My Thanksgiving

As previously noted, I'm spending it with Russet as she will be coming down to Phoenix for Christmas.

It's been a pretty good trip. Thanksgiving itself was nice, we did it at the observatory and probably had over a dozen people show up, drifting in and out. Standard stuff: turkey, ham, two stuffings, two graveys, two salads, etc. I feel a little Noah-ish: Two of every food group taketh thou and eateth thereof.

Had an interesting conversation with a Japanese astronomer. He was here with two other Japanese astronomers basically doing a tune-up on the Sloan 2.5 meter telescope. We were looking at astronomy stuff on each other's laptops and for the halibut I showed him my dad's bowls. I've photographed most of them and started work on a web site for them. We bought a domain a year ago or so, www.gotbowls.com. Well, I finally finished the initial build of the site, so go there immediately and drool and dig out your credit cards and buy something spiffy. The plan is to put individual pieces up on Ebay with links back to more detailed pix on the web site. Anyway, the Japanese astronomer was very impressed. He initially thought that they were something like extruded plastic, a common mistake. When I explained to him that it was actually wood (his English wasn't good and my Japanese non-existent), he said that they would be extremely popular in Japan. So I'm planning on talking to yet another Japanese astronomer here who is native Japanese but speaks perfect English about the concept of doing a translation and having a bi-lingual web site.

I finished the web site a few days ago but for some reason my laptop is not having much luck with FTP. I was finally able to post the site using a method too horrible to mention. I got it up, but since then have not been able to do anything else via FTP. So I'm hoping that my desktop will be OK for FTP when I get home Tuesday. I had a bunch of photos that I've taken on this trip to post, it'll have to wait.


This trip has been quite an experience. As stated previously, I'm a desert dawg. This white stuff is weird. It's pretty common for people from Phoenix to cruise up to Flagstaff in the winter and do strange things in it, but I haven't done that in ages. The most snow that I've seen in the last 20 years was when I was in Omaha three years ago in April and there was still snow on the ground.

I've been taking Celeste, Russet's dog, out for walks. She doesn't seem to mind the cold and she's eager to get out and run around, so that's cool. I had my first slip and fall a couple of days ago walking down a hill on such a jaunt while returning home, I was able to take the impact on my left arm and butt, a little stiff but no big. I think Russ took a worse fall when we went to move my truck, she had a bruise to show for it.


We left my truck downtown Monday night/Tuesday morning. It snowed all day Tuesday lightly, Wednesday it stopped snowing, warmed up and started melting AKA frozen ice and slush. I believe it was Thursday night that we decided the roads would be good enough to drive my Rodeo up to her place, so we gave it a go. Well, things were fine until the last turn before the road Russ is on. I simply couldn't get it up. Made a couple of good tries in first gear, but it was not for me to do it. Russ walked down, backed up much further than I had been trying from, and was able to get it around the corner. We're now on the final straight, and I hit yet another grade that I can't get it up. Once again Russ is able to do the job. At that point it's smooth sailing and we get it parked at her place.


I received an email from my dad that my cousin, his wife, and mother (dad's sister) were in Las Cruces at another of dad's sisters, so I decided to drive down Saturday and see them. I didn't go with Russ into work Friday night, I had a cold hit me Thursday and just wanted to rest. Fortunately I slept for a few hours sitting in the lobby of the observatory while others prepared the meal. I wasn't planning on being a lazy bum, but it still worked out well. So Saturday morning Russet gets home. I take Celeste out for her walk and inspect the two roads that would lead me off the mountain. I decide the upper one was too icy (that was the one I fell on). The lower one was a little muddy, but I didn't think that was a problem, and as it turned out, it was a breeze getting down. Cruised across White Sands, got into Cruces around noon. The four of them were planning on going to see another of my dad's sisters who is in a retirement/assisted living home. So we cruised out there and saw here, chatted for a while, then headed for lunch.

Don't ask me why because I don't really want to understand it, but my cousins, when in Phoenix or Las Cruces, must eat at Jack in the Box. Apparently they don't have them in Texas. So we ate there, and it definitely fell in the category of New Miserable Experience. The woman at the counter was new and slow and doubling on the drive-up, there appeared to be only one cook, and it was lunch time. It took over 15 minutes to get through the line and our orders placed. The drink machine was utterly uncarbonated, so drinks had to be gotten by the woman at the counter. I was not in the least impressed by the food, I should have gone with their attempt at a spicy chicken sandwich rather than a burger. But everyone else enjoyed it and it was sufficient calories to keep me going until I got back to Cloudcroft.

We headed home after a stop at a store. We're standing out front, the women of the party are going to head off to yet another store or something, my cousin was going to use the leaf blower to clear my aunt's patio. While we're talking, another of my dad's sisters and her husband pull up the drive with their trailer, they'd apparently spent Thanksgiving in Tucson. Now, as a brief explanation, my dad just hit 70, and he's the young'un of the family. He has only sisters, his older brother was accidentally electrocuted during WW II. So the women run away, Johnny starts blowing leaves, and I walk down and see Hannah & Franklin.

I had last seen all of these relatives in July at a family reunion in Las Cruces. Just a couple of weeks after the reunion, Franklin had an accident with a riding lawn mower and almost lost three fingers off his right hand. They took him to the 'Cruces hospital, then off to El Paso to see a specialist. He was extremely fortunate, they reattached all the fingers and he has partial use. His hand will be in a permanent semi-claw, it was that or a permanent straight out alignment which would have been much less useful.

I found out that it wasn't simply a riding lawn mower. It was a yard tractor that was pulling a mowing apparatus behind it. He was very fortunate. This is something that I am sensitive to as I had five operations on my right thumb as a child to correct a birth defect, the last one being in my fifth grade year.

So it was a pretty good trip, I saw seven relatives in one afternoon!

My second purpose in going to 'Cruces was to visit Coas, one of the best used bookstores going. Now, Bookman's is a great bookstore (AZ chain with soon to be seven locations), but it doesn't really have the "used book store" feel. It feels more like a cool supermarket that happens to carry nothing but used books with a rather eclectic selection. Coas feels more "authentic", compared to Bookman's, as used bookstores go.

Nothing beats Powell's in Portland, but that's an entirely different class of used bookstores.

Surprisingly I didn't find a lot at Coas, but I did find one really cool thing. A brief sidestep: Jennifer Roberson, a fairly well known writer in the fantasy milieu, published two books called Lady of the Forest and Lady of the Glen, the latter a historical fiction about a famous Scottish massacre, the former about Robin Hood & Maid Marion, Robin being a shell-shocked survivor of the Crusades. It was quite an interesting take on Robin Hood. She has written a second Robin & Marion book, Lady of Sherwood. When I was last in 'Cruces, I believe it was August, they had a trade paperback edition, which is unremarkable, but this one was a proof edition, a pre-release sent to reviewers, uncorrected from the initial type-setting. Unfortunately at the time I didn't have enough to buy it. I was quite surprised this trip to find that they still had it! And this time I had some money! So rather than leaving empty-handed, a truly sad way to leave Coas, I had the proof and a paperback of Lady of the Forest, I decided I wanted to re-read the original before reading the second and I had no idea where my copy was.


The drive back to Cloudcroft was uneventful, just cruised and listened to Prairie Home Companion until the signal faded then switched on my MP3 jukebox. I stopped in Alamogordo and picked up a couple of frozen pizzas and other victuals, including a container of horchata, a drink from Mexico that Russet enjoys.

Actually, that's incorrect, the drive was not uneventful. One unusual thing happened coming off the mountain (Cloudcroft is at approx 8600', Alamogordo around 4300'). Obviously my ears popped from the pressure change, but my left ear wouldn't release. It didn't matter how much I yawned, chewed gum, ate, drank, talked, etc, it wouldn't release. This includes the diver's technique of holding your nose and exhaling sharply. I figured it would re-equalize going back up the mountain. I was wrong.

I have never had a problem with motion sickness, and unless I was running an extreme fever, never had vertigo. Well, driving up the 16 mile twisty mountain two-lane road with rather nasty drops on one side or the other, I had a vertigo attack.

It wasn't a world spinning around-type, I really don't know how to describe it aside from it wasn't pleasant. Fortunately the snow and ice had melted, and aside from it being really cold outside, the roads were safe. I was able to pull to the side of the road, I turned off my headlights while leaving the running lights on, turned on the emergency flashers, and rolled down the window. I figured that if someone stopped to help, fine. If they didn't, either I'd recover or eventually someone would stop. I did some deep breathing to steady myself, and eventually I felt well enough to continue driving.

I drove pretty slow the remainder of the drive, fortunately the uphill drive has lots of passing lanes and no one was terribly inconvenienced by me, and bugger 'em if they were. I got back to Russet's around 7:30. I had previously planned on going to work with her that night but I was feeling a little weirded out after the attack of vertigo and decided to exercise a little discretion, I stayed home and kept Celeste company.

And watched lots of Angel. Russ has the Season 4 DVD set, in two nights I got through 4 of the 6 discs.


I was feeling fine Sunday morning when Russ got home, she wanted to go to Alamogordo and see a movie before work Sunday night. That evening we ended up seeing National Treasure with Nicholas Cage etc., definitely recommended, first we took my truck back down to the Post Office. Sort of a clever modern Indiana Jones without as much fighting and violence, and what I thought were some clever puzzles woven in with American Revolutionary history. Very good cast, I thought it was well acted, though it is receiving mixed reviews.

We followed it up with dinner then back to Cloudcroft to put Celeste back at home. We had taken Celeste to Alamogordo, she stayed in the car while we were in the theatre, she was wearing a sweater (a Harley Davidson sweater, to be precise) and happily eviscerating stuffed animals. We took her to the movie so that Russ wouldn't feel as bad leaving her at home and not taking her to work. We took her to the observatory Thanksgiving Night, wearing the sweater and with a sleeping bag and blanket that she would burrow under, no storm but still cold, and she was pretty stiff when we let her out before we left the observatory Friday morning. Russ would go out every hour or so and talk to her and run her car to warm it up with the heater, so it's not like Celeste was locked in an icebox.

The drive up to the observatory was interesting, as was the drive up from Alamogordo. It was lightly snowing on the way down, on the way up it was mostly fog that varied from light to heavy, sometimes to the point of seeing less than a car length in front of you. Alamogordo was a cold almost rain, it would have been snow if it'd been a bit colder. Once we got closer to Cloudcroft's elevation, it was definitely snowing and you could see it accumulating on the road, still very foggy. When we got up Russet's mountain, the tracks we'd made coming down four hours ago were totally gone.

Russ called the observatory, it was obvious that it wouldn't be open, and she wasn't sure whether or not she was going to go in, leaning towards not. But the first shift observer was really tired, so off we drove.

I've driven in snowy conditions before, but not through actual snow storms, so this was quite an experience. It was rather disorienting, seeing the 3-D layers of snow swirling in the headlights. Frequently the visibility wasn't much beyond a car length in front. The snow was absolute virgin and falling pretty hard, fortunately there wasn't much wind. Russ later said that if she didn't need to go in and hadn't been driving the same road for over 7 years that she would have stayed home.


We finally got to the observatory, driving the distance at 20-30 MPH rather than the normal 40-50. I spent most of the evening wrestling with my laptop trying to get FTP to work properly, Russ worked on some Harry Potter fanfic that is now up to around 11,000 words. Later we got in a game of Amazing Labyrinth, we played a variation that was kind of interesting, in this game there are 24 cards and you deal them out evenly to the 2-4 players, I dealt an extra hand, revealing a single card. This one was available for either of us to go for and the game was over when all cards were gone, rather than the first to run out of cards. She ended up winning, 13-11. It was an interesting variation. I suppose with four players you could all start with five in your hand with a free hand of four. If you really wanted to make it cut-throat, reveal all four cards of the free hand. Three players you could go with hands of six and a feee hand of six, or hands of seven and three free.


Anyway, we headed home at dawn. It had mostly stopped snowing and was very beautiful outside, oddly the snow hadn't really stuck to the trees, Russ said that the snow had to be wetter to stick to the trees. It made a lovely crunchy sound under my New England Over Shoes. We stopped by my truck to drop off my stuff that I'd taken to the observatory that night, so now I just have my suitcase and backpack to take down. We took Celeste out for a nice walk, she had lots of fun romping in front of us, we found a tennis ball in the snow and she actually picked it up at one point and looked at us, perhaps we'll be playing fetch with her some day.


Tonight we're going to a ballet in Alamogordo, it's a Christmas production to, IIRC, The Night Before Christmas. Should be fun. I'll be driving my truck down and heading home from there, so I should be home some time Tuesday morning, eagerly looking forward to class that night from 7-10, it should be such fun after having driven over 400 miles!


It's been really beautiful up here, seeing the trees (and everything else!) covered in snow, then melting away. Now everything on the ground is snowy and icicles are everywhere. There's a rather nice house at the end of the lower street that has an amazing icicle collection, more like icicle short swords, but I'm not going to have a chance to photograph it as the light is already too low to work without a tripod, something I'd rather not do in the snow right now. Perhaps I'll leave that for the next time I'm up here while it's snowy.

It is a literal winter wonderland, white Christmas scene up here. Quite lovely. The cold isn't too bad (it's 26f outside right now) when you're properly attired for it, and once I get better gloves and a good scarf I'll be in much better shape. I'd also like to get one of those Russian hats that you always see their military wearing in movies when James Bond breaks into the compound and starts blowing things up, I think that'd be pretty cool.


Well, time to pack and get ready for the trek home. Ta!