So, the folks have moved their tent to AZ. It’s not too unusual for people to retire to Miami Beach or even Scottsdale, but where does one go if one is already in idyllic Carlsbad, CA? Apparently Prescott Valley, Arizona is the place. Thus brother Matt and moi made the eight-hour pilgrimage across the desert(s) to where mom and dad were now playing “house.”

We’d left on our journey Saturday afternoon so we didn’t roll into PV until late evening and then set about immediately to help the folks in their continuing scavenger hunt to figure out where they’d packed stuff. They’ve been at this for several weeks and dad’s underwear is still MIA. Matt went to work on their TV & stereo system and I went to work on mom’s new mac mini. By 2 A.M. they’d finished setting up and watching a DVD and I’d gotten enough things plugged in so as to determine that her cable “high speed Internet” was not working. Damn. So I called it in to the tech help line, was told that someone would look at it in the next two to twenty-four hours, and decided that it was time to take a nap

I got back at it at 5, and no, the cable hadn’t been “fixed” and decided to make a second call to the tech help line (I didn’t have 24-hours to wait for them to get to it). The tech I talked to promptly began working on it. Apparently the overnight tech was only authorized to take messages, whereas the morning tech was authorized to actually fix things. Imagine that. Less than fifteen minutes later we were up and running and I was ready to download all the updates needed to finish the installation. The rest of the morning was spent getting the OS and software up and running and figure out what components had not survived the transition from Carlsbad to PV. The speakers sounded like crap and I couldn’t get the router to work so after brunch Matt and I went into town to replace these less-than-functional components (Matt needed to get speakers for the stereo… but that’s another story… ). That took most of Sunday.

Amazingly the weather was on it’s best behavior during our visit and it was truly a beautiful weekend. As we tooled around town Matt noted that a number of our cousins in cowboy hats were about but there seemed to be almost no African influence in the community. When we drove through Prescott proper there were a number of houses that were quite cute and well taken care of and then there were some right out of “Deliverance.” It will be interesting to see how the folks will fare adjusting to their new digs and neighbors. JBB