Dear everyone:

Hello again, all! 

I am now firmly ensconced in Arizona, and really loving it.  I’ve had two days of training for my position, really like the folks I’m working with, really like the job I’ll be expected to do, and sort of wish I could stop training and just get on with doing it! 

But the learning is fun, and there is a lot to learn, from plant identification to register procedures to local geography and geology.  And then there’s everyone’s names.  It doesn’t help that one third of my coworkers are similarly salt-and-pepper bearded older men.  I’ve diagrammed the shapes of their facial hair for easier identification in the wild, so hopefully that will help.  It’s a good thing everyone here is required to wear nametags.  Best cheat ever.

I do have a new address, as expected and as promised.  It is:

Me
PO Box 1337
Rimrock, AZ 86335

Please send me many lovely things, keeping in mind always that I only have one small car to carry things back in, and a tendency to keep just about everything.

Other recent highlights: today I was mere feet from petroglyphs pounded into a cliff by stone tools hundreds of years before Gutenberg ever strung two letters together.  The designs at the V-V (say “vee bar vee” for some reason) Heritage Site were intricate, beautiful, and even scientific.  There were patterns believed to represent the solstice, and the time when corn should be planted, and even a depiction of a mountain lion taking down a deer.  And a labyrinthine spiral, my favorite shape.  I do so love those Jungian constants between cultures.

I’ve been living in my own apartment temporarily while the SCAs who’ve been here over the summer end their terms, pack and vacate my more permanent housing.  It’s been rather wonderful to play house and keep an immaculate kitchen and cook tiny dinners for myself with the sparest of tools and ingredients.  I realized yesterday after making myself some beans, rice, fried egg and bananas (try it if you don’t believe me – with lots of cumin), that I didn’t have any salt to cook with.  It made for some boring beans, but an interesting realization – that the ancient Sinagua (the folks who built the prehistoric cliff dwellings that now necessitate my interpretation) had mined salt from an area four miles away to use and trade, and were clearly living it up better than I in this area.  Nevertheless, it’s been interestingly satisfying living a pared-down life.  Granted, it’s only pared down because I’m too lazy to fully unpack my car only to have to repack it later (enough of that nonsense).  And I know it won’t last, because Halloween is coming and I am already finding myself wishing I hadn’t donated away that ugly, green, inexplicably combined leather-and-sweater garment, because it could so perfectly have been amended into a Peter Pan costume.  Sigh.  Oh, well.  I’ll make do with what I have, and long for what I don’t.  A-ha!  A theme!  A repeated theme!

PS: My solitary apartment has no internet access, so occasionally I make a pilgrimage to the local Burger King (true) to use their free wireless.  This means a longer wait time for any e-responses from me, bigger gaps between blarg posts, an apparent inability to post pictures of my adventures and a slightly greasy keyboard.  However, your call is important to us and once I hunker down in my shared place, I’ll only have to steal my boss/next-door neighbor’s wireless.  Then, pictures aplenty.