Sidetracked Charley

Just tried to log on to my bank account and failed the security questions. Don't you hate those questions? You fail just because you forgot to put an "S" on a word or capitalize your high school. And fail the questions twice and you are locked out. The worst websites for security are banks of course. And oddly enough my insurance company. How often do you log on to your insurance company web page? With me it is twice a year and it seems as if every time I have to redo my password or some security question. I have come to expect problems but I have no problems generally with my bank account. In fact this is the first time I can remember being asked my security questions. Has my identity been stolen? That would be the icing on the cake for 2010. This year has been so horrid I refuse, like other friends, to take inventory of it. Instead I have done a couple blogs on best memories and best gifts in an effort to accentuate the positive and ignore the negatives. This blog ...

A spiritual center As 2010 and the year of the Tiger move toward close (February 3, 2011) I find myself tharned. Tharned:  Describes the act of a person or animal being frozen in terror, e.g. a deer caught in the headlights. Perhaps originally found in Richard Adams's novel 'Watership Down,' the term was also adopted by Stephen King for use in his novel 'The Stand.' Michael stood tharn while the grizzly bear bore down on him. It has been a rough year. Some attribute it to the Chinese Year of the Tiger and hold out hope for the much gentler Year of the Rabbit ahead. Others take solace in the fact of how much worse can it get? Lots! But I refuse to go there. I don't even want to give conscious thought to anything bad. Instead over the last week I have immersed myself in four wheeling with my sister and getting acquainted with my Windows 7 and new computer. Surveying the remains Four wheeling has been more fun. The weather has been unseasonably wa...

Christmas 2010 is now in the past. But what a great Christmas it was. My sister and her two fur kids came up from San Fidel on Christmas Even. The weather has been beautiful here so after opening presents Christmas morning we loaded the dogs in the jeep and hit the back roads. I would have begun this blog with pictures of the dogs wading in Coyote Creek, or the Pussy Willows that believe it is spring but I left my camera at Jessica's and Ronnie's last night. We went there for a grand Christmas feast for ten. Ronnie did smoked turkey and brisket. He is a master of the smoker, and Debbie and I came away with some leavings to have in sandwiches for today's vehicle exploration. We hear tell there is a new road we have not yet tried. After we pick up my camera this morning we will be off. Weather should be an unseasonable 42F and sunny today. Meanwhile the southeast part of the United States is under an ice and snow alert. My sympathies. I hope all of you had a great Christ...

Debbie's Arch A friend on Facebook asked about best memories of 2010. I guess I have rather been stuck on the worst memories of 2010 so I think Scott for bringing this topic up. I am going to devote some time each day in the remaining week of the year to come up with another nice memory of the year. First is this arch in Lavender Canyon in South Canyonlands, Utah. We were four wheeling in a restricted/limited access area quite all alone and with no trail guide and no markers as to whether we were going right or wrong. And also no named arches that we knew of. In fact until we began seeing them we were not even aware this narrow canyon had arches. Debbie spotted this one first from the other side. Alan and I thought she was imagining things and it was not until we passed it and could view it from the other side that what we thought was just a depression in the cliff face was clearly and opening. The day alone in the Lavender canyon was an awesome one with lots more arches dis...

Parties! I am not, never have been, a party animal. I was a terribly shy child. I learned at sometime to act as if I wasn't but it was hard work. Alcohol in my youth helped me fake it more easily but after giving up that crutch I find large groups terrifying unless I am behind the podium or on the stage. In short in order to deal with large groups, containing friends or strangers, I must have a defined purpose: Speech, role, agenda, photographer,  my art. Parties are work for me; not fun. And since my CBT nine years ago, large parties are exhausting. And I don't mean just wiped out the next day but maybe a whole week. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy small affairs. Petite little groupings of 8 to 10 people whom I mostly know, but even those I like sparingly. The trouble with the Christmas holiday season is there are too many of those even to honor them all. And too many people decide to erase all their obligations for the year with one huge party. I have pretended to be o...

Going to get a bit airy-fairy here so if you are a non-believer in the effects of planets upon our lives skip this blog. I was siting here with my first cup of coffee, considering the past week for my TW3 blog, and scanning my way through Facebook News (is that an oxymoron?) when I hit the link from Big Sky Astrology regarding eclipses and solstices. Seems this solstice eclipse is going to be in 29 degrees of Gemini, my sign, and it has not occurred for 19 years. That got me looking back at the changes in my life 18 to 20 years ago. Dynamic time for me. And there is no denying that the last year has been very dynamic. So I went Googling. And at another site where I found the image above I found: In a spiritual point of view, a Lunar eclipse intensifies tremendously the power of a regular Full Moon: the Tibetans say that a Lunar eclipse multiplies the karma by 1000!…Whatever you do on a Lunar eclipse, + or - 5 days, can have implications during years on your karma...

I told HP on Sunday I wanted a shipping notification within 48 hours or I was canceling the replacement HP Pavilion order and getting a refund instead. And low and behold the HP Case Manager did indeed get a shipping notification to me. However, Fedex has yet to receive the HP desktop computer to ship. For a while this morning the Fedex tracking number provided me by HP even said it would get delivered today. Frankly I was leery of that one because it gave a ship date of the 11th and I didn't give them my ultimatum until the 12th. I must admit this was a rather clever ruse. Too bad they are not as clever at giving good customer service. Meanwhile someone is marketing is sending out e-mails saying I can still order a computer today and get it before the end of the year. Interesting since I have been told I would be very lucky to get the one I essentially ordered in November before the end of the year. Really HP get your script straight. Is this sort of game playing really das...

I would like to say HP is the Grinch that stole Christmas but I am not sure they are any worse or better than 99% of modern business. It all comes from Mexico or China with support teems in India or Texas (both have impossible accents) and CEO's in the United States that only care about the bottom line and not customer satisfaction. I am so sick of being asked to take on line customer satisfaction surveys (even my computer nerd that destroyed the original HP had one) that I tell them it is really simple just note unacceptable for everything you ask me to rate. It doesn't help that because I do a very base rate on Qwest (because basically they were the first firm this year that lied to me) it is costing me 3 cents a minute to be lied to by HP. You know when they say this call may be recorded to ensure customer satisfaction? Well, I am thinking of recording them on my end to compare the lies they tell. Supposedly they have an open file on a computer (might HP case managers u...

I all fairness let me first say I am not really neutral on computers right not. I have been dealing for over a month with a three year old HP desktop computer that a local nerd, in the business to save computers, killed after losing 3 years of data. Yes, I backed up, but to an external hard drive that failed. So I was forced to go shopping for a computer when I did not have the time nor the money. Nor quite frankly was I feeling warm and fuzzy about the boxes or the people that worked on them. But computer shopping I had to do. I am a small business and while I have a laptop for play I need the desktop for lots of year end business stuff and beginning of the new year submissions of art for fairs throughout 2011. HP had a cyber Monday sale that extended through the following Tuesday and I found a computer, that while not the one of my dreams, met my minimum requirements, fit my budget and would be delivered within a week. The HP Pavilion arrived on December 6th and I un...

My sister asked a thought provoking question yesterday: "Why do we believe things are getting better after the end of the old year?" Or what is the difference between December 31st and January 1st other than one is 2010 and the other is 2011 by arbitrary agreement. It occurred to me, while pondering this issue, that there is none, but from somewhere the belief arose and has carried down to the present day seemingly unchecked by reality. The actual magical day might just be Winters Solstice instead. Worldwide, interpretation of the event has varied from culture to culture, but most cultures have held a recognition of rebirth associated with this planetary event. And that makes a lot more sense than the new year. The winter solstice occurs exactly when the Earth's axial tilt is farthest away from the sun at its maximum of 22 1/2° 26'. And while this is for just a brief minute the influence of a planetary shift has been noticed throughout the ages. The Christian ca...

About now all my faithful readers are asking themselves just how long I can carry on this TW3. I know my Roman numerals up through thousands and no doubt can find the millions and trillions on Wiki if in the Ancient Roman world anyone even wanted to innumerate to that extent. And even in today's world it does seem silly at times. Today I am getting a new desktop computer with one terabyte of memory: A terabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information . The prefix tera means 10 12 in the International System of Units (SI), and therefore 1 terabyte is 1 000 000 000 000 bytes , or 1 trillion short scale ) bytes, or 1000 gigabytes. 1 terabyte in binary prefixes is 0.9095 tebibytes , or 931.32 gibibytes . The unit symbol for the terabyte is TB or Tbyte . It really seems very silly because I have not used up a fraction of my three year old hard drive memory on the failed computer. I need one of those simplistic little examples my teachers used to come up with - l...

A friend asked me this weekend, "If you had never had a computer how would you start leaning how to use one?" I admit I was tired when this question breezed by me. I was also downloading photos and posting them on Facebook and checking my e-mail at the time. I think I stared at her. Dumbly I might add. So she asked when did I start learning computers and how? I had the advantage I suppose to work for one of the construction management companies that led the field in using computer programs to manage multi billion dollar projects. We had Wangs and we programmed them ourselves. We were introduced to them by having them put in our cubicles with games the company had designed to get us familiar with the keyboards and functions. One of my early tasks was to enter line after line of Basic code into the DOS system. Line conditioners were just a thought at the time so I learned to save frequently. Almost killed a secretary that wanted to reset the Xerox machine by flipping the brea...

Friends around the table Thanksgiving was fun with lots of friends and lots of laughs. Oh, but tiring with the cooking and the visits and the fair and just being away from my "safety zone." I guess my studio is my safe ground. I like being at my painting desk and applying colors to my world. It seems when I am out that the world gets control of the colors and the tone. Fairs can be so very exhausting because of having to relate to strangers and old friends and keep your energy up and attitude positive. The packing up seems almost a relief. It is a pure physical activity that has an end. Well, except for getting home (that may be put off a day because snow in Angel Fire) and unpacking. And unpacking may be further delayed depending on the depth of snow on my property. But the fur kids will make all that seem unimportant. Only 32 more days left in 2010, but in that short span there is the tree to put up and decorate, three paintings to do for an invitational show and for...

Seekers This was the week of the broken tripod just when I was furiously trying to rephotograph paintings whose images have been lost by the servicing of the desktop computer. And it was the week the desktop computer CPU fan failed. Fortunately I have already subscribed to the carbonite cloud and my new data is in the ether. And retrievable to my laptop. I managed to get two necessary documents. Down to one computer it only seemed wise to also subscribe it to carbonite automatic backups. And begin looking for a replacement desktop. And seeking money for summer fair fees, the new tripod, the new desktop, and whatever else will go wrong. Fortunately there is a fair this coming weekend that I have high hopes for. When visiting the Malpais of New Mexico and the badlands of Utah I have often wondered about the first people to seek a way through these arid canyons, high mountains, deep chasms before hitting the waterless great basin of Nevada. The promised land was California and the ...

And I will not confess that this new weighing technique in is how I did it but I have now lost eight pounds. I know just one silly pound since I last reported diet success.  There is always a plateau challenge as I have come to call them. And admittedly it is often where I give up. How many of us can say we have lost a 100 pounds? It is just the same 5 pounds over and over and over again. I think this plateau was almost because of my exercise program. I was gaining muscle and losing flab. That's my story and I am sticking by it. I also have got my metabolism on over drive currently and unfortunately that makes me hungrier. And being rather depressed this last couple of weeks has made me accept invitations to dine out with friends. Before anyone even suggests it know that happy pills make me suicidal. Believe it or not better things for better living through chemistry does not work for everyone. Endorphins from exercise and getting my broad spectrum rays from the sun (sitting i...

Memories can come tiptoeing in the early dawn or at dusk and totally knock me off my seemingly safe perch in these troubled times. It can be something as simple as pouring coffee and noticing the clock on the stove. It is around the time he would call when he couldn't sleep and he knew I was up. I loved our morning talks. And it is in the morning I miss him most. I miss his mind. And the wonderful hodgepodge of esoteric subjects we would discuss. Dawn and coffee and talk of politics and history and philosophy. A dear friend of ours, who visited our home frequently, once said we were the only couple she knew that considered debate foreplay. Intelligence has always been a turn on for me. And men that are willing to consider I am their intellectual equal I find very attractive. Mother used to tell me I would regret being intelligent. I really haven't, Mom, wherever you are. But I definitely miss those individuals where there has been a wonderful synergistic meeting of minds. I...

Six Cactus Blossom Panels I got my desktop computer back from the computer doc on last Wednesday and discovered that he was right - it runs a lot better. However, it is empty. Absolutely no data which he promised to save and reload. Nice document tree with all the familiar names of my three years of file building but just folders and no files. He told me that he keeps a copy of the downloaded documents on his back up hard drive but the he is out of town and cannot tell me if my files are hiding safely there or not. Quite frankly I am rather amazed at the emotional roller coaster that has caused. Even in the best of circumstances I have had to do without my computer, which formerly had all my art photos on it, for three weeks instead of the one I thought. That my external hard drive failed at the same time seems to be a punishment for backing up as recommended. I have spent too much time looking for hard copies and combing through my FlickR files looking for my portfolio, inventory...

This might be one of those blogs where the picture has nothing to do with the content. But if you can get past the rippled abs you will see that he is holding two kettle balls. "And what pray tell what are kettle balls?" I asked last week. Just the newest in workout crazes. And it is not just for men as reported by Women's Health Magazine . It seems to go hand in hand with this new sprint training concept. Okay, so maybe I am sitting at the computer Googling and reading too much but I have begun to employ the sprint training concept in my aqua workout at the gym. And yesterday I bought my first kettle ball. The good news is this is not about exercising more but differently. In fact the ideal exercise program should be three times a week and for 45 to 50 minutes. My workout buddy and I are doing that at the pool. And I plan to throw in a couple short "strength" workouts at home with the kettle ball and some of my other collected gym toys. I have now lost 7 ...

Communications are at the best of times at cross purposes. Even when we are in the same room and we have inflection and body language to add to our understanding of the words we think we hear. Written words should be clearer because generally we have a wider vocabulary at our fingertips and the chance to reread and edit. I worked as a free lance writer for small publications for a number of years and still submit an article or two. I found quickly that the first read through I am likely to read what I thought I wrote. So I generally let it settle a bit before coming back to it and giving it another once over. I am often shocked at my second take. That clearly was not what I intended to say and so I rephrase it. But there are often those times when you come up against a deadline and don't have the grace of time on your side. I suppose that is what retractions are all about. But experienced writers generally hit the mark. If the upset a certain segment of their readership it is ...

Wheeler Peak after the clouds cleared The end of October is generally the time locals turn on the under the house heat to prevent pipes from freezing. We all try to go longer because of winter heating bills but temperatures falling to 7 F one night let me know how risky that can be. It is also the time the emergency winter box should go in the car. The clouds of the first "winter is coming" storm finally cleared away from the mountain tops to reveal the first snow on the peaks. Yesterday all this snow on the south side of Wheeler was already gone. That is pretty typical of this time of year. Fall and winter seem to dance around each other into November some years. Saturday was fall and I went to the spa with Jessica and spent a prolonged period in the outdoor hot tub catching the warming rays of the sun. My sister went off-roading with a friend in the Zuni Mountains. I wasn't even that concerned when she didn't call as promised that evening. I figured they went...

Moreno Valley from Palo Flechado Pass Thought I would get a bit closer to home with this week's photo. This was taken about six miles from my house as the crow flies. I was coming back from Taos with a friend. I had my camera with me because of the extended time of dismal weather. I just knew sooner or later the overcast skies had to break and give me a peek at the peaks which no doubt were going to be snow-capped. The mountains and clouds had been playing peek-a-boo for the better part of a week and fall turned to winter. This photo shows just a hint of that snow under Touch Me Not's cloud hat, but it also shows the shadows of the clouds across the Moreno Valley, all framed in pines and bare Aspen branches. Glad I had the camera. But then yesterday I left it home and Wheeler Peak made an appearance with its solid white winter crest, but no doubt I will that again and again in the coming months.

Winter at the top and fall below the clouds This was the week that fall at last succumbed to what can only be described as winter weather. Us New Mexicans (even those in the mountains) are spoiled. We seldom, if ever, go a day without some grace from the sun. But if we saw the sun here for more than a few minutes a day since Thursday we celebrated it. I did get a peek between the clouds of the full moon on Friday. I think it was full. I only saw part. Wednesday, however, was glorious and I posted a photo blog about that. See below . With the weather being not nice to get out and hike I began a round of frame making forgetting that the damp of the seemingly endless rain (rained 2" at my house on Thursday) would slow down the drying of glue and paint and varnish. Obviously, I had forgotten what life was like in the southeast. Still slow progress has been made. Yesterday, the winds of winter arrived. I loathe them. They just seem to penetrate all clothing and suck the heat fro...

The "S" word has been sneaking more and more into the weather forecast and as we are nearing the end of October that is to be expected. The local ski areas begin "making" snow at Halloween because then our weather will be such they have a chance of keeping it around. It is supposedly a La Nina year which means dryer and warmer than normal. I think I can live with that, but a lot hangs on the ski slopes for our tourist dollar input. But the rural electric coop is again raising its rates. It has to buy power from other states because all the power generated in the four corners area from our coal and our rivers goes to light Los Angeles and Las Vegas who seem to waste it. So with higher electric bills in the future warmer is definitely nice. And I have three cords of wood to burn for heat. But snow pack is what makes our forests healthier to avoid fires come summer. And it is how our aquifers are recharged. So I am divided. How about rain at my altitude and snow 20...

Beginning of the end of fall In college we used to play a verbal game where we tried to decide what a particular friend was in terms of a food, or an animal, or a season. We really did have a hall mate that was lemon jello. And one of my best friends was the ferret. The trouble with that game was that the comparisons, if aptly made, stuck. And somehow I find my subconscious mind still playing the game. Marc was fall. His birthday was the end of September when the mountains of New Mexico put on their grandest show and we traditionally rode the Cumbres and Toltec narrow gauge railroad over the mountains to see the color. Or drove up to Pagosa Springs, Colorado. I thought of both as a way of saying goodbye. His wife chose to not have a memorial service here and I am not the only one of his friends hanging in limbo. Both trips seemed to long and I could not see myself doing them alone. Fall lingered, way longer than is normal, as if waiting for me to make a decision of how to let h...

It has been a glorious fall and no recap of the previous week should ignore that. I have of course been out and about with my new camera. Did I mention I have a new camera? Trekking the aspen covered hills with the fur kids has been one form of exercise. And a good friend has me back working out at the spa. Thus far just in the pool with aqua fit exercises, but it has made a difference. Amazing how when you expend more energy you have more energy. That, as they say, is the good news. The bad news is I got water in my ears which seems to have combined with fall allergies to give me a really stuffy head. I feel like I am walking around in a diving bell. But this too shall pass. And I hope soon. Finally getting around to frame making. Got all the wood glued together into framing strips and sanded. Now to just start cutting the correct lengths and gluing them up in squares and rectangles to be painted and stained and fitted on "naked" pictures hanging about the studio. Just ...

a It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Totally an up and down week. As the song by Joan Baez goes - Some days are diamonds, some days are rust. For reasons I cannot explain my ex's death August 22nd really hit me this week. It began with last Monday when a trip to Taos seemed to invoke his memory at every turn. The good news is I have not had to worry about dry eyes. On the good news side I finished two paintings I had been struggling with, the sold one of them, got half of the do before the snow flies list done, finally confronted someone about a forgotten debt (they forgot - I hadn't), gotten back into exercising, picked more raspberries, developed an outlet for left over masks and costume items, received two more of the Connie Shelton Charlie Parker mystery series, and had two pet sitting gigs come up for extra income. On the rust side of the equation beyond the leaky eyes I wasn't careful about my low blood sugar and had a major event. Coupled wi...

We have been blessed and plagued of late with thunder storms building by late morning. When there are booms and flashes the last place you want to be is on top of a ladder even if you know there are things to be done before winter settles in. Today I finally got around to them. It was beautiful weather for working outside around the studio screwing down siding that had warped because of the weather. And finally putting up the last two strings of rope lights I had bought two years ago for Christmas decoration. They are white lights and so will be great when the studio is open for an event in the evening. Speaking of night events I bought and put up a solar powered motion sensor light at the corner of the studio near the gate. I rather like using the studio entrance personally but the motion sensor lights are by the main entrance to my house. Speaking of those lights. They are florescent and I hate them. In fact I tried using florescent lights on all the exterior of my studio and ho...

La Sal Mountains Utah The date is May 2010. We are off roading below the rim at Canyonlands National Park. Second day of our Utah adventure. It snowed on our way up which gave the La Sal Mountains in the distance the tremendous cap of deep snow. We are in summer weather gear on the canyon rims. But the interesting part of this photo for me was how close that mountain looks. We are approximately 15 miles outside of Moab at this point. And the La Sal Mountains begin 20 miles the other side of Moab, but the air is so clear the sandstone tower looks like an immediate neighbor to Mount Tukuhnikivatz  - 12,482 feet (3805 m) and little Tuk to the left. Mount Tukuhnikivatz is obviously big Tuk. Mount Peale, the tallest in the range, reaches 12,721 feet (3,877 m) above sea level. The range contains three clusters of peaks separated by passes. The peaks span a distance of about 18 miles (25 km). The name of the range dates to Spanish times, when the Sierra La Sal (meaning th...

Nightmare by Fussli I don't know if it was my day, littered with a multitude of activities, or my night, disrupted by howling coyotes and activities next door, or the strawberries and cream I ate for dinner, or just the lack of routine in my life of late but last night was fraught with nightmares. Per Wiki A nightmare is a dream that can cause a strong negative emotional response from the sleeper, typically fear and/or horror . The dream may contain situations of danger, discomfort, psychological or physical terror. Sufferers usually awaken in a state of distress and may be unable to return to sleep for a prolonged period of time. Nightmares can have physical causes such as sleeping in an uncomfortable or awkward position, having a fever, or psychological causes such as stress and anxiety. Eating before bed, which triggers an increase in the body's metabolism and brain activity, is a potential stimulus for nightmares In mythology the nightmare is a  ghost or ni...