More Flowers

I think beaker saw our ghost tonight. I was taking him to his cage to put him to bed, and just as we started to go into the study, he freaked and flew straight back to his perch in the kitchen. He refused to go into the study for about an hour after that. He finally decided the coast was clear and let me put him to bed.

I was reminded that the blue flower yesterday is an iris and not a lily. I fixed it in the post. I had lilies on the brain, I guess.

We got a new bouquet of flowers tonight, and I photographed of some of the flowers that came in it. One flower that's different is the blue hydrangea. It's way too dry to grow them in our garden, but when we were in northern Spain, we saw walls lined with hydrangeas. They were really beautiful.

Lastly, I included a photo of my coffee cup at the office before I washed it this morning. The dried sludge from the Friday's Rwandan knock 'em dead genocide blend looks kind of like the dried, cracked clay I see on the river. If your coffee doesn't leave behind clay-like sludge, it just isn't strong enough!

I've been told strong coffee will put hair on my chest. I'm still waiting for the five hairs they shaved off my chest when they put the port in to grow back. Speaking of ports, I have to have my port flushed after I see the doctor tomorrow. Any wagers on whether or not I have an immune system?

Hydrangea

Bells of Ireland with a Daisy

Dried sludge

Feeling Blue

This iris is interesting. In bright sunlight, or backlit through the bay windows, it's very blue. Under incandescent light it's purple. I put the iris in the sun streaming though the bay window late in the afternoon, which gave it a brilliant blue. Blue is difficult to achieve in flowers, and so far no one has produced a blue rose. But this iris definitely puts on blue in the sun, The second photo is the same iris photographed under incandescent light.

I was sitting on the floor photographing the backlit amaryllis leaves against the mirror this afternoon. Laurie walked in and asked what I was getting out of half dead plants. The third photo is one of my photos of "half dead plants!"

The weather was pretty nasty today with the wind kicking up dust, short flurries of snow and the temperature progressively dropping throughout the day. The cats went out in short spurts, and Rosencrantz laid on my lap many times throughout the day, snuggling in, keeping me down. My joints are really complaining about the weather, which is fairly normal.

The bad weather didn't produce much of a sunset tonight; however, the Sandias were a beautiful pink. I included a slightly different view of the pink Sandias, since I didn't feel like venturing out to the river to get an unobstructed view in the cold wind and blowing dust.

Not Another Sunset

Laurie's learning LaTeX. It's a math thing. Whoever said math isn't sexy?

The one thing that's good about bad weather is we usually get good sunsets out of it; therefore, tonight's photos are the same as it ever was. Just flip your hair, role your eyes, and in a low, sarcastic voice say "It's déjà vu all over again!" It helps work the monotony out of looking at more sunset photos.

I also included another cute photo of Puck. Mamma mia! No un'altra foto di gatto! Well! Yes! Puck was just being too cute this afternoon. The other kitties were also being cute, but Puck was the most photogenickly cute.

The orchids have lasted a week and even put out more blooms. We're encouraged. They also smell good. So not only do I have nice looking orchids arching over my computer, I get the added benefit of their pleasant scent.

Besides working on my infestation of cat and sunset photos, I managed to do some watering, a little laundry, a bit of yard work, and got groceries. Laurie worked on math, house work, and made a wonderful Puree of Sweet Potato & Ginger Soup with Apple-Mint Raita for dinner. It was creamy and quite spicy with the ginger and jalapeños. She found the recipe in our Fine Cooking archives.

Picketed Sunset

We had the sunset all round tonight — pinks, yellows, purples and reds in every direction. At first I didn't think the sunset would develop, but then the mountains turned pink and soon after the skies were full of color.

Everyone decided to go back to work and school starting Wednesday. Traffic was very slow Wednesday, Thursday and today at 8:00 am. As traffic crept along I could see women in my rearview mirrors and in cars on either side of me putting on makeup. And why not? They might as well get a few extra minutes of sleep and use the time sitting in traffic dolling themselves up. Normally they are putting on eye shadow, mascara, rouge and lipstick, but this morning one young woman was putting on false eye lashes while creeping along beside us. She looked rather strange holding the eyelash holder on her eyelid with one hand, steering with her knees, while pawing around in her makeup kit with her other hand. She managed to stay on the road, not run into anyone or put an eye out that I could tell. Pretty good!  I couldn't see clearly enough to tell whether she got her lashes on straight, but she seemed to have gotten herself together by the time we got to I-25.

West

East

North

South

West

Working Nights

There is never enough time in a day to get everything done. I did manage to get a couple of photos of people working later than I did tonight on the way home. It's a lot harder to do longer days than it used to be.

Don't Point That Thing At Me

This spotted towhee gave me a really dirty look for photographing him. They usually hang out it the branches of the wild plums, making it hard to photograph them, but this one was bold enough to land on our mutant Peace rose, where I could get a got shot of him. He simply gave me "mad dogs" before flitting off into the plum branches. Maybe that was his way of giving me the bird!

Guildenstern was laying out by the fire pit watching birds flit around in the black bamboo. All I could see was the back of his head and ears sticking up above the edge of the fire pit as he followed the birds' movements.  He just laid there and watched the birds. I suppose the bamboo is enough of a barrier to make the response cost of going after the birds too high, even for a cat.

Northern Sunset

The PET scan was the same as it ever was. Got an injection of radioactive sugar, had to sit in quarantine for an hour while my body either takes up the RS or starts processing it, go to the bathroom then lay motionless on the table while they send me through the PET/CAT/MRI donuts for 25 minutes. The tech said good job, as in laying still. I gathered up my things and left.  Next Tuesday I see Dr Marshall for the results.

Todays photos are the sunset in the north from the other night and a French restaurant.  The cats have been wanting a lot of attention lately. Guildenstern wants to lay across one of our arms on whatever surface we are sitting. Rosentcrantz wants to lay on my stretched out legs, and Puck wants to fight with us. Stretch got on Laurie's lap for a while tonight, which is out of the ordinary for him. He was been talking to me a lot and making me pet him and share my food him him, lately. Mama Manx and Diné tend to want attention when we are in the bedroom. Diné has a whole routine she goes through when Laurie stretches every morning.

So far the orchids are surviving. The pink spotted one is even putting out more blooms.  We finally got a humidifier, which should help all of us. I've been having sinus problems and some of our kitties wheeze, so getting some moisture in the air should help all of us breath better, and help keep the orchids happy.

Balloon

I have a PET scan tomorrow. I've eaten only protein all day, and had no exercise. The instructions say no exercise 24 hours before the PET scan, otherwise the muscles absorb the radioactive sugar they inject, and it's difficult for the muscles to metabolize radiation and flush it out. I won't eat anything more until after the PET scan tomorrow. We scheduled it at 8:00 am, so I won't have to go for long without eating and meds in the morning.

There were a few balloons floating around this morning, so I grabbed a few shots while heading downtown from UNM. I like how the windshield reflected the trees and some of the architecture in the first photo. I didn't know it picked up the reflection until I loaded the files onto the computer tonight. I can't really look at the camera while I'm driving, so I take on chance on getting an image I can work with.

Tulip

I think I the green chile chicken enchilada casseroles I made today are one of my best. I also made a big pot of chicken soup stock we use in recipes. Laurie made some chocolate/coffee bark using a mixture of dark chocolate, orange chocolate and Rwandan knock 'em dead genocide blend coffee beans.  

The photos today are mostly flowers and tonight's sunset. I didn't really get out much today with all the cooking and cleanup, so I photographed flowers in the bouquet we got from Costco last Monday. Since we have a floral refrigerator, we can get about a month out of a bouquet flowers. The different flowers bloom as it sits out on the table while we are home, and then the refrigerator keeps them fresh at night and when we are at work and school. The floral refrigerator seemed extravagant when we bought it, but not only does it keep flowers fresh, it keeps fruits and vegetables fresh about 5 times longer than a normal refrigerator. I don't know how we did without it.  The drawback is it's noisy compared to a regular refrigerator.

I don't know if it was the wind or the cloudy, dreary weather, but the cats and bird all seemed disturbed this morning. They were antsy, whiny and nervous, but as the day wore on they settled down and started acting normal. My joints have be aching today — I suppose whatever is making my joints hurt was disturbing the animals. 

After sampling some of Laurie's chocolate/coffee bark, I'm a little wired, yet I'm tired from all the cooking, cleaning and working on photos today. Tonight might be one of those strange nights for sleep.

Orchids

We drove over to the New Mexico Tortilla Company this morning to stock up on blue corn tortillas and they didn't have any. I inquired, and the cashier said they quit making them. She claimed they were having trouble with the blue corn meal they were getting so they decided to quit making them. The NMTC was the only place I could buy blue corn tortillas in bulk — 12 dozen at a time. We bought some yellow corn tortillas, a bag of chiles rellenos, then headed up to Trader Joe's because Laurie saw on the Internet that they had blue corn tortillas. They had what they called blue corn tortillas, but they are very light blue compared to what I'm used to. We bought two dozen to try, and made some chips with them tonight. They are certainly different, but not too bad.

We also got a couple of orchids at Trader Joe's, which are the subjects in tonight's photos.  I looked up how to keep orchids in a dry climate, so I'll see how we do. I have them hovering over my computer, which adds a nice touch of color and texture. I also was able to match the color in the photos pretty closely to the flowers since they are right in front of me. How the camera perceives color under a mixture of natural light and the overhead lights is different from how my eyes adjust and compensate for the mixed lighting.

The program for the Men's Breakfast this morning was the Metropolitan Homelessness Project. The MHP is also heading up the Mayor's Heading Home initiative. Michael Wilsher, Director of Development, and Dennis Plummer, Executive Director of the MHP spoke. Both men have lead interesting lives. Mr. Wilsher is from England and played with the group that recorded the hit song "Winchester Cathedral" in the 60's. They sold over 7 million records and won a Grammy Award. He came to the US and sold real estate in Rio Rancho for 20 some years before joining the MHP. Mr. Plummer started helping homeless people when he was in college, and walked across the US as part of his homeless ministry at one point. I don't remember how he ended up in Albuquerque, but he has a hypnotherapy practice along with heading up the MHP. The MHP is working to eliminate homelessness and seem to have a good set of programs to help them reach their goal.

La Polla del Amaryllis

I was quite surprised to learn one of the worst videos ever made by Will Smith's daughter is banned in Spain. This is the country that had porn all over the news stands, sex and nudity on public television and didn't edit films shown on public TV for sex or violence like they do it the States. I remember Cronicas Marcianas, a late night comedy show kind of like Johnny Carson meets Saturday Night Live, devoted a show to Conde Lequio's privates.

Conde Lequio is a rather well endowed playboy who has some claim to royalty in Spain. He was quite a tabloid and late night sensation in the late '90s, and it turns out his manhood is still popular in Spain. I did a Google search on Conde Lequio and one of the top results was a fairly recent article entitled "La Polla del Conde Lequio."  Back then Lequio claimed innocence about the paparazzi taking photos of him naked on a boat with some chica. The press asked him if he had his manhood insured, and there was much talk about "el tamaño sí importa."  The Spaniards got a lot of mileage out of Lequio.

I can't imagine why a video with a little girl whipping her hair around, making Pollockuesque paint splatters on the walls would be banned in Spain.  Could be copyright issues, or perhaps they don't want little girls getting whiplash while spattering paint on everything.

Reflections on Architecture

I read in the local news that vandals uprooted a sculpture of a cactus made by under privileged teenagers as part of a working classroom project funded by a $50,000 grant from the State. City refuse workers were called to the scene, decided the sculpture looked like trash, and hauled it off to the landfill where it was compacted and buried.  A spokesman for the city said it was an honest mistake, and the article lamented "That mistake has erased a priceless piece of art!"

I find it interesting that the media assumes the sculpture was 1) art and 2) priceless. Apparently, the vandals and the city refuse workers held contrary views to that of the reporter. And as far as it being priceless? According to a spokeswoman for the Working Classroom it cost $50,000. Pricey yes, priceless no. 

The reporter assumes that the vandals and refuse workers have no taste or sense of art. I assume he believes that's because the refuse workers pick up trash, and that anyone would would vandalize a sculpture made by under privileged teens is a philistine. Since I know nothing about the vandals or the refuse workers, any one of them could have a degree in art or art history. I'm fairly confident that refuse workers make higher salaries than average art historians or artists who subsist solely from art, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were a lot of artists who work for the city's refuse department who would have very good sensibilities about art.

The reporter also assumes that since the sculpture was made by under privileged teens in a project funded by the state, it must be art. However, was it art because under privileged teens created a large sculpture of a cactus using state funds? Was it art because the cactus represented labor by under privileged teens funded by the state? Was it art because it made a statement about the condition of the under privileged teens and moved people who saw the sculpture to become more aware and civically minded about the condition of under privileged teens? Or was it art because the cactus was so well crafted and designed that it stood on its own as art? Difficult questions to answer now that the sculpture lies buried in the landfill.

I think the art is in the process of the sculpture being vandalized, hauled off to the dump, compacted and buried. Obviously no one in the vicinity of the sculpture came to its aid, and whoever called the refuse department to deal with the uprooted sculpture did not think it worth saving. But now, a formerly unknown sculpture has some notoriety and an archive in the chronicles of local news.

Full Moon on the Run

With a full moon rising out of the clouds at 5:00 pm, rush hour dictated the shot. My best opportunity to get the moon relatively unobstructed, and at a time when the camera would pickup detail in the moon, was at I-25 and Martin Luther King Jr. Once I got to where I could photograph the moon at UNM, the buildings were still partially blocking it; by the time we got to the westside, the sun was low enough that the moon showed up as a white disk in the picture. 

You might not think the moon would be a difficult subject, but it is, particularly with digital cameras. Unlike film that will have few details in the blacks and lots of detail in the highlights that can be "burned in" when printing to show the detail, digital cameras pickup lots of details in the shadows, and bright lights and whites are basically void. You can bring out detail in the blacks on a digital image by using fill light in a photo manipulation program, but you can't "burn" white and get detail. So once the light fades enough, getting detail in the moon without a tripod and exposing for the brightness of the moon is almost impossible with a digital camera. The moon appears as a white disk on the image that could just as well be the sun.

Trees en Route

My immune system is still hanging on by a thread.The white counts are the same as last week, but my neutrophils increased by two tenths, which is good. My HGB and HTC are a little lower than last week, but still on the low end of normal. 

Laurie made a really good Filet of Beef with Blue Cheese and Rosemary sauce for dinner. The sauce was supposed to have pine nuts, but there is a pine nut blight in New Mexico, and I couldn't bring myself to pay $30/pound for Chinese pine nuts, so I opted out of the pine nuts. Fortunately there weren't any TSA agents lurking around, so I got out of the store unmolested.

For as much as TSA gets maligned, I read they get some real doozies. One of the best, I thought, was a family that put a dead relative in a wheelchair and tried to get him through security so they wouldn't have to pay extra to ship the body. Speaking of corpses, Garden Design magazine is getting a little friskier in it's new design. There is an interview with a corpse flower named Lois on their website. Lois is an Amorphophallus titanium, native to the rain forests of Indonesia, that lives in the Houston Museum of Natural Science.  These "giant misshapen penis" flowers give off a foul order which gives them the nick name of "corpse flower."  Apparently, Lois has her own twitter and a "rabid" following, so Garden Design interviewed her.  From the photo, Lois does have an impressive amorphophallus.

I took the photos today on the way home crawling along in traffic and one from the parking lot when I stopped to look for pine nuts. There always seems to be something of interest to photograph — if not, at least it helps pass the time sitting in traffic when I'm looking for photo opportunities, instead of getting worked up about being stuck in traffic.

Ripples

Tomorrow I will find out if I still have an immune system or not. I've been feeling pretty well, but that isn't always a good indicator. I'm hoping my immune system has improved from last week. That would be a nice valentine, plus I really want to get back to normal.

Guildenstern smells like smoked paprika tonight, so we're not sure what he got in to. He's an awfully big cat, and we don't see him eating that much; therefore, he may be sneaking and cooking stuff during the day when we are not home. If that's the case, at least he's cleaning up and putting away the dishes when he's done.

For the Birds

According to the Corrales Comment, the corps of engineers are bulldozing the sand bars in the Rio Grande to improve the habitat for the silvery minnow. Likely. They are also going to start cutting down cottonwood trees that are with in 15 feet of the levee to reduce the fire hazard. That's as crazy as bulldozing sand bars to save the silvery minnow. Cottonwoods are not the fire hazard, it's all the overgrown underbrush in the bosque and along the river bank that provides the fuel for fire when it's dry in early summer. The cottonwoods don't burn as well without underbrush to act as tinder. The conservancy would do much better to allow people to go in and clear the underbrush and dead trees out of the bosque.

The drip system on the circle garden finally thawed out today. The temperature registered 70º F in the sun and 72º F on the deck, which means it was probably around 60º F. We sat out on the deck for lunch and watched dog fights between some crows and a rather large hawk. A large flock of finches buzzed us, while various other birds flitted around in the black bamboo, obviously enjoying the warm afternoon.  An intermittent cool breeze reminded us it is still winter, but a cool breeze was merely refreshing compared to the sub-zero winds we got last week.

More birds for today's photos. The cranes and geese where taken out on the river, while the other birds were in the branches of the wild plums that grow on the outside of the fence along the south side of the property. I actually snuck up within a few feet of the birds, but since they sit in among the branches, getting a clear photo of them is rather difficult.

Now that I know the conservancy must sacrifice the vegetation on the sandbars for the welfare of the silvery minnow, and cut down cottonwood trees to keep us safe from fire, I can rest assured that everything will be okay, because I know that they are the government and they are here to help!