Winter's Last Gasp

A few years after I moved to the Albuquerque metro area, I learned the hard way that it's best not to plant any new outdoor plants before April's tax due date.

Today is a good example of why this is.  We are more than a week after Easter.  A cold front with rain moved through today.  As you can see, this left snow on the Sandias.

Tonight we'll be getting down to around freezing, possibly a bit below.  I'm just glad my heavy jacket was handy this morning.
Brrr!



Papillon

Spring Time

Since Spring has sprung so I decided it would be fun to go to the Botanic Garden.  152 photos later, my feet were telling me that the new sneakers I'd bought were not the best choice for an hour and a half of walking.  So I headed home.

In the meantime, here are some of the photos I took this morning.

Over the years, I've seen any number of photos that people have taken of closed doors.  I like open 'doorways' instead.  I rather like this archway with the flowers showing through.

Here are a couple of photos of some of the blooming flowers.  I do so like tulips and daffodils.

Not surprisingly, the Botanic Garden has a goodly population of water fowls.  They have some large ponds and they are close to the Rio Grande.  This is closest I've ever been to a Canada goose.

I do appreciate this male wood duck 'posing' for me.  He is a handsome lad.

The park has a small train that circles the park.  It used to run on a fixed schedule, but the schedule is now a bit more irregular because of budget cuts.  They're now operating on a 'volunteer' schedule.  I know in the second shot, it looks like I'm about to be run over by the train.  I'm not.  I'm actually standing off to one side and am in no danger.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Papillon

 

Two Fun Books

I ran across a couple of fun books and decided to share.

The first is Julia's Cats by Patricia Barey and Therese Burson.  It's a charming little book and touches on something that I had not known before.  It turns out that Julia and her family had dogs (Airedales) when she was growing up so she knew the fun of having pets.  It was not until she and Paul moved to Paris that she began to have cats as pets.

It started out as a preventive measure.  The apartment she and Paul rented had a mouse problems.  One day Jeanne, the maid, decided enough was enough and brought along a kitten.  In France most folks called their cats Minou (Pussy).  When Paul was introduced to the kitten, he discovered it was female, so they named it Minette.  This began a lifelong love affair between Julia and Minette and numerous other cats during her long life.

"Really, the more I cook, the more I like to cook.  To think it has taken me 40 yrs. to find my true creative hobby and passion (cat and husb. excepted)."  -- Julia Child

She even invented a word 'poussiequettes'. 

It's an easy read and makes me wonder why nobody seems to have bothered to mention this facet of Julia's life before.

The other book is more of a raucous read.  It's by David A. Fryxell and is called Good Old Days, My Ass.  As you can imagine from the title, it's an exceedingly irreverent look at what most people look at nostalgically.

Examples of why the 'good old days' weren't:
- A Western Union internal memo in 1876 dismissed the telephone as having 'too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communications.'
- When the Catholic church was at its peak of influence, at one point eating anything meatier than fish was forbidden on nearly half the days of the year.
- Before the pure-food laws and food inspectors, 'fillers' were often added to food.  Fillers included dirt, sand, plaster of Paris, and gypsum  One suspicious buyer in the Victorian era found his tea shipment to be almost half dirt and sand.  Henry J Heinz was a fan of food purity.  One of his early successes was horseradish sold in a clear jar to show that his product contained no turnip filler, leaves, or wood pulp (unlike many of his competitors).
- Before the trend for tanning - pale skin was considered desirable.  As far back as ancient Greece and Rome, makeup could contain chalk, animal fats, starch, and powders or pastes of white lead.  In the 6th century, women sometimes bled themselves to look more pale.  In the nineteenth century, whitening concoctions also incorporated mercury, silver nitrate, and acid.

I'm only part-way through the book but I have to agree with the author.  I much prefer the here and now.  It's a funny, albeit sometimes gross and gruesome, read.

Papillon

Rain and Snow

We've gotten rain...and snow!  Woohoo!  It's been over a month since we've gotten anything.

It started on Friday.  At my house it rained for about half an hour.  The airport got .15 of an inch.  It's not a whole lot, but at this point, we'll take what we can get.

Today we actually got some snow, sort of (at my house, anyway).

Here's what the Sandia Mountains looked like around 1:30 PM.

The mountains are hard to see through some falling snow.  There are also patches of sunlight along the valley floor.

Then we've got storm clouds to the north of town.

Finally, on the way home, I went through a short storm of snow pellets.  This eventually petered out.  The pellets stayed on the ground for about a minute and then melted.

The storm passed on through and sunshine is supposed to be back tomorrow.  Oh, well.  We can only hope for some more precipitation in the near future.

Papillon

 

 

 

 

Bank of America - grrr!

My mortgage used to be with Countrywide.  At some point in time it was bought out/taken over by Bank of America.  Not a lot changed.  I sent my money to them each month.

In late November 2012 I decided pay off my mortgage and end the year with a clean slate.  I called BofA and asked what amount would it take to pay off my mortgage.  Michael told me an amount and said I'd need to send in a certified check.  I followed his instructions and sent in the money.

Imagine my surprise when I got another statement two weeks later saying - you still owe us approximately $240.  I called in again and spoke with someone named Cigi (spelling?).

She informed me that almost everything Michael had told me was WRONG.  She gave me a new amount to pay.  I pointed out that I had trusted Michael to give me the correct amount.  How did I know HER amount was correct?  Oh, she'd send me some paperwork.

Let me get this straight.  You've given me 5 business days to pay off my mortgage.  You're going to send me paperwork to take to the bank and it will take 7-10 business days to get to me.  What's wrong with this picture.  She glossed over this as though it was not important.

The next day I went to the closest branch.  I told the customer service person my story and told her I wanted to know if Cigi's amount is correct.  She called their internal mortgage phone line and promptly got a run-around similar to what I'd gotten.  She finally got an amount.  I handed over the money and another certified check was sent.

I called the 800 number in late December.  The auto-answer said my mortgage was paid off on December 18th.

I waited for paperwork to arrive to prove I'd paid off my mortgage.  In mid-February I got tired of waiting and called again.  I spoke with a young woman who was a veritable fountain of incorrect information.  Among other things, she said paperwork had been sent to the local county clerk BEFORE my payment had been posted.  Say what?!

I called back later that same day and spoke with someone else who said my paperwork hadn't been mailed to the county clerk's office until February 1st.  Sigh.  I got her to agree to send me a letter saying I'd satisfied the loan.

The next day I called the county clerk's office.  They said they had received paperwork to 'release' the loan.  Yippee!  I've also received the letter of satisfaction.

My question is - if Bank of America is such a large financial organization, why do they seem to be so incompetent when it comes to closing out a mortgage.  Isn't this something so routine they should be able to do it in their sleep?  Why does it always seem to take two phone calls - the first one in which I speak to an incompetent followed by another phone call to someone who has more than two working brain cells?

I was complaining to a coworker about all this.  She spoke to a friend.  It turns out the friend has had a VERY similar experience.  Why?  Why can't Bank of America get their mortgage act together?

Why do I keep expecting a tiny Bank of America car to pull up and about two dozen clowns to pop out?

Papillon

Rainy Day! Hooray!

After months and months and years of minimal rain, we got a good 2-hour soak today.  Hooray!

For a while it cleared up, then another rain shower.

More clearing and then lots of wind with some rain.

For now, it looks like it's been raining lightly enough that I haven't heard it, but the windows and roads are wet.

I'm glad it's happening on a Saturday.  If temps get below freezing tonight, the roads could be dicey tomorrow morning.  Instead of worrying about going to work, I can just stay home and sleep in.

On the other hand, the forecasters are saying there might be more headed our way through Tuesday.  We might even get some snow.  Sigh.

I figure I'll take it a day at a time.  If things look slick on Monday or Tuesday, I'll go in late.  I've got vacation time and see no reason to endanger myself by trying to get to work on time if the roads are too slick.  (My desire to be retired peaks at times like this.)

Papillon

The Good Old Days? Bah!

I freely admit that I've been a long-time fan of Upstairs, Downstairs and, more recently, Downton Abbey.

Because of Downton Abbey, I've been reading a number of books written by people who worked downstairs during the early 1900's.  As snarky as people can be as portrayed in the TV series, trust me, things could be even more horrific in actual fact.

The two most recent books read are A Cook's Tale by Nancy Jackman with Tom Quinn and They Also Serve by Bob Sharpe.

Nancy Jackman was born in 1907 and went into service at age 14.  She worked until 1961.  In her first position her employer tried to rape her.  She managed to fight him off and left for home the next day.  In her next position, she started as a scullery/kitchen maid.  She worked there long enough to know how everything was supposed to be done, at which point her employers fired their cook.  Promoting the kitchen maid to cook was cheaper than keeping the original cook.  One of her employers was a doctor who appeared respectable, but when his wife went to visit her relatives, he'd hire a couple of prostitutes and engage in wild and crazy sex.

She did make an interesting observation on why the upper classes were so weird and possible crazy.  The upper classes like to have several 'shoots' every year.  As to be expected, they would use birdshot to kill the birds.  The problem is - there's no way to remove all the birdshot while preparing the birds to be eaten - that is if you still wanted it to look like a bird.  So, when the upper classes were eating their pheasant/quail/whatever, they'd end up with some birdshot in their mouths.  It was considered rude to remove the birdshot from their mouths so they would swallow it. 

The problem?  Birdshot was (is?) made of lead.  As we all know now, ingesting lead can poison you.  They might have just as well been eating lead paint chips.  This could explain a lot of very truly weird behavior on the part of the upper classes.

One rather disgusting side effect - the birdshot wouldn't digest completely on its way through.  It would end up in the chamber pots or, later, the toilets.  The problem is - it didn't flush well and would occasionally stop up the toilets.  The housemaids would then have to clear things out.  Ewwww!

Bob Sharpe (They Also Serve) started as a hallboy.  This is essentially a dogsbody - he got to do all the tiresome chores that nobody else wanted to do.  These included emptying chamber pots.  One day he was running across the courtyard to empty one.  The courtyard was slick and he fell.  A housemaid did condescend to niceness by using warm water to sluice the stuff off him.  However, he had to work in his wet clothes for the rest of the day.  He later became a footman.  Part of that job was to stand motionless behind the diners during the hours-long dinners.  (Unless someone specifically asked him to do something.)  He later rose to become a butler. 

According to both Jackman and Sharpe, the hours were brutal, you could often work 15 hour days.  Jackman talked about one cook who spent a 15 hour day cooking various meals for her employers and their guests.  The cook finally went to bed but was roused around 2 AM because her employers and guests had sat up late playing cards and now wanted the cook to make them hot chocolate.  That's why Jackman later insisted on living outside the household where she was employed.

The good old days?  Hardly.

Papillon