I replaced the hard drive in my Macbook Pro last night, and restored everything from a backup while we watched a French movie.  My computer had been acting flaky, with lots of pauses and programs not responding. A couple of weeks ago I tried restarting the computer and it wouldn’t come back up, so I booted from the install DVD, fixed disk permissions, then repaired the hard drive. While lots of permissions had gotten out of whack, the disk utility reported nothing wrong with the hard drive. The computer rebooted, but continued to act up, so I replaced the 250 GB drive with a 500 GB drive and everything has been working really well all day.

Laurie’s taking French this semester, so we are watching French movies to improve listening and comprehension. I like French movies because they are made for adults in that they assume the viewer has intelligence and they generally have complex plots, good dialog and excellent cinematography. The silly comedies we’ve seen are funny bet not plain stupid, and the action films are still fairly sophisticated.  We watched D13-U last night, the sequel to Luc Besson’s District 13. It didn’t have as much of the parkour type stunts as the first movie, but it still had a lot of action and it was exciting and suspenseful.  If you are into French films I highly recommend the following: OSS 117: Lost in Rio, Tell No One, Mesrine: Part 1 & 2, Potiche and Priceless.

OSS 117: Lost in Rio is a comedy set in the 70’s,  it is very funny and really has the look and feel of the 70’s. Tell No One is fascinating and has a super complex plot. Mesrine: Part 1 & 2 is about the life of Mesrine, who was France’s public enemy #1 in the 70’s and early 80’s. Potiche, another one set in the late 70’s, is about a trophy wife who ends up running the family’s umbrella factory. Priceless is a modern, French version of Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

I think Rosencrantz was trying to warm his back when I photographed him with the sun starting to rise over his head through the glass this morning. A roadrunner was foraging in a vineyard when I went out to the post office at noon, and I got the sparrow hanging out in a fruit tree when I took out the trash this afternoon.

We woke up to snow and wintery skies. I figured the schools would be delayed and the roads a mess, but once outside of Corrales there was no snow, and it was hardly even wet.  The kitties had to go out first thing and leave paw prints in the snow.

 

Bob brought me an error message from one of the web apps I wrote for him to create capital improvement projects for public schools. The error read “Can’t do math!”   While matching rooms to the master schedule for a college, I noticed several classes were scheduled in a men’s restroom. Thinking this must be a mistake, I checked the title of the classes, which included “On site pumping methods” and various “Safety” classes. Perhaps they were scheduled in right place after all.

 

 

I love the ATM right at the entrance to the adult club. I’d meaning to photograph it for awhile, but the few times I’ve been out and about downtown, I’ve walked on the sunny side of the street.

 

 

Laurie and I had been talking about getting a new batch of orchids, but we hadn’t made it out to get any. While she was out with Tristan today, they picked out five beautiful orchids, which where a nice surprise for me when we got home tonight.

Stretch had his face buried in the fleece keeping a close eye on me in case I was going to waterboard him. He seems to know which days are non-waterboarding days, hence his ears are up and he has smiley eyes.  Puck must of really hung one on last night after we went to bed, since he looked really beat at sunrise this morning.  After I dropped Laurie off, a cyclist ahead of me at the light impressed me with her short shorts. It was not her sex appeal that impressed me, far from it — what impressed me was the temperature was somewhere around freezing.  So much skin on a bike in the cold made my knees hurt just thinking about it.

Do you ever get the urge to put your hand in your water while you are drinking?  Stretch does, and we are not quite sure why, other than he’s a Manx and Manx’s tend to be weird.  I don’t know if the sparrow below is the same one that was posing for me the other morning, but this one was posing for me while I grilled pork for enchiladas I made this afternoon. I tried multiple times to get the little bird in the last photo in the clear, but it insisted on staying in the branches. I believe it is a finch, but haven’t looked it up yet.

I added a new menu on the right-hand side of the page named “Photo Galleries” that will take you to my http://www.TandLphotos.com site. I added galleries for Photo of the Day, Etc.  The slide show now has the photos for the photos I post during the current month. Under the Photo of the Day, Etc. Group there are galleries for 2010, 2011 and 2012.  These galleries allow you to see all the photos I’ve posted on Photo of the Day, Etc. since I started it in December 2010.

I bought new flowers when I went out for groceries today, and on the way home I got the photo of the Sandias behind the fence. I did the photos of Puck by the pipe and the flicker in the cottonwood when I took out  the trash late this afternoon.  I spent most of the day working on a poster for Laurie to take to a math conference in March.

The sunset was soft with pastel colors tonight. The sparrows where fluttering around in the blue spruce after sunset. It’s a nice time to watch them, but with the light sky and strong shadows, it’s hard to photograph the birds without making them into silhouettes against the lighted sky.

 

We went to Popejoy Hall tonight to see Forever Tango, and got the photos of Bandelier’s back door and one of the lights outside the Science & Math Learning Center. I got Pepik acting up on the stairs a few nights ago.

The live music in Forever Tango was fantastic. The orchestra was made of a pianist, three bandeneonists, two violinists, and cellist and a bass player. The dancers were great, but they were generally upstaged by the music. Ann Trebunskaya, the guest dancer, was exceptional, and really complemented the music with her wonderful stage presence, fluid movements, and fantastic form. She is a professional ballroom and Latin dancer from Russia who has been on Dancing With The Stars. Unfortunately, she only performed one dance.  Veronica Gardella, who was very statuesque, did a more theatrical tango with her partner that had some spectacular lifts and drops that made their dance really fun to watch.  All around it was a really great show.