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Here's Morgan's blow by blow report from his trip to the beach. Yes, he apparently twittered every couple of minutes. Please join me in making fun of him. Read from the bottom up.

morganbonner: This is your beach reporter Morgan signing off. I have survived another battle with the elements, though only by sheer luck.... about 1 hour ago from web

morganbonner: Yep, she's packing up to leave. Wouldn't you know it, an attractive woman just arrived in front of me. Figures. about 1 hour ago from web

If only our proud nation's Commander in Chief and his minions had picked up a copy of The Art of War, wisdom from a man that lived 500 years B.C. (or B.C.E. if you're so inclined), before setting off to war on foreign soil.

Just two pages in, Chapter 1, Line 2-3:

"When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, the men's weapons will grow dull and their ardour will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.

Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain."

This is a scene from the four foot obelisk in our back yard, illuminated by the morning sun:

What the hell is going on here?

And before you ask, it came with the house.

Our friend Phil is visiting for the weekend as a stop on his tour of the American West. Next stop will be a tent in Utah, apparently.

We drove up to Scottsdale to visit Frank Lloyd Wright's compound, Taliesin West [Flickr].

So the wife had the 'big' ultrasound on Monday. You know, the one where they zoom in on your unborn child's junk in an effort to determine the gender. Assuming they're not "hiding" it, as one nurse said they do sometimes.

Well, it looks like we'll be having a son. Or a three legged daughter. The former, I'd imagine, would get picked on a lot less on the playground, so we're hoping that's how it's worked out.

Today Betsy and I:

• Got Arizona driver's licenses
• Opened a bank account
• Made several doctor's appointments
• Visited my employer's HR department
• Turned on water, gas and electric utilities
• Visited our new home (moving in Saturday)
• Drove randomly around Tempe and Scottsdale

We managed all of this between 9:30 am and 4:30 pm, and everyone we dealt with was friendly, helpful and courteous.

We made it. That's about all I got.

Day two concludes in Amarillo, in the great state of Texas. We travelled from Little Rock, making it the shortest of our three days on the road. The weather through Arkansas and the better part (is there such a thing?) of Oklahoma! was torrential downpours separated by periods of blinding rain blowing sideways. We decided the most scenic thing on the drive today was the windmill farms by the side of the interstate in OK, and the fancy rest stops near the TX border.

We just wrapped up our first day of our cross-country journey to begin the next phase of our lives in Tempe, AZ, unfortunately without our favorite traveling companion. It was a long slog, but we made good time.

The first leg was by far the worst, through the monotonous interstates of central Georgia, a desolate wasteland punctuated only by garish billboards hawking discount divorces, discount liquor and handjob joints (probably not in that order), from Statesboro to Atlanta.