update, weekend, etc etc

Wow, my Monday is passing pretty quickly. Friday flew by because I kept pretty damn busy, and got a ton done. I was worried that today would drag... but its passing pretty quickly.

So my weekend... it also passed quickly, but don't they always. Saturday I got up early to meet Ro to do 10 miles! It wasn't easy, but it wasn't too hard either. I'm pleased with how it went.
Plus, at the end we found an interesting group of travel companions:
If its hard to tell (sorry, crap camera phone shot - click to make bigger)... those are 10 young duckies!! :-) They had decided to make a home in the middle of the trail, as their mother was unfortunately no where to be found. Now the bikers can get going pretty fast there, and from afar these little guys kind of looked like a pile of leaves... so we thought it would be best to urge them off the path. Well, a little whistle and some verbal urging... and I soon had a little parade of ducks following me down the path toward the water!

Such cute little guys! I tried to get them settled in the grass, then on my way home called the park services to get someone down to do something with them. Hopefully the cute things are okay.

The rest of the day was much less eventful, just a lot of relaxing... followed, unfortunately, by a horrible headache in the evening. So I was in bed at 9! Such a party animal I am. Thankfully after 11.5 hours in bed (and 10.5 hours of sleep), I felt much better. Which is great because Sunday was a busy day. We got up and got ready and headed up to my parents. I had to drop off a carry-on my brother is borrowing from me for his trip to Europe. After hanging out there for a little we headed to Lehigh for the main event:

(Picture courtesy of Daniel P. Creighton/The Mercury)
The Dalai Lama!!!

His Holiness was at Lehigh for a week of talks and lessons... including a public one on Sunday which we were lucky enough to attend. It was a fabulous talk... he really is a smart, compassionate man... and funny too!

Unfortunately you weren't allowed photography, but there are some good write-ups and pictures online:
- From Lehigh's website: the Dalai Lama's visit page and a review of the talk
- From PottsMerc
- From FoxPhilly (this one has a short video too... including some coverage of the protesters)
- From the Patriot News
- From the Morning Call (the local newspaper in the Lehigh Valley... this one has video of the whole talk!), also here is the MC's complete coverage of his Holiness's visit.

Afterwards we headed to the BrewWorks on Main Street, Bethlehem, with Trav's old college roommate Jon and his girlfriend Marissa (plus her sister and bf) who were also attending the talk. It was a lot of fun. After that it was back home, and some relaxing before bed.


In other news, I heard from Cassie about the situation with her daughter. There was a continuation of the case because while Cassie, Todd, and Amanda were all interviewed by the court... Skyeler was not yet talked to. So, they felt that they couldn't proceed without her statements, and a new court date was set (two weeks from now I believe). It's not great news (she still doesn't have her daughter with her), but not horrible either (the decision was in no way based off a belief that she is guilty, just a technicality). And luckily the courts decided that it was cruel to not let her see her daughter because of their mistake, so she will get supervised visits on the weekends until the new court date. More updates as they arise... keep sending that good karma please!


Well, back to work for me in a minute... but, since I finally figured out how to get my pictures off my camera... here are a few more I wanted to share. First off, some pictures of me laughing at how ridiculously huge some bananas were that Trav picked up one day:

Now I know I have small arms, but this thing was unnatural... not to mention a full meal on its own.

Phone's ringing...

"Hellloooo?"

(This picture always makes me think of the one scene in Miracle on 34th Street where the one character gets his wife drunk so that he can invite Santa to stay with them... and it is the funniest thing when he tries to get her to talk on the phone which she holds upside down and answers with this hilarious, drawn out "Helllooooo?" So funny.)

An old one of lady:


And one I took the other day on my walk (just a few blocks from home)... some gorgeous gorgeous hydrangeas! In this case I kind of love how it turned out a little blurry... it makes it look very ethereal, like some fairies are going to pop out! :-)

Well, that's all for today... back to work for me! Ciao!


Ps. I almost forgot to write about (though I would never forget about) my uber-excitement about Angelina having her twins! :-) Yay! Love that she ended up with a boy and a girl... making it so she now has 3 boys and 3 girls, 3 of which are adopted and 3 of which she birthed. Very nice. Here's to an easy recovery for mom and babies. And two pictures of the probably pillow-lipped duo soon!