Ugh! Arizona…WHAT a dump!!!
It’s 95 degrees in the deep shade of the back porch, under overcast skies. Wunderground predicts we’ll hit a crisp 100 degrees today, with 15% chance of precipitation. The skies are solidly gray, so…Funny’s Weather Service predicts one helluva lot better chance of rain than 15%.
I hate this place. (In case you hadn’t noticed…)
WhatEVER possessed my father to drag us to the middle of the baking Arizona desert after he retired?
Oh, yeah. I know: Cheap!
Compared to California, where we’d been living for the six years after we got back from Saudi Arabia, this place was a bargain on steroids.
* Housing: cheap
* Utilities: cheap
* Gasoline: cheap
* Doctors’ fees: cheap
On and on and on….
The fact that he cut off my opportunity to pursue a Ph.D. from Cal Berkeley? Meh! Who cares? She’s just a girl. Why does she need a Ph.D. to cook on a stove and wash dishes in the kitchen sink?
Yeah, I did eventually finish the doctorate…from Arizona State University.
And yeah: it most certainly DOES matter where you got your advanced degree!
Except for the ego gratification, I might as well not have bothered.
No, a guy who never finished high school could not be expected to understand why his kid would want a Ph.D. and what advantages it would present to her. Still…how pig-headed can you get?
So, yeah…I hate Arizona. Wish I’d never been dragged here. Wish I’d had the initiative and the ambition to get myself out of here while I was an undergraduate, or, forgodsake, at least for graduate school.
But…by the time I hit the Ph.D. program, I was married to a well established lawyer here in Phoenix. He wasn’t going anywhere (nor should he have!), and neither was I. So…Okay: Ph.D. from Arizona State. Whoop. De. Doo.
What a place!