hello arizona

Well, perhaps more aptly titled: Hello from Arizona!  But I feel more important saying hello to an entire state,  and making it my post title.  No offense.

Honestly, I was a little skeptical when I first touched down in sunny (oh God, it’s so sunny) Phoenix.  Why?  Because it was approximately 100 degrees outside.  You know how it’s really hot and muggy sometimes in Boston, because it’s so humid the dehumidfier has actually given up trying to dehumdify and instead is spewing the moisture back out?  It felt exactly like that, except I don’t think Phoenix is as humid as Boston, which tells you something about how gross and hot it is.

Coming down over Phoenix was also somewhat interesting, mainly because it reminded me a lot of Sims 2, which is ironic, since apparently Sims 3 came out today?  Or yesterday.  Anyway.  You know how they have that desert simulation where you start off with one highway and a teeny tiny neighborhood with like, one house with that one couple you totally didn’t model after yourself and Lee Adama (because it was actually yourself and Jack Shephard)?  And then you build your neighborhood, except you expand in squares because you’re not really original enough to come up with anything better, plus it seemed to be the most efficient way to go about things ever since you learned about tesselations in seventh grade?  And then everyone gets really rich because your friend is leet haxx0rs at the game so they all buy huge pools?  And meanwhile it’s still that one little highway connecting this huge square grid of identical houses each with a spot of teal-blue in its backyard to a complete and utter desert wasteland beyond the last house?  It was sort of like that.

No offense to people who live in Phoenix.  I think the pools are a necessity to life when you are brave enough to live in such extreme conditions.  Also, I’m sure your houses aren’t all the same.  They just all have roofs which look similar from like, 5,000 ft up.

(For the record, the only reason it was Jack over Lee was I hadn’t watched Battlestar Galactica at that point yet.)

All I am going to say about the ride up from Phoenix to Flagstaff was that it was bumpy.  And unnecessary.  I don’t see why an extremely turbulent airplane ride is at all necessary when a perfectly good bus can suffice.  Especially if the students working for you are not aerospace engineers who enjoy calculating airflow around the aircraft while it jerks around at 20,000 ft in the air. ????

Flagstaff, however, is beautiful. To give you an idea…

View just outside airport, hence the cars.

The airport itself was actually very small.  Here is Becky and my luggage next to the one and only baggage claim there was:

And here is another picture of the view:

This is outside my bedroom window.  I know you are all wildly jealous of me.  I am wildly jealous of myself.

And… Flagstaff!

Flagstaff again!

(You can see Becky’s and my shadows taking pictures.  How artsy!)

Mountain!  San Francisco peak, I believe?

And here is the place I am staying.  Not bad, no?

(Yeah, we just got in, and the first thing we did was take pictures.  We’re cool.)

Here is the kitchen:

And the living area!  The TV doesn’t really work.  Looks like we’ll be watching a lot of things on the computers…

The only problem is that many of the outlets are double-pronged, which means that Macs can’t charge.  Another reason why PCs are better than Macs!

All right.  Pictures done.  It’s probably time for me to get to bed, because at this point it’s about 4 am in Boston and it’s 1 am here and technically I need to be able to stay up all night tomorrow night.  I’m not quite sure what time zone I am in at this point.  I’ll probably just sleep a lot tomorrow.  And I think we’ll meet the other REU’s and students on Thursday, so it’s going to be a pretty busy week!