7/12/2024 10:16 AM: ;-*O!!!!!!!!erianadonutfreak1999: I can’t believe José. Still hasn’t given me the address or even these guys’ email. I fly back home on Sunday!! Article or no article!!
7/12/2024 12:00 PM: ;-*O!!!!!!!!erianadonutfreak1999: I thought I knew hot weather. Midwestern summers can’t hold a candle to this. Gotta be 200 degrees out here.
7/12/2024 2:21 PM: ;-*O!!!!!!!!erianadonutfreak1999: Spent all day just hanging around instead of going to that Taliesin west tour.. Insights Tour … started at 9am…some comment on Wright.. at least I lucked out, most of my site research is done thanks to having met Marty Castillo who had a lot to say. Claims even to have nailed Crockett. Not poor Sonny though, we love you Sonny. But the Tracee variety. No relation to Chapman. T. Crockett, the city relocation manager! Hahahaha!! He’s prolly full of shit. I dropped by the gym too just before noon and kept it simple: did 666 squats.
7/12/2024 2:29 PM: ;-*O!!!!!!!!erianadonutfreak1999: Note to self: haha!! Elle freaking all, L freaking OL. As if these weren’t already that… hahahaha!! Anyhow… emailed Deshaughnessy fo’ mo’ money. Explained about the thing with the thing at the thing and that therefore, naturally, of course, CLARO ESTA, POR SUPUESTO QUE… I need more money!
7/12/2024 2:39 PM: ;-*O!!!!!!!!erianadonutfreak1999: Yay! Finally got his email with the intel. Place is in “Central City”. Got the street address. Emailed the owners, a Karl and Marta Sepulveda. I guess José had already talked to them. They’re expecting me for dinner tomorrow night!!
7/12/2024 2:52 PM: ;-*O!!!!!!!!erianadonutfreak1999: Googled it. Nothing. Frigging José wants me to… even the architect’s name! … find out on my own! Oh well let’s see what I can get tomorrow.
7/13/2024 6:43 PM: ;-*O!!!!!!!!erianadonutfreak1999: Off to the Sepulveda’s in a few minutes. Saw the location on Maps. Anyone willing to build their house a mile and a half away from the PHX runway, right on the approach path no less, must have gotten a really good deal on the land. I mean, huge planes roaring over your roof on a regular, 24-7, you gotta like planes. You gotta swear planes are it. And you just GOTTA have a sizey place in your heart reserved for the TURBINES themselves. Plus, have gotten a really good deal on the land. So I guess even with the relocation of these Nuestro Barrio families… something like 18 families were still living in what eventually would be the construction site, as recently as 2016, at least according to that older-Edward-James-Olmos-looking gentleman in the has-seen-better-days UNM Los Lobos basketball jersey I met yesterday at the lobby, who claims to have been one of the contractor guys that owned a bunch of those house-tearing bulldozers. So…even considering the price tag of 18 ok-I’ll-moves, and let’s not forget Pete’s Fish & Chips at the corner of 11th and Buckeye Road – he must have gotten a really sweet deal – even then, I mean, I’m no a real estate expert, not an appraiser, no historian either, have 0 clue what the price per-square-foot in the middle of Phoenix was in 2017, but, 8.5 acres is kind of a lot. For like, one house. So purely, that must have been a steal. Plus they like planes.
7/13/2024 7:16 PM: ;-*O!!!!!!!!erianadonutfreak1999: Maybe it wasn’t such a hot idea either to book at the Hyatt Regency up in Scottsdale considering I practically landed on the project, but whatever. A chance to stretch my legs across the back seat as I also splurge on a black UWheel self-driving 2020 Chevy Suburban (jeez they can make a car drive itself but can’t make an app worth a half a darn, took forever for the UWheel app to read the silly code!) and take in the desert landscape. I cross suburban Phoenix and I got the setting sun hit the west side of the mountains as we go by the preserve along 51. Can’t recall ever seeing that kind of Orange before. Beautiful. Radio´s playing a nice oldie. Otero’s remix of “Worth Fighting For” by Rico and Miella. And Telykast. This thing’s doing, like, 20. Hell, I can get a self-driving car to not slam into a pedestrian too if I can put the damn thing on “park”! Beautiful landscape, sssssloooowwwww… mowwwwww… sightseeeeeeeeinnnggg. Heck, no rush. Thing’s at eight. I swear I see a mountain lion. Yawn. Out.
7/13/2024 7:51 PM: ;-*O!!!!!!!!erianadonutfreak1999: Wow. Let me sit up straight! If you expected a multimillion-dollar home to be located in a nice neighborhood, I mean this is.. like you took No-Man’s-Land, Middle-Of-Nowhere, AZ and … WOW. The City… took a piece of the Sonora and laid some a dirt-cheap roads and power cable grid on it, threw in a crumbling shack here and there, a couple mortuaries for good measure - everything’s beige by the way, and one-story tall - dropped a few warehouses here and there, and… where’s everyone??? Ok. Here it is. Approaching 12th street… an at least 12 foot tall, and, guess. Beige… perimeter wall, topped with electric fence... behind that, huge trees. Not sure what kind. Oaks? And that’s IT. That’s all you see. We’re talking two whole city blocks, here, like... And all you see is that wall and those trees. Now down 12th and… right turn on Yuma. Same thing. Wall, huge trees. Blue skies.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
7/13/2024 7:57 PM: ;-*O!!!!!!!!erianadonutfreak1999: On time!! Early even! Came in through a huge metal sliding gate, green this time, believe it or not, and… Yay. In the middle of the Sonoran desert again. Ok, like we ever left, right, but this is pure desert; I’m talking saguaros, fan palms, big yellow boulders, sand, agaves, sand, prickly pear cacti, sand and no doubt scorpions, rattlesnakes, and tarantulas on either side of the driveway. Shoulda have come in hiking boots, instead of on these… er.. beige.. uh.. strappy.. um.. 5-inch wedges?? Heck it’s not my fault it’s like 200 degrees out here. Heck at least the little bastards would have to rock-climb their way to anywhere near my repellent-free feet.. as if big perimeter trees weren’t enough… there’s a second line of trees, this time… cypresses?? …that seem to form a ring. I mean a circle. Huge one. I’m out the SUV. Can’t see squat of the house yet. I’m GUESSING it’s behind those cypresses. Heading toward that path that seems to lead to that “clearing” between the cypresses. Won’t take my chances roughing it across the desert, nope. By the way. Kinda scary. Ain’t seen a soul yet? WTF?? Left the UWheel in stand-by. You know? Case anything.. oh wait, some radiantly smiling guy’s coming. Prolly the owner. Yep. Prolly Mr. Sep. Mister well-blowered, pharmacy-auburned-mane-of-eighties-soap-opera haired, sensationally tan, all-in-white and barefoot Mr. Sep. Yep. Barefoot. Pedicure and all. Mister I-even-see-a-turquoise-ring-on-his-left-toe Mr. Sep. The just-emerged-from-within-the-ring-along-the-path-across-the-“break”-in-the-circle-of-cypresses Mr. Sep. He keeps walking. I can make him out much better now! The one and only mister all-smiles, mister lower-incisors-notably-yellower-than-upper-incisors Mr. Sep!
7/13/2024 8:00 PM: ;-*O!!!!!!!!erianadonutfreak1999: I have no idea what he’s saying to me since a plane was roaring overhead at that precise moment so all I did was watch his cracked lips move. For like a two full minutes. Seems nice enough though. We’re supposedly walking toward the house now.
7/13/2024 8:01 PM: ;-*O!!!!!!!!erianadonutfreak1999: O…M…F…G… The house is in the middle of a like…immense…round reflecting pool, and… suspended above it, a good 8 feet?? And… like it’s, a building, not a house? And, pointy? And, glass, lots of glass? The entry right smack at the center, at the end of the path that’s – surprise! - also suspended over the water… but, what the hell? Two other paths at seemingly 90-degree angles at left and right and also leading toward the house. Two more front doors?? Three more??? Some stairs seem to go back down to the water inside.. man. The thing looks like a cross between a pueblo mansion, a turn-of-the-century suburban corporate headquarter and a minimalist desert Transformer, transforming. On pilotis. No WONDER José thinks this house is the ‘sheet’. Pardon my French, literally. I’m inclined to ask my smiling host, “was peyote in any way involved in that first ‘client-architect’, ‘brainstorming’ meeting??” Beyond the initial glass façade plane… planes come up from inside the house, at different angles… white planes with square openings … seeming to rotatingly draw away back from the façade… making their way up too. Oh I don’t mean planes like the ones roaring above, I mean the plane planes, I mean the flat-surface-on-which-a-straight-line-joining-any-two-points-on-it-would-wholly-lie planes. On we walk toward the open front door, red, right at the end of the path. Isn’t that like, feng shui suicide? Who cares, peyotes will beat the heck out of lychees, any day, any time, anywhere. Even in China. How not Phoenix? (Funny side note: As we walk I hear something crack and it’s loud enough that we both look at my feet since it’s no doubt something I stepped on. I slowly bring my foot up and I guess I killed a scorpion. Looked up sheepishly at Mr. Sep, offered a half a chuckle and a cheesy smile. He frowns. For once I can’t see his teeth!). We walk on. I can’t get over this reflecting pool! I mean I thought Tadao had smoked with Eychaner Lee but. This smells Chandigarh, this smells Pei, this smells… I catch a whiff of squashed arachnid, never mind. He’s again saying something but bam, another plane’s en route to Sky Harbor. His lips do their thing. We’re at the front door.