Coffee heat rising

BONK! And this didn’t occur to me…WHY?

Y’know…having lived in sprawling Southwestern cities all of my adult life, this factoid never occurred to me. But…y’know what? YOU DON’T NEED A CAR TO LIVE IN A CITY LIKE PHOENIX.

Early adolescence in San Francisco, taught me that…well…yeah. You don’t need a car to live conveniently in the City, as my mother and I used to call SF. San Francisco has (or had, at the time) premier public transit. You’d never wait more than ten or fifteen minutes for a bus or train to come by.

But Phoenix, a hub of blue-collar dorkishness, is NOT like San Francisco. Not even close. Phoenix is more like Los Angeles. Or Long Beach, where I had the un-privilege of spending my high-school years. Wherever you’re goin’ in Southern California, you can’t get there from here…not without a car.

To the extent that Phoenix and L.A. have trains, you don’t wanna ride on them…not unless you enjoy being pestered by panhandlers and oversexed bums. Yeah, there are busses, but by and large they don’t run on time, they’re filthy, and they also tend to harbor folks that you prefer not get too close to you. (“Too close” being “in the same county….”)

But…

Over the past week or ten days, I’ve made two disoveries that change ALL of that:

a) You don’t need a car; AND
b) You don’t have to ride on the off-putting public transit, either.

Why?

BECAUSE OF UBER. 

Turns out that during the past few months and years, Uber has become an enormous success here.

Yeah. You can get from  Point A to Point B in a private car, hired out by its owner to Uber, for less than a taxicab costs. The cars are clean, you feel reasonably safe in them, they show up in a timely way, and the cost is within reason.

Not only that, but a guy who drives for Uber lives three houses down the street from me!  And he’s not the only Uber driver in the general vicinity.

Dayum!

This changes everything. 

****

My son got mad at me and, in consequence, he stole my car. It’s parked at his house — presumably locked inside his garage.

I do not feel like bickering with him, so I decided, in a phrase, ohhh fu*k it! Let him have the damn thing.

And that’s when I discovered that Uber is everywhere. Even three houses down the road. No kidding. One of the neighbors is driving for Uber!

I can easily get from just about any Point A to just about any Point B (or C, or D, or whatEVER), and with a cell phone, I can call Uber from anywhere. 

And y’know what? Just now the only reason I want that car back is so I can sell it to some other sucker!

Eeek! Be Scared! Be Very Scared!

‘Cause our roof’s got a hole in it, and we might drown….  

😀

No kidding. The news media’s weather reports are just hysterical. In the sense of irrationally terrified…  Hope you’re duly terrorized by this alarming News Flash!

Yeah. On Sunday — that’s tomorrow — it’s gonna…gasp! choke!RAIN.

EEEEEK! The TERROR!

IMPACT!

ALERT!

TROPICAL MOISTURE!

Horrors!!

Whatever shall we DO???

Come this time of year, we start to get summer rain- and thunderstorms. And yeah: sometimes they can be pretty dramatic, with high winds, loud blasts of thunder, and this weird WATER stuff that falls out of the sky.

Today it’s supposed to reach 104…which quite frankly is one helluva lot more dangerous to the natives than a freakin’thunderstorm. On my back porch just now — 2:42 p.m. — the temp reads 98. Fairly mild, for the middle of the afternoon. Some hazy clouds drift in the distance…they don’t much look like rain. My guess is it’ll be more like 2:42 a.m. before we see any water falling out of the sky. If we do.

Must be horribly boring to be a journalist around this place. 😀

Well, back in the Day, when I was writing for the local rags, I didn’t find the job especially boring. That may have been because I was a business journalist. The business scene here can be fairly lively…always something going on.

Today? I dunno. Doesn’t seem like much that’s very exciting is under way. Except…OH MY GAWD! OH DEAR OH DEAR!! TROPICAL MOISTURE THREATENS ALL CREATION IN THE VALLEY. BE SCARED! BE VERY SCARED!!

 

What Happens When You Move to Sun City….and when you don’t….

When you move to Sun City?  Well…yeah. Life goes on: that’s what happens.

😀

SDXB (Semi-Demi-Ex-Boyfriend, for you newcomers) moved out there, where he took up with the excellent NG (New Girlfriend), a truly nifty lady. And y’know…the truth is, for him Life Has Gone On in full, lovely glory. Talk with him and you can tell:  This is a happy  man. 

He sounds content, pretty much full of life, active…stuff is going on and he’s going on with it. NG is a neat lady: very smart, very practical, very polished.

She did bang up against one of the Hazards of Old Age: hip surgery.

Argh!!!

But she’s coping. Not just coping, but coping magnificently: back on her feet, hobbling around, soon to be bouncing around. Like SDXB, she’s moderately athletic, and it’s pretty clear that before long she’ll be back to hiking and bicycling and whatnot.

My parents dragged me to Sun City when they decided to retire to Arizona while I was still in high school. That became my last K-12 year, and so I did finish out the 11th grade in California. They contrived to get me admitted to the University of Arizona at the end of my junior year in high school — which was kind of a relief, because I was bored stupid in that California school. In Tucson, I quickly melded into the National Honor Society and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the UofA.

*** Ohhh M GEEE***

Absolutely positively THE cutest, most charming young Black fella just showed up at the door! He’s peddling window accouterments. You’ve never met a more adorable gent in your life!

😀

Seriously: One of the most ingratiating characters I’ve met in years.

And the truth is, he’s got a shot at making some sales. My house has new windows (plus I’m pretty much pitch-proof, being the old cynic that I am). But these houses were built in the early 70s, and the original windows and sliding doors were pretty much…well…junk. Single-paned, flimsy, and more spectacularly NOT weather-proofed than you can imagine. If he visits enough homeowners here, especially if he goes into the slightly older tract on the north end, he’s gonna make some sales.

So I had to wish him luck — couldn’t resist — because he was such a charmer.

😀 😀 😀

Lordie. How can you NOT love young people?

Most of them, anyway.

***

LOL! So what DOES happen when you do or don’t move to Sun City?

Well. First off, in Sun City you get moved into a cheaply built cinderblock house. Insulation? We don’t need no steenking insulation!

And the truth is, when the tract was first built out, most of the residents didn’t. Because…very few of the new natives opted to stay in Arizona over the summer.  Most of them came from the Midwest: Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota…and waypoints. They would go “home” during the summers, staying either with friends & relatives or in places that they’d kept for the purpose.

That wasn’t my parents’ style. O’course, to begin with, they had no “home”: my father was a Merchant Mariner, which translated to an endlessly peripatetic life. Except for the 10 ugly years we spent in Saudi Arabia, they really never came to light anywhere more than about two years. I was 12 when they came back to the States. Between the 7th grade and the 11th grade, we lived in four different apartments, two in San Francisco and two in Southern California.

Once they got settled in Sun City, they were…well, deep in the depths of contentment. My mother thought that place was just the best thing that ever happened. My father went back to sea for a year or two: not out of choice, but because a recession raped his retirement savings.

My mother, having succeeded in smoking herself to death, croaked over within a few years. Visceral cancer is a peculiarly ugly way to go: don’t smoke. If you already do, forgodsake QUIT IT.

She was the love of his life, no question of it. When she died, his heart was broken. He sold the sweet little house in Sun City and moved into an Old Folkerie. Probably would have been content enough if he’d left well enough alone..but…of course he couldn’t, any more than you or I could. Once he got re-settled in the old-folks’ prison, he married the redoubtable Helen: a hideous mistake. The rest of his life was spent on the cusp of utter misery.

Here in the wide-open spaces of North Central Phoenix: You get moved into a house that very well may have been built by the same developer who built out Sun City. 😀

That’s true of my shack.

The construction here is somewhat better: the house does have a little insulation, anyway. The yards have walls (no: they don’t in Sun City). About 80% to 90% of the houses have pools. And you’re within walking distance of several desirable-enough stores: a Sprouts, an Albertson’s, a Fry’s, a wine peddler, an El Rancho, a Basha’s, and on and on and on….

The truth is, my son’s having absconded with my car (he thinks he’s protecting me from myself…heeeee!) makes virtually no difference in my comfort and lifestyle. Well…no…what it does do is provide a good healthy dose of pleasant exercise: walking to those stores takes me through four very nice neighborhoods. 😀

And…yes…I’m afraid it’s true: I love it here. Despite the crime level (Sunnyslope, the district just to the north of us, is Crime Central), I don’t feel especially at risk (that’s why you have a dog, no?). The amenities are excellent. Buses and trains run up and down the main drags. If you like city life, it’s damn near a perfect place to live. Two major hospitals are within easy ambulance distance. The socioeconomics are solidly middle-class. Really: it couldn’t be better.

 

Yahoo! I’m IN!

For a few minutes there, Firefox wouldn’t let me in to Funny, correct password or no correct password.

ohhhh well… Here we are, and the system seems to be working O.K. hmmmm…. For the nonce, anyway.

Onward: A new post is in the works as we gaze upon the site….

Late Spring in the Low Desert

Lumbering toward lunchtime:

* A lovely little piece of steak sits on the grill, doused with turmeric
* A fistful of handsome asparagus also awaits it fate
* Yay! A ripe tomato!!! Sliced and ready to eat
* Pistachios to snack, on the side

My righteous son seems to have purloined all the wine, so all that remains to swill down with this feast is some coffee left over from breakfast, served over ice.

Not bad, for a person who refuses to trudge to the grocery store through the heat..

😀

What a strange, almost icky day. High, thin clouds filter the sunlight into a kind of blurry haze. Still hotter than the hubs, though. And humid.

A mockingbird maestro holds forth in the lemon tree: a fantastic symphony of tweets and trills and whistles…bird music.

Wunderground tells us to expect a low of 75 tonight, after a high today of 98. Chance of rain: 0% to 1%. Lovely…what a garden spot.

 

Strange Weather…

Looks like rain, but doesn’t feel like rain…know what I mean?  It’s a very weird-looking day out there this morning: high overcast. Is it gonna rain? I’d put 50-50 odds on the proposition. Right now, tho’, I doubt that it’ll rain soon.

So…I should get off my duff and walk down to the Sprouts or over to the Albertson’s. Or to some such. Just now, though, I’m a bit too lazy to work up that much ambition. Ruby and I have traipsed all over the neighborhood and the local park — probably a couple of miles. And despite the high clouds, it’s starting to warm up. Do I really want to trade a heat stroke for a handful of chocolate chips?

😀

Well. Possibly. Quite possibly.

My kid has made off with my car (note how tactfully I refrain from saying “stolen”…), and so shopping is restricted to stores within walking distance. Well, unless I want to brave the public transport system.

Believe me: I do not. Been there, done that, ain’t doin’ it again.

Truth to tell, Phoenix has grown into a Big City. And in such a venue, you can usually get most of what you need or want within a reasonable walk from your home. What that means, amazingly enough, is you really don’t need a car. And if you do? The place is swarming with taxicabs, Ubers, and busses. From here I can easily walk to…

* Albertson’s
* Sprouts
* Walgreen’s
* Bookman’s
* Walmart
* a computer store
* several restaurants

Plus a local shoe store, liquor store, coffee store…and on and on.

If I wanted to wait on a bus until after the cows come home, I could even get to the beloved AJ’s car-free. A guy who drives for Uber lives right across the street. He’d probably drive me down to the pricey AJ’s; from there I could get back home by bus and on foot.

The main problem with getting around on foot is that it takes A LOT longer than driving. In a vast, spread-out urb like Phoenix, there is a limit to how much time you want to kill traipsing from Point A to Point B. Same is true with the public transit system here: conveyances don’t come by very often. You can easily stand around a half-hour or forty-five minutes waiting for a bus. And it’s decidedly not safe for a woman to be standing on the street by herself here.

LOL! It ain’t San Francisco, that’s for sure!

When my parents and I lived there during the 1950s, a bus came by our high-rise apartment every 15 minutes or so. I could hop on the bus and ride to a stop within a block of my school. Down the street from the school, you’d find coffee shops, an ice-cream parlor, several decent restaurants, and a variety of nifty stores.

Here in lovely uptown Phoenix, you’ll wait as much as 45 minutes for a bus — any bus — to show up. If you’re female, you’re likely to be harassed as you stand there (and stand…and stand…and stand) on the corner. It decidedly does not feel safe. And that is why I would be willing to pay an Uber driver a fistful of dollars to take me wherever I need to go.

Then, too: it’s about to get VERY hot here. If I left the house right now — 9 a.m. — I could probably get to a nearby supermarket and/or drugstore and then reach home before the heat becomes absurd. It’s overcast today, and so the weather is only supposed to reach 99 degrees. Tomorrow, though, it’ll be 104.

And no, even an old desert rat like me ain’t about to walk across block on block on block of concrete and asphalt through 104-degree heat.

My son is willing to take me to doctor’s and dentist’s appointments…but that presents a monster time suck for him. Paying an Uber driver looks a lot more attractive than having the kid take off from his job every time he turns around. On the other hand…hmmm…he’s the one who ripped off my car.

Maybe he should be paying the Uber guy’s fees. 😀