When I went to the bank yesterday the crows were playing in the lawn. I had my carry camera, Lumix GF1 with a 20mm ƒ/1.7 lens, so the images are cropped to 800% of their original sizes.

We discovered Puck had an infection last Sunday, and we had to give him antibiotics all week — this morning was his follow up appointment.  He made two figure 8’s through the house and catio, running behind the couch, then diving through the cat door and getting on the highest plank in the kitty jungle gym in attempts to avoid getting caught and put into the cat carrier. On his last run into the catio, he made a daring leap from the high plank onto the beam that supports the roof joists. Tottering 10 feet above the slab between two rafters, he finally gave up as he saw he had no more options when I climbed up to get him. After we got him in the carrier, he spun around like Disney’s Tasmanian Devil until Laurie calmed him down. He was very quiet during the ride to the vet, acted the perfect kitty angel for the tech and the vet, and when the exam was over, he couldn’t wait to get back into the carrier that he had given me so much grief over just 30 minutes earlier.  Puck is back to full health, so no more antibiotics — whew!

Black & white photographs often seem more real or possibly more true to life than color, but sometimes they are like magic — altering reality, playing with our senses, leaving only to our imaginations the colors they posses.

 

“Gimme a head with hair
Long beautiful hair
Shining, gleaming,
Streaming, flaxen, waxen

Give me down to there hair
Shoulder length or longer
Here baby, there mama
Everywhere daddy daddy

Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair
Flow it, show it
Long as God can grow it
My hair”

Anyone remember “Hair”?  The woman on the left with her long, beautiful hair reminded me of the song.  I also got another shot in what’s turning out to be my “The Homie In My Sunglasses” series. The snake cat was at his best this morning.

 

 

I left the office quite late tonight and wanted to get home has quickly as possible, but cops, movies and traffic got in the way.  Traffic wasn’t terribly bad on I-25, but many drivers were driving slow in the fast lane; therefore, in order to maintain 80, I had to drive in the right-hand lane most of the time I was on I-25. I’m having to drive in the slow lane more often these days to maintain the speed limit or, as I prefer, the natural speed for the road, which, by the way, is always 10 MPH or more above the posted speed limit. A good way to test this is to drive behind a police officer when there isn’t much traffic. I’ve noticed that Albuquerque police, State police and Sheriff  officers tend drive 10 to 15 MPH over the speed limit if they are not trolling for tickets or responding to calls.

Laurie caught Puck lounging under the bonsai, and Stretch was not happy after I pulled him out from behind the couch to put medicine on his ears. Rosencrantz is a master of napping and was making good use of one of the many cat beds we have laying around the house.

The first full moon of 2012 finally rose above the clouds last night and was visible through the trees. The bird of prey made the photo of the day over the moon, because I found the bird to be much more exciting than than the moon. After more careful analysis of yesterday’s photos, Ingrid (our resident bird expert in the office) and I decided it was not a peregrine falcon, but rather a juvenile cooper’s hawk. I updated yesterday’s entry.  The white crowned sparrow in the second photo was one of the birds the hawk desired for lunch yesterday. The last photo is a still life of one of the scented candles we’ve been burning during the holidays and a card we got for Christmas.

While I was out photographing the towhees, sparrows, juncos and finches around noon, a cooper’s hawk dropped by to see if he could grab some lunch. He sat on the fence watching the other birds, made an unsuccessful dive into a rose bush after a towhee, then flew back to the fence, landing with his back to me. He continued surveying the area by the rose bush where the birds had been scratching, when he suddenly turned and dived to the ground, but landed behind the power pole, so I couldn’t see if he caught anything. As I moved to see if I could get a photo of him on the ground, Guildenstern ran up and challenged the falcon and it flew off.

 

The Occidental Life Building is caddy corner to our office downtown. It was built in 1917 for the Occidental Life Insurance Company and designed by Henry C. Trost of Trost & Trost architecture, El Paso. Although it’s very well restored on the outside, the interior space is not the most desirable. We considered renting space in it a few years ago when we were short on space and I wasn’t very impressed by the quality. The fire escape is on the Berger Briggs building across the parking lot from the Occidental Life Building, and the last photo is of the brick and glass on the New Mexico Bank & Trust Building on the west end of the parking were I stood to do the photos.

 

 

I ventured out to lunch with a couple of guys from the office this afternoon, and they turned homie on me. Actually, one turned homie, while the other looked more like a hit man standing on the corner after he missed the light trailing along behind.  I usually don’t photograph homeless people, but the guy in the jersey who looked to be either interviewing the guy on the sidewalk or inventorying him made for a curious sight I couldn’t pass up as I drove by this evening.