A Lovely Fall Weekend

Happy Monday - all my pictures are huge today! *sigh* Blogger has swapped over to a completely new format and apparently part of that format is that I can try to change the size of the pictures but they don't actually change. *face palm* So we move on and just have rather large pictures today... maybe forever now... Who knows?

The whole weekend was like the most perfect Autumn weekend - the skies were the perfect shade of blue and the temperature hovered around 65-70 degrees. It was absolutely divine! When I got off work on Friday I went home, watered plants in the backyard (see my supervisor watching above) and just enjoyed sitting on the deck in the perfect weather! I placed a Panera Curbside Pick Up order - which went somewhat awry but in the end, I got my soup(s) and all was mostly well.

I spent a chunk of my Friday night just being relaxed and lazy - I discovered the show The Home Edit on Netflix earlier last week and so I've been watching those episodes and marveling at the level of organizational skills these women have! I finally got around to watching Mulan on Disney+ on Friday night and I am just so very sad that it didn't get it's moment in the theater! The movie is great; the scenery and colors are so very beautiful and the story is wonderfully touching - I thoroughly enjoyed it - I just wish it could have gotten it's moment at the movies!

Watson (as you can see) was 100% not interested in watching Mulan - but that's fine, he took a really good pre-bed nap! Saturday dawned with not a cloud in the sky and my breath swirling in the air ahead of me when I took the pup out for his first walk! After coffee and breakfast I changed into work out clothes and Watson and I set off into the wilderness for just a bit, making our way along one of the trails in our neighborhood!

I spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon doing things around the house and trying to spend as much time as possible outside in the divine weather! I had my lunch outside and even did my nails out on the deck before changing and heading to the Alamo Drafthouse to see Tenet - which was a good movie but also a very confusing movie, ha-ha! I have so enjoyed being able to go to the theater again - I don't even mind wearing a mask for the duration of the movie as it seems a small price to pay to do something that harkens back to "normal" life.

After the movie I made myself dinner, watched some episodes of Criminal: United Kingdom on Netflix and even somehow convinced my dog that he wanted to sit under a blanket... a blanket fort if you will! He only stayed under it for a minute but it was long enough to snap a seriously cute picture! 

Sunday was another perfect day - in so far as the weather was concerned. The day was quite good as well! Coffee and church and lunch at Mission BBQ and then home to spend a huge chunk of the afternoon sitting out on the deck in the sunshine - seriously, the weather was absolutely perfect! Around 3:30 it was off to the Blue Ridge Wildlife Center for a little tour - which was incredibly cool!

The Blue Ridge Wildlife Center takes in animals that have been injured with the goal of rehabilitating them and returning them into the wild to live a long and happy life. Unfortunately some of the animals they receive are not able to be returned to the wild and so they live at the Center as wildlife ambassadors. The tour we attended was called the Wilderness Walk and we were able to view all the animals that are currently wildlife ambassadors, learn about what brought them to the center and how they were helped.

The tour is 100% free - you just have to go online and get tickets for a set time. However they do request you make a donation. The animals were just so cool to see - and they all had such perfect names! Starting with my first picture: Goose the Peregrine Falcon, Jefferson the Bald Eagle, Ripea the Squirrel and Nigel the Possum! Most of the larger birds kept at the Wildlife Center were hit my cars and cannot fly/hunt for food anymore and that is why they are being kept at the Center.

Some of the other animals - like Nigel the Possum and Ripea the Squirrel just have developmental delays like not being able to hunt for food or assimilate with members of their own species and so they would not survive in the wild. The tiny screech owl pictured above is named Dopey and he just had a myriad of problems that meant he'd never make it out in the big wide world - one of them being that he literally tries to eat anything he can fit in his mouth! *face palm* Briar the Red-Tailed Hawk was also hit by a car - and lost 85% of her vision.

My favorite little creature at the center was Snow - an Arctic Fox that was being kept illegally as a pet. Since exotic pets are illegal in Virginia, she was surrendered but because she'd been raised as a pet, she could not fend for herself in the wild! She was the most beautiful little creature and she was in between her Summer coat that is gray and her Winter white coat, that will come in completely by early November! As we left, we got to follow behind little Dopey as he went inside for the evening! Such a cool experience all around!

The rest of the weekend was spent grabbing some groceries, having some cereal for dinner, taking my Sunday night bubble bath and then I started watching His Dark Materials on HBO. I leave you with a snap of me, sipping coffee out of my new Halloween mug! Happy Monday everyone!