Tag Archives: Phoenix

Heat

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Phoenix residents snicker.

A heat wave is spreading across the country, giving people in the west, midwest, and northeast a taste of what Phoenix residents experience from June through September every single year.

Heat is serious business in northern latitudes. Many homes were built long before central air conditioning became a “necessity” of American life. The “lucky” people in those older homes have window air conditioning units that they install and remove on the same schedule they use to store and unpack their winter clothes. In some areas of the northwest, air conditioning is rare — since serious heat waves are also rare. And in low income homes, even the window air conditioner isn’t an option since the occupants often can’t afford to purchase such a luxury item. People are being overcome by the heat, getting sick, and dying.

To make matters worse, air conditioners use power and the power suppliers in these areas aren’t accustomed to meeting the additional demands of air conditioner users. Brownouts and rolling blackouts are all too real. You know things are bad when the media recommends unplugging cell phone chargers and televisions when not in use to limit the amount of “vampire power” these devices suck from the grid — an estimated 10% of all power use.

Meanwhile, Phoenix temperatures are below normal, in the high 90s and low 100s. The other day, it was hotter in South Dakota than it was in Phoenix. How’s that for a switch? It has some people in Phoenix snickering. After all, we tease people up north about their snowfalls and low temperatures in winter and they tease us about our hellish summers. Now we can tease them about hellish summers, too.

I’m still up at Howard Mesa where I went to escape WIckenburg’s heat — which is slightly more bearable than Phoenix’s. It’s 20° cooler here — in the 70s every day lately. Relaxing in the sun is actually something I like to do here. The other evening, as I lounged reading a book, I kind of wished I had a little blanket to tuck around me. (My blood certainly has thinned out since I left New Jersey 10 years ago.)

Yet every day, as I listen to the news on NPR, I hear about the “sizzling” heat in one place or another and the emergency cooling centers and the efforts to check on elderly people living alone. Hard to think about such heat when you’re not experiencing it.

I remember those 80/80 days in New York — that’s 80° with 80% humidity. That heat was brutal and I’d prefer a spot of shade in Phoenix in August over that. Now it’s over 100° in New York. Those people must be melting.

One thing for sure: none of my family or friends back east are teasing me about the Arizona heat right now.

Zen and the Art of Ikea Furniture Assembly

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I experience a Zen-like calm while assembling Scandinavian-designed shelves and cabinets.

Okay, so I’m exaggerating. But it certainly was pleasant — at least for a while.

Our storage shed at Howard Mesa was in desperate need of some shelves and mouse-proof cabinets.We needed the solution to be cheap.

In a fit of confusion, we’d gone to a Wal-Mart in Prescott and bought some crappy, Chinese-made modular shelves. Of course, we didn’t know they were crappy at the time. Although I hate Wal-Mart and hadn’t stepped foot inside one for more than two years, for some reason we thought we could find what we needed there. After all, Stan raves about the place. Maybe it had changed in two years. It hadn’t. (People say I’m too hard on Wal-Mart but I know I’m not.) And the “furniture” we bought was so poorly made that we brought back all the pieces we hadn’t assembled. We’re still trying to figure out what we’ll do with the three pieces we did put together.

Back to square one.

I was going to try Office Max when Mike suggested Ikea. There’s one down in Tempe, near Phoenix. I didn’t think they’d have what we wanted, but got online to check their catalog. That’s when I found the Träby series of cube-like shelves with optional doors and drawers. We went down to Ikea with the truck to see them in person. They were exactly what we were looking for. And — surprise, surprise — all the pieces we needed were in stock. I loaded up the cart, checked out, and loaded up the truck. Yesterday, at Howard Mesa, I began assembly.

If you’ve never assembled Ikea furniture, you really are missing out on an experience.

First, open the box in which the item’s pieces are packed. You’ll find the box completely filled in with furniture pieces, bag-wrapped hardware, and the minimum number of foam inserts. There’s no wasted space in that box. Since Träby had a natural wood finish, each piece was wrapped in clean, blank newsprint paper.

Now unwrap the hardware and sort it out. There will be pieces you’ve never seen before (unless you’ve assembled Ikea furniture in the past). You might want to sort out the furniture pieces, too. Each one will be slightly different and have tons of holes pre-drilled into it.

Open the instruction booklet. The whole thing is pictures. Line drawings of furniture pieces and hardware with arrows and numbers. In fact, it looks a lot like a coloring book before a kid has gotten to it with crayons. My favorite picture is the one of the man with the pointy nose on the phone; they phone wire is connected to the Ikea store. In words: Call us if you need help.

Next, get your tools ready. You’ll need a philips head screwdriver. That’s it. Okay, sometimes you might need a hammer, but if you do, the hammering job is so light that you can use the heel of your shoe or the handle of the screwdriver.

Now sit on the floor with everything around you. And follow the numbered pictures in the instruction booklet. You’ll screw in weird, tall screws that stick up an inch or more, then stand a panel on top of them and use round do-dads to hold it in place. It’ll be rock solid when you turn the round thing, as if there are ten more screws doing the job. Back panels slide into slots and are held in place with other slots.

What’s amazing about the assembly process is that everything is so incredibly well designed that the pieces can only go together one way. When you’re finished assembling a piece, you feel as if you have performed the final function in a long string of tasks that bring that piece of furniture into existence. You feel as if you’re part of the Ikea team. Like there are a bunch of Europeans nodding their approval at you from across the ocean.

I say Europeans because Ikea is a Scandinavian company and the Träby shelves I bought were made in Poland. The workmanship was quite impressive for such inexpensive furniture. And everything is designed right down to the last screw hole.

The cabinet doors went on just as easily. The only hard part was bending my body in such a way to get the screws into the right pre-drilled holes. The hinges had all kinds of adjustment screws, but I found that if I just used the center setting for each screw, the door hung properly — the first time, every time. Sheesh.

Things changed when it came time to do the drawers. I’d bought two sets of them. Each set had a big drawer and a small drawer. When I opened the box, I got a shock: the drawer insides were lavender. You know. The color. Popular around Easter.

I followed the instructions to assemble the drawers and found that the pieces fit together admirably well. But I hit a snag when I screwed the roller tracks into the cubes I’d already assembled. I kept stripping the screw heads before I could get the screw all the way in.

Now this was weird. I’d been screwing things in all afternoon and hadn’t changed my technique. I hadn’t stripped a single screw up until that point. Now I was stripping the heads on every single screw, unable to get them all the way in. What had changed?

I looked at the box the drawers had come in and saw my answer: Made in China. I guess Poland wasn’t cheap enough for the folks at Ikea headquarters. They’d outsourced to China, like everyone else. The Europeans who’d been nodding their approval were now snickering at me.

I got fed up and stopped only halfway finished with the job. I’ll need Mike to get two of the screws out so I can try again with a fresh set. I’ll go to the hardware store today and buy new screws. Hopefully, they won’t be made in China. Or, if they are, they’ll be made with slightly better quality metal.

Lessons to be learned here? Cheap is cheap for a reason. Even Ikea outsources to China. The best-designed furniture can still be rendered useless by poor-quality hardware.

Today I’ll put together the last shelf cube. With luck, I’ll get that same feeling I had yesterday at the end of all my successful assemblies. But when I feel those Europeans nodding their approval, I’ll ignore them.

As for the Träby shelves and cabinets — they look great and are rock solid.

[posted with ecto]

Ikea, furniture, Poland, China

Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure, take 2

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I finally make the tour a reality.

A while back, I wrote a post that outlined my ideas for a 9-day helicopter tour to various destinations in the southwest. After writing up the tour, I realized some of the impracticalities of it — for example, booking the hotel rooms and tours in advance and the little FAA rest rule that forbid me to fly part 135 flights more than 7 days in a row (oops).

Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about the tour. I’ve since shortened it up and devised a more reasonable plan: a 6-day, 5-night excursion that includes Sedona, Grand Canyon, Lake Powell at Page, Monument Valley, and Flagstaff, with excellent accommodations and side trips and tours at each destination.

You can read the finalized description on the Flying M Air Web site’s new Excursions page. I haven’t added the photos yet and I’ve just begun work on the brochure. But I do have 7 sets of dates scheduled and ready to go. With a more approachable price tag of $4,995 per couple, most folks I’ve spoken to seem to think it’ll sell very well. Now all I need to do is get the word out about the trip’s availability.

Are you ready to go on a helicopter adventure? Well, what are you waiting for? Stop by the Flying M Air Web site and get the details. Then give me a call to book your trip.

helicopter, excursion, Sedona, Grand Canyon, Lake Powell, Page, Monument Valley, Flagstaff

Keeping Up to Date with this Site

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A few tips for keeping up to date with what’s new without having to surf over here every day or two.

The other day, Cliff, one of my editors, asked me (in an iChat chat) what the best way was to keep track of the new material on this site. He wanted to read my “pearls of wisdom” (his words, not mine, and I think he was teasing me) regularly.

Cliff uses a newsreader to monitor blogs. I think he was more interested in the how-to stuff I write to support my books than the somewhat boring pieces about my every day life. After all, do people really want to know that as I type this, my bird is barking like a dog in the next room? Or that I hung up on a Republican canvasser who called me in my office today? Or that today’s humidity in Phoenix is only 3%?

I told Cliff there were a few ways to keep up with this site’s new content:

  • Subscribe to an RSS feed for the entire blog. The good thing about doing this is that you won’t miss anything new. The 25 most recent posts are always available in the feed, so if you check in at least once a week, you’ll be all set. The bad thing about that is that you have to use a newsreader (which many people don’t use). And you will get summaries of all 25 most recently posted articles, including the ones about barking birds, being rude to republicans, and Arizona weather. If you want to do this, use my Feedburner feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/marialanger.
  • Visit my RSS feeds page and subscribe to just the feed(s) that interest you. Just interested in a book or two? Subscribe to just the feeds for those titles. Want to learn more about flying a helicopter for hire? Subscribe to just that topic’s feed. You’ll still need a newsreader, but at least you won’t have to read summaries about posts that you don’t think will interest you. (Of course, you may be surprised by what you miss.)
  • Use the E-mail Notification form in the navigation bar on most (if not all) pages of this site to subscribe to this blog by e-mail. This is a great way to keep up with the site without having to set up or use a newsreader. I subscribed to see how it worked and I’m very pleased with the results. Each day that I post to this blog, an e-mail message is created that provides a brief summary, with links, for all the posts written that day. So if I wrote 10 posts that day, you get one e-mail. If I wrote one post that day, you get one e-mail. If I didn’t write any posts that day, you don’t get an e-mail at all. The e-mail goes out in the middle of the night, so the message is in your in-box in the morning (like the New York Times, delivered, but without the airs). There are no ads and you don’t get spammed. Best of all, when you get sick of reading this drivel, you can cancel your subscription to stop the e-mails.

Of course, you can always make a point of stopping by this site to see what’s new — the old fashioned way. Visitors are always welcome.

And have you read yet about my chicken with the crooked beak?

rss, newsreader, blog, notification

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

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We watch the Mets wipe the floor with the Diamondbacks.

Mike bought the tickets months ago. I didn’t expect to be around when it was time for the game. But when a book project dragged out and cherry drying fell through, I found myself still in Wickenburg when game day rolled along.

We went down to Chase Field — formerly the Bank One Ballpark or “BOB” — for the game. This was my second visit to the stadium and it still awed me. It is as unlike any New York baseball stadium as possible.

First of all, the ballpark is in downtown Phoenix. That means you can walk to it from just about any location down there. Not that anyone walks. The city streets, which are wide open on a Sunday afternoon because no one has any reason to be there, become the main thoroughfare for traffic to and from the game. In New York, this would cause gridlock. But in Phoenix, it just means a little longer wait at the various traffic lights, depending on which direction you come from.

We came from the north on Route 51. As we approached I-10, one of those programmable signs — you know, with lights that spell out messages — told us to take I-10 west. We could see the stadium to the east, so we went east on I-10. The next sign told us to take 7th Avenue. We knew the stadium was just west of 7th Street, so we took that instead. There was a slight detour due to construction around the Convention Center, but within minutes of leaving the highway, we were pulling into a 5-story parking structure on the northwest corner of the ballpark.

The ballpark is pretty new — completed within the past 10 years. It’s surrounded by restaurants and parking structures and is a short distance from the Convention Center, which is being expanded. It’s a covered structure, rectangular in shape, with a roof that slides back in the evenings to let in the cool air.

Not that there wasn’t any cool air in the ballpark. On the short walk from the car to the ballpark doors — after passing through required contingent of scalpers — we were walking through some of that June 100+° dry heat that Phoenix is so famous for. We crossed a plaza that surrounded the building where various vendors were playing loud music and selling beer and showing off products. (That’s the closest you can get to a tailgate party at a Diamondbacks home game.) Then we stepped through the doors of the ballpark and into air conditioned comfort. Yes, the entire ballpark is air conditioned.

Shade and air conditioning. I don’t think the folks back in New York realize the significance of watching baseball without having to suffer through sweltering heat. (Or the sound of jets flying to and from La Guardia or the screeching of subway cars.)

Chase Field is kept clean. I mean really clean. Unlike Yankee Stadium, where you feel as if you need to go to the game wearing clothes that you can throw away afterwards.

Our seats were in section 207, on the second level, right near first base. We came in through the wrong door, so we had to climb up one flight. Upstairs, the hallway that ran behind the seating was nearly empty. No crowds, no noise. Kind of eerie. There were concession stands selling the usual baseball fare, but few people on line. Some guys tried to get us to guess how many baseballs were in a glass container — I still don’t know what they were trying to sell.

Acura ClubMike had paid $52 apiece for the seats. I thought that was a little high. But it appeared that it was some kind of special concierge seating that included waitress service. (Huh?) It also included admission to the Acura Club, on our level in the outfield. Since we got there before the game started, we decided to check it out.

The Acura Club is a restaurant set up just inside the foul pole outside of right field. It has several levels of tables on the wall of the stadium, with each seat having an excellent view of the game. It appeared that we could have had lunch there, while we watched the game. We’d already eaten, so we settled on dessert. Since the place was half empty, they didn’t seem to have a problem seating us for just a few innings.

Chase FieldThe game started and we watched it while sipping iced tea and waiting for dessert. The Met started the inning and they promptly scored 3 runs. The Diamondbacks stepped up to the plate and stepped away scoreless.

Our desserts were delivered. Mine, a slice of banana cream pie, was completely covered in a non-dairy whipped topping that needed to be scraped aside. The pie was okay. Mike’s, a “giant chocolate cream puff” was definitely giant and chocolate, served with fresh strawberries. It looked very rich.

As we ate, the second inning came and went, scoreless. I’m not sure, but that may have been the inning when the Diamondbacks loaded the plates and then had their runner tagged out as he tried to run home. The throw from the outfield was amazing. A good play that had the Diamondbacks fans groaning.

The Mets stepped up to the plate at the top of the third and proceeded to score three runs. The Diamondbacks took their turn and went scoreless. I was staring to feel sorry for them.

Chase FieldWe left the Acura Club and went to our seats. The sound was much louder there, but the view was better, being so much closer to the action. There was a surprising number of Met fans in the audience, some of them even wearing Mets jerseys and hats. So when the Mets scored 6 more runs a bit later in the game, there was quite a bit of cheering. I really felt sorry for the D’backs at that point. They were losing 10 to 0.

Acura ClubThere was a faint glimmer of hope a bit later in the game when one of the Diamondbacks hit a home run. It went over the right field wall into the swimming pool area. Yes, I did say swimming pool. One of the oddities of Chase Field is the swimming pool just outside of right field. It appears that you can rent it for parties and the like during the game. I took this photo from the Acura Club; you get the idea.

The Diamondbacks pitcher was pulled from the game a while later. He was booed off the field.

In between innings and while the Diamondbacks were changing pitchers, there was entertainment on the big Sony screen. One guy proposed to his girlfriend, live for all of us to see. Then the Kiss Cam focused on couples to kiss for us. Then the Muscle Cam for kids and adults to show off their muscles. There was a dance contest on top of the Diamondbacks dugout and some kind of video race between Ketchup, Mustard, and Relish to see which was the best topping for hot dogs. A kid got to play announcer for two innings, announcing the Diamondbacks players as they came to bat. And, of course, there was the constantly roving camera, picking out people in the crowd to focus on. The Sony screen had better entertainment than the game.

The fans beside me were Diamondbacks fans and I don’t think they were too happy when Mike cheered every time the Mets scored. At the top of one inning, when Petro Martinez (a Met) came to bat, a Diamondbacks fan nearby yelled out, “Pedro, you suck.” Pedro then proceeded to make a base hit. A Mets fan in front of us stood up, turned to the Diamondbacks fan, and yelled back, “Diamondbacks suck.” There was no fistfight. After all, the way the Diamondbacks were playing, even a die-hard Diamondbacks fan couldn’t argue.

We left right after the seventh inning stretch, just before the Diamondbacks came back to the plate. The final score of the game was 15-2.

baseball, Chase Field, Diamondbacks, Mets