A long, long time ago in a little town not that far away the 1st son of Alice and Clifford Muller. Just how long ago? Look at the prominent magazine covers from that week.

Firday night we went to dinner at Steve & Linda’s. Saturday morning we took a short walk across the road and then went to an open house at our neighbor’s Jeff and Andrea’s. We loaded up the wagon and walked the .7 miles to their house.

Sunday Kathryn helped Billie Jo wallpaper a bedroom while Eric and held down the home fort.

While Kathryn and Billie Jo were wallpapering Dakota got into the mixing bowl for the brownies.

Over the past few years I have moved all my cds and music into digital format. I inventoried my collection of digital music today (86gb total) as shown as in the graphic below.

I thought I would pass along this link to Mohawke’s Best of the Best Free and Open Source Software Collection.  There is an impressive list of over 274 Open Source programs listed by name, title, description, and license.  It is worth a review, I am sure you will find something to download.

Home is where I want to be. I been on the road so long, my friend. (With apologizes to Paul Simon….) It IS good to be back home. Much of the snow is gone and I have clean clothes here.

My grand visions of keeping up on the news, checking all my email accounts and regular blogging got side tracked by what I believe is a bad hard drive. The laptop encountered a similar problem a week or so earlier causing me to reinstall Windows and all my applications. I attributed it to a one time problem – but it clearly is not. So now I am on to plan B (probably the subject of a future post).

Our normal golf days consisted of two hours of practice on a driving range, then an hour practicing chipping, sand traps and/or putting. We had lunch at the Country Club and then went out for two hours on the golf course. Given our propensity for swatting the ball everywhere but our intended goal, it took 2 hours for us to play 9 holes.

Nights we returned to go out to eat at night (Tex-Mex prevailed), watch a movie (Pirates of the Caribbean, finally) or take a short hike.

The birding, butterflies and wild flowers were great.

I posted more pictures at /jimmuller.com/trips/2007Tucson/

Our lap top blew up so we have not been checking our mail until today. We spent a nice time in Tucson, went to the 4th Avenue Street Fair with over 400 vendor booths, live bands, and . We got Eric a power ranger cape.

We spent a day at the Desert Museum which is sort of a cross between a zoo and a nature trail – it is almost all outdoors. Got there is time for an incredible show/display of Harris Hawks.  Harris Hawks are social and hunt as a group.  We got to see 5 of them ‘hunting’ together.  One of the better wildlife exhibits we have seen.

The Hilton is quite resort-ish. Pool is very busy so did not go in, just sat by the edge the fisrt day. We had a very nice diner with the instructor/pro on Sunday night. Yesterday was all about golf. There are only three of us in the class and the instructor/pro is a very down-to-earth, jolly kind of guy who definitely thinks golf is fun and wants you to think so too. We spent 2 hours whacking at the golf ball – well, actually he was trying to teach “the fundamentals” of how to hold the club, how to stand etc. We hit the ball more often than not and was quite surprised to have some fairly good hits. We had some great hits, but a few went off course and near houses. Then we spent another hour doing “chip shots”. Those were somehow harder. We went to the club house and had a nice lunch then went on an actual golf course. It was after 3 when we got back to the room and we just watched televison and read until bedtime. Well, we are a little stiff today but think that will work itself out on the driving range this morning! Temperatures are expected to be in the 80s with serious winds today.

The ride from Charlotte to Phoenix was nice, long, but nice.  Meals are different in 1st class.  We also got to watch the in-flight movie for free.  Good thing Rocky Balboa was free – I found it contrived and heavy handed, but it occupied 90 minutes of the flight.

Phoenix is a big airport with all their rental cars services consolidated in one off-site location. We have a nice rental car – a brand new Suburu Forester – but it took us 90 minutes in line to get it.

We drove an hour south of Phoenix towards Tucson and stayed overnight in a Best Western in Casa Grande.   We watched the end of the UNC/USC NCAA game last night before turning in.

There is a railroad running through Casa Grande with a train every hour.  I didn’t hear it during the night, but this morning as I awoke on eastern standard time I heard every warning whistle.

A little yoga this morning helped stretch out the travel stiffness and now we head to breakfast and Tucson.

Charlotte, NC named after King George III’s wife, Charlotte has a happening airport and a slow WiFi connection. We touched down on time (10:30am) and have a few hours to kill before our connecting flight departs to Phoenix. We split a Quinzo’s sub for brunch, killed time in the Starbucks, walked around the concourse, browsed the bookstore and found a new book for K to read (“The Labyrinth” by Kate Moss) and now we are seated waiting for our flight (about 90 minutes from now).

Did I mention we have 1st Class seating throughout our trip? When I traded in my frequent flyer miles they didn’t have any regular frequent flyer slots open, but they did have 1st class, so I cashed in all 100,000 miles for two round trip tickets SYR – PHO. On the flight down there was marginally more leg room, lots of additional elbow room, some increased attentions from the flight attendant, but no special goodies – unless you count the pre-departure beverage.

It is noticeably warmer in NC – expected to be 81 this afternoon.  K asked if I regretted us leaving NC (Raleigh) as we wouldn’t have to shovel snow.  I don’t miss it at all.

More updates from Phoenix – where it will be 70s today.

It is 6:19am at the Hancock Airport in Syracuse as we await our flights to Tucson, AZ.  Sister Barbara was nice enough to provide 1 week of house/child sitting as a Christmas present, with the provision that it be used before the nice weather comes in April.  Kathyrn & I agreed we would go a) somewhere warm and b) go to golf school.  I have had a goal of learning the basics of golf for the past two summers but didn’t follow through with lessons.  So we are attending the Hilton Golf Academy in Tucson where the temperatures have been in the mid-70s the past week.  After a night of fitful sleep we arose early and crossed our ice-slickened deck to the car and began our journey.