Tucson interlude

Thursday afternoon, I thought it might be fun to go visit my friend Cassie in Tucson, so after I got off work, Saori and I packed a quick trip bag and made a dash for the border. The drive from Phoenix to Tucson is so barren, mind-bogglingly flat, and endless that it really only compares to the first hour of the road to Flagstaff from Phoenix. We got to Tucson around nine, and stopped for a bite at Jack in the Box. I got a grilled cheese with turkey and sun-dried tomato sauce, which was pretty good. A little pricey for just a sandwich, but better quality ingredients I suppose.Anyway, we parked at Cassie's house and she picked us up and took us to her friend's  house for game night.

She had told me earlier about game night; apparently a group of her friends get together and play board games. I thought, hey that sounds like fun, Saori and I are totally up for that. Monopoly, Sorry, Scrabble, yeah. Turns out not those kind of board games. Cassie led us up to an apartment block that looked like it had come from the 1960's-1970's, with high plaster ceilings and great block walls. The apartment belonged to a French graduate student, and there were about a dozen people there, apparently a mix of "Ramblers" (the UofA hiking club) and bioscience/optical science graduate students, with heavy overlap between the groups.

Saori introduced us to everyone and we got started playing a new game, Settlers of Catan. This is a German-style board game, a trading and strategy game. You start with one piece on the board, and you have access to the resources your piece straddles. The object is get 10 points, generally the more pieces you have on the board, the more points you get. Anyway, you can learn the rules pretty quickly, and I was actually surprised how quickly I got into it. In fact, I won the game, although it was pretty close. Afterwards, the group dispersed and Saori and I crashed at Cassie's house.

In the morning, we packed up our stuff and headed out to Bobo's, my favorite breakfast place in Arizona. Yes, more than Matt's Big Breakfast or OverEasy, or even Harlow's Cafe, although they're all really good. Bobo's is well-worn and dingy, the epitome of a cheap-eats place. However, on this weekday morning at 9 am, they were packed solid. The three of us had to wait to get bar seats. The food they serve is delicious and cheap. I got buttermilk pancake, delicious, fluffy, and larger than the plate. One pancake and you're pretty much set, although then you'd miss the best link sausage. It's a loud place, with people constantly moving around, two cooks working the stoves and the wait staff running around carrying food and coffees. If I owned a restaurant, I'd sell sophisticated food at night, Bobo's food in the morning.

After breakfast, Cassie walked us over to where she works/studies as a graduate student. She took us up into their relatively new biological sciences building and showed us around. I was curious to see it as it has a similar program (function, elements) to the project I helped design in Illinois. Here are some comparisons:

A Few Facts about the Thomas W. Keating Bioresearch Building

• Size: 177,000 square feet
• Occupants: 350+ researchers (faculty, research staff, and students) from many UA departments within multiple colleges
• Architects: Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership
• Contractor: Gilbane Inc.
• Total construction cost: $61,500,000 / $289 per square foot.
• Sixty-five percent of the cost of the building is mechanical, electrical and plumbing

Back to the Tucson

Friday afternoon after lunch with Saorichan, I drove down to Tucson to see Kevin off. Kevin was recently accepted to a graduate program in Microbiology at UC Davis, and he was leaving Saturday, so I after I arrived, I spent the afternoon helping load up a U haul with his dad. Cassie was also moving out, into an apartment closer to the campus with two other roommates. And a dog, seven puppies, and her cat. One of her roommates is a foster parent for the puppies for a rescue mission, so the puppies will all hopefully get adopted away before too long. The smell was really intense.
Friday night, Kevin's dad treated us to a pretty good Italian restaurant, Elle Wine Country. The first time I heard it, I was really doubtful about the place because I heard it as "El Wine Country" which would be like "Pho Pizza" or "Taco Yurt." Actually, it was very good food, decent calimari and a very good gnocci with smoked salmon and roma tomatoes. For dessert, we went to a gelato place where I had a small but rich cup of straberry champaigne gelato.

In the morning, we all went to a local coffee place for a lengthy coffee break before I headed back to phoenix. Gas prices were down, and so I filled up my Prius with $3.85 gas. The drive down and back, I ended up averaging 49 miles to the gallon, typically cruising along at 75 mph. I'm not sure I totally trust the Prius mpg meter as it doesn't seem to add up. It gives me my average as 48 miles to the gallon, and I have an 11 gallon tank. At that rate, I should be getting 528 miles per tank. What I actually get is closer to 400 miles, but for 11 gallons of gas, I'm not complaining. The digital tank meter also seems to be off. It shows 11 bars as a full tank, which one would think equals 1 gal per bar. However, the first bar didn't drop until I'd traveled about 120 miles, and I know I wasn't getting 120 miles to the gallon. Who knows.

Lots of travel in my future. Wednesday, Saori and I are flying out to Oklahoma to visit my grandparents for the 4th of the July, and then at the end of July me, mom, tay, and Soari and all going to Peru for a week and a half. Last week, mom called me up and asked me if I wanted to go to Maccu Picchu in 4 weeks. I had to clear it with my boss at work, but its one of those things you just have to do. As mom likes to put it, if you wait to travel until its convienent or cheap, you'll never travel.

Friday

It's a very surreal moment. I attended a building information modeling conference with an emphasis on LEED applications, and not once did I feel like I was getting old. I guess not feeling it is a sign of arrival. I was probably one of the youngest people there, but at no time did I ever feel awkward or out of place (other than the usual trade conference awkwardness). We signed in and got our little tote bags, tee shirt, pen, and bouncy-foam globe ball, everything with The Cad Store's logo emblazed on it. Couldn't complain about the food though, fresh coffee, bagels, orange juice, plus lunch was catered BBQ.

The conference actually had some really interesting information, although a lot of it was "why we green" and the second half had a lot of really redundant stuff and showcasing of Revit because the event organizers and lecturers were, incidently, CAD product sales reps. Overall, a good way to spend a day on a project which has dropped down to a crawl pace.

Friday, Saori and I both took off the day to drive to Tucson. In the morning, I changed the oil in the Prius, and Saori went to the UPS store to attempt to pick up a package they were supposedly holding for her. They lied. They put it back on the truck after the second delivery, so even though she made the lady at the customer service counter change the destination, and then called the dispatcher location to make them repeat to her the new destination for the package, of course, they tried to deliver it to the apartment again while we were gone. Additionally, UPS informed her that she was supposed to come to pick it up from the UPS distribution facility instead of delivering it to the second address.

I don't know if its just the Arizona UPS who are all completely incompetent, or if there were just an unlucky series of really stupid, lazy, and whiny employees. I typically prefer DHL or FedEx anyway, but Saori didn't really have a choice from her shipper.

We had a delicious and greasy lunch at Lucky Burger, a tiny burger dive near downtown, and then we took of for Tucson around noon. The drive to Tucson between Phoenix has to be one of the most god-forsaken stretches of wasteland in the entire southwest. At least it goes by in under two hours. Tucson currenly has half of its exits closed along the freeway for construction, so we sat in traffic for a bit until Saori navigated us out to Cassie and Kevin's place. We stopped by a supermarket and picked up balloons and flowers for Cassie's gradution, and Kevin's acceptance to UCDavis grad school.

They keep a little engine of destruction, about a year old, black, white, and compeletely unstoppable feline, extremely rambunctious and super-fast. They call him "Charlie" for the Chaplin-esque little black patch under his pink nose. They're looking for a new home for him, as they're leaving town in a few months for Cali.

We all drove down to the university and hit one of the local coffeeshops. There are immediate and apparent differences between ASU and UofA, all of which become clear entering places near campus. If ASU wishes it was cosmopolitan, UofA wishes it were bohemian. Which is not entirely a bad thing as it leads to great coffeeshops and hole-in-the wall open bar restaurants with great food.

At the UofA memorial union, we attended a small gallery opening of one of our friends from high school, Laura Atchinson. She had filled the space with drawings and paintings inspired from her travels around Europe and New York. There were a few pieces that I really liked, and most of her work I thought was better than the typical First Friday offering. She also baked cookies for the event, which was cool. Actually, there were quite a few of my old schoolmates who showed up whom I'd not seen in years, so it was interesting to catch up with them a little bit and find out how their lives were going.

Someone on Facebook raised the question of a 5 year reunion of our graduating class from Desert Mountain, but other friends of mine raised the point that the people that we really care about and are interested in, we stayed in contact with. There will be no 5 year reunion, guaranteed, because the class of 2003 from Desert Mountain just never shared that much goodwill with each other.

After the show, we walked over to Zachary's Pizza, a surprisingly extensive restaurant and bar which looks a lot smaller from the outside. We split a pitcher of beer and ordered a deep dish pizza of which I ate a slice and was done for the night. By deep, I mean this thing was 2 inches or a hair shy, and so big that the server had to put it on a different TABLE. So we all stuffed ourselves.

Saori and I crashed on the couch once we got back to Cassie's apartment and we quickly passed out, despite being woken up a few times from first the heat, then the cat, and finally the cold of the morning.

on the road

Saori and I are in Tucson, heading out to white sands. Stayed at Cassie's place. Good korean BBQ dinner with Whitney, her friend, Cassie and Kevin. But now its morning, the sun is shining, and its time to hit the dusty trail!