The age of miracles

is not yet passed...

Or, in other words, for the first time in nearly 3 months I'm back home in Phoenix without another trip on the horizon.

Of course that'll change by Monday. Indeed, my mobile phone shows an unanswered call from Kevin, our sales guy. But tomorrow, Friday, I have my appointment with INS and that's quite a bit more important than anything Kevin might want. I have to admit I'm a trifle surprised he even rang me; I thought I'd established that I don't answer company calls on my mobile phone; if they won't pay for the minutes I won't spend them. Anyone with a teenage step-daughter will understand that the way mobile phones are billed in the US makes one chary of using even one minute.

My flight from Albuquerque today came in via Northern Arizona. We would have passed somewhere close to Flagstaff; when I looked down through the cloud I could see snow. If you know much about the geography of Arizona you'll know that Southern Arizona is pretty much desert; long stretches of brown countryside extending down into Mexico. Northern Arizona (those parts I've seen - mainly on the drive from Phoenix to the Grand Canyon) has rather more green. So you'd imagine it came as quite a suprise when, a minute or two after looking down at green countryside, the pilot announced we were on our landing approach into Phoenix. How could this be?

Well, today was the first time I've returned to Phoenix by daylight since October last year. In the meantime we've had a lot of unseasonal rain. Indeed, I hardly recognised the city by air in daylight. All the hills, which I'm used to seeing in blues and browns, are now green. If Phoenix stays this way I think I'll quite like living here!