I'm back online

Having finally completed our move, or nearly completed it, since there is still some stuff to collect later this summer in Virginia, I've returned to something more like my normal retired existence. I've read a couple of books, Christopher Hitchens' Why Orwell Matters, and Michael Frayn's Skios. The latter is very funny and would probably make a good movie. It would have been a good beach book, but I generally read something less appropriate at the beach, memoirs and autobiographies. The Hitchens book was also fun. He really appreciated Orwell, and I generally agree with his take on much of Orwell's writing. I have one other thought on Orwell yet to post, but that will have to wait a little while.

We're living in a very comfortable house in the hill country just north of Austin and Lake Travis. Oddly, this was exactly what we had planned. I generally don't post photos, but here's one I took with my phone camera, a glimpse of the view off the front porch. It's at sunset, but actually looking east:

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The weather has been hot, of course, but this last week we've actually had several days of significant rain. So far we've also managed to get the car registered and acquire our Texas driver's licenses. I think we registered to vote as well when we got our driver's licenses, but I'm not sure how that actually works.

In any case, we are back in Texas only an hour or so from Austin, where we lived and went to college in the first years of our marriage. We drove by our first home the other day, a little duplex that still looks exactly the same, except that the little tree then newly planted in the front yard is now quite large. It was rather disorienting in some ways driving down those streets near the University, as though forty some years might never have happened. Except they did, of course. And you can never really go home again. We all know that.