Christmas in Phoenix 2010

We once again went to Phoenix for Christmas, only this time we went for a couple of weeks. I turned in my last final paper on a Friday morning, and in the early afternoon we were on our way to Phoenix. We spent the first week or so just relaxing - finally able to destress a bit and not think about school and work. This last semester was really intense for me, and I apologize to all my friends who I didn't see or communicate with during that time. This semester should be better.

One of the highlights was going to Rustler's Rooste, a Western steakhouse. Outside the front door is Horney the Bull, who was not the best smelling creature.


Here we all are with out tasty steaks and fixins. I should mention that this is the kind of place that has sawdust on the floor and a live country band.


At the end of the meal is cotton candy, which was enjoyed by all



And of course, with the Santa display


Paul's dad took us to the Boyce Thompson Arboretum about an hour's drive east of Phoenix. It had been built by a mining mogul who decided to build a fancy house out there and fill the yard with exotic trees and plants from all over the world. They had a particularly large Australian section with a bunch of these gigantic trees


The house is still there up on the rocks. They used to have an elevator which brought you down to the valley and the river that goes through there. The building is used for administrative offices now so it's nothing to tour. Still, it is neat to see it perched up on the hill like that with a huge retaining wall holding it up that reminded me of the old castles we saw in Southern France on our honeymoon.


While Anne and I spent some quality time shopping around Phoenix (seriously, the shopping is amazing, especially where you live in the middle of southern Indiana!), the boys took a trip out to Tucson and parts south of there. I'm not sure what all these pictures are of, but thought I'd share.

Here's a place where Paul got some sort of fried hot dogs, something on the idea of giant pigs in a blanket. Not sure I'd order them, but he sure looks excited about them!

From PHX Winter 2010

They also went to some place to look at rockets and other manly things that required the use of a hard hat.


...and went on some nice hikes

...and to a ghost town.


It was so nice to see the family and to have some time to take a break and relax. There is a rumor that next year the grandparents from Poland might be visiting for Christmas - we'll see what happens. It'd be great to see them too!

Christmas in Phoenix

We just got back from our trip to Phoenix to visit Paul's family for Christmas. Thankfully no one tried to blow up their underpants on the flight there or on the return.

We had over a week to visit, so we had time to do some sightseeing. Here's some of the highlights from our hikes:

This is on the Peralta Trail. Coincidentally, this picture was taken by a family with a University of Arizona student and two Indiana University students. At least we have the same school color.

From Phoenix 2009

Here's where we turned around - Fremont Saddle. The big rock formation off in the background is called Weaver's Needle.

From Phoenix 2009

For Christmas Eve, we went to a friend of the family's house for a traditional Polish dinner. I didn't bring my camera, but believe me there was a good spread! There were at least 3 different types of homemade pickled herring (just like the Swedish kind), pierogis, stuffed crepes, borscht, and tons of other stuff. We started the dinner with the traditional Polish Christmas wafers, where each person gets a piece, then breaks off a small piece of each other person's wafer while wishing them Merry Christmas (or some other nice thing).

Back at the Simacek house, we exchanged gifts including these Christmas outfits


And, of course, Snuggies, which my grandmother informed me used to mean some kind of undergarment for old ladies:


We also went to Sedona and experienced the wackiness of the area by visiting some vortexes. Apparently some people believe each "vortex" has some magic energy that is either male and female or some sort of yin-yang balance of something or other. Paul seemed to have a good grasp of why these were special places - they are all really nice places to take in the view. Paul's dad had been there before and brought us to some of the highlights of the area.

Here we are on an apparent vortex near the airport


Here's another vortex, in Boynton Canton, with something called Enchantment Resort in the background. They had some drum session going on while we were hiking past it. So now we know where to go if we need a good Native American drum session followed by some vortex action.


This was my favorite rock formation of the hike - it looks like a face in the rock, kind of like the old man of the mountain of New Hampshire (RIP)

It's official: Providence is the worst for jobs, cost-of-living and low income

A couple days ago Forbes.com listed the "U.S. Cities Where It's Hardest to Get By" (see the article here). And guess which city came up first...that's right, Providence! And why was it first?

HIGH unemployment,
HIGH cost of living, and
LOW median income.

Not exactly what you want to hear as a job seeker in the Providence area, but it does help us feel better about being two people with master's degrees from top world universities who couldn't find jobs here. And it explains why Rhode Island is experiencing "brain drain", with university graduates moving to other states for jobs.

I'm somewhat surprised Phoenix didn't make it on the list because our resumes seemed to go into black holes out there too.

Well, it is reassuring that we're moving somewhere that at least has a low cost of living, and a much lower level of unemployment.

Phoenix in November

Since we've got tons of time on our hands, being over-educated and unemployed at the moment, we used some of our time to make our way out to Phoenix to visit Paul's family. While it didn't result in any job opportunities, we did get to spend some quality time with the family and see some sights around Arizona in the two weeks we visited.

Since we wouldn't be together for Thanksgiving, we put on a full Thanksgiving dinner a couple weeks early. Anne came up from college so we could all be together.

From Phoenix, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon

Arizona is home to lots and lots of desert, and Phoenix is surrounded by vast expanses of desert dotted with saguaros - those cacti that look like they have arms sticking out. Here's a particularly photogenic one

From Phoenix, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon

We also took a drive down to see the St Xavier Mission outside of Tucson. It was built with help from local Native Americans from the Tohono O'Odham tribe, so it's got some unique wood carvings on the inside. They've never finished the second tower on the church, which some speculate may be an excuse to perpetually raise funds for the tower.

From Phoenix, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon

They also had the kind of cactus that attacked Paul as a child (you'll have to ask him for the full story).

From Phoenix, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon

Paul's dad took us on a day trip to see Tombstone and the Chiricahua National Monument. Unfortunately, we forgot to recharge the battery in our camera, so we don't have pictures of this (except one from my phone camera), but both are really fascinating places to see. Tombstone is neat for it's authentic old west feel, a nice change from the sometimes overwhelming big box feel of the city. Here's the one picture I got, at the Tombstone graveyard. You don't see this kind of thing every day!

From Phoenix, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon

Chiricahua, on the other hand, has some extraordinarily impressive "balancing" rock formations that are worth seeing in person. They're the kind of thing that you look up at and think "who put that there and why hasn't it fallen over?"

Most of the time we were in Phoenix, we were continuing our job search, or lounging about drinking lemonade we made from the lemon tree in the back yard. On my next post, I'll tell you about our little 1,000 mile road trip to the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas and the Hoover Dam.