08/11/04’s illustrious band:

Dry Heat

Brought to you by sunny Phoenix, Arizona.

I’m back at last from my visit to Sister-san in Phoenix. Yes, it was hot, if you consider 115 degrees F to be hot. I do. But since it’s a dry heat, it only felt like 99 or so. It was quite a climate shock for me to return to the Twin Cities yesterday to temps just over half what I’d left that morning; our area seems to be experiencing an unseasonable chilly spell.

Sister-san and I kept excitement to a minimum in deference to her delicate condition, but we did manage to accomplish a few things. Item #1: eating real Mexican food. When you walk into a place whose menu warns “We don’t do ‘mild’,” hold onto your hair. Even the beans and rice at Las Dos Molinas packs a punch, never mind the salsa. Everything was fresh and fantastic, though. I’ll go back.

Also, we ran some errands, collected materials for building a window valance in the nursery, put together some bookcases, attended a lactation class (let me know if you need any advice about breast pumps), and made strawberry ice cream. We also watched a few movies and a few hours’ worth of the Game Show Network, which is now known simply as GSN, no doubt in the grand tradition of KFC. My favorite shows were a couple of forehead-slapping episodes of The Weakest Link featuring fourth-tier former stars like Erik Estrada, Mackenzie Phillips, Cindy Williams, and Fred “Rerun” Berry. Don’t remember them all? You are the weakest link! Good-bye!

It was a nice, mellow visit, and the last time I’ll get to hang out with my sister before I become her baby’s auntie. So I was kind of sad when we parted at the airport early Monday afternoon.

Fortunately, the airline had a remedy in mind: keeping me in Phoenix an extra day. My flight was first delayed and eventually canceled due to a faulty computer chip somewhere on the plane. The gate agents busted their butts to get everyone reallocated to different flights or hotels, and they got me to the top of the standby list for a later flight home. However, that flight was already overbooked, so I was relegated to a plane leaving the next day. I called Sister-san at work and asked if I could come back to her house for one last ice cream-loaded evening. She said I could. She loaned me a toothbrush and some clean undies and a T-shirt, too, since my suitcase had made it onto the overbooked aircraft without me and was in Minneapolis by suppertime.

The next day I caught an early departure and experienced flying first class for the first time. I was seated in row 1, where I could smell both the gourmet coffee and the first-class lavatory. The legroom more than made up for the atmosphere, though, and I was kept amused for quite some time figuring out how to liberate the switchblade tray table from its folded/stowed position inside my mile-wide armrest. My errant duffel bag was waiting for me in the appointed holding pen when I arrived, so I actually got away from the airport more quickly than if I’d had to wait for it on the baggage carousel.

Mother Media, Official House-sitter of the 2004 Media Sensation Vacation Jubilee, greeted me at the door of Sensational Acres. She updated me on the latest round of home repairs -- I had managed to break the dryer on my way out the door the previous week -- and I described feeling my future niece/nephew move in my sister’s tummy. Super cool. After souvenir show and tell, we both checked our e-mail, bundled up against the cold, and headed out for a movie. And had ice cream when we got home, of course. It’s a family tradition.

Today around the world: August 11 is Independence Day in Chad, a central African country where the occasional plague of locusts is not unheard of.

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