Golden Weekend

There's a thing in residency - the elusive Golden Weekend.

For many of our rotations we work 6 days a week, sometimes longer stretches, but it's definitely not common to have both weekend days off.

Thus, it's called a Golden Weekend. Depending on your program, working both weekend days might be a Black Weekend, and a regular 1 day on, 1 day off might be Gray or Brown, but we pretty much just use the Golden terminology.

Anyway, for the first time in several weeks at least - maybe 3 months? (not including vacation) I actually had a golden weekend built into my schedule.

When I'm working a schedule that gives me regular weekends, I think I don't appreciate them as much as when they are few and far between, but this weekend I really tried to make the most of it.

There were board games, breakfast out, hiking, biking, Church, long dog walks, some TV, a ton of cooking and Game of Thrones on Sunday with an ever-expanding group of friends, which makes it so much more fun.

I almost feel as though I've had a vacation.

So, sad though it was to return to work, I think I spent the time well and that made it feel easier to go back.

Breakfast at the Grove: Oatmeal with Strawberries

John got the pancakes. Apparently they were awesome.

PBJ flatbread on our hike.

And Luna feeling like we are so lame, why are we not still walking?

It's just about time to start another day, happy (belated) Easter and I hope that you had a good weekend too.

Let's Talk About Mountains

Moving to New Mexico wasn't easy. Although I finally got to start my dream job, there's a lot that's been hard about the past 8 or so months, both professionally and because we left pretty much everyone we knew to come here. 

Knowing the year starts to feel rough, our program does an intern retreat in February. The seniors graciously cover for us and we get to go to Taos, stay in a Bed & Breakfast, do a little admin stuff but mostly ski and spend some time relaxing. 

There was some enthusiastic karaoke.

Plenty of hangout time.

Mabel Dodge Luhan, the B&B

We went skiing. The sun was really bright.

At the top. 

I totally neglected to take pictures of the meals, but there were vegan muffins every morning and bunches of great food supplied by the B&B. 

Although at times this year feels never ending, we're actually well over half done and I'm going to be a senior resident before I know it. 

And when we get to see sights like those mountains, I really appreciate living here.