We just got home from the Friends of Medieval Studies holiday get together. We had great time visiting with fellow medievalists. Tim Graham, Director of the program, gave a great presentation of recent finds, and gave us an enticing preview of the spring lecture series.

Several years ago, a youth group Tristan was in sold hand-blown, hand-painted Christmas ornaments from Poland. There was some special circumstance that enabled the youth group to sell these unique, high-quality ornaments, so not only did we buy several boxes, but Tristan also sold lots of them. We got permission to set up in front of Hastings, and once people realized what a bargain they were, they bought them by the box full. Tristan has them on her giant Christmas tree she and David put up in their living room — they are beautiful.

Although I get multiple cat scans daily, I had a PET scan today to check the status of my remission. There are three steps to a PET scan:

The first step is  to get an injection of radioactive sugar. The technician inserts a very short IV tube, tests for blood draw, flushes it with a saline solution, wrestles the syringe enclosed in a lead and stainless case out of a larger protective housing, connects it to the short IV and injects the radioactive sugar. She told me that she didn’t know how I could watch her insert the IV. She said that most people who watch turn white and look like they are going to faint. I told her I’ve been poked so often, that it’s simply routine to watch, and commented that she was good compared to some of the vampires in the blood draw clinic at the Cancer Center. She reminded me how I watched a surgeon remove a lump off my arm many years ago. Surgery is fascinating.

The second step is to sit in a small, dimly lit room for an hour until I have a nice  glow.

Step three is to lay on a skinny table for 25 minutes while I’m fed into the tube. Since a PET scan is passive, each slice takes 2 0r 3 minutes before the table moves a few inches to get the next slice.

Christmas decorations and flowers added cheer to the house today as we decorated one of our bonsais and hung garlands, birds, butterflies and insects above the mirror in the dance room.  I was trying to remember if we’d ever had a traditional Christmas tree in the 29 and a half years we’ve been married — I don’t think we’ve ever had a large, cut tree. We decorated a ficus that started out about six feet tall with a skirted trunk and gangly, ball-like crown that we most likely purchased from Home Base for many years. Then we got a pot of 5 small Norfolk Pines, probably from Home Base again, that served as our Christmas tree for many years until it got so big we had to give it away. There were a couple of years we’ve had those little, dwarf pines that come pre-decorated. Those are the closest to “traditional” Christmas trees that we’ve had. Over the past six or seven years we’ve been decorating one of our bonsais, with this large, gnarly ficus being the victim most often because of its size and where it stands.

I haven’t had to work at home for quite awhile, but today I had to add a second monitor to my Macbook in order to get some serious work done. The monitor really added to the clutter on the counter. Puck was doing his imitation of a hood ornament on top of the catio this afternoon. I got the moon rising behind the trees last night.

The cold persists, and so does the snow. Today’s photos were taken at dusk, therefore, between the fast lens and the snow reflecting the twilight, the effect is a light gray tone with remnants of soft color.

 

A junco fluttered and swayed trying to balance on a rather flimsy stalk of grass, giving it something of an angelic appearance. I finally put together a panorama of the Sandias after the storm on Monday. I like how the layers build up to the clouds, which mimic the mountains, becoming extensions of the peaks.  The last photo is the sunset from the top of our road tonight. As you can see, we still have a lot of snow after two days of full sun. I’m not sure the temperature has made it above freezing this week in our micro-climate. We’ve had two nights below zero and I expect the temperature will fall below zero again tonight.

 

 

 

“The guy on a buffalo”  is taking a break to be “the guy on a house”, caught on one of my drive by’s on the way home yesterday afternoon. Chance photos are always fun, and this set gives you a pretty good idea of what the snow in Corrales looked like. As we drove into a calm, snow covered Corrales from a dry, windy Albuquerque yesterday afternoon, Laurie noted it was like driving into Siberia. She was expecting to see a troika at any moment.

 

 

We got 4 to 6 inches of snow last night. We were not surprised to hear UNM was on a two hour delay and APS was closed, since we had lots of snow. When we left the house a little after 8:00 this morning, the snow was falling lightly, and there was no wind. Corrales Road was ice packed and treacherous, and Alameda was snow packed to 2nd Street — then the snow started disappearing. By the time we got south of Paseo Del Norte on I-25, there was little evidence of snow, and the wind was blowing. I guessed the wind had blown all the snow away. I dropped Laurie off at UNM at 9:05, then drove down to the office to learned they had cancelled all classes at UNM.

I ventured out to the river just before sunset. It was 15 degrees F when I left the house at 4:15 pm and 8 degrees F when I got back at 5:10 pm. I noticed my cameras and lenses had frost on them after a few minutes of standing on the river bank, and they had hard frost on the lens hoods when I got back to the house. Both lenses are sealed and weatherproof with zoom movement within their barrels, so condensation should not be a problem.

Geese , cranes and ducks were in the water and on the snowy banks on the other side of the river. Just as the sun was setting, I moved a little south and spied the Great Blue Heron. It didn’t fly, and after it noticed me, it did a little stretch and dance for me as it walked away.

The temperature was 5 degrees F at 7:45 pm. My weather widget is now forecasting 2 degrees F for the low tonight. I believe it may fall below zero.