Another cool, clear morning with dew on the roses and mist in the air. A crab spider is peeking out from a petal in the last photo.

Laurie thinks the photo of the stairs is a little boring, but I put so much work into stitching the six frames together and getting the perspective to look somewhat normal, that I just had to post the results. The space is very tight and the ceiling very high, so using a normal, 55 mm lens, I had to take six photos to get the all the stairwell in. Putting them all together was quite a challenge.

Osric dropped by this morning and put his face in my lens while I was photographing the dahlia.

Here we are five days before the first day of Autumn and the fall colors are preparing to set in with leaves anticipating the season, and the sun, enhanced by the thin cloud cover in the morning and dust in the air this afternoon, cast its enchanting, golden light over the Rio Grande Valley.

Would you pick up this cat and put him into a bag?  As part of our morning ritual, Stretch “snakes” me hoping that I won’t see him or that I will be too intimidated to pick him up. When I start to pick him up he growls at me, and sometimes hisses at me, but it’s all to no avail since I pick him up anyway and we zip him up in a kitty bag to give him his daily subcutaneous fluids to treat his renal failure.  Since it’s cooled down over the last couple of weeks, he’s looking much better, is way sassier and harder to handle.  But as much as he hates the daily “waterboarding”, I think he knows, as much as a cat can understand things like this, that it helps him to feel better.

When it comes to letting the cat out of the bag, Laurie told the choir director that I play guitar. Laurie is going to sing in the choir for their production of Handel’s Messiah. In trying to get me to join in on the Messiah, she told the choir director I had sung in other choirs (I faked it) and that I am a musician (it’s all hard work and determination, no real musical talent).  The problem is I haven’t played guitar in over two years, and since my fingertips are still numb from chemo, I’m not sure I can play very well.  My one saving grace is my camera — the director of operations at the church apparently told the choir director to “leave me be Sam I am” because she needs me to photograph the ongoings at the church. A photographer “I am, Sam I am”, I singer I’m NOT!

We had a very full day. First thing was the Men’s Breakfast, which featured Preston Dennard as the speaker. Mr. Dennard is a graduate of UNM and played professional football for the Los Angeles Rams, Green Bay Packers and the Buffalo Bills. During his career he was the top rated NFL Wide Receiver, voted most outstanding Wide Receiver, and twice nominated NFL Man of the Year. He was inducted into the NM Hall of Honor in 2000 and the Albuquerque Sports Hall of Fame in 2002. Laurie noticed his Superbowl ring, so he took it off and handed it to her so she could get a closer look. He told stories of his life, his faith, his coaching (kids’ soccer), and his inspirational speaking. He has five boys aged 6 to 33. The oldest boy is also a professional football player. He was a very good and entertaining speaker. One thing that impressed me during his talk is how much he talked about his father, and how important his father was in his life and success. His dad was in so many of his stories that I started to wonder if something happened to his mom. He eventually mentioned mom and dad near the end of his talk.  With so many single moms, and various youth services and ministries emphasizing the need for men to volunteer and mentor young men, I wondered if he made a point to emphasize his dad. I didn’t get to ask him because he had to run off to soccer practice.

After the breakfast, we ran to Costo and Sprouts (formerly Sunflower) to get ingredients for Book Group dinner tomorrow night (Laurie is hosting). After we unloaded the car, we had to go right back into town to go to the 8th Air Force luncheon. The luncheon was at the Marriott at I-40 and Louisiana, and we made good time until we passed San Mateo on I-40 and both lanes for the Louisiana exit were at a standstill. I finally got out of the exit lane and got off at Wyoming, and snaked my way back to the Marriott. There didn’t seem to be any accidents, so all we could figure was the back up was for the NM State Fair.  We sat with a couple who were from Czechoslovakia and came to the US in the early 1970’s. We asked if there was anything they missed from Czechoslovakia and they both replied “NO! Not a thing!” The speaker was Norman Schipper,s who was the crew chief on the B-17 Liberty Belle, which had been restored, toured the world and then burned up in a cornfield after an emergency landing a couple of years ago.

After we got home in the early afternoon, I finished the cabinet in the bathroom enough to install the countertop and sinks. Now I need to build the doors for the cabinets, install a backsplash and new medicine cabinets. Then I’ll start working on the ceiling and lights. The bathroom remodel is slowly coming together.

Stretch was trying to be a sweet kitty by getting on the sugar the minute Laurie put in on the counter when she was preparing to bake the spongecake for a tres leches cake she’s making for desert tomorrow.

The temperature was 42 degrees F on the thermometer on the south fence this morning, which means it was probably below 40 in the garden. I had to run the furnace for an hour this morning on the get the bathroom above 70 so the contact cement I put on the cabinets would dry before I could stick on the Formica. With the rain and cloudy weather the past couple of days, we didn’t get much solar gain, so the house was 66 this morning. While contact cement doesn’t like cool, humid conditions, the roses are happy with the cooler weather and precipitation.

We left the house early to get through Corrales before the school zone clogged up traffic, but the clouds and the light on the Sandias caused us to take a detour before getting onto I-25 and working our way through the traffic and wrecks. Needless to say, I didn’t get to work by 9:00 this morning. Later, I drove up to FormCove in Rio Rancho to get supplies for the cabinets and countertop in the bathroom and got the photo of the Sandias in the dramatic afternoon light.

We drove home into an intense thunderstorm this afternoon. If we were in the midwest, the low dark cloud would probably have formed into a supercell, but it simply proceeded the downpour. When we got to 2nd Street on Alameda, an Action 7 News team was packing up. I couldn’t see anything worth getting wet over, but the storm. While the reporter looked dry under her umbrella, the poor cameraman was soaked. The field of corn that was so nicely backlit on Sunday morning was beaten down by the torrential rain. An hour and a half later the sun streamed through the gaps between the clouds, illuminating our neighbor’s trees with a bright, golden light.

The young woman in the lead photo came out of “Knockouts Gentlemen’s Club” to take a smoke break. I assume she works there. The four in the photo below are groupies for one of the bands that played at the Sunshine Theater. They were hanging around the band’s bus that was parked on Silver between 2nd and 3rd streets. When the driver moved the bus, they piled into their car and followed.  The bands used to park their buses in the lot behind the office, but since the city closed the lot, they line the busses up on Silver. I don’t know where the bands will park if the city actually gets someone to build a supermarket on the lot.

 

More of our dahlias are blooming in a nice variety of sizes and colors. Although, shades of purple are the most prevalent.