I wandered past the now-dormant Rose Garden and the far-from-dormant new dog park, around the DeMeester Outdoor Performance Center and behind a couple of the ballfields used by the Colorado Rockies during spring training. The players weren't out yet; a few security guards and groundskeepers were around, though, and--forgive the cliché--I could literally smell freshly mowed grass. The weather was beautiful, and as I headed toward Hi Corbett Field, I smiled. Man, it's great to be a Tucsonan this time of year.
It was nice to be feeling good about Tucson. To be honest, I hadn't always been feeling so positive about my hometown in the preceding months.
My home, just a few minutes from the Rockies' spring training home, was robbed twice last year, including an October break-in during which some cretin kicked in our front door. We were at Sunrise Drive and Craycroft Road--a good 20 or 25 minutes away from home--when we got the call from the alarm company. We still got to our house about 25 minutes before the police did. This robbery came a month after the first--we left our garage door open one night, and someone helped themselves to all sorts of stuff--and about five months after someone broke a window on my car and swiped my computer bag while I was at my dentists' office, in broad daylight. (True story: When I called the police to report that incident, the officer basically blamed me for the theft, because I was dumb enough to leave valuables visible in a car.)
But that's all in the past. And, yeah, who knows what the future will bring? But that's to worry about later. For now, it's springtime in Tucson. Hallelujah.
