A to Z.

Hello there! My name is Anna, and I would like to educate all of you on the benefits of living in Arizona.

1. Hot towels. We haven't started running the air conditioning yet (ie: crazy), so the air temperature is somewhere around 80 degrees, or at least it feels like it. The great part about this is after a shower, you have a hot towel to dry off with. It's like a luxurious spa day, every day!

2. Super-dry dishes. Due to the incredibly dry air, water evaporates at an accelerated rate at any point during the day. To save on our electricity bill, I skip the dishwasher's drying cycle and just leave the door open to let the dishes dry. Incredibly effective, and very little energy usage.

3. TV schedule. Since Arizona has its own time zone, television shows have to be pushed back in order to match up with what time it is here. This not only applies to evening television (which starts at seven instead of five to sync up with the east coast), but also applies to daytime television. There is always something on every hour of the day that I could watch, which is a blessing and a curse.

4.  What dirt? Because of the lack of water anywhere in the state, there is absolutely no mud. This means it is very nearly impossible to drag dirt into the apartment, into the car, into anywhere. It also means that I never have to worry about stepping in mud. Even if the apartment complex ran sprinklers (which they don't), it would all evaporate before I walked out the door.

5. Blame it on the a-a-a-a-a-alcohol. I haven't decided if this is a benefit to living here, but I swear there is alcohol everywhere. I'm not just talking wine and beer, I'm talking hardcore liquor bottles in grocery stores all across the state. I've chalked this up to the fact that there isn't much to do here.

6. The whole enchilada. Living here has given me a surge of confidence in attempting to cook Mexican food. This is mainly because there are exactly one thousand kinds of tortillas in every grocery store (I counted), millions of avocados dancing down the aisles (doing the cha-cha), and twenty-three kinds of salsa (I guesstimated). Makes you want to mix 'em all up in a hundred different ways to make something tasty.

Some Honorable Mentions.
- I know what the surface of the sun feels like. Now I don't have to go through with that space mission.
- The sun comes up at five in the morning. It makes you feel like you've slept in too long, which gives you a kick in the pants to hurry up and start the day.
- Flowers mean so much more to me now that there isn't grass for them to naturally grow in.
- I can drink butt-loads of water and never have to use the bathroom. It all evaporates through my skin.

And now for the downsides to living in Ay-Zee.

1. There is no barbecue. There's just a lot of Mexican food.

Oh, and for those of you who were wondering what the population was over here, it's roughly 520,000 people, with a population density of 2,800 people per square mile.

Tallyho, I'm off to make frozen banana bites covered in chocolate and walnuts!