Stormy Sunday

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We had thunderstorms coming in from all directions this afternoon. The thunderstorm that built up over the Sandias was the most dramatic. While out on a walk before the storms, I encountered a little bit of wildlife.

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Buckeye Butterfly

This video of the Great Purple Hairstreak Butterfly shows how it moves the flanges on the ends of its wings while it feeds. I assume it’s to fool predators into going after the flanges on its wings, giving it a chance to escape.

Blue Hairstreak

Silver kitty

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Thunderstorm activity to the north.

Lightning Show

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I was talking to an engineer, who is also an avid photographer, about taking lightning photos when I went up to pick up a piece of equipment he had been working on. We were noting that lightning is easy to photograph, but the danger made up for how easy it is to photograph. On may way home at 11:00 pm, there was a nice lightning show over the city, so I pulled off to the side of the road in the rain, set my camera on top of the car to stabilize it (didn’t have a tripod in the car), and took a few lighting photos before I got soaked in the rain. The results are interesting.

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Urban Olympics

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Urban Warriors

After a week of lectures on Medieval Mystics and Masters that kept us out late every night, I ended the week photographing the Urban Olympics put on by a downtown charter school. Various professional offices and other businesses put teams together to compete in silly events, such as mop javalin throwing, toilet plunger toss, a rely race that included a mad dash in high heels  — tag the rider for the tricycle slalom — tag the backward skateboard racer — tag the office chair drag racer — and lastly, tag the tricyclist for the final speed run. There was waterboarding, a 100 yard dash, urban bowling with orange barrels and shopping carts, water fights, and other events. Cherry/See/Reames Architects, who shares office space with ARC, and one of our staff members participated in the event.

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Mop Javalin Toss

 

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Crash and burn on a backward skateboard

 

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Eying the competition

 

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Macho, Macho Man

 

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Toilet Plunger Toss

 

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Waterboarding

 

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Medieval Egyptian dragon costume design

 

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Digging it

 

The Cat Before The Storm

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I seem to get constant kitty help these days. I walked out of the store to discover a small super cell was forming overhead. I drove straight into the storm and got a great lightning show on the way home. For all the lightning and thunder over the past 24 hours, we only received 2/10 of an inch of rain.

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The Blog Before The Storm

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I took this photo just after midnight on Friday morning. It was so windy and so much rain on Friday night, that the lightning was never clear, just bright flashes and loud crashes. Since the clouds are building up again, I thought I better get the blog posted before the storm hits and we lose power again. We got home at 4:30 pm yesterday and by the clocks that keep a memory of the time they went off, the power had been restored just an hour before we got home, which, if correct, means we were without power for 21 hours. The June bugs and roses are happy after the heavy rains, and Rosencrantz was enjoying a patch of catnip in the late afternoon light that was falling between the thunderheads building up in the western skies.

 

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