Late Saturday

It is late Saturday night, and I am sitting here reflecting about a week of work and discovery.  It has been a very busy week, but a good week.  I think that I am a reasonably bright boy, but it is overwhelming sometimes with all that I don't know.  All I can hope for is that I am also a quick learner so that I can be overwhelmed less often.

I am struggling finding a place to live.  I know that I am picky, but I have to give myself permission to reject a place that doesn't have hot water in the kitchen.  I am not taking hot water from the bath room if I need it in the kitchen.  The same goes for the place with the bathroom with the spongy floor or the place that raised the price because I am a doctor.  I wish it were simpler.  Something will come up, though I think that it will mean that I have to drive about 30 miles each way.  It is all about balance, I guess.  Good place, longer drive.  Not so  of good of a place, closer.  I have a week.  I wonder where I will be.  I am pretty certain that it will be a house, not an apartment building, and guess what?  It will be in the country, not in an urban area.  As if there was an urban area!

I'll be OK.  If nothing else, I bought a small SUV--I could live in my car!  If only I bought a conversion van.  I could live in my car and then shower at the local Curves, the closest thing that resembles a gym.  I am sure that I would fit right in.  Or not.

The photos are of the main intersection (OK, the only intersection) of Roscommon with a threatening sky.  Roscommon is the mailing address of the College, but also a town in Ireland that I think that I know have to visit.  The other is of a canoe rental place on a local river.  I hope to explore the river soon, but since it snowed today, I might wait a few weeks.

Fortune cookies

My dinner tonight was from my new favorite Chinese place, which is it's own statement.  I honestly thought that I would be eating a places that served moose burgers than a place that served Pad Thai. So I am happy.  The fortune cookie tonight was this: "The days you work are the best days."

I laughed because my days are filled with work.  I started my job yesterday and since then I have met about 62 people, learned 59 passwords, found out a million things I have to do, and pretty good number of things that should do, and an even greater number of things that I can't do because we have never done that before.  Ahh, the first days of a new job!

It has been a good few days.  People have been great, I found the afore-mentioned Chinese place.  I found a place that actually is a very good wine shop.  The other places organize their wine by color or fruit flavor--this is the real deal.  

So I think that I will survive.  I will be far happier once I find a place to live but hopefully that will happen soon.  I think that I will have to do, not that is ever a concern for a dean.  It will all be fine.

When I said that people have been nice, this sign was on my desk when I came in, along with some KCC bling.  The signs were also on all the monitors across the campus.  The path is the one that I will walk if I head the the Art/Fine Arts building.  The last is a photo of the front of the building where my office is located.  It is interesting to see where this is contextually.  Take a look at Google Earth to see more context.  10775 N. St. Helen Road Roscommon, MI 48653

One more...

I am at the airport waiting for a flight to Dallas and taking advantage of the free internet.  On the way here, I drove along the Rio Grande Gorge and saw these rafters.  The water was pretty calm, but there was some white water--it still seemed early in the season.  Brr.  I guess rafting is one more reason to go back to New Mexico.

Tomorrow will not be a fun day.  While I am leaving today, my keys decided to stay here.  For the first time since I have carried keys, probably 35-40 years, I have lost them.  As I really looked at my bag I see that the key clip broke or was broken and when I opened the bag they fell out somewhere along the way.  Sigh.  It could be worse--if I was working I would have had master keys, and if you lose those it is your job.  See, it is great to be unemployed!  I am not worried about my house but how do I get a new car key?  Just call the local Nissan dealer and say, hey, can you help?  A locksmith?  Who knows.  See, there are always new learning experiences!  Yay!

Probably the last post from New Mexico

I am winding down here in Taos and heading back to the airport for the trip back.  I was up early this morning and had intended to go to an Easter sunrise service at one of the local historic churches or at least to see the church.  I was there but it isn't a picture perfect day--it was 41 and raining hard. I headed on a drive to wait out the weather and to see more of the country.

I was thinking about it, and one of the things that I have been trying to capture out here is just the vastness of the open space.  Even in rural Minnesota we are comparatively packed in together.  Out here is a lot of big empty.  But how do you capture that in one photo?  I don't think I completely did but this shot from about 20 miles west of the city shows a little of the scale.  This magnificent front of clouds was sweeping across the landscape.  Click on it to make it larger.

If nothing else, it was a pretty good place to go to for Easter sunrise service.

Later, day three...

I wandered around a bit but it was dreary--I think that since the elevation of Taos is about 7,000 feet, it doesn't take much for the town to be in the clouds as this one picture shows.

I ate at the Taos Inn and at their restaurant, Doc Martins and I was impressed.  It was a great meal--OK wine and an apple crisp for desert that topped it all off.  I passed on the rattlesnake/rabbit sausage which I think was a good thing--wouldn't that wreck some poor kid's Easter?  The trout schnitzel also escaped my gaze--I settled on the sea bass (that probably wasn't sea bass, but was still good) with the medley of spring vegetables and the rice with chestnuts.  Truly, not a meal that you can get at Appleby's and I didn't even have to unwrap a single thing and I didn't even use my hands!

Those who have followed this blog know I have a thing for birch trees, but I really like sspens--they just don't have those in Wisconsin.  One of the key reasons I want to come back to New Mexico is for the aspens in the fall.  This isn't a great shot but I did remember the location for perhaps a future visit.

It's all about the color

Because of inclement weather, I had to take a break to dry out.  I spent most of the day near the Plaza and was in a shopping mode.  While there is a lot of Native American art that isn't, there is a higher percentage of better quality art here in Taos.  In some of the paintings you can't even see the numbers.

I know, I am kind of a snob about this stuff.  Some of the painting is great, but some of it would be classified by my more artistic friends as "sofa art."  "Hey, let's make our living room look Southwest this year.  OK, but we are going to need a painting over the sofa with a blue sky and an impressionistic take on a pueblo/adobe building.  Maybe we can find one with a person in a serape--wouldn't that be great!"  Wow, that is harsh…I did see some stuff that was amazing, but priced out my budget by a long shot.  I did find several pieces of pottery of one sort or another that I could afford, including two older pieces.  They are small pieces but they are nice and they fit my shelf space and my wallet.

I don't know if today was a good day for pictures, but I did notice that it is all about the color around here.  A shade of blue is used everywhere, and I am certain that it isn't available from a store.  I think that it needs to be painted on a door or a car and then seasoned for a decade or two in the sun around here and then it turns this fantastic shade of blue.  The best example is the blue door.  The other photos just show some splashes of color that I saw around town.

Day two...

You know, I think I planned pretty well for this trip.  Unlike some trips where I forgot various sundries, I didn't forget anything that I have noticed so far.  But I did forget that spring comes a bit earlier this far south.  While I don't start sniffling and rubbing my eyes until about the middle of May in Minnesota, I realized today that indeed I do still have seasonal allergies.  By the time I got to Phoenix I was…wait, I am in the wrong country song.  By the time I reached Taos I was a mess.  I made it to a drugstore for, well, drugs, got to a hotel and crashed for an hour while they did their work.  That explains the early post and the added bonus that I can see and breathe.

I started today in Santa Fe and headed north to Las Vegas, the other Las Vegas, the one in New Mexico.  The drive was great--it kind of reminds me in places like the Great Smokey Mountains except that the hills/mountains are different, the sky is way different, there are different trees, and there aren't as many people.  So pretty much exactly the same!  It was still a nice morning drive.

Actually, Las Vegas is kind of a nice little town.  I was there by about 8, in time for breakfast at Charlie's Spic and Span Cafe, and the day went on from there.  I actually spent three hours wandering around and found several fun pictures.  And, I almost got arrested!  The Coke sign was from a drugstore that was turned into a bank--it was too good of a sign to get rid of and they still call it the Murphey building so they kept it.  I loved the sign, but had to wait for  probably 30-40 minutes until someone walked into the scene.  So for about 30-40 minutes, there was this stranger with a pretty big camera pointed at the bank.  Odd that it did, but it did raise a concern or two, and sure enough, two of Las Vegas's finest had a little chat with me.  Cool. I showed them what I was doing and avoided the hoosegow.

After wandering around a bit more, I headed for Taos.  There are many ways to get there, but I took Highway 518 from Las Vegas to Taos.  What a drive.  I am not sure that I would like it in the winter, but in the spring it was very nice and I bet in the fall it is spectacular.  I stopped for about an hour at the Agua Piedra barrier-free rest stop and I believe it was well spent.  I think it reminded me that there are many ways to reflect and compose yourself on a Good Friday.  The stream was perfectly in tune, and rills that filled the stream from the mountain snows added counter-punctual harmony.  What a wonderful way to spend an afternoon.

Now I am sitting in my hotel room eating a dinner that is pretty funny.  I have some good Tillimook cheese and thin sliced ham, since it is almost Easter, you know.  I am eating it on Matzo crackers as they were on sale--the Jewish community isn't as big as the grocery store anticipated, I guess, but it is Passover, you know.  They are pretty good, though I am sure I need to apologize to some higher authority for the ham.  I tried to wash it down with some New Mexican wine, but I just couldn't make that work--the wine industry in the state is a bit less refined than I had hoped.  Wow, and yuk.

Tomorrow I will explore Taos and the area, and I am looking forward to that.  I am finding that I like each town or city the smaller they are--Santa Fe is nice, so Taos should be even nicer.

New Mexico, day one

Today was kind of disjointed, as most travel days are.  I didn't realize how tired I was from the trip to MSP last night.  All the snow and rain made the 87 mile trip into almost a three and half hour ordeal, and then I was up early today to head west.

It is interesting out here.  I wandered around Albuquerque for a bit to start the trip.  Mind you I am on this trip because I was supposed to interview out here.  Not a fan, so it seems to be a good call at this point.  It's big, spread out and fairly strip mall ugly, though I am sure that there are charming parts.  I headed further north to Santa Fe and I like this place.  Smaller, more accessible, and there is some charm here, though it doesn't lack for touristy cliche' filled avenues.  I told someone that in some ways this is heaven if you like Native American art but it is also hell if you do like that genre.  There are exceptional pieces that are just stunning and but there are far more stunningly bad pieces. 

In some ways Santa Fe is a clever city that is designed to separate you from your money...even the bad art is expensive, and the good works are very expensive.  It is almost overwhelming.  But it is beautiful here.  It was almost 70 , and yes, the sky really is that blue.  There were just faint wisps of clouds.  The fancy building was the theater, the less fancy one was the Basilica.  There is a colorful scene from the city park, but I think these are easy to figure out. There are green leaves!!  And there is the best store dog ever--click on any of these to see them bigger

Dinner was fantastic.  You know, we get stuck in the Midwest with just red and green and banana peppers--I counted 14 different kinds of peppers mentioned on my menu tonight.  I settled for just a few of them in my meal, starting with roasted corn and poblano peppers and then red and green tamales with several other kinds of peppers.  They seem to be better than the tamales that I have been microwaving of late...I wonder why?

Tomorrow I had to Taos, though it might take me a while to get there--there is a lot to see!

Spring, sort of

Overheard at the coffee who shop this morning.  "What a nice winter we are having this spring!"  I would agree as we are really in the midst of a spring blizzard with 8-10 inches expected.  Sadly, as Minnesotans, we do expect things like this to happen in April…

Brr...

Once again...

I thought I would try this again, with a better lens and more patience.  I am not sure I was any better, but it was an impressive sunset.

Life is funny, you know.  If you ever forget that all you have to do is live another day or two and someone or something will prove that to you.  Thanks for that.  Really.

Enjoy the sunset.  We probably won't have ones like this the next few days since we are supposed to get a winter storm of some sort on Tuesday and Wednesday.  Spring is coming but on halting,  faltering and tentative  steps.  In a few more months we should be pretty much in spring for sure.

Another try

I wasn't thrilled with the sunset photo from yesterday so I thought I would try again with a better camera and lens.  I am still not thrilled or satisfied but  these are a bit better.  I know that a simple sunset photo doesn't exactly stretch a photographer, but at least I am taking a photo or two.

Spring sunset...

I think that it is officially spring, though it was hard to tell this week.  There were two snow storms, and while St Cloud escaped the major snow that some of the viewing area received, it still looked a lot like winter the past two days.  That is until the sun came out and it warmed up to 45 degrees this afternoon.  The day then eased into a nice sunset.

I accomplished a lot this week.  I "studied for" and apparently passed colonoscopy--thank heavens that has passed.  As exciting as that was, it wasn't even the highlight of the week.  I am pretty much signed, sealed and have determined my delivery date for my new job.  I will be the dean in charge of general education at Kirtland Community College in Roscommon, MI.  Good job and good school, and now all I have to do is get there.  I will travel over there for a week or so at the end of the month, and then I will start officially June 1.  I am pretty excited.

It was not an easy to get to this point--I had to cancel a bunch of campus visits and I turned down one offer.  But I do believe that I made the right decision for the right reasons at this time of my life.  I think that is how decisions are made--they are part principle driven but they also situationally driven.  Now all I have to do is find a place to live and pack and load up and and and and...  I am not looking forward to that.  I am, however, looking forward to about June 3rd or so when I am sitting in the woods somewhere near the College, sipping an adult beverage (after hours, of course) trying to spot a Kirtland Warbler (the bird in my previous post).  Then I will be able to relax.