What Chicago looks like (a little bit of it, today)

Kim was our tour guide, photographer, and lender of gloves and cap.
I hope New Mexico is much warmer than this when we get home!

I love the mix of old and new, and the blue building fading into the blue sky.

The angles were already fun, and the shadow made it moreso.  

A red and white cement mixer was outside the window, and Holly pulled out a red and white shirt she had just bought.  I'm sorry she got in front of the truck.  :-)  Every bit of the truck was red with white decoration.  But they matched.

Lines and designs are everywhere here:

I was after the designs on the lamp post next to the designs on the booth (the cover for the stairs an escalator from the underground parking), and didn't see the lamp's reflection until I was home.

Another lamp, parallel to the buildings, but not to that wooden phone or power pole in the alley.

The green mailbox is nice with the store sign painted on the wall past it.

Holly, knots, soup

The other day I complimented Holly on her necklaces.  She showed me that one was a string with a fancy knot in it, one was a piece of lamp chain with a different kind of knot, and her bracelet was also string, knotted.  

Here's the onion soup from dinner, and then the onion soup in larger context.  We're having fun.

I'm in for the night.  Holly's out visiting.  We're all set for tomorrow, attending others' sessions in the mornings and doing one together in the afternoon, and then Holly has one herself (and wants me to be there in case she gets stuck).  My main bit is the last time slot tomorrow.

Attractive outside and in

Usually the phrase "attractive outside and in" is used of people. I've met many lately who were attractive outside and in. But this time, I'm thinking about little nooks and crannies of the world, of automobiles, of books, of games and their boxes and the game play and the camaraderie.

Looking around, and thinking.

An Albuquerque Image

This truck just happened to be between me and this house, when the house was right between me and the Sandia Mountains. I like how the chimney is sticking up "over the mountain." It was a stunning frame for that nice truck.  The truck bed's frame matches the white bumper and the windows of the house.

I have no idea whose truck or house that is; on Edith north of Osuna. The art of a moment.


Same truck, different photo.

Holly did some stuff

Yesterday Holly did this:

She bumper-bumped another car at the credit union. The whole thing fell off. It was made of plastic and styrofoam. It was fastened on with plastic bolts of some sort, it seemed. 2004 Malibu Classic. Just sayin'.

But Holly was at fault, and our insurance company will take care of the other family, who were also very nice. We waited for the husband of the woman to come from Bernalillo (20 miles north) with the pickup, to get the fallen-off parts. Holly was sweet to him, and he said "Nice running into you!" when we were leaving. The insurance agent took statements from Holly and the other driver, and so we don't need to go file police reports. Yay!

This morning, Holly went to volunteer at a hippotherapy event (horse therapy). That's her standing on the left. Her job was to blow a whistle (and she got a sunburn).

Then she came home and we got into an argument. That wasn't fun.

Then a few hours later we made up. That was good.

Now she's off bowling with Marty and some other friends.

Keith and I are going to sit in the hot tub in a while, and then watch Saturday Night Live, and wake up and watch CBS Sunday Morning, and then I'm going to make Holly a good breakfast so she can go to a six-hour event called Women & Creativity.

St. Patrick's Day fashion moments

Holly and Marty in green, before they both left. Holly's going to the birthday party of the friend of a friend. That means new friends. Marty goes to role-playing on Thursdays, but one of their regulars works at an Irish pub so is doing a double shift. Because they can't do the regular game without Ben, Ashlee went with Marty, and Ryan is taking Beth, to the gaming evening, and they'll play board games. Holly's wearing a dress that was mine in 1970, when I was first in college. I was seventeen, and had it hemmed up shorter. Styles change. It looks really cute with Holly's hair and all. Nice. The silver churidor (?) pants are from the mall in Bangalore. She's also wearing a nose ornament I got for her in India. Holly's learning to play guitar, and got a new case for the Ventura guitar I got when I was a teen, too. Very nice case. She's learning quickly and seems to be having fun with it. Last night she got to help record some backup for a group she likes, for a performance she'll miss because... Holly and I will be together for a week, going to the InHome conference in Illinois. I'm looking forward to that. She's pretty jazzed that there's a dance Friday night of the conference, and a yoga session. Soon after we get back, Kirby will be here for a week. Keith goes back to work on Monday, after six weeks home following shoulder-replacement surgery. He's making progress that impresses the doctor and the physical therapists, but he's still frustrated at not being as good as new yet. Both of our cars were in the shop yesterday. The van was making an increasingly irritating sound, and though it was hard for them to find, it was a piece missing from the brakes. It's fixed. And the Taurus that Holly's been driving got new tires, so we're all strongly mobile again, though we're still sharing two vehicles among three drivers. Marty and his jeep are fine. :-) We'll need to share with Kirby, too, because he's coming by car, with his housemate. Most of this I'm writing for my own benefit, so I can look it all up later.

First flower of Spring

Not a bad first flower, for New Mexico.

Time marches on at PayPal

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A year and a half later, I go in to make a similar checkout button, and the number now is something quite like HEQUACKV4B6GL. I used to have a seven-digit number. Now I'm on into 13 alpha/numeric places. Wowie.


But anyway...
What I meant to say was that after tweaking and twirling things all day, registration is open for the Always Learning Live Symposium. Registration and information are here.

Today I sent a copy of The Big Book of Unschooling to someone in Greece! I wish I had kept a list of all the countries I had sent them to. It's past fifteen, I'm sure, but this was the first to Greece.

Poop

For the past couple of days, various people in our house have reported smelling poo.  Keith thought "cat pee."  I thought poo.  Marty and Holly thought maybe dead mouse behind the fridge, but nobody could get anyone else to smell the thing they had smelled, where they had smelled it.

This morning I reached down to pet one of the cats, and she was matted, on the back.  This is a young, healthy cat.  Gross.   Aging poo all over the back of her (?!) and her legs.   She let us wash her in the sink, twice. She sat quietly, wet, wrapped up in towels.  Twice.  She has two odd scrapes on her haunches, some hair missing, but no cuts or punctures.

In news I hope (I REALLY hope) is entirely unrelated, this afternoon as I walked through the back yard picking up trash to put in the hot tub fire (because things blow through out back gate from the alley and businesses out there, and the wind has blown hard lately), I found toilet paper with poo.  And another one, in our yard, toilet paper with poo.

Later Keith found a third.

It's bad enough to sneak into a person's yard to poop, but I certainly hope no late-night stranger rolled our cat in it!  We didn't find anything but the paper.   Where's CSI when you need them?

the cleaned-up cat

---

NEWSFLASH: While I was uploading the cat image, Keith found the, uh... other evidence. No photos will be forthcoming. The deed was done outside the gate. Either the paper was chucked over the wall, or it blew through.

This dark and dirty sort of thing does NOT get reported in Just Add Light and Stir

Doc Holiday's Hock Shop

When I was a kid and lived 90 miles from Albuquerque, I liked the TV commercials for Doc Holliday's Hock Shop.  They would talk about jewelry and musical instruments, and the announcer was enthusiastic, and the storefront looked cool.

Later when I lived in Albuquerque, I never even went in.  It was just another pawn shop.  

Years passed.  The business has changed its name (probably from a change of ownership), and "Doc Holiday's Pawn Shop" has none of the alliteration or cool internal rhyme.   They've moved into an old Grandy's building down the road from our house.  Holly and I were passing by tonight, and turned around to get this little video of part of the series on their electronic sign.  I mostly thought our Brit friends might be amused, but there are other states where it would be just about as unlawful as in the UK.

NOTE:  This isn't a commentary on law or guns, just a little pointer to the real differences in where people live.