two quick things.

back from the reunion in tucson on sunday night late, after having to detour through memphis because of weight restrictions causing us to be only borderline on fuel to go into atlanta, then in atlanta having to battle the rest of the flying public for a seat on a much-delayed plate going to philly.

the reunion was lots of fun, as usual. there were the regular folks there, including 5 of the siblings who are the reason for the reunion. siblings who were there: ernest (and darlene), ray (and barbara), john (and dorothy), walt (and clarice), and helen. the usual gaggle of big cousins (my mom's generation) and little cousins (my generation) and even a couple representatives of the next generation (the teeny cousins?). temperatures were as feared: 111 or so everyday. but, as they say, it's a dry heat. 111 there feels better than, say, 95 here with the humidity. and 95 there is just perfect. lovely. couldn't ask for better.

saw uncle robert and aunt cindy's house, which is surprisingly lovely, what with the desert cactus garden and the pool. got reacquainted with murphy, their mostly chocolate lab who had cataracts and takes medicine for diabetes, incontinence, and valley fever.

we went to tombstone one day. it was...disappointing. we saw the OK corral and the street where doc holliday and the earp brothers gunned down the clantons and mcLaurys. i felt, as i always do in places that are old, the weight of history. i could imagine the clink of spurs on the wooden porches, the nickers of horses tied outside the saloon, the swish of ladies' skirts as they walked slowly down the street in the heat. but the real modern tombstone, though still a museum of a town, falls short of what it could be. the shops and buildings are still there, but most of them have been turned into cheap souvenir shops. the streets have been *paved*. there are cars parked up and down the road. have you ever been to williamsburg, va? tombstone would do well to take a lesson from the williamsburg people. recreate the town, as it was in 1881. return the shops to their original purposes: saloon, newspaper office (the citizens of tombstone had a sense of humor: the paper there was called the Epitaph), corral. staff them with people in historically accurate costume who go about their business while the tourists look on.

but no. instead, you can buy t-shirts and postcards, and pay $7.50 to see a (poor) re-enactment of the gunfight at the OK corral. you sit on metal bleachers in the 111 degree heat for 45 minutes, watching some poor attempts at comedy made worse by not being able to quite hear all of it since the actors don't have mics. they end with a 10 minute version of the famous gunfight that happens too fast (they've left out bits) and just leaves you feeling annoyed.

the next day we did what we should have done, which was go to biosphere 2 which was really fuckin' cool. it has only recently stopped being a research location. first there were the two human experiments, with a group of people sealed in for 2 years in the first case, and 6 months in the second case. then columbia university maintained a research project there. during those times, visitors could only walk around the perimeter, peering in through the windows. but when columbia left a few months ago, they began giving tourists the chance to go inside. we saw the living quarters (10 small 400+ sq. ft. apartments plus a large communal kitchen, dining area, entertainment area, and gym), the agricultural area (where 1/2 an acre of land supported the food needs of 8 people for 2 years (in the real world, you need 8 acres of land to support 1 person for 1 year), and the research areas. the research areas were 5 ecosystems within the 3 acres of the biosphere: an ocean, a desert, a savannah, a marsh, and a rainforest. the climate is controlled, to properly maintain the heat and humidity levels for each of those areas. everything, including air, water, and waste, is recycled (remember, it's a closed system). they even created 2 large "lungs" or variable volume chambers, to guard against the glass of the dome exploding if the air inside got too hot and expanded enough. they had everything except wind. no wind. it's a bit weird, actually. otherwise, it's like being outside. but there's not even a hint of a breeze. trees have to be tied up because without wind, their trunks haven't developed the scar tissue that toughens them up, so they get fragile and bendy as they get tall.

so that was the family reunion. i'll write more, about the family itself, in another entry.

meanwhile, we had the termite inspection on the house and yay! came up clean. karl and the realtor discussed how much more money to ask for from the seller to fix the things the inspector found wrong (roof, patio, etc). karl asked for $3200, the seller offered $2000. karl took it. the seller wasn't going to offer more, since she'd already come down on the price of the house so much. and we had decided that we would take it anyway, even if she didn't offer anything, so the $2000 is found money. home ownership, here we come!

while i was away, the homeless guy came back. karl smelled the pee, that's how he knew. called the cops, who very uselessly came by and just shooed the guy away. they didn't lock him up, as promised (well, promised by a different team of cops). they didn't even cart him away in the car to someplace at least a ways away. they just shooed him out the door. 5 minutes after they left, he was back, hiding his bag of stanky clothes under a grate in the backyard. karl called the cops again, but in the 5 minutes it took them to get back the guy had gone again. shoulda taken him away the first time, eh? karl threw away his clothes and washed his hands 5 times. you know, i wouldn't mind him living there, actually (well, except for the pee) except that the cops keep telling him that they'll help him get into a shelter and get an apartment of his own if he wants it, and he keeps yelling at them and saying no. i mean, if he really didn't have any place else to go, that'd be one thing. but he DOES. someplace with a TOILET, even.