Haydennet.com – personal site of Joseph A. Hayden, J.D.

Gallery and video below (mostly of Monte chasing the geese, which nearly clipped us on their ascents).

This is a picture of Alex, her mother and me in 1994 around the corner from where Alex and I now live, on Montgomery Street in Cherryland, where Alex’s aunt used to live.  We pass that house almost every day now.

I got a 2002 Buick LeSabre with only one previous owner and only 69k miles on it.  It’s a V6, so it should last a long time, and seems to be in fantastic condition.

My niece Kristal lives in Phoenix.  We had lunch last Saturday morning at Thefarmatsouthmountain.com, an organic farm with three restaurants, including a breakfast cafe, where we ate al fresco.  It was conveniently located between her place and where I was staying with friends in Laveen.

Then, on Monday, we drove up to see Uncle Danny Stief (of Sedonatalkradio.com).  He gave us a great tour of that stunning area, explaining to us about the vortexes and other metaphysical anomalies in the area (making Kristal’s name quite appropriate).  We had lunch and then Kristal and I drove back to Phoenix in time for me to catch my flight back to San Francisco.  On the way to Sedona, however, Kristal and I were talking so much that I forgot to get gas, and so to be sure we didn’t have to walk in the desert heat, I let the car coast down a mountainside for about eight miles to get to the next town to fill up!

Sedona is magnificent everywhere you look, with it’s vortexes and it’s manmade and natural monuments.  It was great to see my uncle, who is a talented singer, and touched Kristal and me with a few live performances of Elvis songs.  It was the first time Kristal and he met each other, so I was glad to facilitate their meeting and for us all to learn more about other parts of our family.

I’m also glad to have a nice base tan from Arizona last week for the two weekends in NYC I’m going to enjoy later this month!

Not only do we have a semi-private living room area with a pull out queen size bed, but now we have a bona fide fourth bedroom for guests with a bed set up in the basement where the landlord’s son used to stay.  It’s actually quite cozy, and I’m so glad that we have so much space to accommodate people if they want to visit us.

I’ll be videotaping a video tour of the new place soon.

Includes an indoor Easter Egg Hunt on a rainy day:

Landlords divorced after decades and foreclosed, basically. I can’t buy the place, so unless a family member comes through with a cash offer, we have to move anyway by beginning of April.

I’m traveling to Phurfest and hoping to see friends and family in Arizona in late April/early May.  It’s a state I’ve never stepped foot in, to my knowledge, but which my family has a long history in, apparently.  I’ve seen a lot of relatives going back generations move and return to Arizona, and I know my dad lived there for a time as a kid.  Ancestry.com has helped prove the links I have to the area, but I’m also looking forward to some pool parties and dry heat, which is one of the reasons I moved back to the West Coast.