ellarien: christmas ornament on cactus (Christmas)
Someone decided to decorate a couple of the specimens in the cactus garden on campus.

DSC03711_edited-1

It made for an interesting photo opportunity this lunchtime; I think I've found my holiday icon.


DSC03709_edited-1
DSC03707_edited-1
ellarien: Yellow cactus flower (golden)
Not exhaustive, and not in any particular order:

The Arizona climate, especially its gentle winters.
The many strange and beautiful things that grow in that climate.
Good friends and congenial colleagues, and the overlap between the categories. (I'll be sharing Thanksgiving dinner with some of them later, a tradition that goes back to the year before I moved here.)
A job I love.
My family, far away but not estranged.
Books to read, and the internet to make the reading a less solitary experience.
ellarien: Blue/purple pansy (Default)
The short version is that I spent Christmas with friends in Phoenix, and it was very nice -- a low-key, old-fashioned Christmas not all that unlike the ones of my childhood, give or take some inessential details like food and decorations. There were some memorable differences, though.

How Green was my Desert )


The Carrot-and-Carrot Approach )

Luminarias )

I came back on the shuttle this afternoon, tired and content with my suitcase full of presents, stopped off in the office to wait for the next bus, and checked my friendlist. And saw [livejournal.com profile] fivemack's post about the Indonesian earthquake, which was the first news I'd seen since Friday. Back to grim reality with a bump. I have this unreasonable feeling that news isn't supposed to happen at this time of year ...
ellarien: Blue/purple pansy (Default)
Thanksgiving dinner with colleagues included a couple of visitors from Uzbekistan, which made for interesting conversation. Now I want to know more about Ulugh Beg, but so far my trawling of Amazon hasn't turned up anything very promising.

Afterwards, I got to spend some quality time with my favourite cat, a sweet but shy former stray who apparently hasn't forgotten who fed and brushed him and eventually introduced him to his current humans.

Mission Statement

Reading, writing, plant photography, and the small details of my life, with digressions into science and computing.

Profile

Ellarien

Most Popular Tags

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags