I went out to the river late this afternoon to see what birds were out — the crows were swarming, the cranes were coming in for the night, and the geese were standing around watching the action. There was a hawk flying along the east side of the river when the crows flew in and several of the crows started chasing it, and a crows vs. hawk dog fight ensued. I attempted to photograph the battle, but they were too high and too far away to get clear shots of it.
2012 ended with a beautiful sunset. Laurie walked by the window and said “Oh! The base of the Sandias are on fire!” I grabbed my camera and made the 1/4 mile dash to the river bank just in time to get the red as it faded with the last sunlight of 2012. As I walked out of the bosque, the last sunset of 2012 was quite dramatic, as was the morning light offering beauty and promise for 2013.
I start the new year with my 600th consecutive post on WordPress, and 908th consecutive post since I started on CaringBridge in July of 2010. According to WordPress’s annual report, I had over 10,000 views in 2012 from people in 83 countries, — the US, the Netherlands, the UK, Canada and Russia were the top five. Thank you all for a great 2012 and I look forward to an even better 2013.
One of the first things you can put on your calendars for 2013 is the musical comedy, The Wedding Singer, presented by Devon Frieder and Warehouse 21 Productions. It starts this Friday, January 4th, and will run for two consecutive weekends. The show is directed and choreographed by Devon Frieder, with musical direction by Erik Joshua Clack. The Wedding Singer is based on the book by Chad Beguelin and Tim Herlihy with music and lyrics by Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin.
The shows will be presented at the Musical Theatre Southwest Black Box Performance Space, 6320 Domingo Rd. NE Ste. B, Albuquerque, NM 87108 (Central & San Pedro by the Fairgrounds). Show dates and times are:
Friday, January 4 at 7pm
Saturday, January 5 at 2pm & 7pm
Sunday, January 6 at 4pm
Friday, January 11 at 7pm
Saturday, January 12 at 2pm & 7pm Sunday,
January 13 at 4pm
Admission: $15 Adults, $12 Students. Special Front Row VIP Seats for $25.
To Reserve Tickets in Advance, Call (505)-216-6014
The last five photos are from a promotional photo shoot I did for the show last week, and Three Guys and a Guitar I posted on December 28, 2012 was one of the photos from the session. From the 10 minutes of rehearsal I saw before the shoot, and my interactions with Devon and the cast, The Wedding Singer looks like it will be a fun-filled production with lots of music and dance, and a friendly cast of whacky, colorful characters.
I went out about 30 minutes before sunset to photograph the Sandias when they turned pink, and ended up getting bird photos along the way. The Sandhill Cranes and Snow Geese where still hanging out in the apple orchard with light streaking across them from the low sun. When I got out to the river, a Great Blue Heron was wading around feeding, until it noticed me and flew off. I figured I wouldn’t see it again, but when I focused on the large bird coming toward me (figuring it would be a Sandhill Crane) it turned out to be the heron. The Heron noticed me about the time I got it in focus and it banked left and started hightailing it south, offering me a shot of it in profile, then it turned eastward to circle back out of range of my lens.
A group of ducks where floating down the Rio Grande, diving under the water and popping their heads up several yards down current from where they dived. When they came up from their third dive, they saw me on the bank and took off, leaving little splashes behind them. Just before the sun went down, a hawk flew over at high speed, but I managed to get a fairly clear shot of it. I got my photos of the dark pink Sandias, and as I was walking back to the house, a large group of geese took flight from the apple orchard, heading to the river — they reminded of bats flying out of a cave at sunset.
A storm rolled through today, dropping the temperature signficantly. The Sandias were mostly covered in clouds this morning, while the clouds were breaking up to the north over the Jemez. By noon, when I photographed the 1959 Pontiac Catalina parked on the street, the clouds had been cleared out by a cold, biting wind.
After falling in trenches in the dark and tripping over piles dirt for the past three weeks, PNM finally connected power to the new pole Hammack Electric set for our electrical service upgrade, and installed a new meter on the pole. That allowed them to remove the meter from the well and disconnect the power lines to the pole at the well, as well. So the first phase is done, which moved the meter from the well to the new service pole. The next phase will be connecting the house to the sub-panel Hammack installed on the west side of the house, and then we can have the power disconnected from the pole that currently feeds the house, have all the overhead power lines to the house removed, and take down two power poles. In the end we will have consolidated two electrical services into one, and provided enough power for a new HVAC system, which needs more power than we had, requiring the service upgrade. Hammack won’t be able to connect the house to the new service until January, so we will now wait until late spring or early summer before we have the new HVAC installed. We started on the service upgrade back in September, but figuring out how best to do the upgrade and getting all the permits took until the end of November. Hammack set the new pole the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, then dug tenches to the well and sub-panel, ran the wires, the following Tuesday, but the had to leave the trenches open for the inspectors, and PNM. Now that the new service is on-line, and the trenches are filled in, we should be able to walk to and from the cars without twisting our ankles or getting our shoes full of dirt. However, Laurie said that having gotten used to negotiating trenches and piles of dirt, she twisted her ankle and got her shoes full of dirt on the freshly backfilled trenches tonight.
One my way home tonight, I noticed a car dealer had the emergency flashers blinking on alternating cars on the lot. I suppose it is was supposed to be festive looking, but I was just trying to get by it before it sent other drivers into epileptic seizures. The old uncovered, covered wagon with lights on it is much more creative and festive. The traffic was as thick as molasses tonight, unlike the morning traffic which was surprisingly light when I photographed the hazy mountains. Speaking of molasses, Laurie said she couldn’t find any in Walmart, and when she went to ask the floor clerk, the clerk was deaf, and Laurie didn’t know how to “sign” molasses. I told her I thought that making a rodent face and pointing at her butt might have sufficed to get the idea, but alas, neither mole asses or molasses were to be had. Stretch was in a state of disbelief when he heard they didn’t have mole asses as he thought they would go well in his idea for almond, watermelon cookies — Stretch is quite the gourmet for a cat. While on the subject of cat food, I can understand that flavors like chicken and gourmet beef, seafood, etc. are cat foods that people can stomach buying; but I really think they should make cat food in rodent, bird and reptile flavors, flavors that cats would really go for. The cat food makers could get clever and give the cat food names that people could deal with more easily like Mole Ass Mole, Rotisserie Robin, Mouse Mousse, Rodent Ratatouille, Lizard Linguise and so on. Back to the molasses melodrama, Laurie found some organic molasses on the way home tonight that Stretch is happy with, and the almond, watermelon cookies look cute with the little tails sticking out.
We went “upscale” today and ventured into to Target to do some shopping for few Christmassy things. On our way home the clouds broke at the horizon and the sun streamed a thin layer of light across the southern end of the Sandias. I got out out set of tiny lights to put on the bonsai, but they wouldn’t light. I think it’s one of the fuses in the plug, but now I can’t find the extra fuses I thought I had for light strings. Oh well. I’ll mess with lights mañana.
So much for a wireless!
We had a slow roasted prime rib with pea and parmigiano soup, roasted root vegetables with meyer lemon, yorkshire pudding and Irish whiskey cake for Thanksgiving dinner. David and I went out to the river at sunset to get photos — I used my new ultra-wide angle lens, while he used one of my cameras with a super telephoto lens. While I was wandering around downtown last night I took a couple of ultra-wide angle shots of the Kimo Theater, and then stitched the photos together. The result is how I believe the Kimo might have looked if I.M. Pei had designed it.
These trees on the north side of Castetter Hall at UNM are nicely shaped and cast wonderful shadows under the night lights. Rosencrantz and Mama Manx were snuggled together on the couch, but the minute I pointed the camera at them, they looked up at me. The clouds were beautiful on the Sandias this morning. Laurie had an appointment at school, so we didn’t have time to make a short detour to the open space across from the Balloon Museum and get a better view of the Sandias without so many buildings and power poles.
We celebrated Laurie’s brother’s birthday tonight. Laurie made a chocolate Irish whiskey cake that was wonderful. Romeo, who is Laurie’s parent’s cat, was being especially cute tonight. The Sandias were in great pink form tonight, so I got up on the roof to get the photo. We are working on upgrading and consolidating our electrical service, which will allow us to remove the power pole with the light on it in the photo of the Sandias.
Off Center & Not Even 