All eyes on Loki: Gwendolyn, Loki, Sasha, Glenda.
Loki
Jake? What are you doing in a cat post? “Saying Merry Dogmas to everyone!”
The painter started off well at dawn, but then it rained a washed her colors away by sunrise.
Hubble? Where did you come from? “Lane’s phone stupid Paparazzo!”
Spunk, Sasha, Gwendolyn, Marble, Sasha again.
Selfie in Glenda’s eye.
Marble, Glenda, Gwendolyn, Gwendolyn, Marble
Spunk in the background
Silver
Glenda and Spunk
Color tonight
Sunset
Socratis at Oannes has been posting songs about cars. I keep commenting: “I had that car! Oh, I had that car, too. You are not going to believe this, but I had one of those cars, also!” From Oannes I was inspired to put together a spreadsheet of all the cars that have been in the family, and I had driven since I got my driver’s license at age 15. We still have some of the old cars that were bought new. The stats break down as follows: 33 cars over 48 years. 25 Model years from 1955 to 2017. 14 different carmakers. 26 different models in 10 different colors with green, yellow, brown, and red the predominant four colors. We’ve had more Mazdas than other cars with six. Volkswagon came in second with five. We still have two Mazdas, a Volkswagon, a Ford pickup, and a Datsun 280ZX on the property.
I was also inspired to write and record a Car Song about some of the cars that stood out over the years. I played the bass lines on my 5-string, multi-scale bass. I played my black Strat I built a few years ago for the rhythm guitar, and I played my 7-string, multi-scale guitar for the guitar solo (the song is above, lyrics at the end of the post).
Marble Sinking
Sunrise
Car Song
By Timothy Price
This is a story about a few of the many cars that graced my life
My dad, he was a Rambler man
1964 classic I learned to drive
Three on the tree with no air
Bench seats without belts
The ’55 Cadillac was a tank with tits
Big silver bumper boobs oh they couldn’t be missed
Slushbox tranny liked to bump and grind
Lumbered down the road in style
1960 Rambler in Pepto Bismol pink
Nearly cost me my life and limbs
A boy driving a pink car in 1975
Was worthy of a beating, so the other boys thought
[Chorus]
Thirty-three cars have graced my life
Over two score and 8 years
From green to pink to yellow to blue
Red sports cars are the final two
’66 American in canary yellow
The cubic inches under the hood wouldn’t do
I cut and bent to retrofit a power plant
I lost traction, tickets, I paid for my sins
’65 Corvair. Yep that’s the one
It was “Unsafe At Any Speed”
That car was fun to drive I never rolled it though
Not to say I didn’t try.
The Volkswagen Thing was a Thing of wonder
As I wandered from here to yonder
Weirdly shaped, like a Jerrycan on wheels
It did nothing for my sex appeal
[Bridge]
Cadillac, Chevrolet, Rambler, and Ford
Volkswagens, Honda, Triumph, were never bored
International, AMC, Renault, and a Datsun
Dodge, Kia, and best of all is always Mazda
Eldorado, Americans, a Classic, and a Bus
Travelalls, beetles, and a Triumph GT6 Plus
A Sun Bug, Pickups, Hornet, and a Le Car
Taurus, Rio Cinco, N600, and a Corvair
Granada, Dart, ZX, Five, RX, and a Thing
323, Speed 3, my Miata is really mean
[Guitar Solo]
’79 Renault Le Car was one of my
All-time favorite cars
Smooth ride, canvas-covered sunroof
That got Swiss-cheesed in a hailstorm
The RX-8 was as exotic as I got
A Wankel whining under the hood
Demanded high revs lots of speed
Suicide door, it seated four
My MX-5 is beautiful to drive
Small, responsive, quick, and sassy
A hot profile and racing stripe
It’s total fun and fantasy
On her blue gessoed canvas
She brushes swaths of red
Splashes on the yellow
Orange from the mix
A lavender wash hosts
White stripes of clouds from trails
Her colors silhouetting trees
Geese and cranes flying free
Paint hard at work at dawn
Get your minds out of the gutter. I’m talking about the clouds and the gate I installed today.
The painter was up at dawn working at a furious pace on the well-hung morning clouds and kept it up until after I got to work.
I installed the gate today that I ordered back in August that finally came in last week. The middle photo shows the sprung latch that I had custom-made by an artesian in Canada because I could not find any of the sprung latches in the US of A. They use to be common on garden gates, but there were none to be found. They were probably outlawed for some stupid reason, so we might have a fugitive latch. The gate is well hung if I might say so.
The painter was in a lavender mood tonight as gnarly clouds rolled in at sunset and were well hung hanging over gnarly trees.
…Lingo, that is. I got my annual stats from Duolingo. I was very happy to see that I learned a beastly 666 new words. While on words, I thought I would share my latest weekly stats from Grammarly, also. Besides, it bugs the heck out of me that they are tracking all my writing, besides correcting my manifold mistakes, but that’s what you have to do to be checked out, I do find the stats interesting.
I have given three papers at conferences about how natives of north-central New Mexico have a very unique vocabulary and word usage. I am a native of north-central New Mexico, and my weekly Grammarly stats always report that one-third or more of the words that Grammarly checks in my musings it consider them to be “unique words”. They must count many of the same words as unique each week because I know I can’t be coming up with 1,800 to 2,000 new and unique words each week. Last week, I seemed to have gone all out as Grammarly reported I used 3,387 unique words out of 9,656 of my words it checked. With my numb fingertips, I make a lot of mistakes, the reason I have Grammarly to watch over my words and probably another reason so many end up as unique.
Given my consistency in the number of unique words used each week, it supports my thesis that natives of north-central New Mexico have a unique vocabulary. However, I would need to have a large sample of word usage stats from many different north-central New Mexicans to really show that my thesis could hold any water from the Rio Grande.
A collage of my Duolingo and Grammarly stats with comments by Silver, Spunk and Gwendolyn.
While on words, there’s always the issue of Acronymphomania!
So Wired!
As we began the final month in the year of our Lord 2021, a sliver moon called at dawn. I answered with my iPhone and we had a rather colorful conversation before sunrise.
Watch colors in cold
Nineteen in my underwear
Package is frozen
Pre-Beaver Moon Rising. I was in a parking lot. There is going to be a 500-year eclipse tonight way past my bedtime.
Hey! Beaver! Yoo-hoo! There’s going to be a Beaver Moon tomorrow night, eleven nineteen twenty-one. And a Beaver eclipse in the wee hours this morning. It’s going to be a hoot!
Oh! Really? A Beaver Moon you say? Is that like when Benny Beaver lifts his tail and shows use his beaver behind? I don’t want to be eclipsed. My hair is too short already. Nineteen? It was cold this morning.
No! You dimwit. The MOON! You know that big shiny thing in the sky? Eclipse is when the moon gets dim, like you. It has nothing to do with clippers! It was cold this morning.
Sunrise
Spunk waiting with AantíiciipÁation!
Gabriela announced the winners of her Woman: Splendor and Sorrow: | Love Poems and Poetic Prose poetry contest this morning. I am very excited to announce that I shared Third Place with D. Wallace Peach. Congratulations to Virginia Mateias for her First Place poem, and Ingrid Wilson, and Eric Daniel Clarke for their Second Place poems. You can read all the poems at: The Winners of The Poetry Contest Woman: Splendor and Sorrow: | Love Poems and Poetic Prose.
My poem is One Side Sacred The Other Side Profane inspired by Gabriela’s poem Between Sacred and Profane. I based my poem on W. Eugene Smith’s activism against mercury poisoning in Minamata, Japan in the 1970s. He published a book titled Minamata: Life Sacred and Profane in 1972 that brought the issue worldwide attention. I first saw the book when I was a photo student at the University of New Mexico in the early 1980s. I wanted to buy a copy of the book back then, but I couldn’t afford it as a student. Now copies sell for hundreds of dollars, so I still don’t have one. W. Eugene Smith was one of the most important American photojournalists of the 20th Century. I don’t think he ever took a bad photo. His County Doctor series is brilliant. Chisso employees attacked and beat Smith in 1972. Smith lost sight in one eye and never really recovered. He died in 1978 at the tender age of 59. His death was a huge loss to the world of photography.
Dawn
We have cloudy skies tonight. The photos below are from last night before I encountered the zombies and sprites.
Christine’s Tree with the moon in the background. Mia’s Tree under Venus. Christine’s Tree with a bicycle in the background.
Sunset
Who would ever think it would be so much trouble to get signs? I started working on getting signs for the office after we got everyone moved in at the beginning of June. We had three different sign makers come out and give us estimates, and after a few backs and forth about letting, cost, etc. they all disappeared. They wouldn’t answer emails or their phones. Nothing. I asked the locksmith I had working on the locks if he knew any reliable sign makers. He suggested the Sign and Image Factory. I called them, sent them mock-ups, and they worked with us to finally get the vinyl letting on the glass and the letters on the curved wall in the foyer shown in the photo above. They did a great job and were reasonably priced.
We also needed a monument sign, but the Sign and Image Factory doesn’t make monument signs. Two of the three sign makers that disappeared were going to do the monument sign, also, but they fell off the face of the earth. We contacted three metal crafters. They were either 1) backed up, 2) would not give me an estimate because they couldn’t get firm prices on the cost of materials, or 3) they were very expensive when and if they could make the sign. The monument sign is large at 44 inches wide by 38 inches high.
We really needed the monument sign. For some reason our building in the center of the plaza is invisible. Contractors, UPS, FedEx, and Amazon drivers, clients, and visitors were all having trouble finding the building for the first time. As far as UPS, FedEx, and Amazon drivers are concerned, every new driver has trouble finding the building. Since we were getting nowhere with the monument sign, I started thinking that maybe I could get a temporary sign made until we could find someone to make a permanent sign.
I started looking online and after checking a few online sign makers, I found BannerBuzz.com. I got on a chat session with one of their agents, and she suggested I order an aluminum sign for the size I wanted, and she directed me to the page on their site where I could custom order an aluminum sign. I put in the dimensions, uploaded the artwork, entered the color codes, selected paint type and UV protection, and gave them instructions for the space at the bottom of the sign for the mounting bracket. The total price came out to $150 with shipping. Wow! That was a far cry from the $1800 to $4000 we got from the locals. I added the sign to the shopping cart, and when I went to check out I got a 20% discount for being a first-time customer. So the sign ended up costing $120, with free shipping.
As it turned out the sign was made in India. They shipped the sign a week after we finalized the proofs. It took four days to reach the FedEx hub in Memphis, TN, and then it sat for almost three weeks in Memphis before customs released it to be delivered to the office. The sign is perfect as you can see from the photos. Since the aluminum is only 1/16 inch thick. I mounted the sign on all-weather plywood that I painted the primer color of the mounting bracket. The sign maker who installed the letters went out and looked closely at the sign. He said he could see it had quality paint and a good UV coating on it. It should last a while in under out intense sunshine.
Goods and services have become very difficult to get in Albuquerque. I am still waiting for a gate I order for the patio in August. I have the hinges and the sprung latch I had to order from an artisan in Canada because I could not find the type of latch I wanted anywhere in the USA. I asked the alarm company that provides security for the office for an estimate on access control. They wouldn’t give me an estimate because they can’t find enough skilled labor. They said possibly in six months. We were locked out of the current access control system, and I had been trying to get Isonas (the system we had on the office downtown) installed since before we moved in. The Isonus people have become unresponsive. I finally found a tech that got into the access control system. I can now program the system, and I got new proximity cards and finally gave all of our staff card access. That only took nine months. Getting things done has become a slow, cumbersome and frustrating process.
The monument sing at night.
Colors at dawn this morning.
Off Center & Not Even 