The Pittmeister's Parade Around America

I haven't been to Mexico for probably ~15 years. The last time I was there was part of a family trip to Rocky Point that included a conglomeration of family members from age 92 to something like 8 or 9. We convoyed down there is RV's and made camp next to an open-air bar. It was spring break and I don't remember getting much sleep. Prior to that trip, we used to visit the border town of Nogales whenever we visited my aunt & uncle in Sonoita, AZ and that usually included lunch, purchasing vanilla extract, and enduring the heckling and cat calls of the shop keepers. Yesterday, Wife and I along with our friend and her son visited the nearby border town of Aqua Prieta, known locally as "AP" and located just over the border from Douglas, AZ. I had expected it to be reminiscent of my trips to Nogales as a kid with lots of Americans walking around open air shops, cat calling sales people, and the ability to barter or haggle on prices of merchandise. I have to say i...

It seems like our modern society is obsessed with upgrades and we as consumers are constantly being encouraged to believe that whatever we currently own is not good enough and that we should upgrade to something newer that is inherently better than what we currently have. No where is this more apparent than in the mobile phone industry. Every year, Samsung and Apple debut new phone models to keep market saturation from becoming a thing and forcing their sales to go down. Apple's current model, the iPhone 7s & 7s Plus is competing with the Samsung Galaxy S7 & S7-Edge. This week I upgraded to a new mobile phone; a iPhone 6s Plus with 128GB of memory. My previous phone, a Samsung Galaxy Note II, had been damaged by overheating after I left it on to charge and stuck in under my pillow during the night. For the past 2-3 weeks it would turn off randomly and was no longer reliable. The only way to have it turn on again was to remove the back of the phone and remove the battery. ...

I consider myself lucky to not have been the victim of too many crimes in my lifetime and I feel this is because I have not had the misfortune of residing in areas with high crime rates. Flagstaff, Japan, Bullhead City, and now Bisbee.  In high school, someone thought it would be funny to put orange cones on my pick-up while it was parked along the street one night while my mom, sister, and I were out to dinner. In college, someone stole the CD player w/ car combo (remember those?) and some other items in the glove box out of my pick-up overnight, but that was my fault because I left it unlocked. I think someone also tried to steal the pick-up once and damaged the steering column, but that's another story all together. In Japan I never worried about theft and often left the door to my apartment unlocked for days a time. In Bullhead City, I think someone keyed the side of the Yukon, perhaps a student at the school I worked at who perceived I did them wrong in some ...

In my last post I didn't talk much about my job and in this post, I probably won't either, despite the title.  My employer is arguably one of the largest employers in the entire county and working for my employer is highly desirable and considered prestigious by members of the community. I make this argument because during my first 2 months in the position, I was living in an extended stay hotel during the week and commuting the ~45 miles from Sierra Vista to the campus just outside of Douglas, AZ. On my way out the door one morning, a man was leaving with his kids and he noticed my ID badge. Upon seeing it, he remarked that he had attempted to find a job with my employer and was sad that he didn't because it meant that he and his family had to move out of the area. Our conversation didn't go beyond that as both of us had other duties we needed to attend to that morning. But that conversation really impressed upon me the reputation that my employer within the communi...