donatello

Move new places, make new friends, no?

D and I walked out to the Lullwater Estate for lunch last week, maybe it was Wednesday. It had rained the night before, so we were searching for a dry(ish) place to sit. Suddenly, I noticed a LARGE turtle sitting under the trees just off the grass.

His shell is probably 14" long. We decided to sit down there and have lunch next to our new friend. D named him Donatello. He's a pretty shy guy, tucked his head in quickly and then all his feet when we got too close. He moved his head out to watch us for a while. But he hung out right next to us the whole time we were there.

Yesterday (Tuesday) we walked out to Lullwater Estate again. As we got near Candler Lake, close to where we sat the previous week, we spotted Donatello again! This time, he was cruising over toward the lake. I didn't know a turtle could move that fast:

(double-click the video to start, i dunno where the "play" button is!)

Today we had lunch at Lullwater again, and sure enough, we saw our buddy! He had parked himself on a rock just out in the lake a bit. He's getting shyer... We were maybe 50 yards away when he slid into the water and swam away. He's got some lungs - we saw bubbles for quite a while before he resurfaced.

If you can't see him in that picture... well, maybe it's because he's not visible. But that's the same water in which he swam. I just aimed the camera wrong.

it's really started!

Today was the third day of class. So far we have had about 19 hours of lecture, 5 hours of Anatomy Lab, and 1.25 hours of a mandatory meeting. To finish off the week, we will have 10 more hours of lab and 2 more hours of lecture. It's exhausting - it is slightly fewer hours than a full-time job, but my last job certainly didn't require sitting in a chair for most of my working hours!

My Anatomy Lab table gave me the "most improved" award since I was actually participating in the dissection today. NOT my favorite thing, I must say. It's very interesting, but I still don't like it.

Right now it's raining - there was thunder and lightning earlier. The beauty of it is that the temperature outside has dropped pretty drastically, making it quite comfortable to have the windows open. For the most part, it's been hot-hot-hot. And humid enough to keep me uncomfortable...

small scale gardening

As I've got a nice outdoor space outside my door, I've started a mini container garden. Here are my efforts so far, all with a start date of 4 June 2011:

Lettuce from seed - 7 June 2011

Lettuce from seed - 13 June 2011

Zucchini - 7 June 2011

Zucchini - 13 June 2011

Tomato - 7 June 2011

Tomato - 8 June 2011

My tomato plant has 2 visible tomatoes so far, and I believe at least one more will make an appearance tomorrow!

Tomato - 13 June 2011

Mint - 7 June 2011

Mint - 13 June 2011

The mint is from my Aunt Kathy - she dug it up from her home in Oklahoma, put it in a pot and then in a couple plastic bags, and we carried it with us!

Chrysanthemum - 13 June 2011

This chrysanthemum was here on the porch when I moved in, all dried up and dead looking. My dad chopped off nearly all the old plant and told me to water it. 9 days later - the new growth is 2" tall!

It's stayed hot and fairly humid here, although I'm told the humidity really hasn't started yet. Oh dear...

I had my first day of classes today, it was long but not bad. Thankfully, the classrooms weren't quite as cold as I expected, but the lab is FREEZING!

new home

Here is the street view of my house:

Once you walk back behind the main house, you can actually see the carriage house I now call home:

grapevine covered porch, skylights, benches...

Once inside the sliding glass doors, to the right is the living area:

continuing around the room is the desk and fireplace:

and then shelves heater, and bedroom door:

once through the bedroom door, you see this:

looking back from the bathroom:

and finally, back into the main room and to the right is the kitchen (and laundry!).

And now I'm off to bed so I can get to orientation bright and early tomorrow morning!

visiting

For those who didn't already know this, I was actually born in Atlanta. Both my parents went to grad school here, so they've got friends still here.

When we arrived, we stayed for a night with a classmate of my father's and his wife. We had a lovely dinner with them later in the week.

We also spent time with a friend from our time in Seaside. She now lives in Atlanta as well.

These visiting times were interspersed with shopping trips to get me settled in my new place - to be seen in the next post.

It has been HOT here... especially so since it has continued to snow in Tahoe and rain in the Bay Area. It's going to take a while to get used to the weather here - I'm already looking forward to the fall!!

last driving leg

On Tuesday, May 31, we drove out of Sand Springs, OK. We saw the cooling towers and plume of a nuclear reactor between Tulsa and Memphis, and then drove across the Mississippi - to those of us from the West Coast, that's a BIG river on a normal day, especially so due to the current flood conditions.

For the Californians, again - check out these Memphis, TN area gas prices!!

We passed briefly through Tennessee and Mississippi, then crossed Alabama. There was some awful tornado devastation on both sides of the highway at the edge of Birmingham, AL - here is an example of just one house out of a path about an eighth of a mile wide:

Finally, after about 13 hours on the road, we reached Atlanta!

where the wind goes sweeping down the plain...

The last part of our drive through Oklahoma included battling crazy winds that seemed intent on blowing my poor car off the road. My dad sat in the passenger seat with my camera in hand for a while, sure he'd spot a funnel cloud somewhere with the intensity of the winds.

Fortunately, we arrived safely at Aunt Kathy's place.

Aunt Kathy and David

We had their traditional Easter dinner, a smoked ham (BOY was it good!), on Memorial Day, since kitchen remodel work had prevented the usual timing.

We got to spend time with Jeff and family both before and after dinner.