badasslands

this is me in the badlands of petrified forest national park.

we drove through under a threatening thunder storm on our way to the land of enchantment.

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starting odometer: 223,391

we started driving friday night, heading to sedona for an easy start. a day of gumption fest and hiking.

spent saturday night in flagstaff with good friends. we tried to party but fell asleep at nine o'clock.

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rattlesnake love

i visited Steve and Sherry this past weekend in Camp Verde. nobody wants to see more pictures of me and Sherry standing on rocks, so i am including this amazing shot of 2 rattlesnakes mating that Sherry gave me. they wind around each other and dance before going off to do the nasty. some biologists (I'm sorry, I don't know who) captured this photo at Tuzigoot National Monument, which I previously remembered only because of the huge copper mine-tailings wasteland surrounding it. we went to Montezuma Well which is a neat little natural well filled by a mineralized, warm spring. quite a nice little spot on a late spring morning. to complete our weekend, we ate too much italian food and watched way too many (i'm not telling just how many) episodes of Lost (season 1).

lester

lindsey's sister leslie came for a visit last week.

we spanned time at our house...














we went for a swim at wet beaver creek...

we got pedicures in sedona...














and we ate some popsicles...














if you want to see all the glorious photos from lester's visit, take a gander here

it snows in the desert

one of the reasons i moved to Tucson was to get out of cold crusty snowy winters. last night there was a pretty good snow storm here in middle of the desert. i was working hard in my little pink home office last night freezing my ass off (you might say 'ya right, freezing in Tucson' but we only have space heaters in our house and when it gets cold enough to snow, they don't do a whole hell of a lot) when a good friend called me up and asked if I had looked outside recently. as I hadn't left the computer for several hours, i promptly went out on the front porch to find at least an inch of snow making the ancient cactus in our front yard very sad. it was snowing and it was sticking. my car was covered, the street was white, the poor desert plants were shivering. of course, the batteries in my camera were dead, but I did manage to get a crappy phone pic of a tiny snowperson at the park today (all the snow still hadn't melted at 10 this morning!). look at that sad little thing - it doesn't even have boobs or a pecker!

there are a bunch of much better photos of the January 2007 Tucson snow storm at flickr.

ugly glasses

i went to santa rosa to visit my family right before christmas. when I arrived, my mom pulled this picture out and said, "Look what I found!" My reaction was immediate and swift, "Mom, how could you have let me wear glasses so ugly?!" Check out those gigantic plastic circles on my face (and my fab 80s mullet).

Her reply, "It was the 80s, those were the only glasses available. Besides you should see what I had to wear when I was a teenager." In this picture my mom is about 13 and had just received a very special home perm from my grandmother. I love this picture. Those glasses, that dress, the hair, the nose (my brother, once he was able to breathe again after laughing so hard, asked, "did somebody punch you in the nose right before this picture was taken?").

some tancretos visit tucson

it's been a while since I updated this poor little blog. had a visit from my folks and aunt Peg and uncle Jim last month. I took Mom and Peg to Tohono Chul Park, where Peggy had a run-in with a jumping cholla cactus, while Dad and Jim went to watch Cal lose to the wildcats because Jim didn't wear his lucky clothes, or something like that. We all went to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum where we saw a raptor free-flight demonstration - owls and hawks and ravens and such flying around and buzzing the crowd. it was cool, but i don't have any pics - can you send me those, Dad? we ended up at Caruso's for a real eye-talian dinner that night, drank some wine and heckled some of the cute waiters and bussers (well, that was mostly Peggy).