Life in the tropics

This morning for the first time this "fall" I put on a light jacket to take the dog for a walk. But then I came home to harvest these:

Meyer Lemons in front of Jasmine

These still have some time before they ripen:

The fig is a little out of focus, but I love the leaf.

And our approx. 7 foot x 7 foot Hibiscus is in full bloom and laced through with Plumbago.


This is a winter I could get used to...as my friends up North head inside I'm on my way out the door after a summer hiding from blistering heat. It all feels so very backwards, but right now I'm loving it.

A change is coming...

Since arriving in Texas I have been applying for jobs; many, many jobs. My criteria was that they had to be jobs I was interested in (lucky me to have the luxury to choose and to wait) and that they would challenge me. It has been a long and often depressing wait as I didn't even get interview requests for any of the full time jobs I applied for. The wait is over. I was offered a job last week helping to coordinate research in a center that investigates ethics and health policy and I accepted. The work will be intellectually stimulating, and will give me a chance to learn a lot about genetics and ethics as well as to do a wide variety of tasks, including a lot of writing, over the period of the three year grant. The fact that the information we gather will be used to make policy recommendations, and that I will be a part of making those recommendations in the third year, is especially exciting. I now have 4 weeks to get my house in order.

In the meantime I've been working helping international nurses get settled here and doing a minimal amount of sewing and knitting. Here's some proof:

I don't know if I have plans to be a better blog poster. I have been trying to do more living and less looking. I wish I was the kind of person who didn't get sucked into the whole blogosphere in an obsessive way, but I am. It gets especially bad for me when I'm down, which I have been since we returned from France, and I find that looking at the beauty (granted that little slice we're willing to put out there) and productivity of other people's lives just mires me more. Hence I try to stay away from the computer and I usually feel much better that way. Hopefully my horizons will broaden with a new job and some mental stimulation and I will be back here in the way I was meant to be.