"It's Happy Time"

That's what one of my best friends told me the other week. After a lengthy recounting of the list of things that have gone wrong in her life in the past year...out came this epiphany - its happy time. No more grumping. No more wallowing. No more wishing it could be different, cause its not. It is time to be happy and enjoy life cause being sad is absolutely no fun. Brilliant!

So in the spirit of "it's happy time" - I will not be posting anything about the end of pediatrics, or how much I hate Niagara Falls, or how I did not enjoy my preceptor at all....I will only be commenting on the wonderfulness that is Las Vegas. That's right folks. Vacation + Long weekend in Vegas = much happier Pamela.

This is the most amazing city I have ever had the pleasure to visit. Anything that your heart desires is within 5 minutes. I strolled along Venetian canals and watched Gondolas float by. Saw the Eiffel tower, the New York skyline, a Pyramid, a Castle, and many other feats of construction. I watched an INCREDIBLE Cirque du Soleil show, a dinner theatre with knights on horseback, and an exhibition of dissected bodies (ok, only a med student would find that cool, but holy cow was it ever fantastic!). I drank until...well...lets just go with I drank a lot. My friends would have you believe that I didn't drink nearly enough...but let's face it - I'm a light weight. I swam in beautiful pools and watched fountain shows for hours. Watched sunset over the mountains. Tried on rings at Tiffany's and drooled over shoes at Manolo Blahnik. And had the most amazing and fancy dinner that I have ever eaten in my life. It was like a dream. I actually think that Vegas is on my list of Happy Places.



And the heat....desert heat is beautiful. It is like a warm comforting heat, not an oppressive - makes you think you can't breathe - kind of heat. I enjoyed it so much in fact that I managed to get the world's stupidest looking sunburn by lying at the pool for 5 hours one day. Five hours...what could I possibly have been thinking?! I clearly forgot that I am a pasty white Canadian, that's for sure! I thought I was in the shade, but apparently shade doesn't count in the desert. In any case, I now look like my own version of the Canadian flag - stripes of red and white. Quite comical. For the rest of vacation I joked that it was my spidey sense - the radiation of heat from the burn could sense when we were about to leave an airconditioned area.

And of course the most important part of any trip is the company you keep. I am blessed to have some of the best friends in the world. They are good and bad influences (as needed and when appropriate!) and kept me laughing the whole time.

But now, with the few days of vacation I have left, I really need to finish the research proejct I was supposed to be doing while I was living the high life!

Lots of love
Pamela

Currently reading: Mere Christianity (having already read Harry Potter and Why do Men Have Nipples while lying by the pool)
Currently listening to: Lauryn Hill - Selah

p.s. See Flickr for more photos! If I could figure out how to post a video....I'd put a great one of the Bellagio fountains. Maybe someone more technically inclined than me can help!