Category: 2018

A dog morning

These dogs are like children! After bouncing off the walls at 5:30 on Saturday AND Sunday morning, now, as I drag out of bed on Monday morning, they do not even open one eye to glare at me.

Both mornings this weekend began with Kira’s tail beating in rhythmic excitement against the side of the bed. That’s what happens when you get old. The “thunk, thunk, thunk” of the bed in the early morning are puppy tails, and the subsequent groans issuing from the bed are not joyous.
John reached down and struggled to open the doggie door without actually getting out of bed. I groused at him – It’s still 5-something in the morning! On a Sunday! They don’t need out that early! But it’s grand central station around the doggie door, two feet from the bed.

Now it is Monday. My alarm went off at 6:00. My brain struggles to orient. Monday. Not a single dog appears. I leaned over and opened the doggie door. Nothing. I got up at 6:10. The dogs didn’t stir, didn’t even so much as roll over. I opened the back door to let in the cool morning air. Kira might have looked at me as I walked past. Or maybe I was imagining it.
I went into the kitchen and turned on the bright overhead light. Not even a yawn or stretch from the dogs. I opened the refrigerator. I ran the microwave. Ding-diddle-link-ding! Nothing. I walked right up to the coach where the girls were sleeping to retrieve my computer. They didn’t move. I crawled back to bed with my computer and my coffee.
Sometime later, around 6:30, I see Rosie trot by; she seems to be looking for John. Not finding him, she settles back down on the bedroom rug and goes back to sleep. Kira and Kai are still happily zonked. And no one has used the doggie door yet.
By the time I was dressed and ready to leave for my morning jog, Kia was leisurely stretching, rubbing his face on the rug, and starting to wonder about his breakfast. Kira, the only dog who is young enough to keep up with my slow jog, was still asleep on the couch – or at least pretending to be. Fine. This morning I feel like jogging alone.

Darren’s visit

Originally we were going to take the camper van to Idaho and meet Darren in the mountains east of Boise. But the smoke map looked like this:

So he reluctantly agreed to fly down here and go camping in New Mexico instead. He stipulated he wanted big trees, lakes, creeks, and NO CACTUS!

Ok Darren, you got it.

John being the civil engineer.

Problem is, that water has to come from somewhere.

Here’s John and Darren, working to get Darren’s tent set up before the summer afternoon rains come (which in New Mexico we inexplicably call monsoon rains, even though – hello, this is not southeast Asia).

Kira says, “We’re here! We’re here! Time to play ball!”

Complete blue sky in one direction.

But it’s looking pretty ominous the other direction.

Uhhh…maybe it’s time to retreat into the van for awhile.

We went on several good hikes.

Where we saw lots of signs of wildlife. Bear scat, coyote scat, deer and elk scat, and what is this?

Wow, did a bear do that? Here’s John pretending he’s a bear (for scale for the photo).

We saw the same marks on a number of trees.

So much for this poor little tree.

Whatever it was, it had some reach.

Wait, what’s that? Oh. Just one of the dogs. 

Darren

Kira

The aspen was just barely starting to turn yellow in a few places. 

         

Yep, what the man ordered.

Those are Idaho-worthy mountains and lakes, right here in New Mexico.

But we paid for it, lol! We didn’t mind the rain too much at first.

But then it started hailing. That’s my WTF face.

But all told, we had a great time camping.

On the way to the airport we stopped at the biopark.

Look at these funny flowers – they are asymmetrical.

Why does John always take photos of me when I’m staring at my phone? Or maybe I’m always…nah. He just picks times when I won’t notice he’s taking a picture, so I can’t tell him to stop it.

Thanks for coming down, Darren!

Chupacabra? Jackalope?

When I went outside to go jogging one morning this week, I discovered dozens of holes dug all over my front yard.

If it had been one or two – or even three or four – I would have figured a local cat or dog. But dozens? The whole front part of the yard was pockmarked.

What could it have been, and what in the world was it looking for?

John has a night cam set up in Placitas – where we have bobcats and coyotes and bears. But he never gets any pictures of anything other than the occasional bunny. I should borrow the night cam. It appears that the nighttime wildlife in suburban Santa Fe is more intriguing than middle of nowhere New Mexico.

Cheat Code

“Teach a learning algorithm to fish, and it might just drain the lake.”

Cute little article with ominous implications:

https://www.wired.com/story/when-bots-teach-themselves-to-cheat/

We thought we were going camping yesterday

I bounded out of bed – first day of vacation! I got my coffee and checked my phone and…drat. Fraud alert. My bank had texted and emailed about a recent credit card charge. “Was this you? Please reply, ‘YES’ or ‘NO’.”

The charge was for $1.00 from Amazon web services. It could have been anything. Could have been us, sure. Or not. Am I an Amazon customer? Of course I am. Who isn’t? Amazon practically rules the world. Do I use Amazon web services? Might they have made a monthly small charge for something? Possibly.

Do I even care about $1? Yes, actually, because it’s not uncommon for a compromised credit card to be used for a very small amount to test it, before crooks try something larger.

Bummer. I hit the “NO” button, knowing that this now means a phone call with my bank, and a disabled credit card until they eventually send me a new one, at which point I’ll have to update everything with the new number.

My bank’s advice was to call Amazon and ask them specifically what it was for. I thought that was about as naive as saying, “Call Brazil to check if you dropped your watch downtown.” As if there’s one number that quickly gets a cheerful “Amazon” on the line. As if I could make it through a phone tree without knowing an account number or anything about the mystery charge.

I had a vacation to go to! I told them to stop the card and I’d deal with it later. Now I have a useless card and will need to get another. I had to do that already recently, so the currently compromised number was actually a new one that I haven’t even updated in most places. It’s like changing your address twice in a row in one month, before you even had a chance to send out change-of-address notices the first time.

But just to make sure, I did call John. Maybe he had gotten bored and ordered a $1 streaming movie or something (I was still in Santa Fe – the traffic was a snarl on Friday night so I figured driving would be easier in the morning). He did not fess up to any pay-per-view charges, but he did note that it was raining.

Raining? Typically I can hear rain hammering my skylights, but it was softly drizzling. Drizzle! Drizzle never happens in New Mexico! We have intense sun, which is sometimes, in the summer, is followed by dramatic thunderstorms late in the day. But drizzle? We’re supposed to be going camping!

I was also supposed to be going on my morning jog. But I was suspicious that I might be getting a migraine. That’s one of my tough calls every day. Usually I can’t tell first thing in the morning whether I’ll be getting a migraine that day or not. But if I am, I really shouldn’t go jogging, because it will make the migraine significantly worse. So every morning it’s a guessing game – can I go jogging or am I likely to be getting a migraine? Talk about discouraging me from exercising! It’s hard enough to get myself out the door to exercise without there being a very real chance it could make an oncoming migraine way worse.

I decided that drizzle + potential migraine = I shouldn’t go jogging that morning. Which turned out to be the right decision, because it did turn out to be a migraine day.

Then Darren, who was flying out to go camping with us, sent me a text. “Engine trouble on ignition.” What? Apparently they started the thing up and one of the engines didn’t start. He said there was a heavy smell of fuel in the cabin, and they all disembarked. He got to wait several hours at the airport while they fixed his plane.

Meanwhile, John and I had both noticed a funny smell around our camping van. I hadn’t said anything about it, because everything smells wrong to me when I’m getting a migraine. I had already accused the kitchen of smelling like dog puke. But John had also noticed the odd smell around the van. His first guess was packrats in the engine compartment. And yep, he found packrat nests in the engine compartments of both the van and the Jeep. Oh, the joys of desert life.

But in addition to packrats, it turns out the battery was hot and off-gassing! Our battery had been overheating when the engine wasn’t even on! It could have spontaneously caught fire some day when he was at work, ignited our one lone pine tree on the entire property, which happens to be wedged tight between the van and the house, and burned the entire house down!

Actually I would probably have been more upset about the loss of the camping van than the loss of the house, but I am trying to have a better attitude about this house, so I didn’t say that. I’m also fairly fond of our one lone pine tree.

When John turned the van on, and smoke (or sulfuric acid laden steam) started pouring out. By the time we had discovered the dangerous battery issue, it was already late afternoon and there ways no way we could go camping that day. John went to go buy a new battery and we figured we’d go camping the next day.

This is the second time recently that we’ve taken time off from work for a vacation, and failed to actually leave on our intended day. I guess that’s why it’s good to have more than a long weekend off sometimes. Because life is complicated and doesn’t always turn out as planned.

It’s beautiful out this morning. No more drizzle. You probably don’t even believe there was drizzle, and I didn’t take any photos of it to prove it. These photos are from this morning.

On this particular morning I love this house. And that’s the truth. Some days I love it, and some days I hate it. I do not have a relaxed and consistent perspective about this house. This morning there’s no wind; it’s peaceful and beautiful.

But never mind that now – we’re going camping!

Air Quality Map

I thought you might find this map interesting. It shows where in our country we have ongoing air quality issues.

https://www3.epa.gov/airquality/greenbook/map/mapnpoll.pdf

If that pdf. doesn’t open for you, the same thing is also here: https://www3.epa.gov/airquality/greenbook/mapnpoll.html

And here’s a screenshot for those of you allergic to clicking on links.

Funny market

I’m beginning to think that now is not a particularly good time to buy a house in New Mexico. The market just doesn’t feel good to me. I’ve certainly worked in harder markets – for example, the California Bay Area in 2012. But it feels a bit off. There’s a lot of overpriced undesirables that are just sitting on the market. There’s very few good houses – and those are selling quickly.

In a healthier market I’d expect to see a higher percentage of decent houses, and a more reasonable time on the market – like a bell curve with most houses going pending after a couple of weeks. Instead it’s polarized; one day or over 150 days.

And I’d like to see people doing a better job of getting their houses ready for the market. It feels stressed – like they didn’t have the time or money or inclination or understanding that they should weed the front walk and sweep the entryway.

It has an odd feel to it. But then, New Mexico is odd in a bunch of ways.

What do you think this is? It sort of looks to me like a garage with a marble floor. Like, seriously? John thinks it’s just an epoxy coat. (We did not actually look at this house, and are not going to, so we will never know.)

And what would this be? What are we looking at, some sort of big rock thing in the living room? There’s already enough rocks outside guys, believe me.

It’s a strange looking house from the outside too. Maybe it’s a second story afterthought squashing that marble-floored garage?

They’re asking over half-million for this house, and it’s not even Santa Fe, it’s just Albuquerque. And I’m like, you have got to be kidding me.

At any rate, I’ve looked online at pretty much everything in the state, and there’s nothing I currently want to buy. That could change suddenly! It only takes one house. But not this one.

 

What’s in a name – or no longer in a name

Once upon a time, over a decade ago before John and I were married, I had a nuisance of a name. I should have kept my first married name, with the last name of “Wood”, which was simple, easy to spell, and matched my kids’ last name. But I had various boyfriends and women-empowerment girlfriends who all thought that was a bad idea; I shouldn’t be clinging to the past.

So, unable to give my daughter my last name, I took her middle name for my last name. Problem was, it wasn’t a name anyone expected to be a last name, so I got called “Elaine” a lot. Things were alphabetized under my first name or middle name rather than my last name. It was a total pain. I was, therefore, quite happy to take on John’s last name. Nice, simple, recognizable. I naively figured I’d keep “Elaine” as my second middle name.

When you change your name due to marriage, you’re supposed to change your social security card first, and your driver’s license later, after you have possession of your new social security card. Which I did.

In due time, my new social security card arrived, with both middle names, and John’s last name at the end. Perfect. Then I went to the motor vehicles office and they weren’t buying it. They didn’t care what the Social Security Administration let me do. They were not going to let me keep my previous last name as a second middle name and simply append a new last name. A variety of convoluted and confusing events followed, which culminated in the abandonment of my first middle name. My initials, which had briefly been KMES, became KES.

It’s a good thing we didn’t attempt to go on our overseas honeymoon until several months after the wedding, because it took that long to get it sorted out, and a new passport issued.

I assume I also replaced my 4-name social security card with a new 3-name card, but I haven’t been able to find it for a few years, so who knows. At any rate, my license and passport confirm – one middle name only.

Meanwhile, during that very brief moment just about exactly 10 years ago, when I thought I had a first name, two middle names, and John’s last name, I signed up for a gmail account. The first 3 letters of the email are k-m-e and then my last name. Simple enough.

Turns out everyone reads that as k-me, and then they laugh because they think I inserted the word “me” for myself, in between my first initial and my last name, which sort of sounds like something a self-absorbed 4-year-old would do. There’s no point in trying to explain that in reality the “M” is the last remaining vestigial from a middle name I once owned. I just dig myself deeper.

Which is my very long way of telling you all, to celebrate my 10th anniversary, and my 50-mumble-mumble birthday, I have a new email. Which I’m not actually going to post on this blog for fear of bots, but I can tell you it’s my firstname.middlename.lastname at gmail.com. (Assuming you actually followed that whole story and are clear what my name even is.) Or you can continue to use the kme email, because I don’t suppose it’s going away anytime soon.

By the way, here’s a piece of trivia for you. If you have a gmail with one or more periods prior to the @ symbol, the periods are optional. Meaning, you can email me at:

firstname.middlename.lastname@gmail.com or firstnamemiddlename.lastname@gmail.com or firstnamemiddlenamelastname@gmail.com.

They all work. I suppose you could even use firstname.middlenamelastname@gmail.com, but that would just look weird.

The truth

I have a young coworker who can get away with saying the true things that nobody else can say. Because everyone loves him and somehow it’s all ok when he says it, but if anyone else were to say it, it would sound too critical.

This coworker has informed me that, in regards to houses, my husband must find me to be a pain in the ass. Well! I set him straight. I quickly informed him that, no, it’s not just regarding houses that I’m a pain in the ass. I’m a pain in the ass about a lot of things. (But houses is definitely up there.)

Speaking of houses, I found out that the one on Camino de la Tierra has the septic drain field on the correct side of the house (correct being not where I want to someday build a pool). But John hasn’t even seen that one yet. He’s scheduled to see it on Thursday.

John got up before dawn on Monday to fly to California. He then took a midnight flight from SFO to Washington DC, figured he’d shower & put his suit on at a community center and then went to give his presentation, scheduled for noon. I gather he gets to sleep in an actual hotel tonight. I don’t know how that all went, other than he did send a “safe landing” text from DC this morning. He’s nuts. They don’t pay him enough for that ridiculousness.

I know that guys who make millions a year have schedules like that, but John does not make the big bucks. And those rich important guys presumably sleep on those beds on the planes. It’s hard for me to believe that there are actually beds on planes, but I’ve seen them advertised in magazines. Where would those beds even be? There’s no place for beds on planes. But I’ve seen the photos in magazines; it must be true.

However, it is definitely not relevant to our situation, one way or the other. We’re not the sort of people who get to sleep on beds on planes. The bottom line is, John works too hard.

And “beds on planes” sounds like a Dr. Seuss book. Right? It’s the truth.