Since I am up past midnight, I thought I’d be clever and go out and see if I could get irrigation water since the ditch rider just turned it in to our ditch for the week. All the water was already taken. The farmers above us probably leave their gates down so when the ditch rider turns the water in, the farmers upstream of us will be sure to get it. The license plate on this old Corvair says it all!

For those of you who are old enough, and have good memories, the Corvair was on par with the Devil in Ralph Nader’s “Unsafe at any Speed” published in 1965. The only reason I remember it is because we had one of “The Sporty Corvair-The One-Car Accident”  as per Nader’s title of Chapter One in “Unsafe at any Speed”.  The Covair is long gone, but our evil, water guzzling plants remain, and the Conservancy is making Corrales farmers fight for water, leaving us with “No Agua” for three weeks at a time.

The “Check Engine Light” came on in our Mazda Speed 3 this afternon. I stopped and reseated the gas cap and checked the oil, and everything seemed ok. We had just filled the car with gas, so I suspected the gas cap didn’t get seated well enough. I took the car by Auto Zone and they got the code for me which gave use an error that there was a “Large Vacuum Leak” meaning the gas cap didn’t seat properly.

As I was walking back to my car after class, a young couple were playing guitars by the statue of “Mexican dancers” on the mall between Popejoy Hall and Johnson Gym. I noticed the young man was playing a flamenco guitar with pegs instead of machine heads to secure and tune the strings. Tuning pegs are rarely seen on guitars these days, so I asked the young man about his guitar. He said he got it from John Truitt and that is was made in Albuquerque by a local luthier in the 1970’s. That was really cool to learn, because I’ve known Truitt for many years, and he is like Mr. Music — you can give Truitt anything with a string on it and he’ll produce great music on it.

When I pulled into the parking lot at work, the was a young woman photographing a man and his daughter. I pointed out other locations in the downtown area that were good for portraits. They were friendly and cheerful and it made me happy to see they were having lots of fun with their photo shoot.

Sarah, who’s in French 385 with Lauie and I, and French 302 with Laurie, organized a fun night at Wilson Middle School with four or five other students for their senior project in Communications. It was really well attended, we had to park a block from the school, the food was good and the kids looked like they were having a lot of fun participating in art, science, poetry, etc. The 5th photo is of her team calling out numbers for a raffle.

On my way home from getting the engine light checked, a crew was filming at the Corrales gas station, so I pulled over and got a few shots. I have no idea what movie or show they were filming.

Laurie pointed out the spider in the last photo after she got home. It looks like spider season is coming on, so the macro lens is coming out.