My secret addiction

My work day gets done at 3:00, and that's pretty much the worst time to go out and do anything around here. So, I'm ashamed to admit it, but I've totally become addicted to TV Judge Shows. I especially like Cristina's Court (right) and Judge Maria Lopez.

And Today's episode of Judge Hatchett was especially good - about some fat beyotch who tricked some good hearted idiot into believing her baby, named Johntaysa by the way, was his so he'd take care of it, which he did. But the truth is that she had cheated on him, and the baby was from the affair. Oh no you di-int!

Of course, it's sad and all for Johntaysa, but damn that's good television.

Hope everyone is well.

Godfrey

P.S. Arizona is a state of mind.

Il fait chaud

That's French for it's effing hot. Today I decided to pretend 100 degrees isn't all that bad, and I went for a bike ride. That was dumb. 100 degrees is that bad. And they say it'll be like this for another month. God I can't wait for October.

Anyway, since I last posted, not too much has happened. LeeAnne is absolutely swamped with school. Between teaching 2 French courses and taking 2 PhD classes and an intro to Arabic course, she's pretty much buried in books from the moment she gets up to the moment she goes to bed. So, for those of you thinking, "Hmm, getting a PhD sounds sounds like a larf," think again.

I enrolled in a French class at the local community college. That has been pretty fun. And I'm thinking about taking a ping pong class at the Chinese community center. Also, Bergie and I both signed up for El Tour de Tucson, or simply El Tour for the locals. It's a 109 mile bike ride around Tucson. The ride is in November, so we have a little time to train. Leave it to Bergie sign up for a century ride after only 3 weeks of road biking. My ass is sore just thinking about it.

This coming weekend is Labor Day, which normally would mean the Beach Resort with my pals. So, I'm totally getting all nostalgic feeling for boozing down at the camp fire, smoking an entire pack of cigarettes in one night, making breakfast for my friends, working on crossword puzzles, biking to Bayfield, playing rock baseball, making fun of Mooshoo, Tom, Alice (and her retarded sister), and doing that Beach Resort thing. Lock us in for Memorial Day.
I've only got one picture to share. We bought some cacti to spruce up our patio. The one on the left is a Funny Bunny. The one on the right is called an Eve's Pen. Pretty cool, eh?

Hope everyone is well.

Godfrey

P.S. Arizona is a State of Mind

The master baker

I've finally made the perfect loaf of bread. Well, the crust could have been crustier, but still, this loaf turned out marvelously. I made a garlic sourdough bread by using a slight variation on a reciped contained in my bread baking bible, The Bread Baker's Apprentice, by Peter Reinhart. I'm not sure that you can tell from the picture, but this loaf is about 2 feet long, and four inches thick. The garlic flavor is fantastic. It smells friggin awesome. And man, is the texture right on! Look at those holes in the picture on the left. I've been trying to get a crumb like that forever. The secret - high protein flour and a super wet dough - almost too wet to handle. The flour can be hard to find - I got mine at a Whole Foods-like grocery store, and I paid probably more than necessary. I'm told you can also go to your local bakery or Pizza Restaurants and they might sell you a bag. I tried that at a bakery here, though, and they thought I was nuts. "Um, this is not a grocery store," is basically what they said. Jerks! To avoid going back to that hippie grocery store, I ended up just purchasing a 50 lb sack online through Honeyville. This weekend, I'm going to use a similar recipe, and I'm going to try to make some traditional baguettes. I'm not too good at getting them shaped right. I'll let you know how it goes.

Big Hugs,
Godfrey

P.S. Arizona is a State of Mind

My Doctor-to-be

This is Bergie heading out the door for her first day of school. Isn't she adorable?

A message to all frat boys: She's taken!

That cactus is a total prick.

Hi everyone. Another week down in hot and sunny Tucson. And I do mean hot. It has exceeded 100 degrees every day this week. But, we haven't let that stop us. We've managed to find all sorts of cool things to get into.

The highlight of the week was definitely our journey out to the Saguaro National Park West and the fantastic Sonoran Desert Museum. It's about a half hour drive from town, and the route is very scenic. Especially Grants Pass - this wicked windy road up one side of a mountain and down another. A picture of it is on the right.

We went hiking first. We figured we'd get that part over with before it got too hot. Too late, unfortunately. When we showed up at the visitor center to buy our pass, the ranger said, "I don't really recommend too much walking out there today. It's already 97 degrees in the shade." It was only 9:30. But we had a ton of water with us, so we hit the trails. I had a run-in with a chain fruit cholla. I was just walking through the desert, minding my own business, when I looked at my hand, and a GD cactus was attached to it. Apparently, this particular cactus latches itself onto you even if you just slightly brush it. And it does not want to let go. It imbedded itself deep into my skin, and I had to use pliers to get it out. Ouch!!! Click the picture to the left to see a little series of images documenting this painful ordeal.

After that, we continued our hiking trip, taking pics of all sorts of desert life. I've discovered a new species of cactus, and I just can't stop taking their pictures. Click the image to the right to check out my new photo series - Sonoran Desert Dongs. Also on our hike, we saw saw a bunch of Hohokum petroglyphs. The Hohokum were the prehistoric inhabitants of the Sonoran desert.

Next, we ventured on to the Sonoran Desert Museum, which is the absolute coolest museum we've ever been to. It's actually a combination of a museum, garden, and zoo. The exhibits are very cool. We saw over 10 types of rattle snakes, a variety of tarantulas and other spiders, scorpions, lizards, frogs, and a lot more. And we learned a ton, too. Like, did you know that a saguaro grows only one foot in it's first 15 years, and it doesn't grow its arms for 75 years? And nobody really knows their age, but they estimate the tallest saguaro are around 200. Isn't that amazing? Science is cool!!!

Bergie starts school next week. She had orientation for her Teaching Assistanship all last week. She's quickly finding that the U of A doesn't run their French program quite like she did when she was French coordinator at the U of MN, and that's been a little difficult to get used to. She's looking forward to being a student again. She's taking three courses - so that load with the 2 classes she's teaching will keep her pretty booked up.

For me, working from home is going well, but it is pretty quiet. I'm thinking about taking some classes at the local community college - not sure what just yet, but I need to get out so we can actually meet people. We did go to a little party with some of Bergie's classmates. It was deece - perhaps some potential friends in that bunch, but as of yet, we've met nobody that even resembles our great group of friends back home. We miss you guys.

Big Hugs,
The Godfrey

P.S. Arizona is a state of mind.

35 Pounds of Peaches

Peach pie, peach cobbler, peach ice cream, peach sauce, peach jam, peach salsa, peach smoothies, peach gumbo - with 35 plus pounds of peaches sitting on our kitchen counter, we've pretty much committed ourselves to learning to make just about everything one can make with peaches. So - any peach recipes are welcome.

We ended up with more peaches than we could possibly need because we got ourselves caught up in the peach mania of Orchard Annie's Annual Peach festival in Willcox, Arizona. It was a ton of fun. Once you get there, they outfit you with empty buckets and a peach picker, which is basically a broomstick that has a wire basket attached to the end, allowing you to reach the highest, juiciest peaches. Then, they pile a ton of people in a little wagon and a tractor takes you out to the peach grove, where the picking begins. In a matter of 20 minutes, we managed to load up two 5 gallon buckets with peaches. In the pic to the right, you can see me reaching for a real fatty. We shelled out just over 40 bucks for 35 pounds of peaches - a pretty good deal I'd say. We've just got to hurry up and do something with them. Don't be surprised if you find a jar of jam in the mail.

After picking our own produce, we moved on to another event in the same town - we visited the Coronado Vineyards for their grape stomp festival. We tasted their wines, and Bergie stomped the hell out of some grapes. Their wines were pretty crappy, but it turned out to be a good stop. We sat out on their patio and had a picnic - some bread, cheese, and of course, peaches. It was a beautiful spot.

That was basically our Saturday. Today, we got up early and went for a bike ride. Riding bikes around here is super cool, because as you roll, little desert critters are constantly scurrying across the path in front of you. The quail are my favorite - they look hilarious as they scoot across the path. And all the little lizards are fun, too. We've yet to actually see the scorpions, snakes, and tarantulas we've been warned about, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time.

It is 104 degrees outside today, so we're giong to spend the remainder of the day indoors. Everyone says, "but it's a dry heat." And while it's true that less humidity helps, when it's 104, it's just damned hot.

That's it for today. Hope you all are well.

The Godfreys

P.S. Arizona is a state of mind.

The coolest bike path

Yesterday we rode the coolest bike path at the Saguaro (pronounced "sah wah row") National Park - it's actually a one way road, but we saw no cars on it, so it may as well have been a bike trail. It is a super curvy path with fantastic rolling hills, one killer climb, and awesome decents. For the first 10 minutes, you are basically flying at almost 30 mph going up and down and whipping around curves - it's so fun. And it's in the middle of about a million different types of cacti - especially a ton of saguaro. We're going back this weekend.

Check out Bergie as she cruises by our favorite new plant on her sweet looking new bike - you can click the pic to see more Tucson photos. We decided that since I'm too old and crippled to run any more, she needed to get a bike, and she's already proving to be a good biking buddy - always making me go further than I had initially planned for every ride.


Of course, it hasn't been all bike rides and play time for the Godfreys. We've spent the majority of our first almost two weeks just getting unpacked and moved into our new place. We really lucked out with our apartment. While it's a lot more cramped than our old house in Minneapolis, it's still pretty sweet. Here's my new office. And for those of you thinking of coming down - yes, we have a pool. And it's pretty sweet.

It's been mostly smooth sailing since we got here - people have been great, we've got nice neighbors (old people mostly), the scenery is fantastic, and the food is pretty deece. The electric company screwed us one day and cut our power. (Damn you Tucson Electric!!!) In a matter of hours, our house turned into an oven, but that got resolved within a day, and we're back to sucking energy and chilling in the comfort of our air-conditioned condo.

Oh, and we have officially been married for one month. I got LeeAnne flowers. She got me - nothing. Hmmf! Anyway - marriage is bliss. I recommend it.

I'm back to work, and working from home is going pretty well. LeeAnne starts school next week, so it is going to get wicked quiet around here. This weekend, we're going to the Peach Festival in Willcox, AZ for some serious Peach Mania. Hopefully, it's not the pits.

By the by, a trip to Tucson makes a fabulous weekend get-away.

See you around!
The Godfreys

P.S. Arizona is a state of mind!