the local launderette because first our dryer exploded and now David's trying to get the laundry room tiled and keeps running into snags.

It's not the first time I've been there, as we've had laundry woes before and I did take a few washed loads over last month to dry. I even took some photos on that trip which I do think are quite nice.



Today I took a couple of photos here at home that I thought would be of interest. First there's this year's garlic crop. There's one bulb from last year's harvest left, so I'll be glad when these are ready for harvest.



And here's some proof of knitting, though I didn't do anything on it today. It's my own modernized version of a ca. 1942 Red Heart pattern (4" waistband? I don't think so.) that I'm thinking to write up. I've been pacing myself, though, so that I don't put too much strain on my wrists & arms with the cables. I'm very pleased with how it's knitting up.



And I think that pretty well sums things up.