It’s a quiet Sunday afternoon. Nina and I have been to Church. Scott is taking a nap (as is Austin). Jaelene is still in her pajamas. Nina has gone to visit a good friend. Jackson is also taking a nap (must be a theme here??). A couple of cousins have come over to play, so toys abound everywhere. Everyone seems to be having a good time.

We’ve had a good Christmas holiday. I enjoyed watching the kids open their presents and their joy at seeing what was in the next package. Jackson got a big play kitchen and has enjoyed playing with it. In fact, he eventually got so the other presents weren’t interesting; he just wanted to play with the kitchen. Colten has a new bike, but the real hit was a new set of yugio cards. He is absolutely enthralled with yugio, the TV show, and the associated ‘dualing’. He certainly understands everything about the game, but it’s all Greek to me! I was also well taken care of this Christmas as well.

We are also certainly eating well! There’s candy around everywhere (which Bradica The Dog enjoys), all kinds of food in the fridge, as well as a huge batch of fudge just for me.

This has been a nice, quiet vacation so far. Jaelene is coming back well from the birth and we’ll do some sightseeing out and around the area next week. I think we’ll leave on Saturday to drive back so we have some time to get things a bit in order before all the obligations of the new year start. Tomorrow I’ll do some work — visit a data center in north Phoenix. This is a place that we’re considering doing some outsourcing with. The big value is that by making this visit on Monday, I can turn in an expense report for the mileage. It was about 700 miles down here. It’ll be a nice reimbursement.

Interesting people and interesting things are here. Almost every car here is an expensive car. The more expensive, the older the driver (and often the worse the driver)!. Everything is flat. I don’t think there’s anything taller than two stories for miles around. There is real estate development going on everywhere, all in walled communities, some in gated communities. Huge tracts of land are being developed with highly restrictive covenants, meaning everyone has to drive somewhere else to work. The newspaper is filled with information about lawsuites, all related to real estate and many related to the dairy farms and land fill that were here long before the developments were here. We’ve become a very litigious people and I suspect there are few places more so than here. I think water and access thereto will soon be the major topic here (once again). I’m sure there isn’t enough water in this desert area for all the development that’s happening. I think I’m going to walk around to the supermarket and buy a newspaper. Something interesting may have happened around here besides people suing people! Besides, reading the newspaper is a good thing to do on a quiet Sunday afternoon.