Tom got home last night around 11:30 pm... late, but he made it fine. I know airline travel is statistically safe, but I always feel better knowing he's landed safely.
Today was a lazy sort of day, overall- there was a meeting with the mayor this morning at the University of Arizona Agricultural Center (which is right next to our subdivision). The mayor put it together to address some of our concerns about issues with our developer, the flooding of the roads, etc. After that, we headed back home.
The meeting was actually very interesting- we found out just how fast Maricopa is growing... they did a special census in April 2004, which put the population at about 5,000. Another special census in December 2005 said it was about 15,000. They figure now it's up to about 25,000. (!!!!) The developer got the Tortosa development approved by the county, before the city incorporated in 2003, which is how they slid through without addressing the roads... apparently, the main road out to our subdivision was DIRT until just 6 - 8 months ago.
The main road from town to Phoenix gets more than 50,000 cars on it per day- more than the interstate in this area!! There were no fences along the road till 6 months - 1 year ago... apparently the wild horses crossed the road quite often! (I think that would be sort of cool to see, but probably not if you happened to hit one!
There are 50 trains per day through town, and they figure that within 5 years, it will be 100 per day. They are planning a "grade change" at the tracks (overpass or underpass), but it has to be worked out with the State Dept of Transportation, the railroad, the county, and the town... you can imagine how quickly things get done with this sort of bureaucracy involved! (not very... !)
So, there are lots of things in the works for improvements in the infrastructure, it's just hard to keep up when it's growing SO very fast. It was actually very nice of the mayor to come out and speak to us... I'd like to know more about some of the plans- maybe I'll have to attend a couple city council meetings.
After, Tom watched the men's semi-finals of the US Open (the finals tomorrow will be Federer vs. Roddick), and I headed out to the stamp store in Chandler again. Didn't get to spend enough time there last weekend! I bought a CUTE reindeer stamp (wait till you see it!), a set of unmounted stamps (flowers and grasses- very nice, I'll post some pics soon), and a couple new ink pads. We watched the women's finals (Maria Sharapova won, BOO- my personal opinion), and I messed around with my new stamps while Tom played his guitar.
So now, it's very late, and I should probably go to bed, but we don't have to get up early tomorrow!
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