Quail!

We’re enjoying the warm weather and the nature, here in the San Francisco Bay Area. We hear owls at night (D. thinks he might wander about to see if he can locate their nest), doves at odd times throughout the day, crickets at night, and California quail – or a partridge to you folk in Glesga. Isn’t it GORGEOUS? They’re such sociable wee birds, and it was happily sitting in the tree, trying to find a date for the night (afternoon? hour?) and politely stopped trolling briefly to pose for a picture. You can watch video of them and listen to their song here.

It’s been incredibly sunny this week (to our dark-adapted eyes), and has been in the 80’s edging towards the 90’s (26°C to 32°C). Right now it’s past 8 in the evening and is 73°F / 23°C. We know if we were in the UK we’d be just a tiny bit envious of these temps… sorry, guys. Come visit us in PR, all right?

*yawn* We’re still really not over being jet-lagged, which is a shock to us: in the past we’ve managed without jet-lag quite well. This time, though, even though we fought off the dehydration of flying, we haven’t yet recovered from the several days of Icelandic sunshine which didn’t let us rest adequately. It’s a little annoying, but we’re early to bed and early to rise at this point. T. hasn’t succumbed to an afternoon nap yet, but she has been talked into reading whilst lying down in bed, which to her is near enough to napping to be scandalous. Truly, our bodies were put through the wringer this past winter, and we’ve just been pushing forward, full steam ahead… and it seems that we’ve hit a wall. That’s what vacation does for you, sometimes. Grabs you in an undertow of sleep, and doesn’t let you up ’til you’re fully rested. When we’re feeling indolent and guilty we remind ourselves – we need the sleep.

We’ve begun the house hunting, and are constantly amazed at just how inexpensive things are in Puerto Rico. We haven’t settled on anything yet, but have put out several inquiries and are hopeful that something will turn up in very short order.

The majority of our possessions are still in transit somewhere: they’ve made it out of the UK and are to be received by a US company at some point (we don’t know when). We’re hopeful that we’ll get an estimate as to their delivery time soon, so that we can book our flights and head off. The alternative is to just take off without knowing when our things will arrive, and live from these same 4 suitcases until they show up. You can imagine how thrilled we aren’t at the prospect, but it may turn out to be what we have to do…

T.’s hives are slowly but surely fading, but we’re keeping her activities low-key (limiting sun, face creams, etc.) in hopes not to encourage them to flare up again – they’re apparently systemic/stress-related! After The Great Watermelon-Avocado Gorge of 2012, we’ve slowed down on our fruit and vegetable consumption just a tiny bit – having fruit for one meal per day, and salad for another for three days running, is possibly just a tiny bit extreme – not to mention a little surprising to our intestinal tracts. Also: it’s not quite watermelon season yet, and we’re really wanting to wait for the good ones to arrive, as we’ve eaten several “meh” ones. We know the drill: food in SEASON. We’ll have to wait, but it’s so wonderful to have an inexpensive variety of fruit and veg at all!

As always, we’ll keep you all updated as to what we’re up to. At the moment, though, we’re not up to anything particularly exciting: we’re both working our regular schedules in between having visitors drop by, getting the laundry done, and marveling at the warm weather.

-D & T