What would you do if you couldn’t drive and you had pets but wanted to move to an area far far away? Why you’d take a cab wouldn’t you?

That’s what Betty and Bob Matas, neither of whom drive, did when they wanted to spare their cats an airplane trip as they moved from New York to a retirement home 90 miles north of Phoenix.

They left their Queen’s New York neighborhood on April 10th in a canary yellow ford SUV cab and traveled about 10 hours a day for a flat rate of $3000 plus gas, meals and lodging. Luckily the SUV was a hybrid-electric vehicle and that lessened the cost of buying gas.

“It was pretty tiring, for my wife especially,” said Bob Matas, 72, a former audio and video engineer for advertising agencies. “We’re happy where we are. We’re happy and that’s it.”

Matas said he was “flabbergasted” by the attention surrounding the couple’s trip. Passers-by recognized them when they saw the New York cab, he said.

“Every state that we hit, people would say, ‘Are you the ones?’ and we would say, ‘Yes, we are the ones,’” Matas said.

The Mayor of Sedona welcomed them as they arrived with a noontime ceremony a couple of weeks ago. They were presented with a bag of Sedona souvenirs. Their real estate agent met them at the ceremony and gave them the keys to their new Village of Oak Creek home.

The couple stayed in a hotel for a few days while their belongings were moved into their new house. Their belongings were transported by a friend in a rental truck who drove behind the cab on the long journey.

Hmmm the San Francisco Giants are part of the spring training Cactus Leagues. Now I’ve got some thinking to do. Earlier I’d been thinking of going to see another team play during spring training but now that I know that the San Francisco Giants are part of the same training league I might change my plans and watch a few of their games instead.

See, we’ve been planning a trip for the new year. We might get together with my brother and Tricia’s brother- they are both huge baseball fans, so what better way to get together for a vacation than to go to Arizona and watch some of the spring training games? I think it’s a fantastic idea.

Ah ha! I’ve just discovered that they are actually playing against the Chicago cubs in Hohokam Park, Mesa Arizona on March 1st. We can see both of the teams that we’re interested in watching play against each other if we plan our trip for early March. This is fantastic. I must see about getting the Giants Spring Training tickets soon. I’ve already planned to try to get tickets in section 116 Row A because those seats are in the first row just past third base. Otherwise we’ll try for seats in section 115, row A as those are in the first row as well, just past first base on the Cubs side. Either would be great considering we’re going with both Cubs and Giants fans.

I must go and make plans!

It’s amazing what you’ll find if you stare at your food long enough. Bodega Chocolates in Fountain Valley California says it found a 2 1/2 inch piece of chocolate that resembles the virgin Mary. A worker noticed the glob of chocolate in a mixing vat and thought that it had an amazing likeness to the Virgin Mary standing in prayer. “It’s absolutely a miracle,” said Jacinto Santacruz, 26, a Roman Catholic who in August discovered the 2 ½-inch-tall apparition at Bodega Chocolates.

This isn’t the first time that we’ve heard of religious images appearing in food or other items, for example they’ve been seen in bricks, logs, the gritty underpass of a Chicago expressway, a Tennessee coffee shop called Bongo Java and, last month, a tiny gold nugget found in the Arizona desert.

In 1977, a woman making burritos in Lake Arthur, N.M., saw the face of Jesus in the pattern of skillet burns on a tortilla. She was so enthralled by the tortilla that she built a shrine to house the Jesus tortilla, which was blessed by a priest, and thousands of people from across the country came to gaze and pray for its divine assistance in healing their ailments.

Muslims have also found Arabic script for Allah or Muhammad on fish scales, chicken eggs, lambs and beans.

Scientists call this phenomenon Pareidolia, the perception of patterns where none is intended. One professor who has studied this phenomenon says that it’s really just how humans are hard wired - “It’s really part of our basic perceptual and cognitive situation,” said Guthrie, a cultural anthropologist, retired Fordham University professor and author of “Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion.”

“It has to do with all kinds of misapprehensions that there is something humanlike in one’s environment, when really there’s not.”

At the root of the phenomenon, he said, is the survival instinct.

“It’s a built-in perceptual strategy,” Guthrie said. “In a situation of uncertainty, we guess that something is caused by the most important possibility.”

Hence, if you’re alone and hear a strange sound, even on a gusty night, you’re more likely to ask, “Who’s there?” than think it’s the wind. And if you happen to be religious, Guthrie said, your answer to “Who’s there?” may well be God. More specifically, Jesus in a fried tortilla.

The feelings generated by these perceptions can be powerful.

At Bodega Chocolates, Santacruz and her co-workers placed the chocolate Madonna in a small plastic case, and as news spread, crowds of the curious and devout began making pilgrimages to the shop, where they prayed, crossed themselves and knelt.

“It’s really emotional,” Santacruz said. “I can’t describe the feeling; the emotions make me cry.”

Other alleged miracles have proved profitable: A 10-year-old grilled-cheese sandwich with a pattern resembling the Virgin Mary sold on eBay in 2004 for $28,000; a pretzel in the shape of Mary cradling the infant Jesus fetched $10,600; and a water-stained piece of plaster cut from a shower wall bearing what looked like the face of Jesus brought in nearly $2,000.

Some manifestations get worldwide attention.

In 1996, the owner of Bongo Java in Nashville, Tenn., said he discovered a cinnamon bun bearing the likeness of Mother Teresa in profile.

Dubbed “the miracle nun bun,” the pastry got so much notice worldwide that he parlayed it into a commercial venture, selling nun-bun T-shirts and coffee mugs on the Internet.

The items were taken off the market when Mother Teresa complained, but he refused to stop exhibiting the renowned sweet, even after she died.

Eventually the bun was stolen during a 2005 Christmas Day break-in.

But it was the famous Jesus tortilla of New Mexico that some believe set the world standard for claims of miracle sightings.

After discovering it while making her husband’s breakfast, Maria Rubio mounted a display of the tortilla.

She quit her job as a maid to become full-time attendant to the shrine of the tortilla constructed in her home. And although a few competing miracle tortillas cropped up in subsequent years, none attracted anything approaching the fan base ascribed to the original.

Religious traditions are filled with tales of apparitions.

On Dec. 12, Roman Catholics celebrate the feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, who they believe was first seen by a Mexican Indian named Juan Diego in 1531.

Similar apparitions of a gentle woman speaking soothing words have been noted worldwide.

Church officials say they don’t encourage such interpretations.

“The church encourages Christians to see the face of Christ in the homeless, the poor, the destitute and the immigrant, not in a plate of pasta,” said Tod Tamberg, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

We’re starting to plan our family holiday for this coming spring, and we’re thinking of doing something different this year, like going to Arizona to see the Chicago Cubs play in the Cactus Leagues as part of their spring training. We’ve never been to Arizona so it would be a bonus to go there. The Grand Canyon would have to be on the list of sites to see.

The Spring Training games are taking place in Mesa, Pheonix, Scottsdale, Tucson, Tempe In March so we’d just have to figure out when we want to go in order to figure out which Spring Training tickets to the Cubs we’d want to purchase.

I think we’d probably go near the beginning of March and if we do most of the games are in Mesa around that time period. They’re being held in Hohokam Park. The best seats are right behind home plate in section 100 row L, but the seats in section 115 row A that are just past first base on the Chicago Cubs side look pretty good too. I guess we’ll have to decide which we want and see what’s available and we should probably do that soon before all the best seats are sold out. Decisions decisions. Nah we’re going to have a great time. I’m even going to see if I can get my brother to get some time off work and come with us. He lives in Chicago and he’s a Cubs fan so I’m sure he’d love to join us.