Category Archives: Days in My Life

I don’t just sit around and watch TV.

Living on the Edge of Nowhere

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How a native New Yorker feels about living in a small Arizona town.

Wickenburg, where I currently live, is a small desert town about 50 miles northwest of downtown Phoenix, AZ. You drive through a lot of empty desert on your way to Wickenburg and when out-of-towners come to stay with us, they tell us we live in the middle of nowhere. No, I correct them. We live on the edge of nowhere.

We chose Wickenburg because of its small-town atmosphere, the affordability of housing (when compared with where we came from in northern New Jersey), the availability of services I needed to work (overnight FedEx, Internet access), and its relative proximity to a major airport (Sky Habor is 70 miles door-to-door).

In general, we got what we wanted. Our home, which was brand new when we bought it, sits on 2.5 acres of horse property near state land. We saddle up the horses right at the house and ride out on dozens of miles of riding trails. Our neighbors are far enough away that we don’t need to worry about closing curtains or blinds. We have real privacy, which I like. And peace and quiet, which I really like. I can work and keep in touch with my editors. And there are plenty of outdoor things to do, including horseback riding, off-roading, and hiking.

Wickenburg has just about everything we need to live comfortably, although there are some things I miss. Restaurants is a big one. Wickenburg’s restaurants are, for the most part, the plain vanilla variety where you can get a decent meal at a good price. But ethnic food is another story. There’s a very good German restaurant and several decent Mexican restaurants. There’s a Chinese restaurant, but it’s terrible (sorry, Mae). One restaurant, which is open during the winter season only, has very good “gourmet-style” (for lack of a better term) food, which is actually interesting. We try to go there at least once a month. For other food fixes — such as Japanese, Thai, and Chinese (we’re fond of Pacific Rim foods) — we have to go down to Phoenix or up to Prescott.

Wickenburg’s shopping is somewhat limited, too, although the Safeway Supermarket does a good job of meeting special requests. Certain types and cuts of meat are special order items; veal and lamb are seldom in the store. I have, on occasion, ordered a veal shank (for osso bucco) and a crown roast of lamb (for Christmas dinner). These items were extremely costly, but at least I was able to get them.

I work with computers and Wickenburg completely drops the ball when it comes to electronics. There’s a Radio Shack, but it’s run by a pair of morons who have serious attitude problems. I do most of my computer purchases via mail order or make a trip down to Fry’s Electronics on Thunderbird off I-17.

Wickenburg does not have a Wal*Mart (thank heaven), Home Depot, or Gap. It also doesn’t have a decent bookstore. Its singles scene stinks. So it will never be on anyone’s top-ten places to live.

Except, of course, retirement places lists. Unfortunately, Wickenburg always seems to appear on these lists. As a result, the town’s population doubles to 10,000 or so in the winter when old folk come down from the midwest and northwest to spend the winter where it’s warmer. And that’s where I’m having a serious problem living in Wickenburg.

The trouble is, these people (we call them Q-Tips because of their white hair) come for six months and act like they own the town. For the most part, they’re terrible (read that “dangerous”) drivers who are a real menace in parking lots and at intersections. They operate at a a speed that makes a normal Wickenburg resident look like the Roadrunner of cartoon fame, and makes a former New Yorker like me appear to be operating at light speed. They’re easy to bump into or trip over. They stop to chat in supermarkets and the post office, not seeming to notice that they’re blocking aisles. They seem to look down on local residents, perhaps because we don’t have two homes and they do — or at least a home and a motorhome that cost as much as a home. But the biggest problem is that they’re cheap and don’t want to spend money on anything in town if they can get it cheaper elsewhere. They cruise down to the Wal*Mart and other bargain stores in Surprise (40 miles way) regularly and whine about fuel prices in town. As a result, they don’t help support the local economy and they make it impossible for anyone to open a shop or restaurant that doesn’t cater to their cheap, white bread tastes.

Do I sound like I can’t stand them? In general, I can’t. There are a few exceptions, although I can’t think of any at the moment.

The other problem with living among all these old people is that you start to feel old, too. You start to wonder why, at the age of 42, you’re living in a retirement town. You’re not retired. You still have a lot of good years ahead of you. So why the hell are you living in a place where old people come to spend their last winters?

If the winter isn’t depressing enough, the summer can be sheer hell. In July and August, during the monsoon season, daily temperatures go into the 100s and 110s, with humidity sometimes peaking at 30% or more. It’s a nasty combination that makes it difficult to do anything outdoors. So we spend a lot of time indoors. Or in the air conditioned car. Or in the air conditioned store.

So Mike and I are seriously considering a move. To someplace that doesn’t get so damn hot in the summer and isn’t packed with the 55+ crowd in the winter. To someplace where we can feel alive, all year around. Where we can still get the peace and privacy we need to be happy.

If you know of such a place, let me know.

On Radio Interviews

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I start doing radio interviews again and remember why I stopped doing them in the first place.

I’m at home, sitting at a table (my old kitchen table, as a matter of fact) in our upstairs “den.” (If we had a family, we might call it a “family room.” But we don’t, so we don’t. We sometimes call it a “TV room,” because that’s where the TV lives, but I like to think that we use the room for more than just being pacified by the universal pacifier.) During the day, this room’s two 4 x 8 windows have an incredible view of the Weaver and Bradshaw mountains, but it’s dark now and I can’t see much more than the lights in a few neighbors’ homes. It’s 7:30 PM on a Friday night.

I’m waiting for the phone to ring.

I know who’s going to call. It’ll be David Lawrence, host of “Online Tonight with David Lawrence,” a radio talk show. Or it’ll be someone who works for him, just making the connection while David does other stuff in preparation for interviewing me. That’s why he’s calling, of course, I’m tonight’s guest on his show.

Oddly enough, this isn’t the first time I’ve been interviewed today. At about noon, I had to put my day on hold while I was interviewed by Alan Ashendorf and his partner (whose name I can’t remember; sorry!). I called at precisely 12 noon, chatted for about 20 minutes as a sort of dry run for the interview, and then got asked some of the same questions all over again, along with a few others. The whole thing took 45 minutes. I think I did pretty well. I only forgot what I was going to say once and, hopefully, they’ll edit that out. That’s one of the benefits of doing a taped interview. If I sound like a moron, they can fix things up to make me sound better. Of course, if I sound like a genius, they can also fix things up to make me sound worse. Whatever.

The interview by David will be live. With listener call-ins. I hate listener call-ins. Half the time, they expect you to solve some kind of obscure problem they’re having with their computer. The kind of problem that they shouldn’t be having in the first place, so you really don’t know why they’re having it, let alone how to solve it. But I like David and he supposedly “loves” me (for reasons I don’t quite understand). And I think he’ll protect me from the listener from hell. At least I hope so.

As you might have surmised, I don’t seem too enthusiastic about being interviewed. And you might be wondering why.

Peachpit Press used to line up interviews for me. Some of them were online chats which, I can safely say, are pretty much a complete waste of time. You’d check into a “chat room” at a prearranged time, then spend 50 minutes answering questions by typing them in. There would be about eight people in the audience — people who probably didn’t have much else to do with their time. Of those people, at least two worked for the organization that was holding the chat and at least one other was a fake person planted in the chat room to ask questions when no one else had anything to ask. Call me an idiot, but it wasn’t until I commented to someone about how one particular person turned up for all my chats that I was told that that person didn’t exist. And I thought I had a fan. Instead, I was wasting 50 minutes of my day typing words of wisdom for the benefit of five people.

Peachpit also lined up real interviews, though. There was one that I did in a radio station studio in the Los Angeles area years and years ago. I can’t remember why I was in LA — I certainly didn’t go just for the interview — but there I was, sitting at a table with a mike in front of me. We were live and listeners were calling in. And my headset didn’t work right so I couldn’t hear a word anyone was saying. Needless to say, I didn’t make much of an impression on that show.

There were others, too. Telephone interviews. I remember doing one while I was up at my property at Howard Mesa. Mind you, I’m on top of a mesa (a flat-topped mountain for you east coast folks), 5 miles down a dirt road from pavement that was 15 miles away from the nearest town. I did the interview on my cell phone, plugged into the car’s lighter jack with the windows rolled up. I don’t even remember what I was interviewed about or who interviewed me. For all I know, it might have been Alan Ashendorf and his partner — they seemed to remember me from another interview today.

The cell phone interview at Howard Mesa was the last straw. The problem was, Peachpit would line up these interviews weeks or months in advance. I had to arrange my schedule around these interviews. And I didn’t like that.

One of the best things about my lifestyle is its flexibility. With a day or two of planning, I can go places and do things that keep me far away from telephones and other ties to civilization. (In the old days, before dogs and horses and parrots and airports, we didn’t even need those planning days.) But things are a bit more difficult if I have to be reachable by a talk show host at a certain day or time.

So I told Peachpit I didn’t want to do any more interviews. Or chats. They tried once or twice to line something up for me, but I reminded them that I wasn’t interested. So they stopped. That was about two years ago.

Last month, I did a project for FileMaker, Inc. It was a very good project that required me to write a 15-page, illustrated document about using FileMaker Pro with Excel. The pay was excellent — heck, I wish I could get work like that all the time. But the pay included making myself available for — you guessed it — radio talk show interviews.

Earlier this week, the man in charge of lining up the interviews told me that he had two for me — both today. And because FileMaker, Inc. paid me to do them, here I am, waiting for the phone to ring.

What FileMaker, Inc. probably wouldn’t like is that this afternoon’s interview centered around my recently released Word 2003 book. That’s not what they wanted me to talk about. In fact, they sent a detailed e-mail message to both interviewers and me, outlining what they expected us to talk about. But the PR guy also made the fatal error of sending the interviewers my Word 2003 book. They didn’t care about FileMaker. Microsoft’s Office 2003 software release interested them a lot more. After all, there are millions of Word users throughout the world. What’s FileMaker Pro? I did my best. I mentioned FileMaker Pro twice in the interview. But neither interviewer picked up on it. I think Peachpit should pay the PR guy’s fee for this one.

But in reality, I know it was all a waste of time. My Word for Windows books never sold very well — they do just well enough to warrant revisions every two years when new versions come out — and I don’t expect one radio interview to change that. There’s too much competition in the Windows world and Peachpit is a very small player there.

Peachpit did send the books as requested. So the cat’s out of the bag: they know I’m doing interviews again. I wonder if they’ll try lining something up for me.

So here it is, now 8:00 PM. According to the PR guy, the show is at 8 PM mountain time. My time. And I’m wondering why the phone hasn’t rung yet.

But deep down inside, I know why. The PR guy got it wrong. The show is at 9 PM Pacific time. That means 10 PM mountain time. Which means I’ll be staying up late tonight.

I’m wrong! They called. I’m on.

— LATER —

The interview is over and it was a lot of fun. David does a great job interviewing people.

But guess what? We didn’t talk about FileMaker Pro.

Alex’s New Cage

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I buy Alex a new cage and he won’t move in.

I had a feeling there would be a problem, but Janet made my worries seem ridiculous. So I bought the cage.

The idea was to buy Alex, my 18-month-old African Grey parrot, a new cage. This would be one I could leave outside so he could spend nice days outdoors without me having to wheel his cage in and out. Moving the cage is a royal pain in the butt, and I only do it when it’s time to hose it out. A second cage would make life easier and get Alex some fresh air while I was at work.

Janet and I took Mike’s pickup down to Phoenix to Bird Expo West (or some similar name), a one-day bird show where we were sure to find great bird deals. Janet’s significant other, Steve, has a scarlet macaw named Calypso. He’s a monstrously huge bird with a beak large enough to break bones and a scream loud enough to wake the dead. While Alex may chew on toilet paper rolls and small pieces of wood, Calypso can tear through two-by-fours. Janet was looking for something to keep him occupied so he’d stop chewing the blinds.

The show was very big and very good. There was a little of everything: toys, food, cages, and birds for sale. The place was filled with bird noise, as if we were walking through an aviary. At one point, Janet missed a cell phone call because she never heard the phone ring over the din.

We bought toys. I didn’t buy many — I think I spent about $15 total. They were all brightly colored wood and wicker toys. Small toys that Alex could chew up within a few days each. They were cheap and would last Alex about two months. Janet bought bigger toys that she carried around in heavy bags. She also bought a few smaller toys for her Budgie, who’d lost his partner over the summer.

There were all kinds of cages, from the smallest carry box for a finch to huge, walk-in aviaries. And the prices on cages were incredible. Cages that would cost $500 in PetSmart were $200 or less. At my top budget price of $200, there was plenty to choose from. Including the corner cage with the rounded front.

Take a moment to imagine this. Alex lives in a rectangular cage in the corner of my dining room/kitchen. The cage is about 26″ deep and about 34″ wide. Add to that about 4″ on each side for the “seed catchers” that do a so-so job of keeping dropped food and toys from falling on the floor. As a result, a big corner of my kitchen is taken up by Alex’s living space.

I’d seen corner cages before, but had never seen one quite as spacious as the one at the show. (Mind you, there were other less spacious ones there, too.) This one would give Alex all the room he needed to live quite comfortably. Best of all, its two flat sides, which would be tucked into the corner, measured only 26″ wide. With the rounded front, the cage would take up much less space than Alex’s current cage. It was even green, almost the same color as the cage he already had, which matched my kitchen.

It all makes sense, right? Buy the corner cage, move Alex into it, and use his current cage for outdoors.

But there was a little voice inside my head that told me it wasn’t such a good idea. You see, Alex likes his cage. He likes to hang out in it. He likes to climb all over it — even upside down from its roof. Sometimes, in the morning, I can’t get him to come out. He spends the day in there, and he sleeps in there. It’s his room, his personal space.

I told this to Janet and she looked at me like I was nuts. He’ll get used to it, she told me. He got used to the one he’s in, didn’t he?

She was right — or at least she sounded right to me. So I bought the cage.

You know what comes next. I brought the cage home and wheeled it into the kitchen to show Alex. He was on top of his cage, just hanging around, and when he saw the new cage, he took a dive to the floor. He was shaking like a leaf when I showed him the new cage. He jumped off my hand several times. Over the next two days, every time I brought him close to the cage, he’d climb on my shoulder so he could be as far away from it as possible. Any time I’d try to get him to step onto the cage, he’d dive onto the floor. Obviously, not only did he dislike the cage, he was terrified of it.

Well the cage is installed in the opposite corner of the dining area, where Alex can look at it all day. I’ve installed some perches and toys in it. I lined the top with paper — not an easy task, given the quarter circle shape. And I keep trying to get Alex to take an interest in it.

The sad part is, I bought the cage to save room in my kitchen, and so far, I’ve just lost more space.

Another Sleepless Night

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About my unfortunate sleeping problem.

I can’t sleep.

It’s Tuesday morning, at around 12:30 AM. I’m wide awake, typing on my PowerBook in front of the TV. The TV is off.

I have a weird sleeping problem. I wake up very early — usually around 5 AM — without any assistance from an alarm clock. I can’t even claim that the sun is waking me, because the sun doesn’t rise these days until nearly 7 AM. I go through my morning routine, which includes making coffee for me and scrambled egg for Alex, my parrot, at a leisurely pace. By 7 AM, I’m ready for work.

The day goes quickly. These days, I’ve been starting my day at the local airport, which I kind of manage. My morning guy went back to work as a pilot and I’m looking for a replacement. Until I find one, I’m the morning guy. I work until about noon, getting lots of paperwork done and spending lots of time talking to the people who come in. Then I usually go to my office, where I spend a few hours catching up on the things I neglected while working on my last big book project — in this case, my Mac OS X Panther book. (Next week, I start another book project — Excel 2003 for Windows.) Around 5 PM, I head home. Mike and I have dinner and usually watch something we’ve “tape” on Dish Network’s version of TIVO. Last night, it was an episode of “Choppers” from Discovery Wings and a “Nova” about string theory. (We don’t watch network TV.) By 8 PM, I can barely keep my eyes open. I go to bed.

I’m dead to the world for the first half of any night’s sleep. You could set off a bomb in my kitchen and I don’t think I’d wake up. After that, things are iffy.

On the worst nights — like tonight — I wake up about four to five hours after I’ve fallen asleep and I’m wide awake. Tonight is worse than usual because I still have a cough, so when I woke up, I spent some time coughing, waking up Mike, too. When I’m like this, I can spend at least two hours wasting time watching TV, reading, or writing. Then, if I’m lucky, I can get back to sleep.

Other nights, I’ll just wake up and snooze and wake up and snooze for the rest of the night. Or I’ll just sleep lightly and wake to the slightest outside sound: dogs barking, coyotes howling, wind, etc. Or be kept awake by the sound of Mike breathing. Since I can’t get him to stop doing that, I’m often in a semi awake stage for hours. These nights are particularly bad if I have a lot on my mind. Then these thoughts parading through my head make it impossible to sleep.

Of course, other nights, I’ll sleep right through.

The sleepless nights usually come in groups. They might be triggered by the moon or by some internal clock that my body keeps winding. So I’ll have a week or more of sleepless nights. Then, one night I’ll sleep right through and wake feeling very pleased and surprised. For a while, the sleepless nights went on for months. It got to the point where I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a good night’s sleep. Then, suddenly, I could sleep straight through again. I was extremely pleased. The thought of never sleeping well again wasn’t sitting well with me.

I don’t believe in taking medicine to help me sleep — unless, of course, I have a cold. I’m a firm believer that when you’re sick, sleep is extremely important. If you don’t get sleep, you won’t get better. So whenever I’m sick, I purposely take over-the-counter remedies that include sleeping aids. Of course, they seldom work because I’m sick and too busy coughing or fighting a runny nose to sleep.

Anyway, tonight is one of those nights. I just spent 20 minutes writing this, sitting on the sofa with my legs tucked up under me and my laptop on my lap. I’ll write something else during the next hour or so. By then, I should be ready to get back to sleep.

I hope.

Flashback: February 6, 2002

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I take Mike’s cousin Ricky to a real ghost town.

Swansea is a ghost town about 60 miles west of Wickenburg. Located on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere (or as close to there as you can get), it takes about 3 hours to reach the place by car. But it takes only 40 minutes by helicopter.

Mike’s cousin Ricky was in town on one of his annual visits. (He doesn’t come annually anymore and I’m not sure why.) Mike had to work and I needed to play. So I took Ricky to Swansea in Three-Niner-Lima.

We landed on the site of what had been the mine manager’s house. The area was flat, covered with the same fine gravel that seems to cover about 90% of Arizona’s desert. The town was deserted — at least I don’t remember anyone being around.

Swansea
Ricky stands near Three-Niner-Lima, on the site of the mine manager’s house.

We explored the town for about an hour. I’d been there before and although I found it interesting, Ricky really seemed to enjoy it. The town has quite a few buildings, many of which have enough left of them to explore. BLM, which owns the townsite, has a walking tour, with numbered stops, and a brochure that explains a lot. It really is worth seeing, but whether it’s worth a total of 6 hours spent in a car, most of which is on dirt roads, is debatable. Having the helicopter for transportation really makes places like this much more accessible.

Ricky at the Wheel
I don’t know why, but I like this photo of Ricky behind the wheel of a desert wreck.

This year, if Ricky shows up, I’ll take him someplace new. I have a few ideas for places to explore.