Texas police patrolling US 84 between Muleshoe and Lubbock are weird.  On the way to SLAM on Saturday morning, Janet and Laurie were discussing the speed limit, and noting that Janet was driving 65 MPH, the posted speed limit, when a Texas State Trooper, heading the other direction, makes a U, crossing the median, and pulls us over.  Janet asked him why he pulled her over, since she was doing the speed limit, and he said “No ma’am! You were speeding!” He told her. Laurie asked him how fast he clocked us, and he replied “6 MPH over the speed limit!” At that point Janet, Laurie, Tayler and Praise said in unison “No Way! We all saw the speedometer at 65 MPH!” The officer stood his ground, but said he was only going to give Janet a warning this time. After we took off again, and within a mile of where we were stopped a speed limit sign read 70, but Janet stayed at 65. A few minutes later another cop going the other way made a U-turn across the medium, and Janet said something like “Give me a break!”, and the cop sped past and stop a truck with a load of hay that was ahead of us.

On the way home this afternoon, some miles outside of Muleshoe, a big tour bus with a school-like logo on it passed us and the next thing we knew there was a police car in the left lane in front of it with its lights on with an SUV driving beside the cop car. There was another SUV behind the bus followed by two police cars with their lights on behind the SUV. The bus did not pull over and we decided the police must be escorting the bus. Several miles later, the police car in front and the last police car, turned off their lights, crossed the median and headed back towards Lubbock. One cop, lights still flashing, still followed the bus.  All of a sudden, out of nowhere, there was a fire engine and another cop car in front of the bus and an EMT/Rescue vehicle from Sudan followed, driving at 40 MPH with all their lights flashing. Janet pulled off to get gas, and when we got back on US 85, the whole parade had disappeared. The whole episode was beyond strange.

The SLAM math conference was great. I missed one lecture yesterday while I walked around the Texas Tech Campus with Rick and Laurie’s cousin Teri, photographing sculptures and buildings. Then the last lecture on Saturday got cut short by a fire in the new Chemistry Building that is attached to the old building we were in. When the fire alarm went off, we all just sat there and the speaker continued, but when the alarm persisted, one of the organizers went out to check, and seeing police outside the building, came back in and told us we had to evacuate. Several minutes after we left the building, fire trucks showed up.

The conference organizers asked me to do a group photo of the speakers and participants, so we got everyone out on the steps of the Science Building during the break before the last lecture this morning. They were a cooperative group, and, amazingly enough, you can see everyone’s face. I counted 52 in the photo.

 

I’m in Lubbock, TX tonight. Laurie has a poster of her thesis in the Southwest Local Algebra Meeting (SLAM) held this year at Texas Tech University. We drove down with Professor Vassilev and 3 other graduate students from UNM this morning, and will drive back tomorrow afternoon.  We got back fairly late from a reception tonight, so I’m only posting photos from one of the lectures and of a blackbird that was digging around in the grass with its beak.

 

 

 

We are having to waterboard Stretch everyday now. He seems to be perkier and eating a little more, but he’s still pretty thin. The clouds over the Transportation Center where nice this afternoon, and there was enough dust in the air to make the color look like Kodachrome.

 

 

The winds blew hard today, leaving lots of dust in the air this evening.  Our white orchid is bowing its head as it prepares to shed its last bloom. Davie Jones and Andrew Breitbart both passed on unexpectedly and the ages of 66 and 43 respectively. A solemn reminder of how fickle life can be.

 

While waiting to pick up Laurie’s poster from Kinko’s this afternoon, a woman turned to me and said “Has anyone ever told you that you look like Bill Gates?” I told her that she was the first, trying to decide whether to be “insultated” as J.C., who calls into to Coast to Coast AM, says. She said  “Well I think you look just like him!”  Maybe techie types start looking alike after awhile, but what’s funny about that is I haven’t shaved in a week, inspired by Jean Reno (Wasabe, The Professional, La Femme Nikita, Les Visiteurs), and I’ve never seen a photo of Bill Gates with a scruffy face. Now if she would have said “Has anyone ever told you that you look like Jean Reno?” I wouldn’t have felt the least bit “insultated”.

I finished “The Count of Monte Cristo” last night. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it, it’s an excellent book. I also got my replacement Kindle, got it set up and all my books back on it plus a few easy French readers and learn French books that were free. I forgot I had a copy of “The Heliand: The Saxon Gospel” on my Kindle, so I started reading it this morning. It’s the New Testament written as an epic poem in Old Saxon in the first part of the 9th century.

 

More vintage treatment and a couple of different uses of B&W.

 

 

I was messing around with the remote for the camera while the camera was sitting on the counter, and snapped this photo. I thought it would look good as a Daguerreotype, so I applied the effects.

 

When I went out to run one of the drip systems this afternoon, I discovered some of the crocus where blooming. Laurie went out to see the crocus and found some Siberian iris blooming as well.  We got the petunia last year at the end of May and kept it indoors at night during the winter. It has bloomed continually since we got it.

 

 

 

 

 

My Kindle Touch died when I was 80% into the Count of Monte Cristo. It couldn’t have picked a worst time to die on me. Amazon is sending me a replacement, but in the meantime, I lent the book and loaded it on Laurie’s Kindle, since she’s reading an old-fashioned paper book at the moment.

I got finally got our taxes done. I used TurboTax for the first time, since the credit union had a special on it. Curiously enough, after spending almost 4 hours inputting medical expenses, charitable contributions, energy star improvements to the house, education expenses, and other allowable deductions, all of which came in just a few dollars under the standard deductions, Turbo tax submitted a 1040 EZ form using the standard deductions, plus 45 pages of the forms generated by the deductions that didn’t make a difference after all.

 

 

 

We dropped a package by Tristan’s this afternoon and Leo got all excited. He was following us around meowing and rolling around and playing, but he wouldn’t hold still for me to photograph him. Tristan finally picked him up and he gave me a precious look.  The sunset is from last night, and the reflection coming off the bicycle rim on the back door of the office was quite interesting.