Greetings from Arizona. I don't live out West now, although this region was my home for over a decade. Have yet to break with my physician though, so I come back here at least annually.

This is a hot time to be here, but being off-season there are compensations. Fewer "snow-birds" and fewer tourists. Off-season prices as a result.

Refrigerated air is as frequent, in buildings out here, as the evaporative "swamp coolers" that simply use water without refrigeration. There are plenty of ways to take refuge from the high heat.
Cloudless sky today; the late Edward Abbey used to write of "deep sky" and I know what he meant by that. Today it is blue infinity.

Had to take a series of three plane flights to arrive here, and, shoot, I'm not as young as I used to be. In my youth it would have been an adventure and I would have been smug about it. Paying for that attitude now...getting the rental car at the airport yesterday, after finally getting my luggage, I felt ready to collapse. Good meal and decent sleep and now much improved.

The ticking time bomb that is my collective birth-family continues to tick away. The earlier reported telephone calls, they went on for the better part of one month, and then there were no more calls. A textbook case of don't-feed-the-troll, it seems.