Intersection Logs

Saturday was the annual Sunday School excursion to the Wildlife World Zoo near Phoenix. It was a quick turnaround after the Stanford trip last week, but I'm glad I went. The weather was perfect, everyone had a good time, and I got some nice photos.

( Several pictures and a video )

Here's the full set of photos and videos on Flickr

I think I may be over the jet lag; I woke naturally at 7 this morning; there was a dream before that in which I was impossibly weak and exhausted, but in real life I feel more or less normal. Normal for the aftermath of a Phoenix run, anyway, so I don't think I'll be staying up terribly late tonight.

A storm must have just brushed by Tucson this afternoon; no rain, but when I got back around 4.30 the sky was gray and the temperature was in the 80s instead of the 100s, which made the slog across campus rather more bearable.

Wildlife spotted between the office and home, not counting mourning doves: one half-inch green beetle, with shiny legs and a duller carapace; four Gambel quail trotting along the boundary of the apartment complex; a cactus wren lighting briefly on a windowsill and flying off again. Wildlife spotted in Tolleson: several burrowing owls, a nighthawk, a distant flight of cormorants; a humming bird at the feeder.

The Palm solution to writing on the shuttle to Phoenix worked very well on Saturday, with the composition book as a lap tray, and I ended up with about 1100 words. Coming back today, I was fighting a particularly bad weekend headache, so I didn't try (though I did read through the chapter-and-a-half of stalled novel from last year), but settled for a more modest quota in the comfort of laptop and recliner, post-Ibuprofen and dinner. Ambassador is at 24,965 words, and I have some hopes of wrapping it up this week. (I know, I said the same thing three weeks and about 15K words ago.)

I also got some photos of peach blossom on Saturday, which was a beautifully sunny day; today was rather grey, but still quite mild.

Off to bed now.