It’s raining! Our monsoon season appears to be starting on time this year. Everything in the garden seems to be enjoying the rain — even the cats. The black butterfly fluttered round the garden the other morning flying from plant to plant, touching on them and hovering without making a full landing, and constantly fluttering its wings. Its behavior seemed strange, but after taking a closer look at the photos, I believe it was laying eggs.

 

 

This moth was quite taken with our petunias this morning. There were many dragonflies zipping around above the irrigation water. They chased each other, hovered for an instance and zipped back and forth over the water. I tried to get photos of the different dragonflies as they hovered, but they don’t hover for long, so the blue dot dragonfly was the clearest shot I got. These dragonflies never seem to land, and are different from the ones that do land. There were green dot dragonflies, and probably other colors, as well, but I didn’t get very clear shots of them.

Back on the bike — Day 4: I managed to get in 12 miles between storms at 6:30 this afternoon. The Jack Rabbit showed up and brought a friend. They both beat me in the sprint tonight. I need to work harder.

The license plate on this Model A reads “POPSCAR”. I’d say this car is a 1930 Model A. Since model A’s were only produced from 1927 to 1931, I figure 1930 would be a pretty good guess. Tristan and I rode by this car on our bike ride this morning.

Back on the bike — Day 3: I rode about 13 miles with Tristan this morning, cruising around the disjointed bike trails between Golf Course and Unser, north of Dellyne on the West Side of Albuquerque. My body was very cooperative and I got few complaints until I climbed the road that ascends to the top of escarpment in Boca Negra Canyon. According to my GPS’s topo maps the average grade of the road between the 5210 foot contour and 5300 foot contour is over 10%. One short stretch of the road (85 feet) between the 5250 and 5270 foot contours has a 23.5% grade. Needless to say, the climb was brutal for an old, out-0f-shape cyclist like me, so by the time I finished the .17 mile ascent to the dead end at top of the escarpment, my lungs started complaining as I coughed up phlegm and what seemed like various pieces or broken bronchioles. I continued coughing stuff up as we rode back to Tristan’s and then as I drove home. My lungs never quit griping the whole time. The conversation went something like this:

Lungs: What made you want to drag your fat butt up that hill anyway?

Me: It was there.

Lungs: Just because a hill is at the end of a road doesn’t mean you have to climb it!

Me: I couldn’t resist.

Lungs: You may not have any sense, but you do have free will.

Me: So you say. Besides, it loosened up all the accumulated smoke and other crap that I’m coughing up.

Lungs: You could have killed both of us!

Me: Quit crying all ready. We lived!

If you were expecting a photo of a new age, enviro-type girl, sorry to disappoint. But anyone who follows this blog shouldn’t be surprised by the insect.

The coils on the air-conditioner for the server room got clogged up with cotton and pigeon feathers, and I started getting messages from the server  that monitors the temperature that the server room was heating up late this afternoon. Of course, it was too late to get anyone from AirPro out to service the air-conditioner, so I had to go in, take apart the unit on the roof, split the coils and clean out all the cotton and stuff. The temperature on the PNM building read 103 degrees F.  When I got home we had to leave for a family gathering, so I didn’t get to ride today.

Back on the bike — Day 2: My hiney hates me. It dreamt of sitting on the soft, wide seat of a Harley Road King instead of the thin, hard saddle on my Dean Titanium. My prostrate filed a law suit against me — charging abuse — while my legs looked longingly at the graves as I rode by the cemetery on Old Church Road, envious of the souls resting in them. Now my bones, muscles and joints are conspiring against me. I reminded my body that we have been through this many times before, and that all parts airing their grievances will soon come round and be happy that I’m riding again. They’ll come round eventually, but they’re determined to make me suffer in the meantime!  BTW The Jack Rabbit was a no show.

Back on the Bike — Day 1: After 10 miles of battling wind, and the humiliation of losing a 25 meter sprint to a Jack Rabbit, my prostate and periwinkle are paralyzed, my thighs are throwing tantrums, my knees have nothing nice to say to me, and my calves are contemplating cramping. The sky, clouds and sunset were beautiful; the rabbits foraging along the roadside, and the lizards scurrying about to get out of the way of my tires, and the birds riding the wind above me were great distractions — I had a wonderful time. I told the Jack Rabbit to meet me same time, same place tomorrow for a rematch.  Oh! I almost forgot.  I’m scheduled to be de-ported next month.

 

This tiny spider turned out to be quite fashionably dressed and color coordinated with Laurie’s purple cup it was getting a drink from.

I spent all morning at the Cancer Center to get the results of my PET scan. I’m still in remission; I will have another PET scan in 6 months and I can get my port taken out — all great news, but I got worn out waiting for it. Dr. Marshall said they are short on doctors, which had her running well over an hour behind schedule this morning.

 

This mantis had been molested by the cats before I got home. We couldn’t see that it was hurt, but it was friendly and had no problem posing for the camera.

 

 

Our day was full of teaching, studying, cleaning house, and then entertaining family this evening. When I came back inside this afternoon from taking out the trash, the light on the vase and Petit Prince caught my eye. Laurie reads Le Petit Prince to Stretch and me while we waterboard Stretch. It’s great French practice and a nice distraction for Stretch.  I got the back-lit hollyhocks on my way back from one of my trips to the trash while cleaning the house this afternoon. The circle cuts in the petals make nice shapes, and a little grasshopper poked his head out from one of the hot pink hollyhocks to see what I was doing when I was composing the image. I don’t think the grasshopper is responsible for the circular cuts in the leaves.

Tristan and David had their annual solstice party tonight. In days of old, the Vikings celebrated solstice by sitting around the mead hall drinking, eating, messing with their swords, making up icelandic sagas and fighting. In the modern age, we sit in the living room drinking, eating, messing with phones, making up call center sagas, and fighting. Apparently not much has changed over the past thousand years or so.

While I was photographing all the action tonight, I noticed Laurie’s shoes sitting on the oriental rug and thought they would make an interesting photo. When I pointed my camera at the shoes, everyone started yelling at me not to photograph them, then called me a weirdo for photographing the shoes. They recanted on the photo and agreed that it was interesting when I showed it to them on the camera’s screen, but they still think I’m a weirdo.