Four Days of Vacation!

After working most weekends in the past two months, our app is headed into QA this weekend and we'll have Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday off for the Fourth of July holiday. I am SOOOO looking forward to having a whole four days off. After doing this much code, my brain is near tapioca consistency, and the break will be quite welcome.

We'd planned to go up to the Mogollon Rim this weekend, but with all the fires happening in Northern Arizona and the surrounding states, the Coconino National Forest and the Kaibab National Forests are both closed due to the fire conditions. So, it'll be an in-town weekend.

Since we are annual members at the Phoenix Zoo (yes, I belong there), we'll probably hit the zoo and also planning to check this place out: Arizona Science Center -- They've got a planetarium and a bunch of pretty neat looking exhibits. I'm also interested in doing the Chase Field walking tour where they share details on all of the cool architecture and art at the high-tech MLB stadium.



And the rest of the time I plan on major vegetation playing World of Warcraft. I'm up to a 60 mage, a 40 priest, and 30 hunter all on Horde - Argent Dawn, and lately I've been working on a Night Elf Hunter on Bronzebeard Alliance who's up to 35. Chuck's running a complementary warlock on Bronzebeard and the Night Elf Hunter / Gnome Warlock combo seems to be a pretty wicked match.

Taylor Hicks makes top "hottest bachelor" list

What the.........? THAT'S A 50 DKP MINUS! I know I'm not alone in saying Taylor "Grayhead" Hicks is *so* not attractive. It's like the world put on beer goggles and called in to vote, I don't get it. Here I thought I was safe in my happy little world where Hicks gets voted off American Idol early, but then suddenly I'm swept off into this alternate universe where the guy wins American Idol? Double eww.

On a personal note, apologies for not blogging much lately, usually that means a job is kicking my tail. Working Saturdays only goes so far before it begins getting pretty tiring.


On an interesting note, I witnessed my first dust storm last week. Pretty amazing stuff. You could watch it ROLL into and cover the city of Phoenix, and surrounding Scottsdale, Glendale, Chandler, etc. Click the dust storm for the article.

Same 'ol Grind

We're going to QA in July, which means we work every Saturday through June to hit the date. I'm sure my other coder friends have been through this before as well. The fun part is trying to make your one day off actually feel like a full weekend.

This past Friday we went to a place called "The Satisfied Frog" -- a homestyle bbq restaurant out in Cave Creek, Arizona. It's about a 20 minute drive north of Phoenix, and it's like going back in time to an old desert town, with added kitsch. Their green chile soup was so thick that if you moved it with a spoon, it didn't drip! Absolutely delicious. Also made me so stuffed even before the main meal arrived. That more or less knocked me out by 10:30pm on Friday.

Saturday was work. Blech.

Sunday we got up at 6:30am (the sun creeps up over the foothills and hits my eyeballs around then anyway these days) and hiked Shaw Butte. We hiked it backwards (going the opposite direction of what the popular route is), and I daresay it was easier that way than the front, uphill grind way. My muscles were doing pretty well, but I'm still fighting the heat. Even at 8am, it was in the high 90's already -- between 96 and 99 degrees. And even with sunglasses, a hat, and lots of water, it makes me struggle to breathe. I'm definitely feeling the effects of the Arizona summer since it's my first season here. Hopefully next summer I'll be skittering up the rocks like a chuckwalla lizard, but this summer I'm wheezing worse than an asthmatic in a hayfield.