Spunk and Silver each have their own style of rail lounging.
Month: April 2020
LOL Cat
Since people have been asking about Lola, here’s the latest update. Lola had her two-week checkup today. Since she had been lethargic and not eating well over the past several days, the vet did an expanded radiograph and expanded blood tests. We knew she had degenerative arthritis from the x-rays of her paws, but the expanded tests show she has rheumatoid arthritis, and all her joints are affected. Therefore, she has not been feeling well since the last steroid shot had worn off.
Her treatment from now on will be wearing the splint so she can walk, getting steroid shots every three to four weeks and continued doses of Gabapentin twice daily.
Lola is a real trooper. She curls up with me at night and purrs both of us to sleep. Laurie says that when she wakes up in the middle of the night Lola will be curled up in my arm still purring. We will do our best to keep Lola comfortable so she can be as active as possible. She seems to always be happy and purring, as she looks on the bright side of life.
On the Water’s Edge
A Cooper’s Hawk standing on the edge of the water in the clear ditch. I don’t know whether he was meditating, fishing, our thinking about taking a bath. After we spotted him, he looked like he was trying to decide whether to carry on with what he was doing or fly away. He finally few.
Holy Bat
I was a little more successful getting photos of this bat this evening. Once I started processing the photos, I notice the bat has a big hole in the membrane between its feet and tail.
Flamenco in the Old Church
While I was looking for the video file for Bite ‘Em on the Old Shin Bone last night to make a few updates to the video before posting it, I found a video of Laurie (Laura de Corrales) and me (El Cheo) performing Alegrías with Pablo Rodarte in a show we did in the Old Church in Corrales in the mid-1990s. Pablo danced Alegrías, Laura de Corrales is the Palmera, and El Cheo accompanied on guitar. I transferred the video from VHS to m4v several years ago, so the image quality is not very good. However, the sound is not too bad, considering.
In preparing for the show, Laurie and I practiced daily, I practiced with Pablo’s other students several days each week, but when it came to Pablo’s performance our practice together consisted of 15 minutes of Pablo doing a quick run-through of each part of the Alegías a week before the show. I simply had to follow all his leads during the performance.
Laurie and I both studied flamenco dance with Pablo, and I played flamenco guitar for many of his dance classes back in the 1990s before we moved to Spain for almost four years.
Beaver Dam Breaker
The Conservancy has been at it again, breaking up and pulling the beaver dams out of the clearwater ditch with their evil Beaver Dam Breaker.
Below is a short video a did last night of a beaver sliding into the Rio Grande after cutting some willows to snack on along the river bank. We saw four beavers last night and six beavers the night before last.
Spider & Speed
While I was working on the schedule for NM Tech, a jumping spider named Mighty Mike dropped onto my MacBook Pro to check what condition his condition was in, and then he promptly climbed up my screen and then hung out on top of it for a while striking various spiderly poses.
Laurie’s been teaching her high school math classes from home for the past couple of months, and I’ve been mostly working from home for the past six weeks. Laurie is on video conference for several hours each day, and I have at least one video conference each day during the week. With all the video conferencing, our 12Mbps down and 896Kbps up Internet service was not cutting it. Unfortunately, our local ISP who has provided wonderful service over the past 20 years, does not have the infrastructure in our area to provide us with faster Internet service. Comcast offered Gigabit Internet, so I upgraded. Because of the restrictions in our MacBooks’ wireless, we can only get up to 400Mbps down over WiFi (generally around 300Mbps down), but when I connected my Macbook Pro to a gigabit switch with an ethernet cable I got 939Mbps down, which is close enough to gig speed for Rock & Roll when it comes to Internet download speeds.
Hello! Is Anobody in There?
Our power went out while we were working on our computers this afternoon. Laurie stood up, looked into the sunroom, and said: “There’s the Peacock!” I got up, looked and sure enough, the Peacock was standing on the landing looking through the sunroom door as if he wanted in. After taking a few photos, I opened the door and asked him if he wanted to come inside, but he decided he didn’t want to come inside and ran off. I followed him around the property, talked to him, and got a few photos. Our traipse through the grasses, irrigation ditches, over the shed and through some bamboo, along with our rather one-sided conversation, was interrupted by a gas company tech needing access to our gas meeter that is nestled under a large rosebush.
We both said, “the Peacock” when he was at the sunroom door because the cats woke me up at dawn scrambling over me and jumping off of me to look at the peacock as he walked by the bedroom window. I went out and got a couple of early morning photos of him before he disappeared into the thick underbrush along the south side of the property.
I don’t know who he belongs to. I called a neighbor who called people she knew who had peacocks in the past, but none of them have peacocks these days. Where he came from and how long he will stay is a mystery.
But Mama…
Outside The House In The Rising Sun
I opened the kitty door a little before sunrise. I tied up the trash and walked outside to find the sun peeking over the Sandias. All the kitties, except for Lola†, were lounging outside the house in the rising sun.
†Lola was still in bed. She sleeps late and catches sunbeams streaming through the bedroom window in the mornings.
Off Center & Not Even 