Driving back from the airport Saturday Amanda found out that the Alpaca Festival was going on Right Now! My humoring parents let us spend a couple hours admiring the fuzzy creatures and getting some fleece for spinning.

More pictures are on my flickr stream.

Friday May 1 I had my pinning ceremony for nursing school graduation. I was thrilled that all my grandparents and most of my close family flew into Denver to visit, despite rain and plane breakdowns. These are photos from the the ceremony and party following, taken by my personal photographer, Ben Mason, who is quite excellent. You can see more of the photos on his photostream here. But these are some of my favorites. I'd love to see the photos that others took, Miranda and Mom and Dad! Send them my way when you get a chance.

We made it safely to the glittering city, albeit am hour delayed. But
the shuttle ride and checkin went smoothly. Our room is beautiful, I
promptly checked the bathroom and see it to be appropriately
sumptuous. I love nice hotel bathrooms. We have a view from the 24th
floor of the strip, including the pirate show below. Were just going
to stay in tonight, it's 2 am Colorado time. It looks luke were in
for a fabulous weekend!

It's hot here!

Hahaha ahaa, jk! Dudes, water is $4/liter here, and we haven't found
a single drinking fountain. Crazy. Mac king show was hilarious, I
think I busted my gut laughing. Could be the aches from mirandas an
workout yesterday *shakes fist at Miranda*.

We hightailed it from the bellagio fountains to CP to catch the
aniamatronic show that kind of freaked me out as a kid in the 90s.
Will love to get bens reaction to this.

Hmm, lots of time to blog when you're waiting for free shows to
start. This is the pirate show at our hotel. We get to watch it from
a primo spot because were hotel guests. The baccus show at CP was
decidedly lame. Turns out i was reminiscing about the Atlantis
animatronic show, so well have to catch that one tomorrow. Maybe
between buffet at Paris and before mystere.

I hope you enjoyed the live blogging from my trip. Pretty much summed up by the pictures. We had a fantastic time! We saw the Mac King Comedy Magic Show (hilarious!) and the Cirque du Soleil Mystere show (amazing!). Ben and I agreed that Cirque succeeds in making you feel like you are an inferior human.

All of our photos from the trip are on flickr. Ben's beautiful pictures are here and my pictures with more people in them are here. Please go there and look. Posting them here on blogger is kind of a pain.

Every time I come home from a trip I remember how happy I am to be living in Colorado!

The Walkers have their family Lorne and Laurel visiting this weekend.
Laurel is a cupcake fiend, so we are hitting all the major shops in
Denver. This is our first stop.

Don't worry, well post interior pics later. We bought one to eat
here, and two to take home to compare with the others.

The Shoppe, my favorite.

And we end at happy cakes. Whew! Now we need to eat all of them!

Here are the rest of our pictures from the hunt for Denver's best cupcakes:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelsmason/sets/72157618212804173/detail/

(crap, somehow this one didn't get sent at the proper time, and I can't fix the order of my posts)

I have heard complaints that we didn't summarize our cupcake findings. Well, we all dug into them so fast and we didn't spend too much time talking and deliberating. But I think the consensus was that Lovely Confections had the best tasting cake and frosting overall, but their style was a little conservative and their flavors a bit subtle. The Shoppe came in strong with powerful flavors and funner design, plus their shop was deemed the most fun for visiting and hanging out.

I've been pretty good with studying for NCLEX, getting in 2-4 hours everyday M-Th. I scored very high on my second practice test, so that's encouraging. I received authorization to test from DORA and Pearson, and scheduled June 10th to test. I was planning to take it a tad earlier, but that was the next time available. I won't complain about a few extra days to study.

Busy day today. Miranda and I had an awesome session in the gym this morning - we ran for 25 minutes instead of 20, learned a new machine in the weight room, and benched 55 pounds (up from 45). It's about time for me to cram molly into her new cat carrier for a vet visit - she'll love that ;-) Then I have a quick break to change out of my cat-hair covered clothes into something more professional for a job interview at 2 pm. Exciting! I'm trying not to get my hopes up about this one, but it sounds good. We shall see. At least it's nice to have an interview; jobs are scarce. I'll let you know how it goes. Then tonight I hope to make a strawberry tart from "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."

Happy Friday!

My job interview went very well. Except that it wasn't an interview. They didn't ask me any questions about myself. It was more like a first day orientation to the job. They seemed wary about making sure I wanted to work for them. It was weird, but I got the impression the job is mine if I want it. I'll be hearing from them this week and hopefully will get something more concrete.

It's been a lazy weekend and I love it. Lots of rain, I posted pictures on flickr of my thriving garden. Lots of good food, lots of hanging out with friends, playing with Zaley. I made a strawberry tart from Julia Child's book and I made ice cream from Miranda's recipe. I messed it up, not adding the milk that was in the instructions but not on the ingredient list. It still tasted good. Nate is starting to watch Neon Genesis Evangelion. It's a well regarded anime series that Brian loves. I watched the whole thing with him two summers ago, while I was doing pre-reqs at Red Rocks. I hope I get to watch a fair amount of it with them. Of course, So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD) has started, and Burn Notice will be on soon, and I'm gunning for the Stamps to watch Arrested Development with me, so I might have too much TV on my plate :-)

Tomorrow it's back to studying for NCLEX. I'll leave dishes until then too. Right now it sounds real good to get in warm pjs and listen to the rain as I fall asleep.

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The colors were glorious at Crown Hill today. I took a load of photos with Ben’s fancy schmancy camera. Look on my flickr page for more.

[question removed, since it technically violated their terms of service to share it. Too bad for all you late readers, it was funny.]

PS: I had a third interview-type thing with the dialysis company today. It looks great. It's a dream job for a new nurse. It will be hard, but I'm ready for it. I'm 90% hired. They want me, they just need to submit my candidacy to the higher-ups and get salary approval sorted out (and if they offer me anywhere near what they talked about today, it's bazzonkas for a new nurse). (Yes I made up that word).

PPS: Galactorrhea is a side effect of Haldol. I'll probably never forget that now.

PPPS: Brian has Battlestar Galactorrhea. HA!