may i have your attention please...

i have an announcement to make.

i am going to thailand for 3 months. july, august and september. i'll be a biology teacher at a high school for gifted kids.

i'm very excited! a free trip to thailand! it will be an interesting trip no matter what, even though i have to work. i'm totally looking forward to the food and i'm hoping i'll learn some thai cooking skills. figuring out the culture will be interesting, and i can only imagine the scenery (although i'll be in bangkok for school).

i hope i'll still have email access, etc. i'm planning to still post things here, so you can learn all about thailand with me.

vindication is mine!

perhaps you recall an incident i had at the library a few months back involving a woman who apparently thought the library was the receptionist's desk at a doctor's office?

well, this week i noticed some new signs at the library. signs to the effects of "no cell phone talking in the library!" they could have been there for a couple weeks, but they were new to me (my books were not overdue yet, but it was close!)

anyway, what i thought when i saw those signs was, "HA!! take THAT, stupid receptionist woman!" and i smirked to myself.

for a laugh, or perhaps a look of confusion, visit http://icanhascheezburger.com/

cave creek

it was 101 degrees Fahrenheit here in tempe yesterday (at 9pm on sunday, its 87). please note, its still april. that is damn hot. to escape the heat, we went camping in the seven springs area of the tonto national forest. its not far from here, but its a couple thousand feet higher (=cooler!) and a different type of desert (semidesert grassland and montane scrubland) that i haven't visited before.

it was really pretty neat, more rolling hills than the rugged mountains you generally see around here. and, there was a permanent stream! water! trees, trees with real leaves!!

and there were tons of wildflowers blooming, which were nice to see.

tim's favorite part was the ants. there were ants everywhere. lots of different kinds. he spent a lot of time like this, looking at the ants.

it was a good trip, even though it started out not so well. with a 10% chance of rain, we decided not to take the rain fly for the tent. then as we're leaving, they sky looked really black and stormy. then we took the wrong exit and got a little confused where we were (why are there 2 exits for the same road, separated by 5 miles?). then there was a huge dust storm and it was extremely windy and it sprinkled a little. we stopped by the ranger station and the ranger told us there was some big weather system coming up from mexico and it was probably going to be really windy all night, and it might rain. a lot. and if it rained a lot, the campsites might flood because there was a fire a couple years ago. (umm, why did this not show up on weather.com a few hours before? but you can see some burned trees on the far hill in the top picture) but then we visited some indian ruins a few miles down the road and it cleared up and the wind died down some, and the huge black clouds weren't coming any nearer, so we all decided to stay.

then when we got to the campground, there were no open sites. so we picked a site that was maybe a site, maybe not, right on the parking lot of the trailhead. worked for us, but it was right by the road. which you would think, not so much traffic 12 miles down a gravel road in the middle of the night, but apparently people like that road at night. no more troubles after that. no wind. no rain. lots of moonlight. and, there were a bunch of toads hopping around, trying to get to the creek. fun for all!

its supposed to be 98 tomorrow, don't you want to come visit?

wild kingdom

today i saw a roadrunner kill an inca dove. it was awesome, but a little sad too because inca doves are pretty cute.

first i saw a mourning dove kind of freaking out on the ground, then i saw there was a roadrunner checking it out. the roadrunner charged and the mourning dove flew off. then the roadrunner was super quick and snatched the inca dove out of a creosote bush! just grabbed it in its beak and whacked it on the ground a bunch of times. then it started pecking at it and eating it. it saw me watching and dragged it under another creosote bush, then i couldn't see much so i left. it was pretty cool, i didn't know roadrunners ate birds but i guess they eat pretty much anything.

other than that, i'm still waiting to hear about a really interesting job i applied for. its now been 8 weeks since the application deadline. never mind they originally said they expected to hire someone in 30-45 days. every 2 or 3 weeks i've checked in with them, and they just keep telling me, "maybe another couple weeks." argh!!

i also made a scrumptious strawberry pie this weekend.

spring eye candy

some springtime cheer for those of you who are in the cold. plants (mostly cacti) from the desert botanical garden. i don't know all their names, any help from out there? (ma arntz?)


no idea on this one.


mammallaria


prickly pear


some kind of wildflower


baja fairy duster



cholla flower


a desert scene



hummingbird (probably anna's or costa's) on ocotillo blossoms



hedgehog cactus.

easter vacation

for our easter vacation, we went down to picacho peak state park. its about 70 miles south of phoenix, right off I-10. its some kind of volcano flow mixed with sedimentary rocks.... who knows. the campground was pretty nice, even though you can see it from the highway. it was super windy, i thought that our tent was going to blow away. with us in it! so it was a little hard to sleep, but otherwise nice. i was on a quest to see an elf owl, but i was again disappointed! but the bird book says they're here in the summer so maybe its too early. we did hear a great horned owl.

some views from up the peak.

some scenery
we also saw some birds, ants and lizards. and i saw the eye shine of what may have been a ringtail or a kit fox. some medium-sized, agile mammal.

we took the scenic route home today, and it really was more scenic. part of the drive was through the gila river indian reservation, which was much nicer to look at than the fields of who knows what (wheat? we couldn't tell) that shouldn't be growing there. at some point, i thought if you ignored the mountains in the distance and the sorry appearance of the soil (it does not look like what i would call "fertile"), you could pretend you were in the midwest. the road was straight and flat, and there were fields on both sides of the road.

anyway, then we stopped at the casa grande ruins national monument. there are ruins of a huge house and smaller houses and a ball court, etc., from the hohokam tribe. you actually can't even go see most of the smaller structures, it looked like they were doing some new excavation. this is the casa grande, protected by that big roof (which a sign said was built in the 1930s i think).


it is impressive they built this huge community in the middle of the dessert. the walls are basically primitive concrete made out of busted up rocks they dug out of the ground.

the two holes in the wall below are for a celestial calender sort of thing, one lines up with the setting sun on the equinox (or maybe solstice? i forgot) and the other with the moon on certain days.


the doors in the smaller buildings are smaller.


these little guys (round-tailed ground squirrels) were all over.

and, we drove through a small town called coolidge. i kid you not, there were people there selling "baby easter turtles". what turtles have to do with easter, i don't know. but i guess baby things are always good for easter since its springtime.

if i were you, i'd totally date me

sometimes i wish i could date myself because i have so many great skills. well, mostly i wish this when i bake something really tasty. then i could eat the tasty thing but just sit around while other-liz made it. but i would probably get fat.

anyway, yesterday would have been a great day to be dating me because i made chocolate croissants (en francais, pain au chocolate). oh, they are good. because tim doesn't each chocolate much, i froze half of them for my later enjoyment. that still leaves six for now! mmmmm, thinking of them makes me drool.

i've never made croissants before, and it was somewhat time consuming but not that much work overall. it was like mix, wait, roll and fold, wait, roll and fold, wait, etc. then i got a little impatient when it came to the rising, so they could be higher but i'm not complaining. here is a picture.


are you impressed? how about this one, can you see the flaky layers?


if you lived here, i'd give you one. too bad for you.

mormons and big tobacco

after my time in utah, i have decided the mormons must be in cahoots with big tobacco. they certainly aren't nice to the alcohol industry. beer must be less than 3.2% alcohol, unless you buy it at the state liquor store. in a regular bar, you can only get beer. at a restaurant with a liquor license you can get beer or wine or mixed drinks. but to go to a "bar" that serves liquor, you have to go to a private club and pay a membership fee. and even then, you can only get a single ounce of liquor at a time. no doubles. you have to finish the first drink before you order the next. it was a long 9 days in utah. drinking that beer just made my stomach hurt.

as for tobacco, you can smoke inside bars and restaurants. i don't really remember the last time i had to request the non-smoking section in a restaurant. after having dinner one night, i had to go for a hike the next day to de-smokify my pants. and at the airport, they had smoking lounges in every concourse (lucky for me, i had the time to check out all the concourses). these smoking lounges didn't even have doors, they were just rooms off the main hallway like any of the other shop. it was strange, since i knew i couldn't even get drunk if i went to the airport bar.

mormons are strange.

must read

in utah this week, theoretically solving problems with a ttx assay for the other brodie lab. we'll find out tomorrow if it works. until then, feast your eyes on this:
http://longevity.about.com/od/longevity101/tp/fun_ways.htm

ostrich non-fest

yesterday we went to the 19th annual ostrich festival in chandler, az. i had heard interesting things about the ostrich races. yet again, my low expectations were too high. whoever rated it one of the top ten "unique festivals" was on drugs.

first of all, there was only one booth that we found selling ostrich-related items: ostrich burgers. we ate some, but they weren't worth $6. kind of dry. we could buy fake tattoos and all kinds of other crap, but no ostrich eggs, no feathers, nothing. how can you have an ostrich festival without ostrich stuff???

then we went down to the race track to see the ostrich races. that was, of course, the highlight of the whole thing. but i am confused. this festival is supposed to celebrate the ostrich-farming history of the area. the only ostriches in attendance were the ones for the ostrich races. these ostriches came from KANSAS. there are no ostriches in arizona any more? or maybe just no one willing to make them run around with humans strapped on them? anyway, it was funny to watch. first there was the bareback riding. that ostrich cowboy below is from indianapolis!


then they harnessed chariots to the ostriches, which you can sort of see here.


they move surprisingly fast, so it was hard to get a picture.

after that, they had little kids chase emus and chickens around the racetrack, which was sort of amusing. then they raced camels, which was not as interesting as it sounds. they had the riders dressed up like "arabs" and called them things like "ahab" and i was a little offended. after that, we watched some pig races, where the winning pig got an oreo. oreos are good and all, but i wouldn't run around a track just to get one. then we went home because there wasn't anything else we were interested in.

the best would have been if an ostrich attacked someone.

people can be so rude

I’m writing this sitting in the Tempe Public Library. I have just had such an awful experience I can’t believe it!

I’m sitting here, minding my own business, working on this heinously long job application, and this woman two tables over keeps talking on her cell phone about medical office-related topics. She is clearly a receptionist for a doctor’s office. She’s calling about lab reports and scheduling appointments. Debbie Smith’s phone number is 602-xxx-xxxx and she needs her lab results. Tami Bowles is 48 and needs to schedule a neck and face lift. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING IN A PUBLIC LIBRARY??? I keep asking myself, thinking its sooo obnoxious. Not to mention it seems totally inappropriate to be discussing patient information over the phone in a PUBLIC LIBRARY. I keep exchanging looks with an older lady at the table between me and receptionist. What the hell. Finally I’m too pissed off, I can’t take it, this is just wrong and irresponsible on her part. So I go over there, I say real nice like, “Excuse me but can you please conduct your business elsewhere? It’s annoying and rude.” I figure I won’t start with how wrong it is to be talking about patients in public.

She says, “Oh I’m sorry, I am here all the time, no one has complained before.”

“Well, that’s weird, because its totally wrong of you to do. By the way, can I have the name of your employer?”

“I don’t think that’s appropriate for you to ask.”

“I don’t think its appropriate or considerate of you to discuss Debbie’s phone number and test results or Tami’s face lift in public.”

“It doesn’t matter what I say as long as I don’t say their social security number.”

“Well, I hope I never go to your office, its incredibly disrespectful to patients.”

I went and sat back down, she packed up and finally left. Old lady smiled at me, I felt calmer. Later old lady comes over and says, “That really took some guts on your part. And just so you know, I was here the other day and she was doing the same thing. I didn’t see her before I sat down or I would have gone somewhere else. But I’m going to tell the librarians, because its just not right of her to do that in here. She was using their electricity.” I thanked her for supporting me (although backing me up when I was talking to receptionist would have been better) and told her receptionist was also using the library’s internet.

I still think its wrong that she’s doing doctor office business in the library. In public. Isn’t that what doctor’s offices are for??? Is there not some code of conduct for this? And, librarians out there, is it ok to use a cell phone in the library, for any purpose? I would not do it, I’d go outside. It’s a library for pete’s sake, a quiet zone. And the next time I hear someone answer a cell phone like, “Hello, Dr. X’s office, how may I help you?” I will write down Dr. X’s name, look them up and let them know what their receptionist is doing.

spring is on the way!

i heard that the groundhog said its going to be an early spring. seems like it will be here in the valley! (although i don't know what the definition of "spring" is here, exactly.) but the highs this week are supposed to be 75-80F. it is so nice. i am wearing sandals today! its pretty exciting. i do feel bad for all of you back in the midwest and east, who are at risk of freezing to death. you can always come visit and thaw out.

we have to plant tomatoes and such sometime this month of we want to harvest anything before it becomes deathly hot. we're going to give it a whirl, anyway...growing tomatoes and peppers on the dinky balcony. i think its about time to put up a hummingbird feeder, too, and see how many different kinds we get.

everyone should think good thoughts for tim, who is sick, and jeremiah, who has a job interview this week. and for luna, who has not tried to run away again. ;)

Luna's Big Adventure

a brief account of the first half-hour of my morning:

wake up. notice luna is not in her normal sleeping chair in the living room. or on the couch, or on the other chair. she's not in the kitchen watching birds out the window, either. maybe she is in the other bedroom? no. in the second bathroom in the litter box? no. maybe she was in our bedroom and i just didn't notice? no. in the bathroom with tim? no. maybe i just didn't see her. nope, not under the couch or the chairs, definitely not in any obvious place. maybe she got stuck in a closet? no. hmm, where could she be? in a cabinet (she is not a known cabinet-hider, but her brother linus is)? no. certainly she'll come if i put food in her bowl. NO! oh no!

liz: tim, i can't find luna.
tim (in shower, covered in soap): what do you mean?
liz: i can't find her, she's not here. i put food in her bowl and she didn't come.
tim: hang on, i'm almost done.
[tim quickly showers and gets dressed]

i'm trying to think where she could be, then i remember that before i went to bed i opened the door for 5-10 seconds in bring in a plant so it wouldn't freeze. crap, what if luna escaped? she's not on the porch, but the welcome mat is askew, that's not good. she's not on the stairs or around the downstairs neighbors. crap, i have to go inside so tim doesn't think i'm lost too.

tim: you didn't find her?
liz: no.
tim: you looked in the cabinets? [looks just to make sure]
liz: i looked everywhere! i think she's outside. [oh but i didn't look in the dishwasher. no. fridge? no]
tim: you opened the door last night.
liz: yeah, to bring in the plant.
tim: lets look outside.

tim is dressed and clean. i'm in my pajamas and bathrobe, not clean. oh well. tim looks by the street (please don't find her dead in the street) and i look in our complex. calling her name, looking under cars. thinking what picture can i use on her "lost cat" poster and will i really recognize her if i have to look at the animal shelter? then i hear a meow, maybe. luna. meow. definitely a meow! luna. meow. sounds like she is in a tree! ooo, there she is! on some stranger's upstairs porch!

she didn't move til i came up the stairs, just meowed, but i knew it was her. she's so cute and soft, how could it not be her? and she let me pick her up and carry her home. when we were going up our stairs, she got so excited i had to put her down and she ran the rest of the way to the door, then stood up and put her paws by the doorknob like she wanted to open it herself.

then she got scolded for running away. too much stress for the morning.

Dr. Lehman, I presume

woah, 'tis been awhile

hi everyone,

i hope you had a great holiday season, whatever it is you chose to celebrate and whoever chose to celebrate with you. things here were pretty busy but nothing much happened. jeremiah was here to visit IU-Tempe last week, that was fun. always good to have visitors and reasons to do things like cook a turkey. the weather for xmas was great, and it was strangely calm in the city. got some good presents. ;) now we are preparing for a visit from devin! yay! i'm looking forward to that. not much else to report other than that i didn't get that job i interviewed for. oh well, its kind of nice not having much to do. some pictures for your enjoyment.

'tis the season

tim and i are staying here in AZ for the holidays, so we decided to get our first christmas tree. it probably won't stay alive, but we are trying! luckily, luna is not quite as into the ornaments as i thought she might be.

nothing much else is going on here right now. i was supposed to hear last week about that job i interviewed for, but so far not a peep from them. oh well, i'll let you know when i hear something.

sheer entertainment

jeremiah has a blog now
http://aka-jb.blogspot.com/

busy week

highlights from the last week:

8:30am monday--interview for job with arizona game and fish dept. it was kind of strange, more like a test than an interview. i had 50 minutes. they asked me 10 questions. they would repeat the question, but would not elaborate on it. i was done in something like 35 minutes. then i asked them a few questions and they asked me like one other non-test question and i was done. supposed to hear something late this week or next week.

9:30 am monday--get to the airport as fast as possible.

11am monday--flight to LAX for our cruise.

monday afternoon to friday morning--our cruise. it was fun but not all we had hoped for, but we learned that we are not the cruising type. the food was good, but nothing special, and i felt we could do better with most of it (i know i have made some way better desserts, for example.) but the soups were all delicious, something i don't usually make. there was always food around. i felt nauseous the first night and got these accupressure armbands and after that i felt fine. tim felt somewhat nauseous most of the week. (it took more than 48 hours for him to get his land legs back.) we were on catalina island (one of the channel islands off the coast of california) on tuesday, where we went coastal kayaking. we saw harbor seals and/or sea lions (too far away to tell for sure) and lots of orange garibaldi fish. we were in ensenada, mexico, on wednesday. we wandered around, ate the best food of the whole trip at a little restaurant (we were the only non-mexicans) and went for a horseback ride. there we got some very hot and tasty salsa that tim loved. they gave him a cup to take back with him, and he ate too much at once and was on fire for awhile. thursday (turkey day) we had a "fun day at sea". shuffleboard winner = tim. putt putt winner = liz. turkey and such for dinner. canadian tim was not a very amusing "name that tune" host. it was cloudy and windy and chilly. but it was nice to relax. that's pretty much the whole excitement of the cruise.

hope you all had a fun thanksgiving. on friday we had a thanksgiving dinner that our friends allen and shu-ching cooked. it was better turkey than on the ship.

tim and his horse, habanero (it kicked the guy behind him twice)


our cruise ship was docked right next to the queen mary, which is a haunted hotel ship i leard about from flava flav.

happy late thanksgiving

more soon.

bacon, healer of all ills

p.s.--i have an interview for a job with the arizona game and fish department. they just called today. woo-hoo!