Okay, so everything is new...

Wow, what a change a few days makes. First off, I sent off the draft of my FINAL chapter of my dissertation on Sunday!! Now this has been many, many, MANY years in the making. More than it should have. And I’m not done yet. But, this is a huge deal for me. It means that the great bulk, the meat, of my thesis is complete. I have revisions to write, an intro and conclusion, endnotes to finish and polish up, a bibliography to complete, but all of that qualifies as fluff to me! As you can imagine, I’m pretty happy at the moment! I plan to spend the next week working on our kitchen and other house projects that have been looming large! AND...because next Monday, on September 25th, John starts his NEW JOB!!!! So this is the best news ever, and isn’t it interesting that he and I are completing one stage of our lives and beginning another huge phase just about at the same time? Hmmmm....

So let me tell you a bit about the last four months. John left Home Depot on May 4th to make a leap into another level of his work life. He had been dissatisfied for a long time with working at Home Depot. It’s a pretty dismal place to work, and John was very underutilized (and underpaid!) there. BUT, after what we went through in 2001 with the recession (where John’s whole department was laid off and it took ten months to find the Home Depot job), there was reluctance on both our parts to rock the boat! John had to take the leap, however. His health was suffering, as well as his self esteem, and he needed to really go for what he wanted and knew he could have.

And, he did just that! The job he starts on Monday is with a really great company, Milgard, that makes high-end windows and doors. They are very progressive thinking, and really ecstatic to have John on board. We visited the company yesterday and people all through the ranks had heard of John and seemed quite excited about him. And the pay is great, very much what John should be making. Very wonderful work on my husband’s part!

Now we begin a new cycle of our lives. For me, it’s the ending of a 12-year quest to complete this dissertation. Battling illness and my own inner demons, and sometimes feelings of utter hopelessness (I ‘quit’ the dissertation twice), I definitely feel like I’ve climbed the mountain. I don’t get much of a rest at the summit, though, since I have revisions for my first two chapters and probably revisions for the third (and last) chapter. But the revisions are relatively minor and should be quite enjoyable. And then there’s the defense, looming larger and larger. Definitely a “I can’t wait to get it over with” experience, but one that I know will galvanize me even further as I begin to move forward onto a whole new career path.

What is that path, you might ask? Well, I’m not really sure yet, mostly because I’ll be navigating uncharted territory in some ways. I don’t want to stay in academics. Once I’m finished with this project and have my Ph.D., I don’t see myself teaching in that environment unless asked, i.e., unless I can teach what I want to teach. Part-time. As a guest. I do want to continue to write, and hopefully make a good living at it someday. I also am starting a new venture in my yoga practice. I’ve been a devotee of a particular form of yoga, Shadow Yoga, for over a year now, and this October I’ll be starting an intensive, three-year program of advanced study and training. At first I didn’t think I wanted to teach, but now I’m starting to feel the seed of something growing inside me that has to do with yoga and holistic healing. I have no idea what that means, or what form it might take, but it’s there and it’s definitely resonating.

I’ll have to keep you posted on that one! For now, John and I plan to enjoy some rest this week before he heads back to work and so do I! Thank you, our dear friends and family, for your generosity of heart (and sometimes of pocketbook!) in the past months and weeks. We love you!!!!

Nothing new...

Unfortunately, I have no news on jobs yet. John has had a couple of very near misses for some very good jobs, but just not quite the right fit. It’s just a matter of time, of course. In the meantime, I’ve almost completed the final chapter of my dissertation, at least the first go around! I have revisions for each chapter so far, but they are not extensive and I hope to have it all wrapped up in a month or so. Then I only have to schedule my defense and, voila!, I’ll have Ph.D. after my name!

So keep those good thoughts coming and wish us well in our respective endeavors!

Front Yard Patio

We decided to take advantage of some glorious Pacific Northwest weather and get some yard projects done. I did this patio and the planting in this front bed, a project I've been waiting to do for two years! I have before (way before!) pictures as well as after, though the before pictures don't do justice to just how crappy the bed was getting to look! Anyway, here's my masterpiece! It will look even better as I get more planted around it:

Before:

(note the little poodle at the window....)
After:


Before:

(I know, you can only just see the front bed, but it's the best I could do!)
After:


Pretty cool, huh?

Well, we may have job news soon, but nothing is certain and now we wait. In the meantime, we are fixing up our kitchen for the next week. There is lots to do, as can be seen from this picture:



We have an entire wall to replace, a wall to repair, wallpaper to remove, a floor to put in, painting, a sink area to redo....lots of work, so we are using this waiting time to get it started! I continue to hammer away at the final chapter of my thesis, which is taking longer as expected (not unusual!). But it is going well and is a much more interesting, and challenging, chapter to work on than the others. I hope to have it completed and revised in time to defend it before the end of the year. A lot will depend on other people’s schedules and there is a lot that goes into the application process once the writing stage is completed. I look forward to having that to deal with!

Anyway, I’ll post again as soon as the job front resolves itself!

Dueling Hummingbirds and other news...

For those interested in funny backyard birding antics, I’ve identified a new species of hummingbird at my feeder—a couple of female Rufous Hummingbirds. They are surely passers-by, since I know they migrate, with the males going south first, then females and juveniles following later. I suspect they are stoking up for the big journey to Mexico, lucky birds.

So today there are two of these rather assertive little birds vying for space at the feeder, neither very happy with the others presence. I’ve seen a couple of minor squabbles before, but these two mean business! Here’s a photo of what they look like:





Apparently they are quite aggressive little birds, for being among the smallest (perhaps the smallest) of their kind.

Nothing else really has changed of late. We continue to plod along our respective paths together—John continuing to hammer away at his career quest and me slogging it out with the last chapter of my thesis. I am, in fact, merely taking a small break as I write this. The temperature here has returned to normal while the east coast continues to bake. Our cool summer days are so lovely. I can’t believe it’s already August and in another month or so it will be fall! Back to work on that thesis or I’ll never get it done!!

Our Anniversary

Today, twelve years ago, John and I got married in a small, very small, wedding ceremony...

The grand event took place at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson center—what used to be the college president’s residence. Wilson’s wife, during their tenure there, had a beautiful garden planted that is preserved to this day. Very lovely, and a grand place to begin our lives together. We spent today really looking at our lives, what we are grateful for in our union, what is working, and where our challenges lie. Primarily the latter consists of making our career dreams come true and living a kind of lifestyle that right now is still a dream. Not a rich one in terms of having lots of money, but rich in terms of experience, lots of time to spend together, plenty of traveling, visiting with our dearest friends. And life work that fulfills us and matches up with our deepest values and passions.

On that note, John continues his career quest while I work feverishly (not hard in this heat!) to complete this monster of a dissertation! 279 pages and counting, though hopefully not too much more than that after clean up and revising. I hope to have my final chapter completed by the end of this month and revisions completed by the end of August.

In any case, we have spent the day on such reflections and plan to end it with a candlelit dinner at home and envisioning what is the next stage in our journey together. Very exciting indeed!

My hummingbird

I’m watching ‘my’ hummingbird right now (see earlier post for more on the hummingbird). She comes often to my feeder, which is about two and a half feet from where I sit all day. She feeds deeply, not like most hummingbirds, who feed, look around, feed a bit more, look around again. This little one just sticks in her beak through the feeder’s opening and drinks and drinks. Yum! Now she is sitting, as she has for about the past seven minutes, relaxing and resting a bit in a place she feels safe. And that has an endless food supply! She is the smallest, most delicate looking thing, with dark brown little eyes and markings that make it look like she has eye makeup on. Very lovely little eyes. I think she may be the sweetest thing on the planet. Now she drinks more nectar. And rests, looking around in her alert little manner. I’m gifted with a hummingbird friend who likes to sit for a nice long while.

I think we definitely have a connection going here. Whatever it is, I hope she never leaves for good! Hummingbirds around here tend to stick around all year. I’ve had these two little girls, this one and another more slender and tall female hummingbird (who also seems quite un-shy during her stays) visiting since last spring. I haven’t seen the male for quite a while, but occasionally he comes around. He’s more cautious and shy.

Off she goes, onto whatever it is she does the rest of the day when she isn’t keeping me company as I pound away on this keyboard! I’ll miss her, until the next time...

Heat wave!!!

Well, when we first moved to Portland, we thought about getting central air conditioning but decided against it. Who needs it, when Portland normally gets a few hot days in the summer—usually averaging in the low 90s or so—and then it’s back to a moderate summer, low humidity, pretty near perfect weather?

We do! Can we say ‘global warming.’ We have had our second wave of 100+ temps in just over a month. Today it reached 105 degrees! Unbelievable. And it’s not going to cool for another two days in any significant way. So, it’s almost 6pm and we are sitting our living room, fan going, dog panting. It’s only 87 degrees inside our house. Oh wait, it was 86 just a half hour ago. It’s going the wrong way!!! We will likely sleep in our basement tonight. It’s a lot cooler down there.

So when you come to visit us in Portland, we’ll be sure it’s not in the middle of July or August! I don’t know if this will continue every summer, but it could be a sign of things to come for sure, especially in light of the global nature of this increase in temperatures. And we’ll be sure to install air conditioning for the few, well obviously less few, times we’ll need it!

At the Park

There is nothing new to report regarding John’s job search, but it’s progressing well. He’s chomping at the bit to get back to work into something really meaningful and fun. Me, I’m writing away. I want to turn in my final chapter draft by the end of July, and hopefully have all revisions completed by the end of August, with a defense of the thesis sometime in October. I’ll see how things go, but this is the plan! In the meantime, here’s a picture of the Weinbrecht family at one of our favorite small parks. There are so many of these in Portland! This was taken Sunday evening, July 16th, a very lovely evening indeed.

Correction on hummingbird

The picture I posted below of the bird I saved is of a Ruby-Throated Hummingbird which doesn’t even live in my area! The hummingbird's we have in this area, and the one which I saved, is an Anna’s Hummingbird. Here is a picture of a male Anna’s:



And a picture of a female, which is the bird I ‘saved’:



She looked exactly like this little cutie! I get both male and female hummingbirds at my feeder, and in fact I'm pretty sure one of the most frequent is the saved one, which looked a little worse for the wear at first but seems quite healthy and eats a lot of nectar!