John Wise - Photo of the Day from Phoenix Arizona

A few days ago my daughter Jessica called while approaching Texas on a drive across America and reminded me that she was soon to arrive in Phoenix. Funny how these little things slip the mind. Really, tomorrow? Uh, aren't you going to visit your mom first? I'll stop there on the way back to Florida, ok. After nearly three years my progeny was stopping in. I know it seems like a long time not visiting one's child but she'd been busy with the Navy, getting out of the Navy, getting married, working, and generally trying to find her own person while living in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Her husband had some training in San Diego to tend to along with about six weeks of vacation before reporting to his new duty station in Florida, so Jessica hopped into the Hyundai with Sparky the Dog and tried driving non-stop across the United States. She nearly made it, too, but sleep overtook her in Texas.

As the hours of her arrival shortened, my nerves began to fray. Oh my god, what should I expect? Does she have facial tattoos, piercings, brands, does she smoke, drink, do drugs du jour? Nope, none of the above. OK, an occasional drink but other than that she could almost be considered old fashioned normal. Pride arose in me. Maybe I wouldn't have to work to make her uncomfortable so she'd leave before she got situated. Instead we began enjoying the conversation and catching up with what transpired over the intervening years. We got along so well it looked like she might even stay two days in Phoenix.

The second day gave way to a third, a forth, and a fifth. We visited Rinku and Yagnesh who were soon to be married and had dinner with them. We visited Tonopah Rob's farm and had lunch with Rob and Jerry. Jessica requested we have pani puri on one of the nights of her visit, an Indian snack she'd enjoyed on a previous visit. We looked at our travel photos, talked about some of the books she was going to borrow from my library, and she listened to a lot of the music Caroline and I have in our collection. Before she left I drew up an itinerary for her and Caleb, her husband, to take as they finished up in San Diego.

The plan called for them to drive up the California coast to Monterey, pass through San Francisco, visit the Muir Woods, continue north through Pt. Reyes on to the Redwoods before going to Oregon and taking a jet boat up the Rogue River. After visiting Oregon they would spend time with Caleb's family in Montana and then drop into Yellowstone before staying one night in a tent-cabin in the Grand Teton National Park. Their road trip would continue south through Utah into Mexican Hat, Monument Valley, across Four Corners into New Mexico and then Texas for a visit with Jessica's mother - Sheila.

It was so nice visiting with her, playing with Sparky, and  talking with Caleb on the phone. Unfortunately I've not had the chance to meet him yet, but from those who have it seems I'll be honored to meet the guy, he made a terrific impression on my great aunt and uncle in Santa Barbara who they dropped in on as they drove north in California. Caroline and I are hoping to visit Jessica and meet the son in-law over Thanksgiving this year as we are planning on being in Georgia over the holiday. I dare say, my daughter has the potential to do well, my fingers are crossed.

Driving south out of Santa Barbara I told Caroline to put down what she was doing and watch out the window as with only 20 minutes of ocean view out of the 8 hours of driving back to Arizona she needed to be on the lookout for dolphins and whales. There must have been a whisper in my ear because within minutes we were pulling over to watch more than half a dozen dolphins swimming along the shoreline and surfing the waves. We did not fare as well in the whale watching department but were thrilled to watch the dolphins and even the sea lion that showed up. Click the picture to see a larger image making it easier to see the dolphins.

Having spent 3 months helping my uncle Woody Burns get back on his feet after a fall that broke his hip, I couldn't be sure how we'd find him this weekend after our 5 month absence. In fact he is doing better than ever. Prior to his hip-breaking fall my uncle had been on a heavy dose of pain medication for a back injury that ultimately required extensive surgery, creating more pain than it alleviated. While he now uses a walker for getting around he is more sure footed today than I had seen him in the previous years, which in part I attribute this to being off the pain meds. The intervening 5 months were too long a break in our otherwise regular visits that my great aunt and uncle had become accustomed to expect every 60 to 90 days - we'll return with my mother-in-law in tow in early June.

On our way to Santa Barbara, California for the weekend we were able to get out of Phoenix near midday but were not fast enough to glimpse a view of the ocean before dark. High winds and rain pummeled us just before leaving Arizona and crossing over the Colorado river into SoCal but from there on we were treated to beautiful, cool, clear weather for the rest of the weekend.  

For months Starbucks employees from various locations would try to entice me into buying a loyalty card. Everyday I would hear how I could save the charge for soy milk and the syrup add-in. Everyday I would say no thanks. And then one day I finally gave in. Heck, on my morning latte I would save seventy cents alone. Often Caroline and I would get a latte late in the day, I could save another $1.10. I took my newly charged loyalty card home and registered it on the internet so I could begin my savings.

Immediately I see we are going to save $54 dollars a month and I am quite happy. The things is though, this has backfired for the Starbucks corporation. All too soon I have to recharge the card, so I put another $30 on it. Within three days my balance is once again depleted, ok I'll put $40 on it this time. Every three or four days I find myself having to put money on this card. While I was buying a coffee everyday on my debit card I never bothered to account for what I was spending, it was just a little here and then a little more later in the day. Now I'm faced with feeling like I'm charging the card three or four times a week and if I put $30 or $40 each time, I do a little calculation, we must be spending between way too much and an ungodly amount per month on coffee.

Solution: just as I took the card to save $54 a month on our coffee habit, I must use the card to wake up to the financial waste and stop the morning coffee, that will save me another $105 a month. That works for a while but now I'm considering that we move to only going to Starbucks every other day which would save another $97 a month. Attention Starbucks corporate marketing geniuses you have cost your company $159 dollars a month in lost revenue and are about to lose another $97 a month for a grand total loss of $3,072.00 per year because you pushed your baristas to interest me in a loyalty card. Thank you for your consideration in bringing my wreckless spending to my attention.

Arizona Public Service or APS as we better know our electricity provider recently did us the incredible favor of installing smart meters in our apartment complex. A smart meter allows us to see our daily and even hourly electricity usage, as soon as the following day in a browser on the internet. This fantastic service allows us to adjust our consumption on one day and see the next day how that would impact our overall usage. For example we now know that using the dishwasher is a huge draw even without the drying cycle - back to washing dishes by hand (although this is not for certain yet as we are just today doing the dishes in the sink and will have to wait until tomorrow to see if hot water usage and the subsequent electricity usage is significantly different from going through a dishwasher cycle - but I can guess we'll see a large savings).

This January we started using Windows 7 in which the sleep function for the computer now works perfectly. Compared with last year, based on usage in the middle of the night we have trimmed approximately 190 watts per hour out of our electricity usage this year. This past Friday I rewired our computers to plug our router, modem, printer, speakers, backup drive, and table lamp into a different powerstrip and it appears we cut another 240 watts per hour out of our usage when the powerstrip is switched off. With the TV, DVD player, amplifier already on a powerstrip (and turned off when not in use) we are down to 140 watts of electricity per hour overnight.

Why is this meaningful to me and hopefully you? We are presently paying $0.133 per 1,000 watts of electricity, if we can save 400 watts of electricity per hour for only 7 hours per day, we save a whopping $0.37 per day - no big deal you might say. But, over 365 days this equates to a savings of $135.93 or $11.33 per month. I figure the average family could turn off equipment that uses "Standby Power" for nearly 13 hours per day, that would be from 11:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. and then again from 9:00 a.m. to maybe 3:00 p.m. saving that family $0.69 per day for total savings of $252 per year or $21 per month.

Late last July our attic was given a second layer of blown in insulation, which resulted in an immediate 25% drop in how much electricity we were using. July and August of 2008 both saw daily average temperatures of 95 degrees but our July bill dropped from 2,202 kwh of electricity used down to 1,659 kwh for August. During 2007 we averaged $7.31 per day over the 120 hottest days of summer costing us roughly $876, based on my initial estimates of saving about 25% of summer time electricity usage we will see a savings this year of about $219 over those 120 days or about $18 per month as we pay on a yearly average plan. Is it economical to have a new 3 inch layer of blown in cellulose insulation? Well it only cost $0.20 per square foot from King Insulation in Phoenix so you can see that your savings can be terrific, especially if you plan on living in your current home for more than another year and a half. Heating over the winter has seen similar dramatic results, during the previous 3 years for our January billing cycle we used an average of 1002 kwh per month, this January we only used 623 kwh for a 38% reduction in electricity use.

To read more and to be shocked at how much electricity your appliances are using in Standby Power mode visit the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory webpage on Standby Power by clicking here.

Laurie Anderson on the left and her husband Lou Reed on the right performing in Chandler, Arizona this afternoon to benefit the Yongey Peace Prevails Center of Phoenix. The show started quite early, at 3:00 p.m. - the encore was finished before dark! The first highlight of the day was Shangao Cai and the Phoenix Chinese Art Ensemble performing three traditional pieces, one Chinese, one Tibetan, the last Mongolian. Before I move on to Lou Reed's and Laurie Anderson's performance I have to say I was shocked at how many people left during the concert - I can only imagine it was not what they expected. As for us, we were thrilled with the show. The best I can describe it is as though it were a Post-Bush American interpretation of a traditional Hindu Raga. Raga is Sanskrit for color or mood and that is just what these two legends of the music industry created. Where a Raga performance picks a ground note for a drone, Lou and Laurie used a drone that didn't always follow a continuous tone but would shift between the artists from a synthesized noise, to Laurie Anderson's violin, to Lou Reed's guitar or a device in front of him we could not identify from the audience and at other times the drone was replaced by Laurie Anderson's story telling with a simple melody playing beneath, before the drone would come rising back up. As I said, I was thrilled by this performance since it felt we were afforded the opportunity to see these two artists genuinely work their craft and not dredge up their famous past. Steve Hunter of Alice Cooper fame joined the duo for a while, adding another layer of ambience for the audience to try and digest. How nice it was to see these artists paint their canvas live and in real time for those of us lucky enough to attend.

To see a traditional Raga performed by Veena Sahasrabuddhe click here to watch on YouTube.

Today brought conclusion to the 46th year of my life and the beginning of my 47th year. I mean to say that there are only 365 days to my 47th birthday as I am today 46, just as when we are born we are not yet a year old. Before sunrise Caroline and I got in the car and drove to Superior, Arizona and then on highway 77 south to Winkelman to pick up some tortillas - our favorite brand, Maria's, is no longer in business but Mi Pueblito filled the gap and is doing a great job, too. It wasn't our sole intent to drive 110 miles just for tortillas, our ultimate destination was Canyon Wren Ranch in Aravaipa Canyon. Cathy raises Churro sheep and it is lambing season. Seeing we had never visited this corner of Arizona it seemed that today was as good as any to do so. The sky was clear and blue while the desert green and lush although the wildflowers haven't exploded onto the scene yet. And today's photo is not of Aravaipa Canyon, it is roadside south of Superior looking west.

No, this is not The Return of Creature From The Black Lagoon - it is The Return of The Mother-in-law From Germany. Tickets are bought, travel plans are finished, reservations made for Jutta's mid-May trip back to America. For the first time since she began visiting back in 1997 she will be travelling to the North Atlantic corner of United States. Over the years Jutta has visited twenty-three of the fifty states primarily in the West but also some of the Southern states. This year she and I will meet up in Philadelphia and travel to St Michaels, Maryland on the Chesapeake Bay for a few days of sailing and rest while she gets over jetlag before Caroline joins us. Our road trip begins in historic Harpers Ferry, West Virginia and takes us west to Front Royal, Virginia for the one-hundred mile drive south on the Skyline Drive National Scenic Byway to Swannanoa, turning east to Charlottesville, VA to visit President Thomas Jefferson's home Monticello and then on to Montpelier and President James Madison's home before visiting Fredericksburg, Virginia.

After taking the James River Plantations Drive to visit the Berkeley and Westover Plantations we will visit Jamestowne - the Colonial National Historic Park - and then Williamsburg. A lantern tour and concert have already been booked in Williamsburg while breakfast at the Old Chickahominy House has been put into the itinerary, too. Travelling north we'll stop at Mount Vernon for a visit to President George Washington's home and then we have three nights booked in Washington D.C. From the nation's capitol we drive to New  York City to visit the Empire State Building for a night time view of the city and then the next day we go atop the Rockefeller Center for a day time view. Of course we'll be visiting Times Square and plan for a guided bike tour of Central Park. Our last day in NYC has us taking a ferry to Ellis Island to see the Statue of Liberty.

From here we head up to Buffalo, New York and the Niagara Falls along with a short visit with my Aunt Lillian, but by now this leg of the vacation is quckly coming to an end and so we'll point the car south driving to Lancaster, Pennsylvania to tour a small corner of Amish America before boarding our return flight to Phoenix.

Back in Arizona we have a traditional Hindu wedding to attend for our friend Rinku and her soon-to-be husband Yagnesh. A week later a short trip to Los Angeles has us visiting the Griffith Park Observatory - James Dean has always been a favorite of my mother-in-law - and then we'll take her to San Pedro for a fresh fish lunch at Ports O' Call. Santa Barbara is also on the list of todo's with a five day visit. Under consideration but not yet confirmed is a drive to Monterey, California.

We close out this trip with a drive to the small town of Pagosa Springs, Colorado for the 4th of July with an old fashioned downtown parade followed by a rodeo and fireworks. The next day we are booked on the Cumbres & Toltec Railroad riding the historic narrow gauge train through the mountains amongst the wildflowers.

Following this vacation Jutta will have visited America for a total of 336 days and seen 30 states plus the District of Columbia. She has hiked in and out of the Grand Canyon, visited Death Valley a few times, snorkeled in the Florida Keys, strolled along the Appalachian Trail, dipped her toes into the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and the Gulf of Mexico, too. Jutta has enjoyed her visits to Washington's Olympic National Park looking at moss and mushrooms in the rain forest and then walked on the glaciers in Montana before one of her many visits to Yellowstone. We looked up to the Presidents at Mount Rushmore and she helped drive across the Great Plains. She's eaten beignets in New Orleans and visited Elvis Presley's home at Graceland. My mother-in-law has been on a raft on the Colorado River, a steam train in southern Colorado, a fan boat in the Everglades, and the ferris wheel at Disneyland. So for those of you who ask, and many do, how I can spend so much time with my mother-in-law - it's easy with someone who enjoys herself as much as she does.