Laurie photographed a mama duck with her ducklings paddling around in the Duck Pond at UNM.

Clouds after sunset last night.

Sunset tonight

Another view of the sunset tonight.

Yet another view of the sunset tonight.

Moon peaking through a cloud nebula last night.

Moon in a crystal clear sky tonight.

Sasha thinks there's nothing like snorting and rolling around on the floor with a stinky pair of socks to help her unwind after a rough day of trying to keep a house full of unruly cats in line. 

Hey! Get your own stinky sock! Loki!

That's better!

View looking north

Demolition of the fountain on Civic Plaza in Downtown Albuquerque started this afternoon. I took photos looking in the four cardinal directions and from the ordinal directions around the east side of the plaza and 3rd Street.

View looking south

View looking east

View looking west

View looking southwest at the Bobcat on the tracks made of 2X8 inch lumber.

View looking southwest. The banners on the fence depict what the plaza will look like when the remodeling is done.

View looking southwest

View looking southwest including the backside of the orange JO that is northeast of the fountain.

View looking northwest

Lola giving Spunk mala leche

Lola is really a sweet kitty to people, but when it comes to most other cats, watch out. She goes from sweet to all growls with a "cara de mala leche" as they used to say in Spain. We usually call it "mad dogs", either way, Lola can make some mean faces at the other kitties.

Lola giving Spunk more mala leche

Lola being sweet and thinking

Spunk spotted something

Spunk

Loki practicing his "squint like Clint"

Loki

Sasha

Najar

Silver

Rosencrantz

Marble in the shelf above the refrigerator

Marble in the catio

Looking south at a volcano in the distance.

Wild poppy

A swallow of some type

Towers in the clouds on the snow covered Sandias.

Another wild poppy

Another swallow in a full speed tuck.

Looking south

A cubist duck takes flight.

Looking north

Rain fell hard against the threatening darkness, making craters in the water as we walked to the river. An iron knot somehow sprang from the ground, mysteriously uncovered, as I had walked by the place where it came out of the bosque floor hundreds of times and not seen it. How that one inch iron cable got tied into such a tight knot is a brain twister — no mortal man or woman could have bent that cable into such a tight knot bare handed. Perhaps La Llorona has been tying knots to pass the time. 

The Rio Grande runs higher and higher. The Sandias were almost whited out by clouds, mist and falling rain. The only critters out in the cold rain at dusk were me, Laurie, a few ducks, and a pterodactyl that flew by almost invisible against the gray sky. I stood on the edge of the river, wearing a silly hat, rushing water lapping at my boots, as I pointed out monsters across the waters with clouds coming off my fingertips. One monster laid just under the water's surface, obscured by a broken tamarisk that stood on my right.  The mist started to clear off the foot hills before we walked back to the edge of the bosque. Laurie watched a little squirrely whirly fly over the treetops, and one last gasp of light peeked under the clouds before darkness consumed us. 

Cooper's Hawk

Jack Sparrow

Swainson's Hawk

Looking east from the corner of Union Square and Central (Old Route 66) just east of the railroad tracks.

I walked up to UNM from downtown for tonight's Medieval lectures. The ART (Albuquerque Rapid Transit) project has Central (Old Route 66) torn up, down to one lane each direction, and the pedestrian/bikeway in the middle of Central. I'm posting some of the more interesting buildings I passed on my walk up Old Route 66 on my way to UNM.

Funky Barber Shop

I believe this is the first time I photographed the 66 Diner during daylight hours.

Phillips 66/Route 66 sign wall just east of the 66 Diner.

Funky gated community one Central about a block west of UNM.

Looking west on Central from the corner of Central and University.

The Felony Cafe is getting a face lift. Its on Central across from Hodgin Hall on the west end of UNM.

Big Bullfrog sunbathing

Tiny little butterfly

Spider waits for prey

A big wet critter across the raging waters of the Rio Grande on the now flooded sandbar.

We went out for a walk on the ditch banks and river just before sunset. When the sunset turned out to be on the lame side, we walked over to the edge of the Rio Grande about 10 minutes after sunset. I could see a large critter across the river on the flooded sandbar, but with the light fading quickly, I couldn't really see the critter clearly, even through my telephoto lens. I assumed it was a beaver, but it looked to be the size of a pig. I bumped up the ISO, and clicked away. A pair of geese landed upstream of the beaver, so he dove underwater, popped back up about a twenty feet downstream, and swam toward a fallen tree laying in the water on the sandbar. I moved over so I could see around a bush, and when the leaves crunched beneath my feet, he dove again. When he came back up another twenty feet or so down stream, he stood half submerged on the flooded sandbar and looked at us for a moment, shifted position and stood still, half submerged, just looking at us as from across the river as darkness fell all around.

A Tree floating by while the beaver stands in the shallows on the sandbar.

The beaver dove under water and came up a little downstream. His back is to the camera, but the log gives some sense of scale.

This is the same log a couple of days ago when the river was about a foot lower and the sandbar wasn't flooded.

Geese standing on the edge of the flooded sandbar about 100 feet upstream of the beaver.

Whatever is equivalent to the Loch Ness monster swam by us in the waning light.

Standing half submerged on the flooded sandbar looking at us standing on the other side of the river.

Shifted his position and watched us until we walked off into the darkness.

Time to dust off the turntable

I celebrated Record Store Day by going to Charley's 33's & CD's on the corner of Menaul and Pennsylvania to see what they were doing to celebrate Record Store Day.  The owner informed me that I missed all the action, as people lined up around the store before it open at 11:00 AM this morning, and bought up all the Record Store Day specials by noon. Unfortunately, I couldn't get there by 11:00 AM, because I was finding and repairing a leak in the pump house (that's another story for another day). However, it was still a celebration to visit Charley's, talk to the owner and hear stories about Record Store Day and their 30 years in business. Charley's 33's & CD's is a huge store, taking up four retail spaces, and they have a large inventory of LP records, 45's, CD's, cassette tapes, posters, tapestry, clothing and record store paraphernalia. Walking into Charley's took me back a few decades and brought back memories of when I was a teenager and buying the latest hit release was fun and exciting.

As I got older, and we wanted a bouncy dance floor in the house, records became more of a burden — our good turntable took up a lot of space, plus the records would skip when we danced, so I had to record the vinyl to cassette tape; therefore, Laurie and I were very excited when Compact Discs came available and we got into CD's early on — I think we bought our first CD player and CD's in 1984. I remember people telling us at that time that getting into CD's was silly because they wouldn't catch on. I said there would come a day when records wouldn't be available. That day came a lot sooner than I ever expected, but there has always been a small niche market for used vinyl — as I mentioned, Charley's has been in business for the past 30 years; however, new vinyl is making a comeback as people who want the superior fidelity of vinyl seek it out, but now people who want the cool factor and physical asset of a vinyl record are bringing records back into style. I read an article about Record Store Day that said vinyl has become a billion dollar industry again. I sill get email from Disc Makers from the days when we were mass producing music CD's for a local musician, and Disc Makers are producing vinyl again — they have lots of information about how to put together recordings suitable for vinyl. 

Nowadays, I'm happy with digital music, although my first choice is listening to it through our old stereo and a pair of speakers I built when I was designing and building speakers back in the late 1970's. I have not heard very many commercial speakers that sound better than the pair I built.  While I still have boxes and boxes of cassettes tapes, and nothing to play them in, I gave my vinyl collection and good turntable to Tristan — she has room to store the records, young ears to appreciate the fidelity of vinyl, and our record collection is still in the family. While I'm not one who consumes vinyl records, I still do film photography, so I understand the physical asset of a process that has also been consumed by the digital world. Sometimes, those old, physical products and processes are so much more magical and comforting than what can be a cold and lonely digital abyss in cyberspace.

If you missed getting out to a record store for Record Store Day, you can still celebrate at Amazon and purchase the Keepsake album by Lavinia Ross, available in streaming, MP3 and CD, and/or Billy Momo's latest album Seven Rivers Wild, available in MP3, CD and Vinyl.

A funny thing happened on my way to the record store

Charley's Music Co. T-Shirts + Posters in neon

Record Store Day Specials pretty much sold out in the first hour

Vinyl is groovy

Charley's has lots and lots of space

Cassette tapes and Heavy Metal tapestries

Posters and clothing

Rows and rows of music

What's a record store without Alfred E. Neuman in the window?

Charley's 33's & CD's and Records, Tapes, CD's, Posters, Tapestries, Stickers and Picture Discs takes up four store fronts.

Fishes frolicked in the shallows
Splashing spirals colors rippled
Fluid gems against currents swim

Flowers danced in winds at dusk
Glowed against consuming darkness
Snaggletoothed daffy awaits its prey

Sunshine filtered lights Sandias
X hangs under falling blues
Pastel brushes painted darkened skies