Month: November 2012

Today in B&W

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These trees on the north side of Castetter Hall at UNM are nicely shaped and cast wonderful shadows under the night lights.  Rosencrantz and Mama Manx were snuggled together on the couch, but the minute I pointed the camera at them, they looked up at me.  The clouds were beautiful on the Sandias this morning. Laurie had an appointment at school, so we didn’t have time to make a short detour to the open space across from the Balloon Museum and get a better view of the Sandias without so many buildings and power poles.

Kitty and a Cake

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We celebrated Laurie’s brother’s birthday tonight. Laurie made a chocolate Irish whiskey cake that was wonderful. Romeo, who is Laurie’s parent’s cat, was being especially cute tonight. The Sandias were in great pink form tonight, so I got up on the roof to get the photo. We are working on upgrading and consolidating our electrical service, which will allow us to remove the power pole with the light on it in the photo of the Sandias.

 

 

 

Crane Dance

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We had cloud cover most of the day, but no precipitation. I went out on the river an hour before sunset and got the cranes flying in for the night. They often dance around after they land. I don’t know if the duck was stretching, dancing or saw something threatening, but he was putting on a show, also.

 

 

 

 

 

Four Cats & A Parrot

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Out of our six cats I got four of them to pose for me tonight. Puck, who is usually a great poser, made me chase him all over the house and catio before he decided to go into “light switch Viper” mode and attacked Laurie before he let me get a few shots of him.  Between the cooler weather and the daily waterboarding, Stretch is looking so much better. I read Tintin in French to Stretch while giving him his fluids a couple of times this while Laurie was getting ready. I think my French on top of the waterboarding was double torture for poor stretch as he growled even louder as I read to him. Diné and Mama Manx headed for the hills when they saw the flashes. I usually don’t use a flash, but now that it gets dark so early, I’ve pulled out the flash. Beaker, our Gold Cap Conure, didn’t seem to be at all bothered by the flash.

Crows

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Wagner plowed the corn field under. The cranes are sparse so far, and there were a few geese, but the crows are really taking advantage of the corn scattered by the plowing.

 

 

 

Windows

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I walked around downtown after work tonight and found some interesting windows. The motorbike in an art gallery’s window looked like it might even run — could be functional art. Functional or not, it is an interesting piece.

 

 

 

The Duke

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When you think of icons and landmarks you can’t get much better than the painting of the Duke in the Frontier Restaurant across from UNM’s new School of Architecture Building on Route 66 in the Duke City.  John Wayne stares, from his large portrait hanging on a south wall in the Frontier, straight out north windows at the new Architecture building across Central Ave (Old Route 66). While I was waiting to cross Central on my way to the Frontier, I heard engines roaring and tires squealing and zoomed my lens toward Girard to capture either a car chase or car race on Old Route 66. One of my clients thinks I need to make another edition of my photo book Route 66 Albuquerque’s Central Avenue After Dark and include images like these. He thinks the book is incomplete without a photo of the painting of the Duke in the Frontier and a photo of the School of Architecture Building at night.

Freeze-Dried Monday

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It was a “real” Monday Monday. First of all, my weather widget on my computer said the low in Corrales would be 25 F, so I figured 15 F or so. When I got up the thermometer on the fence showed 5 F, which means it was near zero in other parts of the garden. The roses and flowers that were holding up against lows in the high teens and low twenties under the protection of the canopy are now freeze-dried, and my water filter, which I forgot to disconnect, was busted into pieces by the hard freeze. The weather widget says the low tonight will be 29 F — Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! The temperature is already down to 20 F. We are definitely doing our part to fight global warming.

But the Monday Monday didn’t stop at near zero temperatures. After I got the work one of the modules in the phone system went on the blitz, I had to restart a server and it didn’t want to reboot, clients upgraded their computers and their browsers were not reading javascript properly, so our web apps were acting up — just one thing after another.

Although one bright spot for a Monday is our Christmas Cactus bloomed (3rd photo). I think this is the sixth year in a row that it has bloomed for us.

 

 

 

 

Movember 2012

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Here we are in the middle of November, which is the month of “Movember” where some men grow mustaches to raise money for prostate cancer research and men’s health. Last year I grew a mustache for Movember, and put up weekly, often creative, self portraits of my mustache’s progress (see above); however, besides the donations that Laurie and I made to Movember, only two other people, one a fellow cancer survivor, made a donation on my MoBro page — all that work and creativity turned out to be a bust. Which I suppose was because everyone had given all their money to breast cancer research with all those walks, runs, and trots for Tatas that thousands of people turn out for. It seems to me that everyone places their bets on boobs and let those poor, pathetic prostates be damned.

Nevertheless, I signed on to Movember again, but I’m not doing anything more than giving a donation. Besides, I still have a mustache — I certainly wasn’t going to shave it off and grow it again for nothing. But if you have a few dollars to spare, my MoBro page is at http://mobro.co/Elcheo.

The main Movember site is at http://us.movember.com/.

Finally, if you want a good laugh, I helped Ben Lolli film a trailer called “Mustache Empire” back in the fall of 2011. That was my first venture into cinematography.

Mustache Empire:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KhvMOkTwx8

The Birds

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Crows swarming over the Rio Grande and bosque this afternoon reminded me of Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “The Birds.”  A pair of Sandhill Cranes were trying to land on the river, but they were having a hard time making their way through the swarm of crows. They tried flying through the crows two or three times before the crows thinned out enough for them to land. Each attempt they would start down, zig zag a few times, pull back up and circle around before making another attempt. On one of their circles they got close enough for me to get a clear shot of them above the crows. A flotilla of geese were leisurely floating down the Rio Grand to where they spend the night about a quarter mile from where I was standing.  When they saw me on the bank they turned into the current and started treading water, staying in the same spot for some time while they discussed among themselves whether or not is was safe to float on by me.  They finally decided to stay in the water and continued on their way, hugging the far bank as they floated past me. A couple of ducks floated down after the geese, but they decided it wasn’t safe to float on by me and took flight.