Santa Fe Week In Review

OK, it's been noted that we've been away from the blog for a while. We were housesitting through this Wednesday night, been busy, and here's some highlights:

Saturday, we helped Janie & Joa out with a party they were throwing. I was working on a freelance project during the day, then we headed over to Cowgirl to pick up the food they had ordered, and helped them set up and throughout the evening. There was some rain during the day, and around sunset a thunderstorm rolled in, kind of off in the distance. The view they have is spectacular, all around the area. The mountains were eventually obscured by the thunderclouds, and lightning was jumping all across them. We headed out after cleaning up, worried about Cain being closed up inside (we were warned he didn't like storms). Our fears were unfounded, and we headed out for a nice evening walk.

Walks were a lot of fun with Cain. There's an arroyo that's ideal for walking along, and you can just kind of wander around a lot of the surrounding land. We'd let him off leash and keep him in sight, and just kind of explore.

The food from Cowgirl was really spectacular, smelled so good when we were transporting it in our car. So when we headed back on Sunday evening (after more freelancing during the day) to return the "hot box" they loaned us for transport, we stuck around for some barbeque sandwiches before heading off to the monthly Santa Fe comics creators' meeting. We had our offering for the anthology of hospital stories to share and were treated to previews of some others' work.

I've been working at the Paper Tiger, back into the work routine. Far more production and computer troubleshooting than design . . . but I've had some interviews at another place — not going to give out too many details for fear of jinxing it. Though I am more than a little bit hopeful, I understand they've been checking references (unless it's the Tiger finally getting around to it). The preparations and running around for the interviews added to the general activity and confusion of the past week. And I still had to regularly stop by home for one thing or another (including some upgrades for the desktop computer: more RAM and a wireless retrofit).

Monica was working over in Joa's garden for a few days last week. Due to my sudden employment, she had to bring Cain along. He gets along well with Janie & Joa's dog Audrey, but I'm told it was a lot of work keeping track of the dogs and keeping them in line.

At the house we were sitting, there's nice vegetable garden. We were charged with watering it and eating its yield, and kind of fell behind. So, on the second-to-last day, Monica made some cold pea soup and gigantic batches of spinach/arugula pesto:



We stuck around at the housesitting until later Wednesday evening, the occupants were due to get in after midnight, so we thought we'd keep Cain company as long as we could. And so we moved all the stuff back to our place, including the computers, and are gradually getting used to living in our own home. We did have a terrific time out housesitting, it was a great place in a beautiful location. We're being kind of stingy with the details and photos, as we never really warned the owner about our blog. However, we feel safe in revealing that there's a little lizard living in the flower bed on the side of the studio:



Friday morning, back at the apartment — a hummingbird sighting, feeding off the pine-leaf penstemon. I spotted it and called to Monica, but she only got a glimpse as it buzzed away. Needless to say, no photos yet. (Sorry, Liz! — Monica) Closer to work, and with no interviews, I managed to bike in to work; my time away from biking showed as I headed back up the dreaded hills that night.

Today, Bob and Shannon headed up from Albuquerque to spend some time in Santa Fe. They hadn't been here yet to see it all, so they piled the girls (Stella, 13-month-old Yellow Lab; Chelsea, 11-month-old Golden Retriever) into the truck, and arrived mid-morning.

The plan was to try and park on the fringes of the Plaza, and just kind of wander around; whoever wanted to go into a store the least would stay outside with the girls. I was by the Plaza on Friday, and there was all sorts of setting up going up, little vendor-type tents and such. So we had an alternate plan, which we had to put into action when our route into the city was blocked by a parade route — turns out the Santa Fe Rodeo was staging its parade on our way in. So we parked the car at the mall, and walked in, maybe a 20-or-so-minute walk. What I saw being set up was a craft festival on the Plaza, so things were hopping there. We took them around to some of our favorite spots. Shannon, too, was drawn to the work by Salvador Romero, coming away from Keshi with bound wolves. At all our stops (except for one jewelry store, where the owner invited them in), the girls waited outside and were, without fail, a big hit.



After a couple hours we headed out, and stopped by, well, Cowgirl, to pick up some lunch. A big barbeque combo, and some sitting around wrapped up our afternoon.