Changes

I haven't blogged in a while.  Maybe that's the beauty of blogging, you do it only when you want.  There have been so many changes this summer.  I applied for a new position at the university and got it, something that historically I only do every 12 years.  I miss seeing some of the people I worked with every single day.  Yet I am on stable money now, not at the mercy of grant funding.  The new job, well it's perfect for me.  It's going to be a rough semester, but the first time through always is.  I now coordinate the undergraduate biology labs at the university.  I'm going to love it.  The position comes with a real office with a real window and  my own phone number in a beautiful new building.   

To complicate matters, one week into the job I pulled jury duty.  Luckily I drew the new short trial format. After a 10 hour day, my duty and the trial were both done.  Whew.  

The poor dogs though.  The funky hours trying to learn the new job before the incumbent retires in two weeks has taken its toll.  Some 6am days, the super hot weather and smoke from forest fires has messed with our morning walks.  I think the dogs feel neglected and I'm all out of whack. I get my best thinking done on those walks.

The dry spring has had an unusual effect on my plum tree.  Without the dampness that fosters aphids or the late blossom killing frost, the plum tree, for the first time in its life, is having plums.  They are beautiful and bountiful.  It seems the dogs have found a new past time: eating all of the fallen plums.  It took me an entire week to figure out the massive diarrhea belonging to otherwise happy dogs.  The pits laying all over the back yard gave them away.  The little piglets ate and ate without restraint.  I spent two nights this week picking all of the plums off of the tree.  Diarrhea, gone.  

My little fur family and I are laying low until the heat breaks.  There isn't a one of us that isn't looking forward to that first chill in the air signalling fall.  Elle and Chance often sleep outside together on the cool grass guarding the veggie garden from rabbits  and listening for the sound plums make as they hit the ground.