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Unusual times, remarkable places

The "Standard of Ur" from ancient Mesopotamia

The "Standard of Ur" from ancient Mesopotamia

28 September 2007

Sixty-four reasons I haven’t blogged


For some cruel and perverted reason, the packers labeled these forty-seven boxes "Shauna office"—along with another seventeen that you can’t see in this photo and several that I’ve already unpacked. Surely they can't be all work-related. But I have to open and empty each one to find out.

Yes, we’ve been here two weeks and I still haven’t unpacked my office or done any writing.

Our drive from Louisiana to California went well. I had not expected the scenery to be so beautiful and was sorry not to have my camera available to capture it for you. We saw conical mountains, rounded mountains, jagged mountains, striped mountains, bare mountains, plant-speckled mountains, boulder-strewn mountains, and even one strange pyramidal mountain that reminded me of old pictures of the temple of Ur before it was excavated.

I’ve spent my time so far mostly unpacking and resting from unpacking. Still, we’ve been able to enjoy some of the perks of living in California. Our house is in the foothills, so in addition to good views we have a constant breeze that lets us eat outside on our patio even when it’s hot and cools the house in the evening enough that we rarely need to run the air conditioner during the day. A few hummingbirds have already discovered the feeder my husband put up this past weekend, and we have at least one roadrunner that hangs out on our property. The photo at right shows the clearly-not–New Orleans view from our back patio.

Back to blogging about writing next week—if I can get my sixty-four excuses unpacked.