“But what really knocked me out was her cheap sunglasses”

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When I asked Dolores about her collection of sunglasses on a shelf in her office, she told me that it’s bright when she comes in, dark when she goes home, so she often forgets her sunglasses, and then wears another pair when she comes in the following morning. Her collection of sunglasses and explanation for it reminded me of the first line to ZZ Top’s song “Cheap Sunglasses”:

“When you wake up in the morning and the light is hurt your head
The first thing you do when you get up out of bed
Is hit that streets a-runnin’ and try to beat the masses
And go get yourself some cheap sunglasses”

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Infidel Lumberjack

 

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Since we are having branches that have been piling up around the property for the past couple of years chipped, I finally got around to cutting down an old, diseased peach tree that we are not going to irrigate this season because of water restrictions. I was going to cut down the tree with a chainsaw, but the chain come off sawing on the first branch. Since it’s a real pain to put the chain back on the chainsaw, I got a bow saw and discovered I could saw through the branches very quickly, and had the tree cut down by hand in 30 minutes — not much longer than it would have taken me to put the chain back on the chainsaw once I gathered up all the tools and got the chain back on and adjusted properly. Whenever I cut down trees, I can’t help thinking about Monty Python’s “Lumberjack Song.”

Laurie put the finishing touches on the catio, including trying to clean the calcium carbonate from water seeping out of the swamp cooler over the years. She was really cute scraping on the glass. The last photo shows the finished catio. The large box leaning against the bonsai shelves has my darkroom sink in it.

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Dump Day Drive By’s

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I took a load of junk to the dump this morning and got drive by’s on the way home. The second photo is seagulls foraging through the trash after a bulldozer mixed it up. I couldn’t get close enough to get really clear shots of the seagulls, but they really are seagulls in the high desert, not just trash blowing around.

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Cookies

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Laurie made batches of delicious chocolate chip cookies. For a while it looked like they were going to go on forever. If you have not used SILPAT cooking mats, they are wonderful — nothing sticks to them.

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Trees in the Mist

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When we left early in the morning there was a mist that gave the trees a ghostly look. As we headed out to Paradise Hills, the mist turned into a thick fog, which is quite rare for the Albuquerque area. When we got to Paradise Hills, a couple hundred feet above the Rio Grande Valley, the sun was making its first appearance above the fog blanketed the valley below.

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Killer Cookies

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Giving new meaning to the phrase “one tough cookie” or a gang of tough cookies, in this case, this plate exploded as the cookies were being thawed out in the microwave. Curiously, the plate pieces were too hot to touch, while the cookies themselves were still cold.

Morning, Noon & Almost Night

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Are you finding yourself well rested, and full of energy after waking up to a clock showing the time an hour later than normal? I’m not.  The photos in the series today were taken at 9:31 am, a little before noon (11:48 am) and at 7:09 pm.

When I noticed the contrails casting shadows on the clouds above them, I had to do a drive-by photo. The effect was so weird because I was heading east, the sun is still pretty far south, yet the shadows were cast on both sides of the contrails as if there were two light sources: the sun from the south and another light source from the northwest. Furthermore, for the contrails to cast shadows at all, it’s as if the sun were below the clouds. This is when things STOP making sense, you reach a DEAD END, the sun goes down, and you’re still confused.

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