Month: December 2012

On Spot

Timothy Price4 Comments

SpotLight

We were working out the lighting for the Christmas Eve services, and while I was practicing following people walking down the aisle, I photographed Jerri with camera in one hand while tracking her and manipulating the spotlight with the other hand.  I guess all those “drive-by-photos” have honed my skills at taking photos while doing other things.

On Christmas Eve there will be three services at Central United Methodist Church with music and drama in the 8:00pm and 11:00 pm services — I’ll be manning one of the spotlights at those two service. I’m playing guitar for the first service at 1:00 pm, and the fact that I only have two arms that are each a little less than a yard in length, playing guitar at one end of the sanctuary and operating a spotlight from the balcony at the opposite end of the sanctuary stretches way beyond my ability to multitask, so whoever shows up for the 1:00 pm service with only get the added drama of listening to me improvise while the congregation lights their candles, then I’ll play accompaniment for “Silent Night,” which, by the way, was written for guitar.

A clarinet and xylophone duet played for St. Martin’s Hospitality Center’s Holiday Breakfast as part of the NM Philharmonic Orchestra’s gift of music for the homeless and disadvantaged members of the community. I was invited to drop by photograph them playing for the breakfast. The music was excellent, and the place was packed and swarming with activity. I managed to put together a panorama of the activity, but it was one of the most difficult panoramas I photographed and successfully stitched together because of the constant activity, the room configurations, and the extreme differences in lighting from on side of the building to the other. But I think the resulting photo show the activity and how many people St Martin’s was feeding this morning.  St. Martin’s is just one of a handful of shelters and churches that feed and clothe the homeless and other people who need help in the Albuquerque area.

 

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1959 Pontiac Catalina

Timothy Price3 Comments

PontiacCatelina59

A storm rolled through today, dropping the temperature signficantly. The Sandias were mostly covered in clouds this morning, while the  clouds were  breaking up to the north over the Jemez. By noon, when I photographed the 1959 Pontiac Catalina parked on the street, the clouds had been cleared out by a cold, biting wind.

After falling in trenches in the dark and tripping over piles dirt for the past three weeks, PNM finally connected power to the new pole Hammack Electric set for our electrical service upgrade, and installed a new meter on the pole. That allowed them to  remove the meter from the well and disconnect the power lines to the pole at the well, as well. So the first phase is done, which moved the meter from the well to the new service pole. The next phase will be connecting the house to the sub-panel Hammack installed on the west side of the house, and then we can have the power disconnected from the pole that currently feeds the house, have all the overhead power lines to the house removed, and take down two power poles. In the end we will have consolidated two electrical services into one, and provided enough power for a new HVAC system, which needs more power than we had, requiring the service upgrade. Hammack won’t be able to connect the house to the new service until January, so we will now wait until late spring or early summer before we have the new HVAC installed. We started on the service upgrade back in September, but figuring out how best to do the upgrade and getting all the permits took until the end of November. Hammack set the new pole the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, then dug tenches to the well and sub-panel, ran the wires, the following Tuesday, but the had to leave the trenches open for the inspectors, and PNM. Now that the new service is on-line, and the trenches are filled in, we should be able to walk to and from the cars without twisting our ankles or getting our shoes full of dirt. However, Laurie said that having gotten used to negotiating trenches and piles of dirt, she twisted her ankle and got her shoes full of dirt on the freshly backfilled trenches tonight.

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No Molasses? Really?

Timothy Price3 Comments

NoMolasses

One my way home tonight, I noticed a car dealer had the emergency flashers blinking on alternating cars on the lot. I suppose it is was supposed to be festive looking, but I was just trying to get by it before it sent other drivers into epileptic seizures. The old uncovered, covered wagon with lights on it is much more creative and festive. The traffic was as thick as molasses tonight, unlike the  morning traffic which was surprisingly light when I photographed the hazy mountains. Speaking of molasses, Laurie said she couldn’t find any in Walmart, and when she went to ask the floor clerk, the clerk was deaf, and Laurie didn’t know how to “sign” molasses. I told her I thought that making a rodent face and pointing at her butt might have sufficed to get the idea, but alas, neither mole asses or molasses were to be had.  Stretch was in a state of disbelief when he heard they didn’t have mole asses as he thought they would go well in his idea for almond, watermelon cookies — Stretch is quite the gourmet for a cat.  While on the subject of cat food, I can understand that flavors like chicken and gourmet beef, seafood, etc. are cat foods that people can stomach buying; but I really think they should make cat food in rodent, bird and reptile flavors, flavors that cats would really go for. The cat food makers could get clever and give the cat food names that people could deal with more easily like Mole Ass Mole, Rotisserie Robin, Mouse Mousse, Rodent Ratatouille, Lizard Linguise and so on. Back to the molasses melodrama, Laurie found some organic molasses on the way home tonight that Stretch is happy with, and the almond, watermelon cookies look cute with the little tails sticking out.

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Go Tell it on the Mountain

Timothy Price1 Comment

GoTell

The Children’s Choir sang “Go Tell it on the Mountain” for the prelude this morning. I’m sitting in the back thinking that we are going to get the usual weak children’s voices, with half the kids off key, while the other half are “out of compás”, but when the kids started singing, belting out out the song in parts, on key and in compás, I remembered I was at Central United Methodist Church, where they get the best music out of everyone, regardless of age. All the kids were great, and the soloists sang like they were pros. It was so refreshing to see kids full of life and spirit, making an effort to deliver their performance.  All the music was fantastic today. The old hymns were fun, the Chancel Choir performed “For unto us a Cild is born” from Handel’s Messiah, and the Hand Bell Choir performed a piece that was out of this world. They get sounds and music out of those bells that you wouldn’t think possible.

Stretch was shifting around in his box he was curled up in, basking in the sunlight, when the box slid off the edge and wedged itself against the heater. Like a captain who won’t abandon his ship, Stretch stayed in the box and patiently waited for one of us to come over and put his box and him back in place. Laurie when to his rescue while I photographed him going down with his box. After Laurie got the box back in place, Stretch resumed his position, curled up in the sunshine, as if nothing had happened.

I find coffee sludge dried and cracking like clay on the bottom of a dry riverbed to be quite artful. It also reminds of the time when Laurie was going to pre-op and I unintentionally dribbled thick, black coffee that looked like motor oil with a couple hundred thousand miles on it along the floor from the elevator to the first bed in pre-op. The staff at the desk started swarming like ants that had their hill stepped on, while doctors and nurses tiptoed around the line of coffee like it was some type of infectious, black ooze. I really wanted to photograph the whole thing, but I felt I would have been pushing it to get out there and start clicking away — instead I cowered in the corner and tried to look like I was sorry for dribbling sludge on the floor (actually I was really sorry, not for their sakes, but because I didn’t get to drink the coffee). Even though I didn’t get photos, it was really great performance art. Luckily, all that came of it was mad dogs from the Hazmat crew who were brought in to clean up my offensive sludge — I’m not so sure I’ll get off so easily next time.

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Saturday Shopping

Timothy Price7 Comments

ThinLightSunset

We went “upscale” today and ventured into to Target to do some shopping for few Christmassy things.  On our way home the clouds broke at the horizon and the sun streamed a thin layer of light across the southern end of the Sandias.  I got out out set of tiny lights to put on the bonsai, but they wouldn’t light. I think it’s one of the fuses in the plug, but now I can’t find the extra fuses I thought I had for light strings. Oh well. I’ll mess with lights mañana.

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Da Bruski Stare

Timothy Price2 Comments

TheBruski

 

The rain and cool whether made Da Bruski frisky this afternoon. After taking WCW’s cigarette and arguing with him about it, he gave the photographer Da Bruski “stare challenge” better know as “mad dogs”. Before leaving Lindy’s, Da Bruski challenged poor Santa, who, in his good natured way, ignored Da Bruski and smiled for the camera with his kind, sympathetic eyes. No one was safe after that, and Da Bruski even mad dogged the poor pink Brontosaurus that stands in front of the Gizmo Store greeting people who are walking along Route 66 in downtown Albuquerque. As we made our way back to the office, Da Bruski saw his reflection in the dark glass of the Bank of New Mexico building and challenged himself — for all I know he’s still there seeing if he can get his reflection to back down.

 

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Tiffany

Timothy Price10 Comments

Tiffany Closeup

 

I can’t think of a better way to spend a lunch hour than photographing a beautiful woman. Meet Tiffany Paleo, make-up artist, actress, singer, wife and mother.  She’s as sweet as she is beautiful, and delightful to work with. For you women who like to be pampered, Tiffany is available at Katharoz Boutique to help you with all your skin care needs — 505-227-1224.

Laurie and I attended the annual holiday party for the Friends of Medieval Studies at UNM tonight, which featured a concert by Música Antigua de Albuquerque — they were wonderful.  Música Antigua de Albuquerque will be performing “Stella Nuova” on Saturday, December 22th at St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church, 601 Montaño NW in Albuquerque.

Mark April 15-18, 2013 on your calendars. The 2013 Medieval Spring Lecture series is “Medieval Myths and Monsters”. This promises to be a superb lecture series not to be missed.

 

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No PETs Allowed

Timothy Price6 Comments

PET_Scan

 

12/12/12 didn’t mark the end of the world, but it has marked the beginning of the end the great health insurance policy I have. Just as I figured, people with individual health insurance policies like mine get screwed by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). I’ve had my health care plan for over 10 years now, and It’s provided great coverage at a very affordable price, and, up until today, my insurance company had never denied a procedure.

My six month PET scan was scheduled for tomorrow, but the insurance denied covering the PET scan, and approved a CT scan instead. I got a letter from the insurance company yesterday authorizing the CT san, so I called the Cancer Center to see what was going on —  it turned out the doctor who is standing in for my oncologist while she is on sabbatical hadn’t yet found out that the PET scan had been denied. So I was transferred to the receptionist in Radiology who explained that when the denial came in, the doctor on call cancelled the PET scan so I would not be liable for a $9000 procedure, and scheduled the CT scan. My new doctor was out of town, so he hadn’t learned about what happened.

Here’s the issue: if I did a CT scan it would show I have a bunch of tumors. The tumors are dead, killed by the chemotherapy I finished two years ago, but the CT scan will not show if there is any new, cancer-like activity; whereas a PET scan will show if there are any “hot spots” that could be cancerous. The doctor did say that the radiologist can use a CT scan to measure and compare lymph nodes from my previous PET scan, but he went on to say that I should have symptoms and the blood work would probably indicate if there were issues with lymph nodes having significant growth over the past six months. My blood work was normal, and I currently don’t have any symptoms to speak of.

The doctor called my insurance company this morning and argued for a PET scan, but they held firm in their denial. With the new rules that require insurance companies to use something like 80% of the premiums on patient care and other changes coming into effect from the PPACA, my insurance company changed its policy to only cover one PET scan a year, once a patient has gone two years from being diagnosed with cancer and successfully treated.  But they will authorize CT scans since they are much cheaper than PET scans, and argue that CT scans are sufficient preventative procedures. In my case a CT scan is more of a problem than a preventative procedure, so we cancelled the CT scan, and we will see what the doctor can negotiate in January, since it’s a new calendar year.

The lead photo is one of the images from my PET scan done on this day last year. The second photo is the Rail Runner streaking by at the Alameda crossing, and the third photo is a car covered with Christmas lights speeding up Paseo Del Norte throwing off square roots of light.

 

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Holiday Tradition

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Lewis Winn

 

We had our annual holiday party at the office tonight. There is an abundance of green chile, chicken enchiladas, posole, gumbo and other food to satisfy one’s hunger, and Lewis Winn’s guitar and Michael Olivola’s bass accompaniment is a highlight of our annual holiday party. I believe this was the 9th year straight that Lewis played at our party, making his jazz a holiday tradition.  Lewis is a super guitarist, and if you live in the Albuquerque area and haven’t heard Lewis play, you’ve really missed out.  But not to worry, he is playing with the group The Alpha Cats at The Range Cafe, 925 South Camino Del Pueblo.  Bernalillo, NM  starting at 7:30 pm on Saturday, December 15th, and at the  St. Clair Winery and Bistro, 901 Rio Grande Boulevard Northwest  Albuquerque, NM starting at 6:00 pm on Sunday, December 23rd.