Winter arrived in Albuquerque last week. It didn’t stay long, but it was quite cold and slippery for a day.

1) My yard at sunrise,

2) The feet of someone waiting for the bus in the evening,

3) Snow-covered yucca in a parking lot.

Another typical Albuquerque happening during the holidays. Luminaria! You can buy faux luminaria with electric lights. But it’s suppose to be a fire hazard! Candles and paper bags. This is the scene that greeted me when I left work in the Zimmerman Library the other day.

I love having the iPhone handy to do snaps of Albuquerque as I drive around, but it never does justice to what the skies really look like. This cloud looked like a huge black shadow in reverse over the Sandia Mountains.

OK, the gloves are off!  I just read a NY Times article about the role Mormons played in getting Prop 8 passed in California. Frankly, I’m appalled by Prop 8.  I’d say I’m about where Keith Olbermann is on this issue. Some people are in love and you want to deny them the expression of that love?  How in any way does the existance of even a single gay marriage affect your own relationship?  How in any way does the existance of even a single gay marriage affect your admission to heaven?  How in any way is it acceptable for religious principles to become state law?

So here is the thing, as far as the Mormon church is concerned, I am a member of their misguided, bigoted, hypocritical little faith. Baptism at 8 years of age to appease the grandparents got me into that mess. Truth is, I’m an atheist. I understand the comfort many people feel through religious faith. I reject it altogether as a way of understanding the world and interacting with other human beings. I am especially disgusted by the Mormons proselytizing about the sanctity of marriage and against gay marriage, given their history on that point.  Many of my high school friends took part in this campaign. You are misguided IDIOTS!  I completely reject the Mormon position on this. I wish they would just skip to the f*%king chase and excommunicate me.  I couldn’t believe in their doctrine and principles any LESS.

Last night we were driving on Jefferson and looking for something to eat. We didn’t really feel like wandering the city to find something, but we’ve already eaten at most of the places along Jefferson and in the @25 area. So we said, “what the hell, we’ll try this Twin Peaks place.” Yikes!

I guess we should have known based on the sexy cowgirl exterior decorations. The place is one of those softcore T and A joints with a rustic, log cabin kind of theme: sort of Hooters meets Monty Python. I’m a lumberjack! Wonder Bras under flannel.

The food wasn’t especially remarkable. Neither was the service. Thankfully, our waitress didn’t try to do the “perky” thing. Or the cleavage in your face thing. I wonder what the point of this kind of uniform is? Do people really go to a restaurant to see a little skin? Surely there are places where they can see A LOT MORE skin. Wonder(bra)s never cease.

The dogs are loving the new deck. They go up there and wrestle, when they aren’t peering down on neighborhood cats and howling with frustration.

Tobias Wolff is something of an “old school” writer. I Just finished reading his novel Old School. It’s narrative is quite straight-forward, not experimental or avant-garde. But it is so seemingly effortless, so seamless, that it’s a great pleasure to read. Each word, each sentence and paragraph seem to flow with a natural rhythm. There are no stops or lurches. It just carries you along, not in “page-turner” fashion like a thriller, but more familiar, like listening to someone you know who is a really good storyteller. Writing, of course, plays a very important part of the story, which is about a young man in prep school aspiring to be an author. Ironically, some of the plot turns on his inability to succeed at writing, his failures. In contrast to Wolff’s great success.

Balloon Fiesta started yesterday. An Albuquerque institution! But the weather that I was mocking in earlier posts played havoc with the schedule today. It rained all night and into the morning. There was supposed to be another “mass ascent” today, but unless it happened much later than normal, I’d say it was cancelled. Nonetheless, we look forward to more balloony activities.

This time of year, it’s still warm. Thunder clouds build up towards the end of the day. It makes for some pretty spectacular sunsets!

It’s the monsoon season. Makes like it’s going to rain, but it rarely does. Doesn’t seem to be as intense as Arizona’s monsoons.

On the right side of this photo there does seem to be a funnel cloud. Probably nothing more than a dust devil, as we called them, or a very localized downpour. If it had been a tornado, the city of Rio Rancho would have been destroyed!

PS: Well, now it is raining.  Doesn’t seem to want to stop.

While we’re talking food: I tucked away a good portion of meatloaf at the Range Cafe last night. The RC is something of a tongue-in-cheek home cooking place. The decor consists of both retro-cowboy fabrics and nouveau pastel western on the walls. There are rabbits camouflaged to blend in with this color scheme. And lots of interesting props: an oven with mouth/door open to expose a huge tongue and tonsils. And then of course the flying cows. Flying, obviously, because they have ceiling fans on their backs, helicopter fashion!

The food was pretty good, but I imagine its temperature suffered because our waitress forgot about us for quite a while. The warming lights couldn’t really keep the meatloaf oven-hot. I think the wife’s steak went back under a broiler for a minute or two. The steak suffered but everything else was still pretty good. We’ll go back because there are a few other things we’d like to try. (Pork tenderloin here I come!)