Hi all,

I'm spending this week in Globe, Arizona, on a pretty minor project. Next Monday, I'll be back in Tucson for the week, and then Janine and I are off to Baltimore for five days. After that, I'm not really sure what's going on.

We do, apparently, have a house on hold for us, which should be good to move into by the end of July or so. Two story. Weird. It's going to be odd living in a place where there are areas in which you can't hear the TV.

I'm typing from an enviable Dell in the lobby of a Days Inn, and I'm in need of dinner, so I'll put off elaborating on current events for another day or two...

Hate to just post photos, but damn, I really must post this one.

My buddy, Arizona Diamondback Luis Gonzalez yesterday at a Shell station off of I-10. Guy is famous among baseball players for being incredibly nice. No lie. He posed for this photo, and I got the feeling that he would have sat with me while Janine drew a still life of us in charcoal. He said he felt fine for this upcoming year, sports fans, so expect the D-backs to lose fewer than 100 games this year!

Nearer My Dog to Thee


Janine's first crochet project: dog bonnet.

RAAAAAARGH!


(please note: this is a posed phot, taken by Ms. Kelli Newton, in good humor. Janine is not a barbarian maiden in real life).

In other news, we're off to Phoenix, folks -- in a month or so, Janine and I will be official Phoenicians, or whatever they call themselves. I received a plum job offer from Archaeological Consulting Services, Inc. (with... I can barely form the words... benefits!), with a tacit agreement to involve me in any historical projects they come across. Janine's already been offered a position at the Bayada Nurses branch in Tempe (just south of Phoenix), just a few blocks from ACS headquarters, and she's got any number of mindbending schemes in the works. All we need now is a place to live...

And no, I haven't waivered from my Eastward ambitions -- I'll still be moving back there in good time. A year or two with assistant crew chief (or more; you never know) and historical research and excavation credits on my resume will probably give me a better chance of landing a better position back there than, say, what that Joe guy was offering.

I've been wrestling with a chest cold for most of this weekend, which I've resented -- Janine and I were batting around ideas of either going winery hopping or maybe skiing up in the White Mountains or maybe something besides staying home, drinking tea, and coughing up goop. It appears to be subsiding now, but I'm hoping that another 40 hours of romping around in the dirt this week doesn't leave me with a couple of lungs full of mucusy mud next weekend.

And now I must sleep.

And we're back.

Sorry for the silence and all, but for some reason I've been feeling a bit non-verbal for the past few weeks. There has been quite a lot brewing, and I've been taking some time to process it all before I go spewing it all over the internet and such. Don't tell me you haven't been catching all of my psychic memoranda, though -- if not, put your fingers to your temples and sign up for the mailing list.

I'll start with the latest and work backwards and forwards over the next few days -- unfortuantely, I've only got a few minutes before my bedtime. Currently, I'm waiting for a response from the archaeology firm I'm working with right now. A tentative offer was made for mid-term (2 years) employment in Phoenix, and I'm anxious to learn what sort of position they see me filling before I consider perhaps delaying my Eastward plans for a short while (relatively) and lord it over a few other greenie archaeologists. Part of me hopes they make me a killer deal and Janine and I wind up in Phoenix (good pizza, bad traffic, good airfare deals, hellish summers) as soon as next month; part of me hopes they don't offer me anything I couldn't as easily get around here and I'm back to planning my Eastwardly exodus.

Either way, I should be seeing more of those back in the Eastern parts -- I'll be in my old stomping grounds of Baltimore at the end of April/beginning of May (I HAVE the tickets, and I WILL be there), and I'm hoping Dan & Stacy aren't going to be in Fiji at that time. I've got a few other trips scheduled for the Spring, including, I hope, my cousin's wedding. AND Heather may be swinging through the Southwest on her prospective spiritual awakening at the end of this month. Shaping up to be a decent year so far for me -- 10 years ago, I met Janine. A decade later, fate's going to have to do something brilliant for an encore.

And watch this space for an upcoming true confession!

Will the Real Andrew Bockhorst Please Grow Up?

Yes, it's been a while, and things have been happening, but I haven't felt all that verbose recently. Most has been good, although as I've just gotten back from monitoring the beer quality at Thunder Canyon brewery, I can't get into it just now...

Love to you all (and not in a drunken, "I LOVE YOU GUYSH" kinda way. I only had two).

Like a bad letter writer,
I will definitely write a long, long something
tomorrow.

An interesting week, which comes up to the minute as I have a 5-gallon pot of boiling IPA wort on the stove as I write. I started a little late in the day (maybe 2 o'clock), and spent a hell of a lot of time sanitizing and getting everything together. It's just starting to dawn on me that I might have to stay up significantly longer than I would've liked waiting for my beer to cool down enough to drop in the yeast. Right now, though, my apartment smells absolutely divine.

And for probably the first time ever, I'm having to choose between two jobs: my current position and one offered next month. Not an entirely easy choice --

Current job: probably the most entertaining and jocular crew I've worked with, with maybe the exception of the Playa Vista (Los Angeles) All-Stars, a selection of the most enjoyable of the Embassy Suite group. I've worked with Tierra for the past two weeks, dug the hell out of it (yes, pun), and just learned that this current project will probably extend through the end of next month. After that, I've been promised continuing lab work until the beginning of the following project, which will last forever or so.

Other job: Starts on the 10th of January south of town. I don't know anybody connected with the project, except that the woman who hired me over my e-mail is engaged to a guy I worked with a few weeks ago. I believe the work is still prehistoric, and the drive's about as far. And it pays about 30% more. And so I took it.

Meanwhile, somebody apparently broke into Janine's Jetta and made a very big mess of all the papers and worthless crap that was in there. Janine's pretty freaked out about it, but I can't help but think it's funny. Primarily because they didn't find anything to steal (that we've noticed, which is roughly equivalent), and because they didn't cause any damage (because, well, I think I forgot to lock it). They just risked at least a few months in jail squirming around, frantically digging through archaeology books and miscellaneous papers and Maxell tapes and a big purple blanket and some LSAT apocrypha, looking for at least a juicy cd wallet or some electronics to rip off. Silly felon. We value only accoutrements of the mind! Try fencing the Penguin dictionary of archaeological terms, you fucking dick.

I am still sending out resumes, so don't let up! I do consider correspondence with the company for which I'll be working next month as a sort of resume, so I'm really pretty much on task...

Just applied for a local job that starts next month -- actually, just applied for a salaried assistant crew chief job that I'm probably overqualified for, but still can't count on getting. Lotta archaeologists in these parts, damn it. And there's a good-lookin' job in Moab, Utah -- full-time, permanent historical archaeologist -- that I'll probably apply for tomorrow but probably won't take if it's offered. It'd be so nice to be offered, though...

And I made some niiiiice beef jerky over the weekend and promptly ate it all. I have to stop making food I like. Which is why I'll be brewing an aromatic IPA next weekend.

And I found this!