Ah, the joys of dog ownership.

Photo Credit: Mark Castonguay

Grover

Meet Grover, a sweet, spunky 1 year old black and tan shepherd mix rescued from a hoarder in Mississippi.  The Washington Animal Rescue League took in 70 dogs that “had been confined to a 3 ½ acre property—some inside the house, some in pens outside, and some loose in the yard,” and “were covered with mange and suffering from a variety of other medical problems, including gunshot wounds.”

Grover was one of the luckier pups.  His mange wasn’t as bad as the others, and he’s obviously been somebody’s buddy in the past, since he’s trained to sit and lie down.  He’s just finished treatment for heartworm, and needs to rest for a couple more weeks, but then will be good as new.

He comes home with me on Tuesday, and I couldn’t be more excited.

Chris and I are headed to New York City tomorrow to spend the long weekend relaxing and celebrating the end of my first seminar at Norwich (Straight A’s!) and my birthday.  I am so looking forward to the break.

I spent much of my weekend on various home and garden projects.  In addition to the grow light I devised for the Rosemary and Basil in the kitchen window,  Jamie and I put up a fence around our garden plots and  I replaced the blighty tomato plants in my garden with (hopefully) healthy new ones, though it appears that late blight might end up being a big problem in our area this season.  I also installed a dimmer switch in the kitchen, converted a switched outlet in my bedroom to un-switched and visited the Washington Humane Society shelter. Exciting stuff, I tell you.

I’m not sure what the point of this post was, other than to not be working on stuff that I should be.  So I’ll leave you with some words of wisdom from my girlfriend, Rachel Maddow.  Watch it, it’s worth it.

Sadface.  I was a bit disheartened to get an e-mail from garden buddy Jamie this morning with a picture of blight on one of my tomato plants.  I’ve pulled all 3 that I bought at Home Depot, and hope to replace them tomorrow.  My first real gardening casualty…

Grad School is going well.  It’s not yet as much of a time commitment as I feared, and my grades have been good.  I’m wrapping up my first seminar on May 22nd, with a couple of weeks off before classes start up again in June.

The big news over the past couple of months is that I started a new assignment at work, returning to my roots at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.  I had a lengthy transition from my old client, but I’ve fully moved over to FDIC as of April 15th.  I have two years of experience there, so there hasn’t been too much of a learning curve.  I am enjoying it so far.

I’ve also picked up a bit of a hobby recently.  My friend Jamie and I got plots at the community gardens in Fort Dupont Park.  Here are a few pictures, courtesy of Jamie.

So far it’s been a lot of fun.  I’ve planted various kinds of tomatoes, bell peppers, spinach, collard greens, green beans, catnip, cucumbers and squash, and I’ve got plenty more land to fill.

Other than that, not much else to report.  A bit of travel coming up–New York City for Memorial Day Weekend and hopefully home to Southeastern Massachusetts for the 4th of July Weekend.

January

• Inauguration
• Chris

February

• Shmoocon
• Car stolen

March

• NYC

April

• Suuuucked.  Sucked sucked sucked.

May

• Philly
• Birthday

June

• Pride

July

• Nothing to see here, move right along…

August

• Rehoboth

September

• South-freaking-Africa

October

• Atlanta

November

• Luray
• Dominican Republic

December

• New Apartment
• Snowpocalypse!

Zoo officials were able to get the lionesses out of the pen and rescue the deer, but NBC4 is reporting that its injuries were too serious and it was put down.

Hat tip to @MikePanetta for initially tweeting this.