Sometimes I think that sun ain't never coming out

And last week we had Sunshine's regular annual veterinary check. For the first time in a couple years we could both go in with her. They've expanded the clinic since we could last both go in to accompany her; what used to be the entrance is now a middle section of offices and such. They had us wait in the exam room, and even had us wait in the exam room after the exam was done. They said they'd have someone in to cash us out and make the follow-up appointment in, but we're pretty sure they forgot we were in there. After about fifteen, maybe twenty minutes I ventured out to ask if we should be, you know, doing something.

But for the checkup itself? That went quite well for us, and went all right for Sunshine. She got to even be a training exercise: they had a veterinary student getting some practical work in, and so got to see how to examine a basically healthy rabbit and feel how a basically healthy rabbit feels. This let us, eavesdropping, learn fascinating things about the process of veterinary medicine, little things like ways to hold the animal so it has a harder time jumping off the table. Or that many vets who don't work with rabbits much don't realize they'll do little grunting snorts to express displeasure, and so may incorrectly diagnose breathing problems.

Sunshine was willing to put up with most of this, but she did not enjoy having her abdomen squeezed, especially for the extended time that was needed for two people to do the examination. Her eyes started to bug out, to an extent that was amazing and that would be funny if it weren't a sign of her anger and distress. Her eyes were going positively hare-like.

She did need to have a blood draw, for her routine screens --- incredible as it seems, she's an elder rabbit, at least five and plausibly six years old --- and they took her in back for that. They told us she was well-behaved, which is either being kind to our feelings or they expect a lot of trouble from rabbits. They drew from her hind foot, which we'd have expected to be particularly hard.

Sunshine also got a vaccination against that new hemorrhagic virus that's going around rabbits in the southwest. It hasn't been spotted anywhere near Michigan, and it's unlikely she could be exposed, but we figure that she's better vaccinated than not. She'll need to go back in a couple weeks for the second shot, and then we hope she'll be done with major veterinary matters for a year. She does still have her routine eye appointment next month, but that's a different clinic. Here's hoping that goes well.

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More of the fursuiters in the aftermath to the parade.

The ballroom was nearly emptied as people went to the hallways or to the sidewalk outside.

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I think Dipper spotted me.

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There's folks re-congregating outside the ballroom.

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Trivia: Passover and Easter happened the same day in 1903, 1923, 1927, 1954, and 1981. They are scheduled to next coincide in 2123. Source: Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar, Duncan Steel.

Source: The Calendar: The 5000-Year Struggle to Align the Clock with the Heavens --- And What Happened to the Missing Ten Days, David Ewing Duncan.

Currently Reading: Howard the Duck: The Complete Series, Volume 1. Steve Gerber and quite a few artists. Of course there's a chapter that's a riff on Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, how did I not see that coming? Volume 2 has got to have a Jonathan Livingston Seagull bit. (I don't have Volume 2.)