Done-zo. I'm a doctor.

Remember how I now have a group of old people pickleball friends? Well, they actually really like playing volleyball, they just didn't have access to a court. Well, thanks to some smooth talking to my old SP, I now am the owner of a stake center key (which I share with 2 other people that help organize sports groups out here). So we got to play on Monday. 

Casa Grande, AZ. First preserved monument.

These structures are made of adobe. AKA mud. Over 900y ago. 

And it was a blast. We played for almost 2 hours, switching up teams each time. Nobody got upset about anything and I got to slam the ball so many times. Also sprint around the court since we played 4's this week and traditional volleyball players are pretty lazy in their zone. It was a good workout and after icing both knees, I couldn't walk normal for 24 hours. 

The smaller monument, which you can't touch, but you can climb IN. 

Just being weird in an ancient adobe castle. 

On another note, Joe bought a copy of my new book, Cowboy Hank, and we had an official signing with a planned dramatic reading for my inservice (don't tell the officials). Most of my patients are fans, so that's cool. AND Stu told some of his friends who promptly bought the book and would like their copy signed as well. On the way up :)

Real smiles. You don't see those every day. 

Top of the butte. 

In other news, I am officially graduated AND I have my first paid gig coming up. This upcoming week is spring break and the PTA is going on vacation, so Joe agreed to hire me for an extra week to help him out a bit. Thus, I am postponing my vacation northward in favor of some fresh dough. 

We're getting better at this. 

 Never quite made it to the top. 

And since I didn't bail this weekend, I got to go down to Coolidge, AZ for Stu's semifinals HS basketball game. We left four hours earlier than needed, which was good because we were getting out of another historic snow storm in Flag. And we checked out the Casa Grande ruins as well as Poston Butte. We did find out (after some serious climbing around) that the pyramid on the top entombs Poston's relocated ruins. Poston is a guy who petitioned for AZ to be included as a territory originally. 

The halftime play. 

The Sand Devils won the game by a close enough margin to make things interesting. The highlight was like 3 seconds before half time, they called a play that ended in a perfectly timed alley-oop. I'm still working on getting the right camera settings, but they're improving. Afterwards, we had a 4h drive cut short by some closed roads due to snow, so we slept the night at Becky's house before driving back in the morning. It's now been several hours and we're all still TOASTED.