My more to say will be said tomorrow.

This very full day needs to come to a close. To tide you over, I'm offering this far-off egret and this close-up cow.

Scenes from this ground.

My garden gate.

My living room view.

The view from town.

Downtown.

Along my walk to downtown.

Downtown from near the grocery.

Looking down on waterbird-feeding from the edge of town.

Even the walls grow flowers here.

Seems a quintessentially English name, really.

Perhaps I will consider rebranding the Bungalow.

I am collecting sweet juxtapositions.

My local-to-be, right around the corner from the house (the river you glimpse at the far right is the same one I see from my living room).

Even windows grow books here.

Off and away.

Have I mentioned that I acquired that camera I've been coveting? I did, with semi-reckless abandon. Almost every time I take a picture now, I look at the preview on the camera's giant screen and think, "So that's what that lens can do." It even makes a difference when I'm taking pictures from the plane.

I am mere minutes away from boarding the flight that will take me to the country that will be my home for the next year. Shortly after the flight that brought me to this city departed, I was hit--hard--with a wave of utter giddiness. It wasn't the first such wave this week.

(These three gentlemen turned out all to be travelling together, as I discovered when the rest of their party arrived and all of them laughed at their friend who was so sound asleep.)

When next you hear from me, I will be on another continent. Remember our last international adventures? I have this deep-down feeling that this year's might be even greater.

Pressing questions.

I am in the process of checking in for tomorrow's international flight, and USAir wants to know:

Are you Preferred? Are you traveling with golf clubs? Do you need to check more than 2 bags?

Oh, to be Preferred and traveling with golf clubs.

Visitations expected and otherwise.

My excellent parents paid me a visit this weekend, one of my stages of being seen off to England for the year. Last night, as we sat in my excellent friends' living room talking during a rainstorm, we heard what sounded like someone's knocking on the window. We all started a bit. Then we heard a loud thud, as if something heavy had fallen somewhere. A couple of us went outside to look, but we couldn't see anything amiss.

But when my parents went to their car a few minutes later, they found the problem straightaway:

(Obviously, this is what it looked like this morning.)

So, a ten-foot-long limb through one's windshield will keep one from progressing homeward in quite the way one had imagined. Phone calls ensued. Eventually, a rental car was procured. We extracted the limb from the windshield (and off of my own car, which sustained just enough cosmetic damage to add to its considerable character--my car is no longer even a teenager now). My parents made it home safely by early evening, and the tarp-covered car still rests outside my excellent friends' house, until regular business hours begin tomorrow.

It was a hard week for (some) birds, too: the day after I shot the cardinal babies' photos, those babies were gone--almost certainly prey either to crows or to squirrels, both of whom consume baby birds with abandon.

I find myself deep-down tired tonight.