first week rundown

This is my seventh day in Arizona. So far I have:

• gotten my brain into this time zone
• begun Arboriculture and Urban Forestry online (the irony of taking those in the desert)
• signed up for two Coursera classes
• learned how to operate a French press
• cold brewed coffee (this was entirely too strong, but the right flavor, so I'll keep working on it)
• gone for long walks every morning
• completed two of three days of week 1 of the Couch to 5k program with Mike (on a scale from couch to 5k, I am probably somewhere in the middle, although the hills and altitude may have set me back a bit)
• did a soil texture analysis (Carrizo-Riverwash complex: loamy sand! Let me know if you want to see my lab report.)
• caught up on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me and Prairie Home Companion
• applied to over 800 jobs (this is not an exaggeration, but this includes 702 openings around the country within the same announcement and four other announcements with over a dozen openings-- I guess it makes more sense to tell you I applied to 14 jobs this week)
• spent a lot of time on facebook and Google Reader
• Skyped with Mom and Dad
• read half of the 12th book in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series (love love love these books)
• spent yesterday morning with NRCS on Mojave Nation land checking out cropland deficiencies (mostly due to irrigation systems that were inundated with sand)
• Yes, it turns out there is cropland in the desert. Alfalfa mostly, and some cotton. They have sheep grazing nearby here. They do floodgate irrigation by the Colorado River. It's kind of bizarre to see a swath of green in the desert. 

It's "chilly" here this morning. Yesterday's weather:

 

Blowing dust?! This apparently brought some kind of "cold front". I'm excited to do field work with NRCS at much higher elevations next week, where the high is expected to be well below freezing. Arizona?!