Recently I took an amazing trip to Italy with my boyfriend and his family.  We went from Venice to Florence to Rome to Ischia, spending about three to four days in each place.  This post has pictures from my favorite part of Venice, the island Burano.  The beautiful diverse colors of the buildings coupled with the many cats just lounging around easily put it to the top of my list.

I got a new camera this week and I’m completely in love with it.  I got a Canon EOS Rebel t2i; not the most recent Canon Rebel, but close enough and cheaper than the t3i.  It’s been wonderful so far, but I haven’t had too much time to play with it since I’ve been moving in, my mom’s birthday, etc.

I got a little bit of time to take pictures of one of my favorite subjects: my cat Cyrax.  She’s a natural model.  More pictures will come when I get more time to play with my amazing new camera.

current distraction: elliott smith

Two things.  One, Yeva and I just made a strawberry-apple-rhubarb pie.  So pictures of that to come shortly.  Anyway, more importantly is the second thing.  I am donating this post to Yeva’s attempt at taking a cute photo shoot of Smoky while she was on her computer.  Enjoy.

 current distraction: sick little kitten.

This weekend was pretty fun, depressing news first then fun stuff.  So Saturday was Smoky’s first vet appointment.  The doctor is an old man, probably around 60 or so, but he’s quite spunky in a cranky way.  Sort of like my grandpa where he is right and you better listen, but he’s a lot more uppity than grandpa.  Anyway, we told the vet that Smoky was a girl since that is what the shelter told us.  He picks the kitten up and goes “Hmph, those are balls.  This is a male.”  So I got all excited because I thought he was male. But now it’s all figured out.  However, Smoky is sick =(  The poor gender confused kitten has an upper respiratory infection and it’s getting pretty bad. It conveniently got much worse after we left the vet. He’s had running eyes, a stuffed nose, can hardly breathe, and now he won’t eat.

I spent the entire day at work today in a panic because I was so worked up about him.  I was so nervous that we were going to come home and he was dead or something.  But we got home and he was passed out and then started crying and whining to us when we started paying attention to him.  So we took him to the vet again and he gave us food and high calorie other stuff to force feed him so he has some energy.  He actually seems to be getting a bit better already.

At the end, after the vet explained ten times over how and when we have to feed the cat, he started asking about how we will feed the cat during the day.  Problem: we have work and kittens aren’t allowed at national laboratories.  So he asked if we had friends, we said no we’ve only been here three weeks and don’t know anyone.  Then he said that we could drop Smoky off during the day and he would watch him and feed him when need be.  It didn’t even seem like he was going to charge which was really, really nice (but we’ll see, that could always be wrong).  You can tell he really cares about the pets, and I appreciate that alot.

So the rest of the weekend: sixty degrees and sunny.  Saturday Yeva and I ran errands and then made vegetarian enchiladas from scratch for a mexican potluck that all the interns were having.  I was a bit nervous at first, since I am a complete psychopath when it comes to trying new food, especially something with cheese.  But surprisingly enough I loved them! The potluck was fun and it was nice to get to know everyone better and spend quality time together outside work.  Sunday morning I got up a bit early to go park hunting.

I found a pretty nice one in a really ritzy area.  It was pretty calm even though it was such a nice day out.  There were some runners and a family having a picnic.  It was nice to be outside and in a tshirt in January... very different from the brutal winter up north.

After this park Yeva and I went and found a park by UT that was definitely more lively.  It was right by the river and everyone brought there dogs.  It was the perfect people watching place.

It was definitely a relaxing weekend and that was much appreciated since work is quite the crazy place.

current distractions: smoky

So today was the big day and we got our baby Smoky.  She is tiny... and we’re not positive on if she is a male or female.  I think I may have spotted male genitalia; however, that could be the wound from getting her fixed.  They said she’s a female but I don’t really believe them... at first they said she was a he and then swapped it, then swapped, and here we are confusing balls and wounds.  Anyway, the possible hermaphrodite is adorable.  Please see the pictures below =)

We’re kind of obsessed.