You know you are a redneck when your daughter shows up at 10:30 pm to see if you have a part for her water heater, and you go out in the dark yard to face the raccoons, skunks, porcupine, and La Llorona, search through some junk and come back with the right part.

Halloween closes out October, ushering in Movember. That’s right, it’s not a typo. Movember is a foundation started by some cleaver blokes in Australia to raise money for prostate cancer research. Instead of doing a walk, run, bike or other feat of athleticism, Mo Bros, as Movember participants are known, get sponsorship and donations to grow mustaches. I think it’s brilliant — growing a mustache is about the only thing a man can show off in public these days without getting into some kind of trouble.

Prostrates, unlike breasts, are not esthetically appealing to the vast majority of people. While thousands of people sport pink and show up for various events to raise money for breast cancer, I heard the Prostate Power walk in June was a bust. Prostate cancer is as deadly and devastating for men as breast cancer is for women, yet most people and the press are mum on the subject of prostate issues, but rah, rah for the breasts — beauty gets all the attention while the beast is left to suffer and die in obscurity.

Anyone interested in supporting Movember can go to http://us.movember.com/.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I did a photo shoot with Annie today. Annie is a singer/song writer who was part of a tech team I had working on a large computer inventory and software installation project in 2009/10.  She is a lovely model, we had a great time, and got lots of beautiful photos.

 

 

We got a hard frost this morning, making the roses look like they were sugar coated. It was 26 degrees F on the deck this morning, which means it might have gotten down to 20 in the garden. I don’t have a working thermometer in the garden right now, so I can only guess at the temperatures — in the past, it’s been 5 to 10 degrees colder in the garden than on the deck.

 

 

We were up until 2:00 am working on the preliminary draft on Laurie’s paper, then we got up early and finished all the changes so she could send it to her committee this morning so they can comment on it. Getting all the little details, corrections and formatting on a math paper is really a lot of work.

I woke up to a yellow-orange glow in the bedroom, grabbed my camera and went out into the wet twilight and watched dawn pushing up the sun. Behind me in the western skies hung a whisper of a rainbow arcing over the trees.

Guildenstern posed nicely on the stump tonight. There is something about the stump that make the cats want to pose. I’m sure they think of it more as giving kitty speeches than posing. They would probably do the same if we had a soapbox in the middle of the garden.

It’s midnight. Do you know where your monoids are? Ours are all over the counter, crawling on book holders and hiding under coffee cups. Finishing Laurie’s paper turned into a real math party — Laurie and Tristan bumped and ground along lattices testing cases, while I  had fun with LaTeX entering compositions and functions, then cleaning up headings and subheadings. David provided general support and entertainment.

We are finally evolving from stone age Internet service of 1.5 Mb/s to neolithic Internet service of 12 Mb/s. We might be getting on par with places like the Congo, but we remain far behind places like Singapore, Japan and Thailand. It took almost 10 years and Qwest getting bought out by CenturyLink before we could upgrade our Internet service — that’s about 10,000 years in computer time.

I had a photo session with a very cute praying mantis this afternoon. She really liked posing for the camera.

 

 

At twilight there was an afterglow on the yellowing foliage, making the bosque look like it would glow in the dark once dusk had finally put the sun to bed. Capturing what my eyes see at twilight with a camera is difficult. The camera wants to create a uniform exposure, whereas our eyes can adjust to the low, soft, almost imperceptible light seeing detail and subtleties in the landscape that the camera can only see by exaggerating the light. The lead photo is a rough representation of the bosque in twilight.

The other two photos are panoramas of the river, bosque and Sandias just before sunset, and the Sandias in purple just before the sun fell below the horizon, about 15 minutes before I took the lead photo.

I made two 18 pound green chile, pulled pork enchiladas this morning. We’ll freeze them in lunch-sized portions.  I spent the rest of the day helping Laurie with her paper, herding cats and processing photos.

I had a long day. I got the makings together to make giant enchiladas first thing this morning, took Stretch to the vet, cleaned the house, went out to the river with friends to photograph the fall colors, and then we had a great dinner. Guildenstern wanted us to worship him during dinner. Three of us were giving him attention, but the one person not interested in worshiping him was the one he pestered the most.

While we were standing along the river watching the mountains turn pink, the cranes started flying in for the night as the sun was setting, making nice silhouettes against the wispy clouds in the western skies.

Farmington motorcycle cops parked their Harleys in front of our office this morning while they got their boots shined next door. They were in Albuquerque to help with the Special Olympics. I asked how they liked the Harleys, and they said they’d rather have BMWs like the Albuquerque Police.

The world didn’t end, yet again. In case you didn’t know, the world was supposed to end today. And it’s a good thing too, because our new folding chairs that go with our fold out table finally came in today.  We were supposed to get them three weeks ago and the manufacturer sent them to the wrong person and address. They are very nice chairs.

When we drove up tonight, all the kitties were out looking happy as little kitty clams. The boxes of chairs were on the front porch and the front door was open, but the door knob was locked. I guess I must not have closed the door all the way when we left this morning — Stretch probably noticed and pulled it open. The doors are all still a little swollen from the rains a couple of weeks ago.

The vines at UNM are putting on a nice red.