And I saw that I love my new lens! Not only can I frame shots more easily, I can capture photos of unwitting victims citizens from afar. On top of getting a few shots I really like, I discovered the rather obvious fact that the historical buildings within Steele Indian School Park are the original Indian School. If you live in Arizona and didn’t grow up here, you probably thought the street name, “Indian School,” was a bit odd. And then it promptly blended in with the likes of Hohokam Expressway and Squaw Peak Highway.

If you walk around the paved areas of the park, the lamp posts all have small marquees on them with various descriptive texts of the history of the school. I didn’t realize this until I was almost ready to leave, so I didn’t really get the full idea… but basically they talk about how the school was built, what sort of local social issues they faced, ceremonies the school practiced, etc. You can read a pretty short description on the Phoenix government’s website here, and I hope to go back to the park and record some of the writings on those placards since they don’t seem to be available online anywhere.

Until then, if you want to check out some of the other pictures I captured in the park, you can find them here.

Steele Indian School Park
300 East Indian School Road
Phoenix, AZ

The first race was a little timid. It took me a while to get comfortable with the kart and the track… even etiquette was a bit complex. The closest equivalent I’ve tried is Project Gotham Racing on X-Box Live… and I’m the first to admit that I consider it a valid tactic to ram myself into the rear end of a leading car to slow myself down. Not allowed at this place.

The second race got a little out of hand- a series of unfortunate events led to one of my coworkers getting a kart almost thrown on top of him. He got out with no serious injuries, just some scrapes and cuts.

It’s not quite Fiddlesticks, but it’s a lot of fun if you don’t mind coughing up a bit of cash. Or signing a liability waiver.

F1 Race Factory
317 S. 48th Street
Phoenix, AZ 85034

I live about 4 miles from my office so even as all my coworkers have started taking busses to work, I’ve been holding off. I keep hearing stories about how day by day, the busses are getting fuller and fuller- especially on the routes coming to central phoenix from the suburbs. And if they’re having trouble now… imagine what will happen if gas hits $4 or $5 a gallon? Phoenix is just not prepared for that.

I think it’s about time to buy a bicycle. I’ve never commuted by bike but it’s a straight shot and it should be easy enough to do. Maybe if I shop around at garage sales this weekend I can find a cheap one and try it out.

Ordinarily I would have no problem liberally dousing the area with pesticides. Or I could just stop watering the area and dry it out. But my poor innocent koi would be destroyed by either of those solutions, so I’m looking for a way to kill the skeeters without damaging the fish.

My yard has been an exercise in tolerance for me. It’s lush enough that it harbors all manner of crawly things. Slugs, geckos, yellow jackets, mosquitos, crickets, ants, cockroaches, woodlice, spiders galore. I hate all of those things in varying amounts, and one of my favorite Arizona features has always been the lack of crawly animal life.

Speaking of woodlice, I was just reading about them on wikipedia and discovered that they are actually crustaceans! They’re closely related to an aquatic species that looks much like them but are horrifyingly large and scary looking. See here for details about them including alternate names… (roly-poly being what we called them in Oklahoma)… here for information about their gigantic aquatic cousins… and here, and here for images of the big ones that’ll give you crawly nightmares for weeks to come.

And as if that weren’t enough, I found many recipes for preparing and consuming them. Apparently they’re similar in flavor to shrimp.

I’m sure the trees and the lawn are happy with all the extra water to suck down, but it left a bit of a mess on the pavement. All the crap that perpetually rains down from the mesquite tree was swept up onto the pavement where it left rings of dried plant matter everywhere. It should be easy enough to sweep up, but I think I’ll leave it and see if the lawn maintenance guys will tend to it for me. Muahahahaha…

I took that shot in my back yard yesterday. Though I’m thinking back to all of the great shots I could’ve captured over the years, I’m also looking forward to capturing a lot more fantastic photographs of Arizona and other scenic spots.

After looking into APS’s other rate plans last month, I took a shot and switched over to a split rate option. 9am-9pm, Mon-Fri, it is now a no-no to run major appliances in my house. But it looks like it paid off- I just got the bill and was relieved to find that I cut my utility bill by over a third. That’s especially impressive since that was the bill for most of August. Hooray!

It’s getting to be that time of year where the months are running short and the vacation time is running high. I’ve got nine vacation days left to use before the end of December. There aren’t a whole lot of American cities left on my to-do list. I could go to Chicago, I haven’t been there since I was a kid. Maybe Portland, Oregon, or maybe somewhere in Alaska? I’ve got a free round trip on United that’s good for another nine months… so the list of destinations of is pretty wide open, I’ve just gotta make a choice and book it. Any ideas?

I spent most of Labor Day weekend in Sedona with some of my family. Even after having been there on several occasions, the drive into Sedona from I-17 is still breathtaking. I highly recommend it- just pick any nice clear day and cruise on up. One of the advantages to living so close is that you can occasionally cherry-pick some inexpensive, last minute hotel deals. Thirty-six hours in a cooler climate among the trees and scenery can be surprisingly therapeutic.

Even though digital thermostats are more efficient and save energy, I have to admit that part of me is sad to remove the old ones. It seems like everything these days is a black box. When I was a little kid and I opened up one of the old style thermostats… I could see before my eyes an ingenious mechanical creation that demonstrated a number of scientific principles. Now, I’d just see a leads for the inputs and a couple of jumpers.

Then again, mercury contamination sure was a pain in the ass.

One of the best parts of living in Phoenix is getting to fly home to Phoenix. Living on the ground, you can lose your perspective of the mountains that ring (and sometimes slice right through) the city. It certainly makes it easy to pinpoint home… find a geological feature and orient yourself from there. Tempe Town Lake and the stadium… Piewesta Peak… Camelback Mountain… South Mountain…

It really is a lovely landscape when taken in as a whole.