Spunk helping with laundry.
Tag: photography
Hoot Owl at Dusk
While walking back home in the dark from what turned out to be a 6.5 mile walk, I could hear the owls hooting at each other. As I looked around to see where the hoots were coming from, I saw what looked like a large cat at the tip top of a cottonwood, backlit by the afterglow of the sunset. The owl was too far away, and it was too dark, for me to get anything but silhouettes of it.
Progress
I’m taking weekly photos of the progress on the Imperial Building construction project going on behind our office. Today’s photos are from Monday, January 19th, and Friday, January 23rd. The middle photo shows our daily marking off of climbing the stairs in the New Mexico Bank & Trust Building (on the right in the first and last photos.
White Lace Dawn, Black Lace Dusk
We had several inches of snow in the morning, but the snow and clouds were almost all gone by sunset.
Morning Clouds, Evening Snow
The clouds were spilling over the Sandias this morning and it was showing when I walked out go the office in the evening.
Cat Fu Fighting
Spunk and Najar sparring in the catio.
Drags On The Rio Grande
After fording the shallows of the west fork of the Rio Grande to one of the large sandbars in the middle of the river, I was faced with a forest of salt cedar interspersed with thorny Russian Olive Trees as I bushwhacked my way across the sandbar to see what was happening along the wider, deeper water running on the east side of the sandbar. Figuring they were hidden from the shutters and eyes of humans they commonly see along the accessible areas to the river, the Sandhill Cranes were playing games, drag racing to be more specific, very much like what you might see in an old Far Side comic.
As I emerged from the orange-yellow briar patch, a couple of Sandhill Cranes took off in a race down the river, while another pair quivered behind the barbed wire starting line ready to start their drag race down the river. I was able to catch the second pair on film and narrate the action in each of the photos below.
Sunset in Purple
I walked a mile and a half south of the house and got the sunset looking northeast, east and south while standing in the middle of the Rio Grande. Besides the normal shades of yellows, pinks and blues, the interesting shaped clouds to the north turned purple.
Cranes On Blue
Climb Sixteen Floors, What Do You Get?
Another day older and 320 steps
Saint Peter ain’t a callin’ cuz he knows I can’t go
My legs are like jelly and terribly sore
If you are not familiar with Tennessee Ernie Ford’s hit song “Sixteen Tons” a version from 1956 can be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Joo90ZWrUkU
A modern version by Jeff Beck and ZZ Top with the 1956 film above playing in the background can be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2aqvKY6zLc
Laurie’s parents gave us Fitbits® for Christmas. These little devices track your steps, how many floors you climb, calories burned, active minutes, total miles, and log your sleep among other things. Laurie and I have gone a little nuts with daily goals and challenging each other. She’s been climbing the stairs in the buildings at UNM between classes to get stair climbing in, leaving me in the dust on the floors. So today, I talked Bruski into walking over to the New Mexico Bank building and climbing the stairs with me. There are sixteen floors, but my Fitbit logged 18 floors because there are two flights of stairs from the lobby to the first floor. We got in 6 active minutes from the lobby to the 16th floor, according to the Fitbit, and it about did me in. Brusk said he could feel it in his legs. Climbing sixteen floors also gave us a nice view to the west above downtown Albuquerque.
Off Center & Not Even 