I hadn’t seen a roadrunner in our yard in several years. About 20 years ago we were infested with roadrunners. There would be a half dozen or more hanging around in the yard just about any time we went outside. When we were out working in the garden, the roadrunners would surround us, staying about 15 feet away, and walk circles around us, one direction then the other, cocking their heads as the eyed us up one side and down the other. I figured they were sizing us up to determine if they had sufficient numbers to take us down. One year they simply disappeared and I haven’t really seen roadrunners in the yard again until yesterday. I got the photo of the dogs in the back of the truck on our way home tonight.
Author: Timothy Price
El Dia de los Muertos
We went to a live performance of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” last night (wonderful performance), then went to the Frontier Restaurant to eat and visit afterward, so we didn’t get home until almost midnight. Laurie reminded me that we set the clocks back an hour, so I set all our analog clocks to 11:20 thinking we were almost ready for bed. However, by the time I remember I needed to go outside and turn off the water to the drip system, did a kitty count, messed around on the computer some more, and finally herded the cats to the bedroom it was 12:20 again — I ended up staying up past midnight twice last night.
We went to the Marigold Parade and Festival as part of El Dia de los Muertos after choir practice this afternoon. The Marigold Parade was great fun and people from the various cultures in the Albuquerque area participated and showed off their creativity.
Classic Beauties
The smoke from the latest controlled burn has just about put me down for the count — I really have cold symptoms from it. The lovely sisters work at Lindy’s Diner downtown. They were gracious enough to pose with the coke pump in the diner. The turquoise GMC pickup is a really well restored 60’s model and the Boulevard C50 T is a modern classic in turquoise as well.
Inspirations
We went to “Inspirations” by Nicole Larsen tonight at UNM’s Keller Hall. It was a mix of singing, dancing, and drama that was very well done and entertaining. The show offered great music, beautiful singing, stylish dancing and emotionally charged theatrics delivered with a lot of energy and enthusiasm. The only problem was a pesky photographer who sat in the back of the theater taking photos during the first act; the clicking of the shutter and whirring of the lens stabilization system bothered his wife, who made him stop taking photos during most of the second act. Oh well! I need to figure when the dress rehearsals for show like this are and see if I could photograph the dress rehearsals, then people could go to the shows if they liked the photos and the review.
Girls Just Want to Have Fun
Teddy works for Patrician Design, which is a couple of doors down from our office. Now I’ve already forgotten who Teddy was for Halloween, but she sure had fun being her.
Halloween
Liz, who works at Patrician Designs, was a paper boy for Halloween. Getting a good photo of her clicking her heels was not an easy task, but we finally got a great jump and click — although she jumped so high, she about jumped out the frame — I was impressed. I managed to get a photo of an angel playing the piano, which is a pleasant addition to the ghostly images a got walking around downtown this evening. The three celebrants in the last photo had wonderful costumes, very well done, and appropriate for Halloween.
Ladies of the Night
What better thing to do on the second night of a full moon, and the night before Halloween, than to go out and interview a couple calavera and a scary madonna? I asked the lady in the hat what her perspective on life was from a dead person’s point-of-view. She confirmed the dead wife’s observation in Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods” that “…you’re not so prejudiced when you are dead…” and she confided in me that her general lack of prejudice made it easy to acquire the great hat she was wearing from some woman she scared half to death.
The MonSat Girl has been hanging out in front of the Tijuana Bar. I commented that she must have been a big fan of spaghetti westerns with her sarape and all, but she said “No I was the one the characters in the spaghetti westerns were modeled after! I was the woman with no name who roamed the prairies and fought for justice!” I asked her if she was the original, then why did they have men like Franco Nero and Clint Eastwood play the part of the “man with no name’? She said “Dah! Look at me! What am I now? A Skeleton? Well? Skeletons ain’t got no boobs!”
I found the scary Madonna more difficult to interview. Unlike the calavera, she was serious — an unhappy spirit stuck in a plaster statue that was toppled over in the sand where she could only look at the stars in the heavens above. I told it that I thought it seemed appropriate for a praying madonna to be laying on her back facing the heavens. She simply bared her teeth and said “Puleeese!” I got her point and moved on.
By The Moonlight
Bob’s MAD
Politics! Need I say more? I had to go to Costco before they closed tonight, so I missed the moonrise over the pink Sandias. The moon had risen and only the tail end of the pink was still splashed on the granite along the top of the mountains by the time I could get a shot of it. We have had two nights with lows of 20 degrees F, so most of the flowers we didn’t bring inside got frozen. The flowers in the third photo have been defiant so far, and are still blooming despite the cold nights. I got an old crow flying overhead and then notice a Cooper’s Hawk watching me photograph the crow.
Javier Y Pablo
We went to a graduate Recital by Javier Gonzalez, tenor at Keller Hall tonight. Mr. Gonzales was fantastic and he was accompanied by master pianist, conductor, composer, arranger… Pablo Zinger, whose piano accompaniment was spectacular. We couldn’t have asked for a better performance from both artists.















































