Tucson: Days 1-3

I'm spending a week in Tucson visiting two members of my family of choice, one of whom had surgery last week. She's doing well, and we're all having a good time.

After a mostly-uneventful seven hours of travel (the shortest trip I've ever taken from Rhode Island to Arizona) I arrived hungry, cold, and not fully awake. After breakfast at the Waffle House and a nap, I managed a visit with my friends and to eat Chicken Marsala, one of the Army Dude's specialties. I staggered off to bed at 9:00, completely forgetting to take my meds. Good news, though: it turns out that if I miss one dose of my anti-depressant, I don't have a psychotic break. Not that I'm in any danger of becoming psychotic (that I know of) but there are dire warnings on the literature that comes with the medication that says "very bad things can happen if you stop taking this abruptly. Including, but not limited to psychotic breaks and feeling like dogshit." Or something similar. So no psychotic break. Yay!

On the morning of Day Two, we visited and chatted, then the Army Dude and I went to some consignment shops. One of the really cool things about Tucson is that it's an artistic hippie community, so there are all kinds of consignment and thrift stores, vintage clothing stores, and stores that specialize in recycled items. One consignment shop we went to was approximately the size of the Walmart store back home, and contained about ten times the merchandise. We have to go back there, since after I saw the left-handed boomerang, I was totally confused.

That night we went to see Robert Cray at the Historic Rialto Theatre, which is across the street from the Hotel Congress, where John Dillinger once stayed. The hotel is also reputed to be haunted. All I can tell you for sure is that the food was great at the hotel's Cup Cafe, and that Robert Cray rocked the house. It was a great show. We also really enjoyed the warmup band, Bad News Blues.

Day 3 started with a walk in the morning sunshine, which I followed with a two-hour nap (I was still a bit jet-lagged after being up late the night before). After lunch, the Army Dude and I headed to 4th Street (pictured above). It's an area with quirky shops and tattoo parlors and vintage clothing stores. I found a couple of gifts for folks back home, and bought myself a handmade bracelet of turquiose and copper beads and rattlesnake vertebrae. Which is the closest I ever want to get to a rattlesnake, even if it does taste like chicken.