Au recherche...

Had a lovely Thanksgiving weekend in Phoenix, AZ with my grandparents. I know that sounds like a lose-lose for a long weekend, but it was surprisingly interesting and restful.
After a huge Thanksgiving dinner with extended family we spent a couple days driving around central Arizona. The Grand Canyon State has mroe to offer. The Superstition Mountains were lovely, and involved some interesting driving (ie, steeply down-hill on a twisty unpaved road). There was also time for a couple tourist traps: Goldfield Mine and Tortilla Flat.
Then we spent a day taking the scenic route to Sedona and back, through Red Rocks park with a stop in Jerome, AZ, which is an old mining town that looks like it all might slide down hill at any moment.
Sunday was more a day of rest, just touring Phoenix and preparing to get up at 5:30 am (which is 4:30 am, PST--but who's counting?).
Came back to rain and cold weather (even by East coast standards it's a bit chilly out there). At least the rain washed some of the bird poo from my car.
Gearing up for Christmas (hard to believe I'll be visiting my Mom in 3 short weeks)--I am always woefully unprepared for this season. No gifts, no money, no plans. I did put out the Charlie Brown Christmas tree--so at least the apartment's decorated.
The impending new year makes me oddly contemplative: what have I done this year? Why don't I feel any more adult or with it or whatever than I did last year? What will I do nest year? More of the same, most likely.
On the upside, I've replaced most of the light bulbs in my apaprtment with compact fluorescent bulbs, which use about a quarter the power and last 4 times as long as incandescent bulbs. The light's a little weird: white-bluish, starkly futuristic (or just stark). I wonder if I could paint the bulbs yellow? Probably not a great idea. The bulbs were a great deal though (4 for $8 at Big Lots--who knew?) and I got lucky enough to find globe vanity lights for the bathroom, too.
Maybe this will off-set the increased energy useage from the A/C and space heater I bought to make my room livable (next apartment will have central everything!).
Watched An Inconvenient Truth this week: wow. If Al Gore's right (and he probably is), we are screwed. California voters just voted down a huge initiative to develop alternative, cleaner fuels by taxing gas extracted here--we are not on the leading edge of this thing. At least I drive a small car and now have eerie fluorescent light illuminating my other energy-wasting activities.