5-21-09 Thursday (Knifed)

Last night we watched the Curious Case of Benjamin Button.  This was a long movie.  I’m not sure how exactly I would rate it.  I have mixed emotions.  It was slow running to me but the whole thing together was good.  Sorry, not much of a review, is it.  Well, ya know, watch it, don’t watch it, I don’t care.

It poured rain last night.  Again, so odd for the desert, but there it was.  It wasn’t until we were out west that we spotted signs for various washes.  I had never heard of a wash.  A drainage ditch that temporarily fills during rain.  Washes can even cross roads.  How odd.  Then we saw warnings about flash flooding.  We’ve heard stories of people being killed by rushing water into a wash.  Rain falls onto mountains/hillsides.  Water runs downward, catches into the wash.  The ground is firm from the lack of water so it can’t absorb into the ground very fast.  From what I understand, it doesn’t take much rain to create the fierce river-like rapids.  Unfortunately, we were watching a movie and it was dark last night so I didn’t get to see this in action.  Maybe there wasn’t any action.  Of course I’d safely view it from the sidelines.

Oh, and American Idol!  Wowsers.  Oh, we don’t watch it.  Kris this, Adam that.  Actually, we don’t watch TV much at all.  We don’t have a satellite dish (we decided against it early on because we’re traveling to see the country, not watch TV) but do have cable at some RV parks.  When we have reception, then we just manage to sit around more than we should.  We do have a lot of TV shows to catch up on once we settle down.  We’ll watch ‘em on Netflix, or Hulu or whatever.

Jim suggested we take a ride to the town of Sierra Vista and have lunch at a Chinese buffet we spotted yesterday.  I said, “no, we can’t be doing shit like that.  I baked chicken yesterday for salads … we need to have a salad.”  He agreed.  After I took a shower.  “OK, let’s go to the buffet.”  I’m so weak.  The buffet had quite a lot of tasty things.  2 interesting things at the buffet.  Pizza.  Well, it’s strange to have pizza there, it was even stranger to see it have peas and carrots on it.  The other item was “octopus” as the sign said.  It wasn’t breaded and it had the head and all.  Jim wanted me to take pictures but at the time I was like “uh no, then I’d have to admit that we went to a buffet after always complaining about my weight.”  Yeah, I’m not sure what happened there either.  I do want to bring up the lack of knives in the Chinese restaurant culture.  Do these people not believe in them?  Was I supposed to have a sharp chop stick? I wouldn’t care if they’d make the meats or pieces of broccoli bite-sized. They’ll be a special hell for those non-knife restaurants (which is all of them).  Chop sticks made of cotton. I have to admit, I was stuffed after we left.  As we sat down in the Jeep, I surely resembled Buddha. 

Jim and I are still in awe over these mountain views.  Not just the campsite, but everywhere.  Bisbee, Sierra Vista, and other neighboring towns all have spectacular views.  Sierra Vista is a fairly large city.  It has a CitiFinancial, a Cold Stone, Lowes, Home Depot, Chinese buffet, a Suzuki dealership under construction and opening soon … what more could we need?

We had dinner with the employees here at the campground.  They invited us to attend a farewell dinner for one of their long term residents who is leaving to take a job. A few other people joined us, making it a total of 9.  Jim and I brought brownies and they supplied salad, meats, potatoes and corn bread.  It was good.  We played Phase 10 with Andy after the gathering broke up for the evening.  I won!