The western sky at dawn had I soft pink just before the sun rose over the mountains. Puck was hopping around between the bonsai shelves, sniffing leaves and rubbing on things. Rosencrantz sat on the chair in the dance room and took in the sunbeams filtering through the glass in the sunroom.

This bodacious architecture is really quite out of place with its white columns and bright lights, as it sits across Central from Old Town, which has mostly old adobe structures. The building houses a law firm, which I would guess does not offer bargain legal services. 3rd, 5th, and 6th streets were all closed again tonight, so I went home on West Central and couldn’t pass up photographing this monument to the legal profession with its high intensity night lights setting it off agains the night sky. The yucca and portal are off the parking lot across Central from the Law Firm.

 

A roadrunner was sunning himself behind a catcus yesterday when I dropped Laurie off at Tristan’s. Many years ago we had an infestation of roadrunners on the property. When we were gardening, five or six roadrunners would circle around us sizing us up to see if they could make a few meal out of us.  Roadrunners seem more like dinosaurs than birds to me. After a couple of years of eating all the lizards, robins and other birds in the neighborhood they moved on. I haven’t seen a roadrunner in the yard in long, long time.

They’ve closed down several streets downtown the last few days for filming, forcing most of the traffic trying to get out of downtown onto 2nd Street. The problem is the lights are not timed to handle the extra traffic, so 2nd Street and all the side streets were jammed. While waiting to turn onto 2nd Street, I noticed the light on First Plaza was interesting. I finally got to Martin Luther King Jr. and while waiting in traffic to get on I-25, the light was nice on the old hospital building on MLK.

 

 

 

Tristan is restoring her 1980 280-Z. This is the new dashboard, center console and speakers. Laurie helped with sanding and painting parts to the steering column today.

I think the “Your Speed” sign was freaking out tonight. I’m not sure what the young woman in the shorts was thinking. The sun was setting, the wind was icy, and she was walking very quickly along along 5th street along the west side of the Kimo Theater.  I missed a shot of another young woman walking a block north of the Kimo who was bundled up from head to toe, arms tucked in tightly, chin down to minimize the cold wind on her face. It would have made a nice companion photo. “In Plain Sight” is filming their final season, and had a line of trucks, facing the wrong way, blocking 3rd Street this afternoon. The homie in Hair and a Homie and Homies and Homeless was an extra in the 2010 and 2011 seasons of In Plain Sight. Maybe he’ll get called up again.

When I went to the bank yesterday the crows were playing in the lawn. I had my carry camera, Lumix GF1 with a 20mm ƒ/1.7 lens, so the images are cropped to 800% of their original sizes.

We discovered Puck had an infection last Sunday, and we had to give him antibiotics all week — this morning was his follow up appointment.  He made two figure 8’s through the house and catio, running behind the couch, then diving through the cat door and getting on the highest plank in the kitty jungle gym in attempts to avoid getting caught and put into the cat carrier. On his last run into the catio, he made a daring leap from the high plank onto the beam that supports the roof joists. Tottering 10 feet above the slab between two rafters, he finally gave up as he saw he had no more options when I climbed up to get him. After we got him in the carrier, he spun around like Disney’s Tasmanian Devil until Laurie calmed him down. He was very quiet during the ride to the vet, acted the perfect kitty angel for the tech and the vet, and when the exam was over, he couldn’t wait to get back into the carrier that he had given me so much grief over just 30 minutes earlier.  Puck is back to full health, so no more antibiotics — whew!

Black & white photographs often seem more real or possibly more true to life than color, but sometimes they are like magic — altering reality, playing with our senses, leaving only to our imaginations the colors they posses.

 

“Gimme a head with hair
Long beautiful hair
Shining, gleaming,
Streaming, flaxen, waxen

Give me down to there hair
Shoulder length or longer
Here baby, there mama
Everywhere daddy daddy

Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair
Flow it, show it
Long as God can grow it
My hair”

Anyone remember “Hair”?  The woman on the left with her long, beautiful hair reminded me of the song.  I also got another shot in what’s turning out to be my “The Homie In My Sunglasses” series. The snake cat was at his best this morning.

 

 

I left the office quite late tonight and wanted to get home has quickly as possible, but cops, movies and traffic got in the way.  Traffic wasn’t terribly bad on I-25, but many drivers were driving slow in the fast lane; therefore, in order to maintain 80, I had to drive in the right-hand lane most of the time I was on I-25. I’m having to drive in the slow lane more often these days to maintain the speed limit or, as I prefer, the natural speed for the road, which, by the way, is always 10 MPH or more above the posted speed limit. A good way to test this is to drive behind a police officer when there isn’t much traffic. I’ve noticed that Albuquerque police, State police and Sheriff  officers tend drive 10 to 15 MPH over the speed limit if they are not trolling for tickets or responding to calls.