Almost Like Fall

Flagstaff was lovely and lots of fun. The weather was perfect - just about 80 degrees in the afternoon and mid 40s overnight, a perfect breeze, and a wee bit of rain - and there was lots of time spent cooking or just lazing around.

Even the 3 1/2 hour drive up was fun - E and I were highly entertained by J's "data collection" for efforts to find me the perfect boyfriend. As J put it, "We're trying to match Anne on 22 levels of J's compatibility." This mostly consisted of J asking a series of questions and me answering. Sometimes the questions were accompanied by "scenarios" for clarification. The funniest questions were probably the ones for which J needed me to further explain my answer. At some point E and I were puzzled as to in what sort of order these questions were meant to be, to which J replied, "We're taking a top-down approach to finding a boyfriend." My comment? It's like proteomics! E thought the funniest part was my reaction to the boxer/briefs question, and I'm not going to elaborate other than to say man-thigh is not attractive! I'm not sure what he's going to do with all the information he collected. He claims he's going to find my a boyfriend (what I requested for my birthday), but I'm assuming that if he actually knew anybody suitable to introduce me to that he would have already done so.

Saturday after biscuits and gravy for breakfast we wandered around Coconino National Forest and Sunrise Crater National Monument. It was cool to go from pine forest to volcanic crater to open desert within about a 30 minute drive.


On the way back to E's parents' cabin we saw the most amazing rainbow I've ever seen. A double rainbow, where you could see the entire arc of both rainbows. It was crazy. Unfortunately I wasn't far enough back and my lens isn't a wide enough angle to catch the whole thing.


E's mom made another feast for dinner - ribs, baked beans, and cole slaw. E and I made this caramelized onion focaccia that I've been drooling over ever since I found the recipe months ago. It was delicious, and actually quite healthy - no eggs or butter in it.


Sunday morning I went for a run, and didn't die nearly as badly as I thought I would running at 6800 ft. And I'm glad I ran, because the feasting continued with a delicious pancake breakfast. We pretty much spent the rest of the day lounging around and baking. We made a ton of cookies and apple tarts. I was super excited to discover my favorite apples were in season (honeycrisp!), so I think there may be lots of apple dishes in my near future...

In all it was super nice to get away for a bit and not think about school. It's even cooled off a bit in Tucson. This morning was the first time in probably 9 months that I was chilly walking to school in a tank top. C'mon fall! You can do it! Come to Tucson!