3 days at the dog park, 3 days of work...

i have spent the last 3 days at the dog park. university lake. always a good place to take the dogs in between shifts. they get to interact with loads of people and dogs. it was packed there this weekend. i took these first 3 pictures with my new little canon powershot. should be a nice addition to my larger camera. always fun to just have a pocket camera around. i love the rebel, but i never like bringing out the big camera at simple social events and think it's nice to be able to just tuck a camera in your pocket for that random shot that comes along. i've missed so many pictures because there isn't space in a purse for a rebel. these little powershots also are video capable. i'll have to test that out with blossom's frisbee catching or rio's zoomies. could be fun.

so as you can see above the place was crazy with dogs and people this weekend. also skiers were out in large numbers. it got a bit chilly today. the signs said around 10. i was pretty chilled when i got home. shower....nap. we ran into several dog park regulars. this guy always has treats so rio can locate him across the park. his dog, darby, isn't in the picture but she is a labradoodle....of the austrailian lineage. he's pretty excited about that dog. there are several regulars that i've come to know here.

i never got off night schedule last week on my stretch off. wednesday i managed to get the dogs to rovers run and thursday turned out to be quite pretty and we headed to n.bivouac. did some back trails there after running into more trail friends. below blossom runs across the frozen pond out there.

this picture was just a tester shot with the canon powershot. you can see rio's nose is healing from her little bite last week. poor girl.

blossom and rio meet up with luke and emma (gill's labradoodles). she was out skiing with her friend and she said the dogs knew we were out there and they had to alter thier original course to meet up with us. the dogs played a bit and then they were off on thier ski's. i really need to get out on my ski's more. i tend to walk as it's just easier. it's not that i don't enjoy a ski...i just get lazy. it usually gets better at this time of year as the daylight stretches out and it gets easier to find yourself outside for activities.

below was in the back trails at n. bivouac. always pretty back there with the snow mounded up on the heaps of grasses out there.

might not be too easy to see in this next picture but that is gill and wendy skiing our way and the 2 doodles making ground to get to us. you meet such lovely people out in the woods. alaska is just a great place, so many friendly folk. should be a good dog walk tomorrow. have had a few folks say they plan on coming so that is always fun. i think acc took my signs down...oh well. word of mouth seems to be working still.

again...more pictures below in the back trails.

this last one i took on rovers run the other day. we had some fresh snow. just thought it looked pretty.

just finished up 3 nights of work and am on call for peds tonight. i really should just work, but i was pretty worked over by the first 3 nights. need to build up my pto time and stop being such a baby. it did give me a chance to nap, chat and finish off the book i had gotten myself sucked into. "the tenth circle" by jane johnson. turned out to be a good read i picked up at the faux book club...which is really a book exchange. good enough for me. not intellectual banter about the reads required. plans are already getting made for china poot kayaking over memorial day weekend. i need to start requesting time off for my summer fun...and start working to build up vacation time for said summer fun.

watched the net flix movie this evening. "treeless mountain". out of asia somewhere. simple theme. 2 little girls (ages like 6 and 4) are dropped off at thier aunties by thier mom who suddenly has packed them off. auntie is a little less than attentive and more attentive to her drink. when the mom drops off the girls she leaves them a piggy bank, tells them they will get coins for being good and that when the piggy bank is full, she will return. well they figure out that if you change one big coin into several smaller coins (like changing a quarter into 25 pennies) the bank fills faster. so like a kid. they wait at the bus once the piggy is full for thier mom, but she doesn't. a note comes to auntie that she still can't return and that they should be dropped now with thier grandparents.

kids that age are very literal. one of my patients this week was an adult age downs kid. a very different approach from your regular adult patients. poor kid...i printed out some info about age related care and left it there and i'm trying to get child life from peds more involved. in the adult unit, you just aren't used to having your patients crying when you poke thier finger for a blood sugar. in that way she is a fish out of water in the adult unit. often i don't really pick up on the differences to this degree. adult and peds. staffing is softer in peds and a big reason for that is the extra attention and complication of treating a childs mind over that of an adult. they just see the world differently at different stages and you really do have to adjust for it. i'm not as good as most of my co-workers in peds as i'm probably more mentally an adult icu nurse, but i see that i do adjust more than i'd thought. part of it must become innate in you when you work peds...adjusting your cares to different age levels. funny, how i didn't really notice that so much working peds, but saw it working on a "kid" in adults.

well, i think i should try and be asleep before 2 am. i really don't want to wake up at noon on my days off. movie was good though. i like a simple theme....sometimes in simplicity there is power. was a good flick for this week.

watched a show they did on that plane that landed on the hudson river last year. they interviewed the pilot and several passengers as well as some folks in the tower that day and ferry workers out on the river. it really was a miracle and must have been so terrifiying for them all. the passengers said the plane was very silent, nobody freaking, pilot got on said, "brace for impact" and the flight attendants started chanting like they did on my plane. i was convinced there was a tape they hit play on, but i spoke to a flight attendant recently and she thought that was funny that i thought that. just them doing thier job. thier chant on the hudson was a little different than the one i heard on our near miss, but similar. our plane was silent before impact as well. i still think you just get so scared you can't freak out. the next day i was a basket case i remember. flying is still not my cup of tea...i'm cool in those little planes though, just no more air buses for me.