The Weather

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It’s all relative.

One of the reasons I left the New York City metro area years ago and moved to Arizona was the weather. The winters in the New York area were just too darn cold. I recall getting ready to go to work one winter morning and glancing out the window at the thermometer to find it reading -7°F. (That’s -22°C for you metric folks.) There was an icicle hanging from it.

The winters were gray, too. By November, the trees would be bare and their trunks and branches were gray. The sky was gray. When it snowed, the snow turned gray. Even the grass seemed gray. It would stay like that until May when the trees budded up again.

One year, it snowed not long after New Years and there was snow on the ground for a full two months. Gray snow.

I don’t like cold weather and I found the gray depressing.

So I moved to Arizona. Winter days here in Wickenburg are quite mild — often warm enough for a T-shirt. Winter nights are cold, sometimes getting down into the mid 20s. The desert depends on the sun for heat and the sun doesn’t disappoint. It’s sunny most days. When the sun sets, the temperature can easily drop 20°F in less than an hour.

The sun does its work only too well in the summer time. It gets hot. Hotter than I bargained for. Hotter than hell for at least two months out of the year. Don’t be lured to Arizona by cheap hotel rates in July and August. Even the people who live here wouldn’t come here then.

Arizona SunriseYesterday and today, it was overcast. It’s been making great sunrises (like the one in this photo, taken out the front of my house this morning) and sunsets.

Today it actually rained.

Rain is a big deal in Arizona. We can go literally months without any rain. This was probably the first rain in at least a month.

For the past two days, the sky has been gray. I’m glad, though, because the sky is blue and clear so often that gray makes a nice change. Everyone I spoke to today pretty much felt the same way. “I hope it rains,” one main said, looking up at the sky.

It had already rained once, but that’s never enough. In Arizona, we hope it rains all day long.

Arizona SunriseYou can hope for rain all you want in Arizona because you’re not likely to get it. Sometimes, when it rains, the air is so dry that the rain dries up before it hits the ground. You can actually see it falling under the cloud, but it disappears before making anything wet. The phenomena is called virga and I think I’ve seen enough of it to last a lifetime. You can see some in this picture, looking pink because of the rising sun. (This picture was taken out my back door yesterday morning.) Sometimes you can actually smell the rain and still not feel a drop. What a tease that is.

The rain does have an interesting smell here. Not at all like back east and nothing like the ocean. Mostly, it’s the smell of the creosote bush. I think it’s the smell of the rain that I like the most. Last night, we slept with the bedroom door open to the patio. This morning, the rain smell was the first thing I noticed. Nice.

Is it possible for the weather in a place to be too nice? I think so.

When you look forward to a rainy day just to have a break from all the good weather, I think that’s proof enough that you’re getting too much of a good thing.

Some Interesting Reads

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I told you I shouldn’t surf the ‘Net.

I’ve slipped into news junkie mode. But rather than get it from the television, I get it from the Internet, written by people who actually think.

Here are a few interesting reads:

Rescuing Jesus by Alessandro Camon on Salon.com discusses the hippocracy of the religious right.

Press Briefing (10/13/2005) by Scott McClellan on whitehouse.gov illustrates how the White House’s screw ups are not getting by the press unnoticed.

Fall of the Rovean Empire by Sidney Blumenthal on Salon.com discusses the politics, economics, and behind the scenes dealings of members of the Republican party.

Please don’t comment on these unless you’ve read them.

And Another Thing…

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I really shouldn’t surf the ‘Net.

Today was a cloudy day in Wickenburg. And I’m trying to get over a cold. So it made perfect sense to spend the day lounging around the house.

I don’t watch much television. There isn’t much on that I like. I have a DVR (like Tivo but for Dish) that I can use to record anything that interests me. Then, when Mike and I need to spend “quality time” together in the evenings, we can put on an episode of Modern Marvels or Nova or maybe even StarGate SG-1 and relax.

Mike was watching ball games all day. So running through a few recorded shows wasn’t really an option for me. (Yes, it’s true. We only have one television. I’m really serious when I say I don’t watch much.)

That left blogging, but I was pretty much all blogged out.

So I surfed. I don’t surf often, either. There’s more junk on the Internet than there is on television. But I do admit that there’s also more interesting stuff on the Internet than there is on television. And today I found some of it.

I read about the blogger who lost his job at Microsoft because he took a photo of Macintosh G5 computers on Microsoft’s loading dock and put them in his blog. I read about the journalist who finally met the blogger who had been slandering him for two years. I read about the high school student who was interviewed by the secret service because of an anit-Bush poster he’d made for a school project.

In between, read a summary of the controversial parts of the Patriot Act, took an IQ test, subscribed to a few NPR podcasts, listened to a podcast about the Dover PA Intelligent Design vs. Evolution trial (on Science Friday), ordered a few writing books and a helicopter calendar from Amazon.com, and made several trips to the kitchen to stir our crockpot dinner.

Then I started browsing through the political articles on Slate, Salon, and The Progressive. As you should know by now, my political leanings are quite a bit left of the current administration. Since the current administration is about as far right as it could get, that puts me somewhere just left of center. And the articles I read about current events — Harriet Miers, Carl Rove, Judith Miller, Iraq, and McCarthy-like incidents all over the country — made me wonder (again) what the hell is going on in this country.

What took the cake, however, was a review of Senator Rick Santorum’s book, It Takes a Family. This guy is really a senator? People voted for him instead of someone else? I’m obviously not the only person who is upset that a man with his beliefs is in public office. I found the Santorum Exposed Web site with lots more information about this self-righteous nut.

So now I’m far more politically up-to-date, even though I lost an entire day to surfing.

But hell, this is better than reality TV. It’s reality.

And you know that truth is stranger than fiction.

Land of the Free?

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Think again.

Another example of how our rights are being questioned or stripped away from us.

On September 20, a high school student and one of his teachers were questioned by the Secret Service about a poster the student had created for a class project on — of all things — The Bill of Rights. The villain here is clearly a Wal-Mart employee — yet another reason to avoid the store. You can read the details here, along with over 200 comments by outraged readers.

Matthew Rothschild, the author of the article for The Progressive magazine and Web site, has been keeping a list cases on his “McCarthyism Watch.” If you’d like to get angry, be sure to check out some of the articles there.

I guess you don’t need to be a blogger to get in trouble for speaking your mind.

Fine Dining in Wickenburg, Take 2

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Mike and I enjoy a great dinner…in Wickenburg!

To the people reading these blogs — especially lately — it might seem that I spend an awful lot of time and words thinking and writing about food and restaurants. You need to understand that Wickenburg is a small town in a relatively remote area and fine dining is not something that’s in demand — or apparently understood — by the general population. Although there are restaurants where you can get a good meal, getting a fine dining experience in town is a bit tougher. That’s hard for a transplanted city girl who was accustomed to getting any kind of food she wanted any time of the day or night.

Hopefully, when they start selling all the expensive housing they’re building around town, rich people will move in and there will be enough of a demand for fine dining to open a few new restaurants. In the meantime, I’m waiting.

But last night, Mike and I had dinner at one of the town’s three remaining “American Plan” guest ranches: Rancho de los Caballeros. We’d been eating at Los Cab (as the locals call it) occasionally for the past five or more years. During that time, they underwent a change of kitchen staff, with at least three different chefs. Los Cab’s dining room is the closest you can get to fine dining in Wickenburg and sometimes it’s pretty darn close — close enough to convince me, anyway.

Last year, I was quite disappointed. Mike and I ate there three times and it just wasn’t cutting it anymore. The menu had gotten boring and the service just wasn’t what it should be.

One of my pet peeves in a fine dining restaurant is having a server or busperson address us as “you guys.” I’m talking about a greeting like, “How are you guys today?” Or a question like, “Would you guys like anything else?” I call this the You Guys syndrome. While it’s perfectly acceptable in a place like Screamers, for example, where you walk up and order a burger at the counter and they call your name when it’s done, you don’t expect it in a place that has a dress code. Yet sadly, Los Cab’s staff was suffering from the You Guys syndrome.

How are they supposed to address people, you might be asking? How about “How are you this evening?” or “Would you folks like something else?” Duh. It doesn’t take much imagination. But if the young folks that make up the staff aren’t properly trained, they don’t know they’re doing something that’s not quite up to par. So I can’t blame them.

Last night was our first meal at Los Cab this season and we were suitably impressed. Service was excellent, the menu was interesting, and the food was good. And I didn’t hear a single “you guys” during my entire meal. What else can you ask for?

I mentioned the menu. Los Cab changes its menu daily. This is because all guests staying at the ranch eat all meals there. If you’re there for five days, you don’t want to see the same menu every day. Especially since the menu is somewhat short. Last season, the chef experimented with a single menu and revolving specials, but he saw the light and switched back to the seven menu system midseason.

Last night we had the Friday menu.

I started with a mixed appetizer definitely designed for daring city slicker types — it included fried cactus, home made jerky, and grilled rattlesnake. Unfortunately, they were out of rattlesnake — it is out of season now, you know — but the jerky and cactus strips were very good. I wasn’t too keen on the dipping sauce, which tasted a bit too much like soy sauce for me. Mike had the Tortilla Soup. He said it was a different recipe and a bit spicy but good.

For our main course, I had grilled venison served with tabbouleh and pear slices. It was very good, although I think a little more sauce wouldn’t have hurt it. Mike had roast duck breast atop a smoked portabella mushroom. It was an interesting preparation — most times we’ve had duck, it’s been paired with a sweet sauce, like a cherry or orange glaze. This had a more smokey sauce that was definitely different. We shared a bottle of wine with dinner. (In case you’re wondering, it was served properly in the correct glasses.)

For desert, we shared creme brulee and something called Chocolate Lasagna. The creme brulee wasn’t my idea of a creme brulee, which is an eggy custard served very cold with caramelized sugar still hot on top. (Frank’s in the Myrtle Beach area made the absolute best when we used to do down there about 10 years ago.) This was a more pudding-like concoction served over fresh berries in a thin sugar cookie crust with vanilla creme on the bottom. Very good. The Chocolate Lasagna was chocolate cake layered with marscarpone. It wasn’t my taste, but Mike gobbled it up. Of course, we had that with coffee and tea. My coffee was very good — I’m so picky about coffee — although the bean was a bit darker roast than I prefer. At least it was brewed to the proper strength, fresh, and hot.

What’s nice is that Los Cab has a fixed price menu that includes three courses — appetizer/soup, entree, and desert with coffee. Alcohol is extra, of course, but they don’t nickel and dime you for entree accompaniments or beverages (like one Wickenburg restaurant that gives you free “dessert” — a tiny scoop of half-melted ice cream — but charges you $2 for the coffee you drink with it). And this year, Los Cab accepts MasterCard and Visa — previously it was a cash-only restaurant.

After the meal, the restaurant manager brought our check and asked how everything was. I told her it was great. We talked about last season when both she and the chef were new. She said it was like opening a new restaurant back then and that they had to work out the kinks. I told her that so far, this year was looking much better than last and that we were looking forward to coming back on other days to sample the rest of the menu.

If you live in or visit Wickenburg, you really owe it to yourself to try Los Cab’s dining room for your next special occasions. You’ll need reservations to get in. Because all guests eat at the restaurant, they open up tables to outsiders only if tables remain after all guests have been seated.

So yes, you can have a fine dining experience in Wickenburg. Thank heaven!