When I admire the wonder of a sunset...my soul expands in worship of the Creator ~ Mahatma Ghandi

The crowning aspect of living here, for me, is the sunsets. After spending a week on a luxurious boat, stopping at famously beautiful cities and beaches on the Pacific coast of Mexico, hiking through a lush jungle and snorkeling with amazing fish, I found myself on my drive home, ecstatic about the Arizona skies, bathed in the colors of the setting sun. This daily phenomenon could be enough to live for if I had nothing else.

"What I did on the 2nd week of November"

I went on a cruise.

It was amazing.

Be jealous.



Pictures will come soon.

I'm (Getting) On A Boat!

This Saturday, I'm heading to LA to meet up with my brother, his roommate, and one of our mutual friends for a 7-night cruise! I'll be thinking of you while livin' it up along the Pacific coast of Mexico...I promise! :D

I can't pack lightly...it just doesn't happen, and it's something I give myself permission to do, so the large majority of my closet is sitting in a pile in my open suitcase tonight, along with my snorkel, camera(s), and several books I'm eager to read on my vacation. We registered this spring, so I've been looking forward to this for a long time, but it kinda snuck up on me, and now I can't believe it's here!

So, if you notice I'm not living on Facebook like usual, know that it's because I'm feasting on the buffets & trying to figure out how in the world they folded my towel into the shape of a 1964-1/2 Mustang...

(I'm just crossing my fingers that renditions of T-Pain's musical masterpiece will be kept to a minimum.)

From CR Tortuga Island

Last time I was on a boat, in Costa Rica, they ran out of gas on our way home!

Baby Factories

It seems like just about every other day, someone is putting up pictures of their newborn child on my Facebook news feed. The other night, I was curious to know if my noticing this was some unconscious hyper-sensitivity of mine about not having children, or a legitimate reality, so I did a quick survey of my 'friends list' to count how many were pregnant or had had a child in 2009...the result? 50 babies born to 449 friends! (Some of whom are married to each other and parents of the same said babies). So, over 10 percent of my friends have had babies in this year alone.

Feeling validated in my hypothesis, I clicked the 'Home' link before closing out the window & going to bed, and a new status popped up from a friend I haven't talked to in a year or two: "Tom Church Is going to offically be a daddy today...my lil man should be here sometime around 9am."

...make that 51.