I’ve never quite figured out what people mean when they say “Sure it’s hot, but it’s a dry heat.” I mean, your oven is a dry heat too, but you wouldn’t want to live in it!
Yes, I am comparing Arizona to living in an oven, and I’ve been here less than a day.
About 6 hours after I made my last blog post, our internet access was turned off by The Man. The last two weeks in Massachusetts were not pleasant – no internet, no television, no money, and nothing to do but pack and move and clean and pack some more, all day, every day.
Fun.
But I made it, arrived in Arizona last night after a long day of airport, plane, airport, plane, taxi ride. So far here are my thoughts.
The Good
- I have literally never seen my father so happy. We spent hours just chatting, and he excitedly showed me all of the books he’s read recently, and bought but hasn’t read, and wants to read but hasn’t yet. Not being able to walk around town like he did for decades has been a hard blow, but he can still read, and does. A LOT.
- My older sister has really thrived out here, and it’s obvious she loves living in AZ. Got her license and a car, loves her job (and they love her); it’s great to see her so happy.
- It feels like I’ve already had as much food since I’ve been here as I did the last two weeks back in MA. 😀
The Not-So-Good
- I’m a bit concerned about the amount of space in the house; plenty of people-space, but not so much for all the stuff I have coming. I really did make an effort to get rid of as much as I could before leaving, but I don’t think I was merciless enough.
- I’m also worried about how the actual unpacking is going to go once my freight pods arrive. Packing in MA was a nightmare – I’m not out of shape if the shape in question is a sphere, but otherwise, I get winded just by sitting too long. Here it’s at least 20 degrees hotter, and I’m completely on my own (my sister helped a LOT in MA).
- Maybe I just worry too much – we’ll see how it goes!
The Bad
- I already miss everyone. I miss my sister, who I got to hang out with every single day for four years; I miss my niece and nephew, who I saw when they got up in the morning until we put them to bed at night; I miss my Soldier of Fortune buddies because I haven’t been able to play in weeks; I even miss my mom more out here, because this used to be her home and she is still all over it.
- Two words – Dial. Up. I feel like I’m living in the stone age. This morning I was finally able to get back into TheMook.Net to do the usual anti-spammer cleanup, and what used to take me 10 minutes took 2 hours. No broadband means no Soldier of Fortune, no World of Warcraft, no video chat, and crippled instant messaging. Even email takes so much longer. Yuck.
- The disgusting Heat! It’s routinely over 100 degrees in Tucson, and in Phoenix (to the north of us) they just completed 21 consecutive days with temperatures over 110. The house (and pretty much every building) is air conditioned, but it’s not enough – I still need to have the ceiling fan on and sit right under it to be even close to comfortable. Hopefully I will adapt (or lose weight – I’m sure all the extra flesh baggage doesn’t help matters).
I’m still kind of out of the loop here for another few weeks (months?) until things get settled and sorted out, but I wanted to let everyone know I made it cross-country safely and am in the process of rebuilding. My email is still out of commission for a while though, best way to reach me is through TheMook.Net forums (either a public post or Private Message).
I have pictures to share as well, once it won’t take me 11 hours to upload them!
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