so ariz

joe and i took advantage of a three-day weekend to head over to arizona to do some exploring. after a work party friday night we left early saturday morning for tucson. upon arrival we found out about a stupid gem & mineral convention going on in town basically clogging the whole city up, most notably the hotels & hostel, so much that, to our disdain, every place was both booked and double priced, leading to an extensive, multi-hour search for the lone available room in the city.

we found it, after combing the city for way-y-y too long, calling and stopping by any place we saw. our mistake was to stop at the unbearable flamingo suites, this was perhaps at hour four in our search and joe agreed to the room without looking at it first, apparently a terrible move but in our haste we didn't anticipate the disgustingness inside. and oh god was that place a dump. it smelled like ass. we spent about five minutes inside and realized that it was uninhabitable, even in our state, it was absolutely shady and disgusting. joe is still playing phone tag with lourdes, the only person employed at the place able to make refunds, so we wait and hope it wasn't a pricey mistake. luckily the holiday inn across the street from the flamingo was kind enough to point us in the direction of the only decent hotel within the city limits with an available, overpriced room.

lesson learned to never again go somewhere without previous arrangements. too bad because a reasonably-priced, chic-seeming downtown establishment called the hotel congress seemed to be a perfect fit, but alas all booked up. same with the hostel, who by the way doubled their prices for the gaddam gem show; i thought that hostels had some code of ethics against changing prices (c'mon, hostels are supposed to cater to people with little funding, right?) so anywho. we did get to see pretty much all of tucson about 48 times but not the way we would've like at all.

no photos of that day. should've snapped one of the flamingo though!

we got up in the morning and headed due east for the desert museum, which was chosen due to its proximity to saguaro east, which was our ultimate destination. the museum/zoo/nature preserve was pretty cool, packed due to amazing weather. there were some interesting things to see there, but the hike in saguaro was much better overall, less tourists, more freedom to roam. we went on a four-mile hike up to a ridge and back. it was beautiful & weird & everything like that. those cacti are crazy...and they're everywhere, thick like a forest.


hummingbird at desert museum


joe at top of hike


typical saguaro shot

so then we hopped in the car and headed 90 miles south to bisbee, passing through tombstone, which we heard sucked so didn't stop. OK corral, wyatt earp, whatever, seemed like a tourist trap. so onward to bisbee, where we checked into a haunted bed and breakfast. then we went and got a big mexican meal in town & went to bed shortly afterwards. joe seems to think something spooky happened during the night there, and i'll admit that i was up on and off all night, probably mostly due to the screaming in the streets because of a nearby bar. but the b & b was really cute and old-timey.


B is for bisbee

bisbee is a mining town built into the mountains, with lots of old historic buildings and the like. but the copper & gold mining went bust half a century ago and so the town is in semi-disrepair, mostly inhabited by weirdos and hippies now. lots of art galleries and things, lots of empty houses or houses that should probably be condemned but are still used. mixed in with some really beautiful spaces and buildings.


bisbee decor

we spent today wandering around the town and we had a really nice breakfast at dot's diner. it was great but a half day of wandering was pretty much enough to see everything, plus the vibe there is strange, the locals didn't seem too welcoming even though tourism probably is the main source of money for the town. there seemed to be a lot of vagrant-types, a guy that lived there was talking about how the hippies retreat to the mountain tops to live in caves during the hot summer, then come down and display art or something in the winter, but i really didn't see any good art at all, just some crappy-ish stuff in some gallery windows. i think it seemed like the potential for the area was very high but something was a bit off about it all. the best part was the architecture, the labyrinth of stairways between houses and streets, and the european-scale of the town since it was built mostly before the turn of the century before cars were wide-spread. so that was neat.

as usual, lots of photos up on flickr. okay i'm going to bed!

the owls are not what they seem

It has certainly been a long time since my last blog; many things have happened in the meantime, but rather than recap everything I figure I may as well just start where I left off—infrequent & by no means all-encompassing notes on, well, pretty much nothing special. Guess I’ll just include a few photos from lost time & let them speak for themselves.


(me and rebecca hiking in cloudcroft, white sands in the far background)

I don’t know what prompted my bloglessness, & I especially understand that I have probably by now lost most all of my already small reader pool but I shall carry on as though they’re there. There is no there there.*

We had a low key weekend, probably partly due to joe’s illness, and my newfound interest in embroidery. I just started this abstract embroidery montage thingy, which led a friend to insult its lack of thing-ness and burst my bubble. Thanks Rebecca. Just kidding.

We went to see ‘there will be blood’ and that was definitely the highlight of the weekend. It’s an amazing film; a tour de force, Daniel day-lewis’s opus, blah blah. I highly recommend it & joe and I can’t get it out of our heads. I can’t quite interpret exactly what they were getting at; the lead character is repulsive & magnetic & there is no redemption in the end.

It’s been a long January and it seems like ages, not weeks, since we were back home in Minnesota.


(reece on xmas)

Now it’s back to the old routine, which is pretty much a conveyor belt of the same old thing, centered on work. There is a good energy with the kids in the program so that makes it easier. Other daily living things, cleaning, laundry, cooking, etc. take up most of my free time. That and the twin peaks series which is also amazing. We are about half way through & it’s the default activity of the moment in a good way.


(laura palmer from twin peaks)

Musically still in the animal collective/panda bear phase which has been set for a good long time now, since we saw them in el paso several months ago on a whim not having heard them much. Also dorn brought over some interesting early 80s records the other day, so have some new things to explore.

Am looking forward to a mid-march trip to Puerto Vallarta followed by a much-anticipated visit from my mom. Hoping to see anna when she comes into Albq for a few days this month. Hoping that the hurt family stops over sometime in april when they move. Trying to figure out what to do once summer comes…definitely thinking a lot about a japan/hong kong trip, mainly because we’d have places to stay so mostly just the expense of airfare would hold us back. Also that it may be really super hot during that time.


(joe & joe at chaco canyon over thanksgiving)

I’m reading ‘the places in between’ by rory stewart, about his walk across Afghanistan in 2002. It’s been a fun read, I mean a good read, because I don’t envy what he was doing & I certainly don’t think he had a ton of fun doing it. But it sheds light on a foreign world that’s largely unknown to outsiders. Some of the culture out there seems completely outrageous to the western mind. Or at least my western mind. Anyway you should read it. I needed some non-fiction in my life.


(here's a typical scene at our house. nothing too exciting.)

Work-wise things have been busy but I think going relatively well. Aside from building & improving the program I’m also taking a hard look at myself and my management style (or lack thereof). I’ve never really had to manage others much, apart from the summer camp last summer, and it’s been difficult at times. I used to just assume that people would inherently do whatever they could to improve the program (this is in the context of the non-profit world, I don’t really know much about corporations or anything since I’ve never really worked for them, but I imagine that motivation there is mostly purely economical)…well anyways I’ve found that management is more delicate than that. I’ve also found that it’s hard for me to delegate tasks because I’d rather just do them myself in most cases since then they’ll be done my way, but that has led me to near-burn out several times since this new job & I can’t do that anymore, there’s just too much else I need to focus on. It’s been a good learning experience for me.

Enough about work. I shouldn’t be thinking about it on a Sunday night anyway.

We’ve been making good tofu, joe’s been messing around with the new loop pedal & the voice recorder, I’ve been loving my new camera (although not traveling enough to really use it as much as I’d like), olive’s been a superstar. Yes that’s corny but if you have a pet you know what I mean. If you don’t have a pet then you probably just barfed in your mouth a little bit. Too bad.

Thinking about the future, as always, as most people do. Have no idea exactly what to do, but what else is new? hopefully the new future includes some blogging!

*Gertrude Stein quote, for roy, who for some odd reason knows who Gertrude Stein is, and can answer trivial pursuit questions about her.

I'll leave you with a series of jungle-themed glamour shots!