New Discoveries

After some thought, I've decided to lift the veil a bit on my personal information. I've been trying to be very obscure about who exactly I am, and my family, and where we live. This is to discourage serial killers and kidnappers from easily finding us. I've decided that I'm going to have a difficult time blogging without at least revealing the location to which I've moved. Here it is (drumroll...) Arizona!

I think that it would be pretty simple to deduce where we've moved from future posts, and I think that anyone who is motivated enough could go through the various family links/blogs and figure out who and where we are. I also really want to talk about the new, fun, cool, bad, frustrating things about a new state and climate.

(Note to any serial killers or kidnappers or whatever- keep this in mind. I'm 6 foot 8 and 250 pounds. I own and practice using handguns. I can also be pretty foul tempered. So step off!)

Here are the main things that really strike me about where I live.

Good things:

• It is beautiful here! Because nothing really grows unless you water, people have to plan what to plant. Even the the landscapes along roadways are carefully designed. I live in a planned community with full time landscapers and they do a great job on all the public areas.

• There are no/few mosquitoes. I can sit outside on my sweet patio in my new sweet patio rocking chair as the sun goes down without bug spray, candles, or fans. This is HUGE for me.

• The weather is wonderful! (Disclaimer, I have only lived here during March and April- I hear the July and August are horrible). The days are sunny and the skies are blue.

• There are lizards in my back yard.

• I have no grass to mow or fertilize. We can walk 100 feet to a huge park with lots of grass.
  

• My yard is beautiful. There is a gorgeous patio and the plants and landscaping are striking. I've seen several cute old ladies stop and look over my yard as they walk by.
  

• I live really close to really nice parks, walking trails, and catch-and-release fishing ponds.
  

• The schools here seem rigorous. The pace of learning and the curriculum seems more serious than where we used to live.
  

• I've been swimming a LOT. There are at least 2 big community pools that we have access to year round, and my bro-in-law has a pool that could be at a resort that we can use whenever.
  

• It has rained three or four times in the 6 weeks we've lived here. Serious amounts of water. I thought this was a desert! The air smells wonderful after the rain.
  

• We're getting a spa in the back yard. Midnight tubbing under the stars.

Bad things:

• The houses here do not have basements. I would think in a place where is routinely hits 100-115 in the summer, the houses would be entirely underground. Like the hatch on Lost. I guess they don't have a frost line to interfere with footings, so they don't need to dig, so they don't. Not having a basement cuts into my storage space significantly.
  

• It's really hard to find a gas station. I think there must be a law that keeps gas stations away from freeway off-ramps, because there are few by the freeway. The ones that I have found are also camouflaged to look less commercial and are therefore harder to spot.
  

• Everything is REALLY far away. Despite living very close to my work, I'm driving much more than I used to. Everything seems to be a half-hour away. We live on the cutting edge of development growing out from the city, so we have to drive to find businesses.
  

• I have killed two cockroaches in my garage. Big ones that look like survivors from a radioactive spill. Yuck! There are also these stupid slow crickets that infest my yard. I guess the lizards like them. I had an exterminator come out and I'm finding lots of dead creepies outside, and found the cockroaches dead, too.
  

• You need to watch out for scorpions. We haven't seen any and they are pretty rare in our area, but they could appear. I'm told the key is to keep their food supply out of your yard (hence the exterminator).
  

• The schools here seem more rigorous. I mean really! Does a 4th grader need 1 to 1.5 hours of homework a night?
  

• My kids are becoming cold wussies. They want jackets when it drops below 70 degrees.
  

I am really happy here. I do wish I wasn't so far from family, but what do you do?