Christmas trip

For Christmas, my sisters, brother-in-law and I all met up in San Angelo to spend time with my mom.  As mentioned in my Thanksgiving post, the drive for me is long and, at times, rather boring.

The trip to San Angelo was rather unusual this time.  I called ahead and checked on the condition of the roads.  The recording said they were fine.  The recording did not mention the foggy conditions that were pretty much in place until I got to Roswell, NM.  Sometimes you could see several hundred yards to a mile.  That's unusual for the country I was driving through where you can normally see for several miles in all directions.  In Lincoln County, NM the fog was especially heavy.  Not much fun to drive in.  Here's a picture of when conditions were foggy but not too bad.

Normally you could see for at least 5 to 10 miles -- at least.

All the fog plus temperatures around freezing put a frost on the vegetation.  Just north of Vaughn, NM, I spotted a couple of trees.  I pulled over to take a photo.  When I rolled down my car window, it sounded like there was a light rain.  It turns out I had stopped about the time that the temps got just above freezing and it was the sound of frost sliding off branches and plopping on the ground.  Here's one of the trees.

Just north of Vaughn is a very small town called Encino.  Here's a sad little house.  I always wonder what it's history was and why it looks like this now.

On the trip to San Angelo I was very glad I had finished all my shopping.  One of the towns I went through was LaMesa, TX and the strip center with WalMart was PACKED.  Ditto in Big Spring, TX.

Between LaMesa and Big Spring I almost ran off the road when I spotted what I thought was a full-grown, real, live reindeer.  I checked again on the way home and decided (due to the other animals in the pasture) that it was probably an elk instead.  I think the ranch it was located on hosts hunters for a living.

Christmas was nice and so was the drive home.  It was sunny and windy and a bit chilly.  As I got to Brownfield I noticed several long ribbons of geese headed in an easterly direction.  Not sure why and where they were going, but they were pretty to look at.  Also spotted on the drive home was a solitary hawk perched in the only tree for several miles.

It's good to be home.

Papillon

Make It Stop

I suddenly like political ads better than Christmas ads.  Why?  Because the day after the election, the political ads stop.

Apparently this is no longer true of either Christmas ads or Christmas music.  After having both start up before Thanksgiving, it looks like folks are trying to wring every last bit of sentiment out of them.  Especially annoying is the incessant Christmas music.  Yesterday I was hoping area merchants were just letting the music linger through the weekend.

Then I was in a local restaurant today and what do my ears behold?  More Christmas music.  Fortunately the restaurant was a bit noisy and I could tune most of it out.

All I can say is - make it STOP!
Papillon

A Snow Day

It's been a long dry autumn here in New Mexico.  So we felt some relief when the weather forecasters said we'd be getting some precipitation starting yesterday.

The forecasters were right.  I woke up yesterday to cloudy and rainy skies.  Hooray!  I ran some errands and then headed home since the forecast was for the rain to turn to snow.  Sure enough, it did shortly after I got home.  I was expecting an inch or two.  That expectation was dashed when it kept snowing and snowing and snowing.

Here's what it looked like out my front door around 10 PM last night.

This morning I woke up to approximately 4-5 inches of snow.  We rarely get this much snow here on the west side of Albuquerque.  Needless to say, I'm going to spend most of the day here at home. 

It's supposed to warm up to 40 degrees.  However, as of noon, we are still in the low to mid 30's.  Some melting has occurred, but there's still a whole lot of snow hanging around.

Papillon



Feeling Good

After having spent some time as one of the countless unemployed persons and having my resumes ignored by all and sundry, I suddenly am having much better 'luck'.

Around mid-week I was contacted about my interest in a position at a local entity which runs/owns two of the local TV stations.  Since then, I've had my first interview.

Then, at about the same time, I was contacted by Sandia National Lab about my interest in a position there.  Friday morning I went in for testing - they want to make sure you can read and do math and follow instructions and have more than a passing familiarity with Microsoft Office.  I did well on all of the tests except for Excel.  Even though I use Excel on a regular basis, they were using 2007.  I have not had a chance to use it and with the 24 hour notice I did not have a chance to track down a tutorial to run.  So, for a while I was pulling out my hair, but eventually got through it with a passing score.  Hooray!

I go in for an initial interview on Monday for Sandia.  I'm waiting to hear if the TV stations want to do a second interview.

Woohoo!  It sure feels nice to be popular.

Papillon

More Recuperation - At Home

I'm back from San Angelo.  It turns out my trip timing was excellent.  I left the Albuquerque area on Wednesday and had lovely, albeit windy weather for the drive to San Angelo.  In reading the local newspaper after I got back, it turns out the Albuquerque area had just enough moisture plus freezin temperatures to turn a major highway interchange into a skating rink.  About 20 cars ended up wrecking, including several police cruisers who were responding to the accidents.  Nobody was badly hurt so that was a good thing.

I came back on Saturday and had lovely weather for long distance driving.  On Sunday, a cold front moved through with resulting high winds.  Today, portions of the state got snow - including areas that I drove through on Saturday.  Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

As I mentioned in my previous entry, driving through eastern New Mexico and western Texas can be mind numbingly boring at times.  For example, large parts of west Texas (north and west of Big Spring) are devoted to cotton... as seen here.

The brown parts of the photos are fields of harvested cotton.  For fans of the movie Places in the Heart, cotton is no longer harvested using crews of field hands.  Instead farmers have large (and hugely expensive) machines that have one person sitting up in a cab and driving down the rows.  Much more efficient.  As you can see, the fields go on for MILES.  In the right-hand photo, the small area on the extreme right hand side of the picture are mature trees surrounding a farm house. 

After the cotton is harvested, it is pressed into large rectangular shape generally the size of a large travel trailer.  These are later loaded onto trucks and moved to communal cotton gins located around the area.  Usually the gins are just called things like Co-op Gin of (insert nearest community).  One of the better named gins is the one located at Punkin Center.  Note:  to my knowledge there are no pumpkins/punkins at Punkin Center.  Just lots more cotton - the field just behind the sign looks like it's waiting to be harvested.  That's not snow on the ground, just open cotton bolls.

In addition to cotton and cattle, there are numerous places in both west Texas and eastern New Mexico where there's lots of drilling for natural gas.  So you see lots of these devices, they're called pumpjacks (I think).  All day long they go up and they go down.  Rather hypnotic in their own way.

Also, as mentioned before, there are some weird place names in west Texas.  On the south side of Sterling City is Bodcaw Draw.  (Reminder to self, must remember to do some research on what the heck is a bodcaw?)

Trips can be fun.  But it's also good to be home, especially knowing that the Sandia Mountains east of town got snow today.  Hooray for not having to drive through it!

Papillon

Thanksgiving Visit

I'm spending Thanksgiving with my mom.  She used to come & visit me, but thanks to a number of things including increasing frailty as she gets older, I've been visiting her for the past several years.

The problem is that there is no easy way to get from the Albuquerque area to San Angelo, TX.  You can fly to San Angelo, if you don't mind spending hours & hours in airports during various layovers in Houston or Dallas.  Or you can fly to Midland, rent a car & drive for a couple of hours.  Unfortunately, what used to be a late afternoon flight was moved by Southwest to a mid-evening flight - leaving the traveler to drive the couple of hours in the dark (literally and sometimes figuratively).

Thanks to my getting a new(er) car earlier this year to replace my 20 year old truck, I've been driving over the hills and through the prairies - for about 9 to 10 hours.  Which is what I did yesterday.

At first it's fun to see the scenery change.  The evergreen trees in the Sandias changing to the evergreen shrubs changing to the grass punctuated at first by lots of cholla (cactus) to occasional cholla to very little cholla and mostly grass.  However, after about 5 hours, it starts to get VERY old.  This photo was taken in Lincoln County, NM - looking west from the highway.

I was glad I was doing the speed limit when I drove through Vaughn.  By the side of the road sat the police.  In a pickup truck.  And not just ANY pickup truck.  Imagine said pickup with a kick-ass paint scheme of blue and black.  Plus the fact it was a pickup that apparently had been taking steroids for a considerable period of time because it was very big and very intimidating.  The windows were tinted so I couldn't see if the occupant matched the truck for size & intimidation. 

I keep meaning to stop in Vaughn.  As I've driven through I've noticed a diner - one of those old-fashioned kind with lots of chrome on the outside.  It looks very 1950's.  I may stop on the way back to Albuquerque for a snack.  I'll keep you posted if I do.

Happy Thanksgiving!
Papillon

Recuperation

No, I've not been sick.  I've been recuperating from the November edition of the Albuquerque Main Library's $3-a-bag book sale.

Don't get me wrong.  I love books.  I love getting books for $3 a bag.  It 's just VERY tiring schlepping all those books around.  There are times I wish I'd gotten a lighter weight hobby.  But no.

On a positive note, the best way to recuperate from the book sale is to lay on the couch and read one of the books.  So tough to do (tongue firmly in cheek)!  The cat likes it too, since my lap is handy for naps for him.

Note:  some time ago I mentioned this book sale to a coworker.  She looked at me and said in all seriousness, "I hope you got some good books in your bags."  I looked at her stunned when I realized she thought that a '$3-a-bag book sale' meant you went to the library, paid $3 and the library staff handed you a random bag of books.  Um, in a word, no.  I explained to her that this was not a literary version of buying a pig in a poke.  You either bring your own bag or use one of the brown paper, grocery-style bags they provide and then you look through the thousands of books they have out on tables.  You get to select any books that take your fancy and then pay the nice ladies at the cash registers.

Happy reading!
Papillon