hanging out at the beginning of spring

It’s been a ridiculously busy week at work (not bad, just intense). So much for keeping the blood pressure down. It doesn’t really help that we are hiring nad hiring and the building size is not increasing to match; it feels like there is no escape from peoplepeoplepeople everywhere. Wednesday I got a bit of a migraine on the way home (optical symptoms only) and then had to go home from knitting early when it came back later – I can’t knit if I can’t see, not when I have to deal with picking up stitches or changing colors. I did get a bit of a headache at the end of the evening, but just an ache, not what people mostly think of as migraine levels of pain.

It feels odd this year to be only a week away from my birthday and somehow not at all excited about it. I’m not sure why, though the fact that Ted leaves for a business trip the next day is probably not helping. He suggested going up to Amsterdam and staying over the night before and that day until time for his flight, but there really isn’t much I want to see there, that I haven’t been to already. There’s a canal house museum that looks interesting, but it’s probably better to wait until the gardens are in bloom.

Speaking of blooming, it is starting to feel like spring here – crocuses are up and I’ve seen some daffodils in bud. For a while I was regretting the end of winter because we never really got any winter weather after the bit we had around Christmas, but now I am anticipating daffodils – and Ted pointed out some leaves that look like tulips in the garden on our balcony. A Dutch spring is a splendid thing.

It looks like we’ll be staying here another year. I am a bit sad about that, but on the other hand it gives us another year to travel around Europe – and to save up for the year we want to spend traveling when we return. (And for more changes to happen in the US to facilitate that – facilitating changes from the time we left until now include easy access to wireless internet, the Kindle, and Obama’s healthcare bill.) And for all that work here can be taxing, it gives me more time to see results of all the things I’ve been working on. So I’m still sad, but I’ve reasons not to be. That may factor into not feeling excited about my birthday, but it isn’t depression: I’ve got a number of other things I am looking forward to, like a trip home in April where I’ll get to host my parents and in-laws for Passover, and a road-trip through Spain in May.

I’ve also been told about one nice birthday gift, either an early or a late one depending how you look at it. Last time we went to the US, I of course ordered a bunch of books from Amazon that weren’t available on the Kindle. I also ordered River House, by Sarahlee Lawrence, the story from a women who after spending a few years rnuning rivers all over the world, decided to come home and build her own house on her parents’ farm. That one is available on Kindle but I decided to order the book because I thought Ted or his parents might also like it. That was a good guess; his dad loved it. He’s very familiar with the area where it’s set, and even knew a couple of the local families mentioned in the book. He’s also a bit of a river rat, so he appreciated the author’s rafting background. He hadn’t finished the book when we left, and my MIL wanted to read it to suggest to her book club, so I left it with them. So when they saw that the author was doing a bok-signing nearby, they went. She must have been very happy to see them, because apparently the signing was not well-attended (it was 11AM on a Sunday morning) and of the people present he was the only one who had read the book. They had a long discussion which he enjoyed a lot, and now when I get back to Oregon I can finally read it – in my signed copy. 🙂