with a boulder on my shoulder and feelin kinda older

I can't believe a year has gone by. What an exhausting, exhilarating, educating, humbling, amazing year. Thanks to all my family, friends, clinicians and internmates who helped get me through it. Thank you to my patients who taught me so much. And thank you most of all to Adam, my breakfast maker, fantastic listener, and love of my life.

If that sounds like an Oscar speech, so what. Finishing an internship and moving on to a residency is probably as close as I'll get.

Thanks to my wonderful cousin Laura, Adam and I found a place to live in West Sacramento! It has a yard and fruit trees and a patio. It also has a spare bedroom, so feel free to visit. We're moving via a POD, so Adam and I will be spending some time in MD before the cross country drive. I love traveling and am very excited! We have some, but not all of our route planned. Any suggestions? I've been to Ohio and California, but no place in between.

I'm on nights this week and will try to update more, but no promises.

"20 years of schoolin and they put you on the day shift"--Bob Dylan

So I started this blog to help keep in touch with friends and family during my 4th year of vet school. For those of you who don't know, this is my LAST year of school ever ever ever. Unless I decide to do a medicine residency because I'm an idiot who really enjoys punishment...but we'll see.

Anyway, 4th year is the most anticipated year cause we actually get to touch real live animals on a daily basis, and learn how to do scary stuff to them like surgery and anesthesia and are responsible for physical exams and giving medication. A block is 3 weeks long and I spend it in a different place each block. Because I'm an equine tracker, I get to spend a lot of my time out of the hospital in Blacksburg--which is good and bad. It's awesome cause I get to go to a lot of really nice equine practices, but bad because I have 5 away blocks in a row this summer which means 15 weeks away from Adam.

My first block is at the Equine Medical Center in Leesburg, VA. The EMC is actually a part of the vet school at VT, so this is a required block. It has mixed reviews. Some people have said you're just a glorified horse holder, others have gotten to do a lot--including an enucleation! (enucleation=eyeball removal). I'm on medicine for this block, which I heart, so it should be fun. The only drawback is that I'm on call every other night, and have to work weekends. But the word "work" implies being paid, which I'm not. Oh well, it'll be a great learning experience and being on medicine in the spring=tons of foals! I promise some pictures when I start a week from Monday!!!

And what am I doing during my week vacation? Going to the Outerbanks in NC with Adam! So...back to packing!