Wonderful Things!

It has been a while since I have written anything in my blog and well past time for me to remedy the situation!

These last few months have been very hectic. “How is that any different than any other week in your life, Bill?”, you may ask. We had a 3 week visit from a good friend of ours from Goettingen, Germany (she attends Georg-August-Universität, where she studied Egyptology with Claudia), the World Cup started, I had to do interviews and completed the hiring of my staff for next year, continued working on my dissertation and found time for all of the other ‘normal’ things that occur from day to day. It may sound like I am complaining, but that is not the case. I have a wonderful life!

Lately, I have been getting a good deal of work done on my dissertation. Unfortunately, it seems that I am in a continous loop of writing revision and rewriting. The different pieces of the dissertation are currently in what can only be termed a ‘tense standoff’. They don’t currently play well together and it has been quite a struggle to get them to come together into a coherent whole. I am sure this past paragraph has been captivating! ~ I know that it is boring to most, but hey, it’s what I am doing for my PhD!

Have any of you caught the exciting discovery in the Valley of the Kings a couple of months ago? They just found another tomb in the Valley of the Kings, KV63. (The tombs in the Valley of the Kings are designated by numbers that are preceded by KV, an abbreviation of ‘King’s Valley’. Tombs in the West Bank of Thebes, across the river from Luxor, are also designated by numbers, in this case preceded by TT, an abbreviation of ‘Theban Tomb’.)

Now for important, wonderful things for those of you that read to the end of this blog entry….

We do have something exciting happening in a few months, Claudia and I are expecting a new addition to our family at the end of October! The tentative birth date is October 31st right now and we are so happy! We may be able to find out soon whether the baby is a boy or a girl at our next ultrasound appt. Since Claudia’s mom is out visiting for the next few weeks, we are really excited that she can come with us to the appt and see her grandchild on the ultrasound.

Flowers of Bliss

I have found a couple new plants to add to our small slice of paradise in the middle of the big city (our patio, and it is not just small but very small!). When Claudia and I went to Hawai’i at the beginning of last February we both just fell in love with the tropical Plumeria plant. The blossoms are more beautiful than any other flower that I have seen in my entire life! And the fragrance from these plants is heavenly!

So while we were in Hawai’i we bought a cutting from a yellow flowering plumeria and planted it as soon as we got home. Needless to say, a month or so later the cutting began to grow and produced both leaves and beautiful yellow flowers.

Fast forward to this past month. We were looking for a plant to replace a large bush that I had to get rid of due to an uncontrollable infestation of spider mites, and we happened upon a pink and yellow flowering ‘Cancun Dreams’ plumeria at the annual Aloha sale at Armstrong in West LA. Kirsten, my mother-in-law bought this beautiful plant for Claudia and me. Thanks Kirsten!

The following week I completed this year’s plumeria collection with a white flowering ‘Samoan Fluff’ plumeria that has not bloomed yet but is very healthy and that means a stronger bloom when it actually starts. It is currently showing the first indications of a flower pod. I will post pictures when I can get them on the computer.

For the last few weeks, I have been working on making our patio a flowering haven where Claudia and I can spend warm summer nights eating, drinking, reading and relaxing. In the past few weeks I have built a new trellis, flower box and corner fountain that have made the patio an even more pleasurable place to be than it was before. The flower box is planted with two star jasmine plants and one climbing vine that has small white flowers with a yellow center (I don’t remember the name right now). Kristen then planted Merigolds in the rest of the flower box to add a splash of color to it. Although I love our little patio I very often find myself wishing that I had a larger space to put in a pond and/or Japanese garden. I currently have a very large desire to do some good landscaping, which is just not possible on the concrete slab that is our patio. However, I think that I have done a fairly good job making the barren patio look at least a little bit lush.

Interestingly enough, the plumeria, much like the pineapple and coffee bean, is not native to the Islands. This beautiful, fragrant plant is actually a native of Mexico and was brought to the Islands by early non-native visitors. You can get further info in the Plumeria Entry of the Wikipedia.