Wow, what a whirlwind of change in the past few weeks!  We have officially become residents of Gilbert, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix.  It’s a few degrees hotter in the Valley of the Sun, but we’re happy to be together again, and living in a house! 

Drew started a new job as a video editor at KPHO, the Phoenix CBS affiliate.  I’m still staying busy at my new job with the Town of Gilbert.  It took a lot of hectic lunch breaks and weekends, but we found this lovely 3-bedroom rental home right next to a park in a nice neighborhood in Gilbert.  It even has a yard.  No grass, but the park has grass and it’s just a few steps away.  (It’s common for homes to have decorative rocks instead of grass in Arizona.)

We loaded most of our U-Haul last Friday and were prepared for a smooth trip.  Unfortunately, a trip was what we got, and it wasn’t so smooth.  While loading the last of the boxes right before leaving Saturday morning, Drew tripped on piece of a bed frame, and we took a trip to urgent care.   He had to get nine stitches, but we got some help moving, so it all worked out.  His leg is feeling much better now.  I’ll spare you the photo.

Now, we have our work cut out for us, unpacking and arranging all the furniture and decorating.  Sometimes it’s still hard to believe we have a mailbox and a garage.  And a yard.  Even though there’s no grass.

My new job with the Town of Gilbert is going very well, and the best part is I get 3-day weekends!  Though the days are 10 hours long instead of eight, I still find myself wishing there were more hours in a day.  My new co-workers are very friendly and encouraging.  Just last week, I walked back to my desk from a shoot, and I found this on my chair:

One of our assistant town managers made it for me after I finished a video about our Town Manager’s Year in Review.  At first, I was reluctant to voice my own stories like I did as a reporter, but it turns out everyone loves it!  So, I’ll probably be doing it more often.

As far as project go, I’m working on several at the same time.  Some of my favorites so far have been the opening of a new environmentally-friendly fire station, and the town’s 9-11 ceremony, which got more than 300 views on youtube in just a couple of days.

Our communications team is still building up our fan base on facebook and twitter where I post stories, as well as the local newspaper’s neighborhood page and our public access channel.  We’re growing our readership quickly!

Drew and I still live on I-10 between Gilbert and Tucson for now, but not for long!

For the past three weeks, when people have asked where I live, I tell them I-10.  Half of my week I spend with my in-laws in Gilbert, and the other half I travel back to Tucson to live with my husband.  The road between, is interstate 10.  Which means that for the past three weeks I’ve spent more time than ever before, living here:

It’s not bad at all.  I happen to think the dust, cacti and mountains in the distance during the two-hour drive between Tucson and Phoenix make for a much better experience compared to the bumper-to-bumper commute of tolls, smog and stress that many people in the country face during their daily commutes.  Earlier this Summer when Drew and I drove to Los Angeles for our 1-year-anniversary trip, I calculated that in the past 5 years I’ve actually driven every stretch of this road.  Clear across the country from coast to coast.  🙂
Other than living on the interstate, my new and unique living situation has had some pretty cool advantages, one of which being the time that I get to spend with my niece and nephew, neither of which are ever at a loss for a moment of entertainment.  I took a few videos on my phone the past couple of weeks.  One during dinner:

In addition to the little peewees, I get to spend some time with the world’s most docile cat:

Life on the road in Arizona can be desolate and dangerous with a whole lot of nothing in between cities and civilization.  But when it comes to living on a road, I think I’ve got it pretty good.

In the newsroom we used to joke about how dangerous the desert can be.  My producer and I agreed, Arizona’s slogan should be, “Welcome to Arizona.  Here’s your gun, and your sunscreen.”

Yes, the people here have more guns than they know what to do with and the sun kills a handful of out-of-state hikers every year.  But, perhaps the most dangerous encounters I’ve had have been with the wildlife.  It sometimes seems everything in the desert is built for defense.  The plants are pointy and the animals poisonous.  It only took a couple of weeks for Drew and I to run into one of these….

There are a few tarantulas that frequent our apartment complex.  Often times it’s late at night when we’re coming home from the bar or a movie.  I grab my camera while Drew makes a run for it.  I also had the honor of standing up to a brown recluse with one of Drew’s golf clubs, and Wes, our brother-in-law, is still trying to track down the black widow I found near the door of his garage this week.  I know most tarantulas are harmless to humans but it’s tough to rival the creepiness of a giant hairy spider. Only one animal has succeeded in beating the creepiness of a tarantula, right on our doorstep.

This little rattlesnake visited last winter.  I guess he was trying to stay warm by our door and I had the nerve to come home from work to disturb him.  I barely had enough time to snap this picture before he rattled and lurched back, preparing to pounce.  I will never forget that sound.  I haven’t heard it since, but I came close last week on one of my runs.  Except the rattlesnake sunning right in the middle of my running path must have been this guy’s dad.  He was at least twice the size!  I didn’t have time to snap a picture, as I immediately sprinted in the other direction.

People ride their horses through the riverbed because it’s only an actual flowing river about once a year.  I’ve also seen coyotes and roadrunners, leading me to believe I’m really running in a cartoon.  Every now and then, I come across some of the state’s more friendly species.  I brought my iphone on one of my runs recently, and snapped these:

A family of quails, my friendly prairie dog who lives next to the parking lot, and a lizard with some pretty convincing camo. 

Fortunately, in my two years living in the desert, I still have yet to come face to face with the species I most fear:  the scorpion.

I hope it stays that way.

      From holding the government accountable, to working for the man.  This week I started a brand new job working for the Town of Gilbert, AZ.  It’s a suburb of Phoenix with a population of about 220 thousand people.  I am a digital journalist with the communications department.  It’s a new department with all new positions including mine, and it’s very exciting for me to be on a team of like-minded people (many who used to work for tv or broadcast news) building a digital communications department from scratch.  The team includes me, a website developer, a mobile app developer, a public information specialist, and my boss who supervises all of us under the direction of the town manager.  We will be adding another position eventually, but I get to decide what that position is based on what I need.  How exciting! 

     Right now, it’s a lot of set-up.  The town’s website is getting completely overhauled which will include a digital newsroom page so I can post news releases, photos and video clips for the public and the media.  I am also working with the public access channel to develop more programming.  I will be shooting, writing and editing stories to promote the town and its government.  After just a week, I’ve already been approached by the fire chief and several other departments who want me to do stories on projects they’ve been working on.  It’s so cool to see everyone’s just as excited about our department as we are!  It’s also really neat to be getting into something like this on the ground floor.

     One of the best parts about my first day on the job was what I like to call Christmas morning.  Not only will I be in charge of all things video to promote the town, but I get brand new state-of-the-art gear to do it!  I literally spent a couple hours on Monday unpacking video cameras, hard drive, monitors, light kits, and everything else you need to operate a studio!  I also get a macbook and iphone.  These are just a few of the items I’ll be using:

   I foresee a lot of cool projects in my future…

Andrew and I met in Panama City Beach, Florida, where he grew up and I’d moved for my first job as a TV news reporter.  He worked at the station while getting his film degree and quickly became a photographer.  The rest is history.
But, when the time came to move on to bigger and better things, the business took both of us from the beach to the desert, so we packed a truck and headed to Tucson.

                             For the past two years, we’ve been working and playing
                                              in the desert and its surroundings.

                             But in a few days, it will be time for another change.