Still At It...

Still baking in Phoenix, but we’re getting near to done. We’ll be leaving tomorrow morning, back to Fort Irwin, then a quick (well, not so quick, but with a quick mindset) trip up I-5 and back in PDX on Sunday.

I’ve been doing absolutely nothing music related the last few days except some furtive poking at my current Pd patch, so I’ve really got nothing to talk about in that regard. In perusing my RSS feeds, it seems that nobody has done anything terribly interesting this week in any event, other than deciding that a webcam and some little cardboard boxes might be a good way to program drum beats. (Speaking as a musician and not someone easily enamored by all things blinky, I think I can safely espouse the view that it isn’t, in fact, a very good way to program drum beats.)

One thing I’ll mention, which isn’t in any way related to the normal content of this blog, is that I forget how alive the low desert is. The Pacific Northwest in general, and the Willamette Valley in particular, is explosively fecund in the area of flora, but it suffers somewhat where fauna is concerned. Not so the low desert that surrounds Phoenix. My wife’s parents live on the very outskirts of the metroplex, in an area that could be described as “country” if it weren’t for the laughably large mansions and 6-lane boulevards that run through it. Sitting here this morning as the sun came up, a bobcat sauntered (actually sauntered) through the backyard. This place is just thick with birds and critters of every sort, much more so than the northwest forests.

I don’t even mind the heat, truthfully. It’s the dryness that gives me a workout. If we have to be hot anyhow, I’ll take the sauna of a Chicago summer or New Orleans over this place any day of the week.

Anyhow, big thumbs up for iPhone tethering, hoping that I don’t get a thousand dollar bill from AT&T next month, and I’ll be back to work on Monday morning. Until then, talk amongst yourselves.