I'm a long time traveling away from home

It's been a difficult 6 months. New place, new job, new friends (and old friends who have trouble with time zone math). New expectations. Apparently when I accepted my residency I was supposed to magically acquire a boatload of knowledge. This did not happen for me, so I am currently struggling through giant textbooks with bible thin pages and feeling like I'm running to stand still.

As always though, I am still finding time to read novels. "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" by David Wroblewski and "the Magicians" by Lev Grossman were both particularly good. Warning: "the Magicians" was quite gritty. Don't believe the review that compares it to Harry Potter- it's way more "Catcher in the Rye".

It's also been a particularly hard time for the family. It's strange calling it "family" when it's just the two of us. I try to put things into perspective and remember all I'm thankful for (dogs, Adam, Ellen for weeding the garden and helping me clean when that seemed so very important to me for some reason, everyone who came to the memorial service, sunsets on the sacramento river delta, foals). And I know when I see my dad again, it will be in a place like this:

which is far, far better than a wheel chair. But it's hard to stay in perspective all the time.