The Turk grabs (what else?) a catnap on a bit of furniture we bought from the previous owner of Rancho Pendejo. It won’t last.
Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment) doesn’t know it yet, but his repose is about to be disturbed yet again.
The movers are supposed to show up with all our crap today, and you know what that means: the terrifying sounds of Unauthorized Personnel Operating Within the Perimeter.
Sigh. And we had just gotten back to what passes for normal around here, if your idea of “normal” includes a small satchel full of soiled clothes, no cooking/eating gear, and less furniture and electronica than one might find in the average Motel 6.
The Erna Fergusson Library has rows of tables with power strips for the techno-fortunate who fetch their own machinery hither and thither.
Today my “office” is at the Erna Fergusson Library on San Mateo. I pulled the early shift at the Northeast Heights Satellite Coffee outlet, because a day without a breakfast burrito is like a day without sunshine, and then moved over here to free up some parking space for the caffeine-deprived. I’d have used the Juan Tabo branch, which is closer to Rancho Pendejo, but it’s closed on Sundays.
The phrase “your tax dollars at work” has become a punchline for eons, but I doubt it’s funny to the three dozen or so folks who were queued up outside in the hot sun, waiting for the library to open at 1 p.m. Most of them were in the line to use the facility’s computers. Having mine in a messenger bag — two of them, actually — I felt slightly yuppified and ostentatious.
Imagine doing without the Innertubes and computers in this day and age. If you want to go low tech, that’s one thing; but having to is something else, especially if you’re trying to find, oh, I don’t know, a job or health care or child care or something.
Looking north on Trail 365. Apparently the construction of some newish houses (not ours) required a detour via pavement to the west.
Still trying to get everyone settled in (and settled down) at Rancho Pendejo. Amazing how difficult that can be when most of your earthly possessions are somewhere on the road, in the custody of others, and the cats spend the wee, small hours hunting remorselessly for a cozy basement that is six hours north of here.
You want cacti? We got cacti.
I’ve been using Satellite Coffee and the Juan Tabo Library as temporary offices while we await the installation of the Innertubes. Don’t have to tip as frequently at the library, but the coffee and breakfast burritos aren’t nearly as good.
I took a break from work this afternoon for a short march around a trail just east of our new digs that warrants further inspection by bicycle.
Herself has run a bit of it, but all I wanted to do today was just stagger around outdoors for a while, collect a little free vitamin D. I’m still running a fairly significant sleep deficit, and taking a cyclo-cross bike out on an unfamiliar trail bordered with various cacti seemed exceptionally stupid, even for the Irish.
The view from Tramway, on the descent to Interstate 25.
I managed to squeeze in my first ride as a born-again resident of New Mexico yesterday.
Nothing special, just an hour or so riding the Tramway bike path north from Rancho Pendejo, peeping out the terrain, getting a feel for things. We’re just a couple of blocks from the path, which links up neatly with the Paseo del Norte trail about 20 minutes up the hill. Other east-west feeder routes abound, and I hope to explore them directly.
I think this is Sandia Peak, as seen from the base of the road to the tram.
Lots of folks on bicycles out and about, most of them roadies, though there’s also some class of mountain-bike trail network in the area that I’ll inspect at some later date. Right now, the old plate is full to overflowing with chores and annoyances.
For starters, we have no Innertubes at the new place, and won’t until Oct. 3. This forces me to play “Hipster In the Coffee Shop,” a role for which I am far too unhip.
Also, and too, the cell service is only slightly evolved beyond the log drum, smoke signals, or two tin cans linked by a waxed string, so using the iPhone as a mobile hotspot is right out. One bar on the iPhone does not a data connection make. Coupled with the dearth of Innertubes this renders communications a bit, shall we say, spotty.
Likewise, we have almost none of our shit — the movers won’t show up for another four days or so, so we’re getting by with some stuff we bought from the previous owner and whatever we could cram into the rice-grinders.
Speaking of which, two of our three critters have more or less successfully made the transition via Subaru to new quarters. The lone holdout, Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment), spends the wee hours walking the battlements, inspecting the perimeter, and issuing challenges to foes only he can see.
As did Herbie Goldfarb in “The Milagro Beanfield War,” I find my brain going all foamy, like a vanilla milkshake, from lack of sleepzzzzzzzzzzz. …
The move to Duke City is going two ways, gradually and then suddenly, like Mike’s bankruptcy in “The Sun Also Rises.”
Since August we’ve managed to shift Herself, her toiletries and a subset of her wardrobe, and Mister Boo to Rancho Pendejo. Then, a week from today, boom! The movers show up and in two days Chez Dog will be stripped bare, its innards exported to New Mexico.
Mister Boo supervises my cycling coverage from the other side of the couch.
I spent Saturday night at the new place. Herself had scored a queen-sized bed for one of the guest rooms, which meant we could dispense with the inflatable mattress in the master bedroom, and come morning I did a few hours’ worth of paying work in the living room before stuffing the mobile office back into the Subaru and motoring north.
I’m out of practice at working on the go, and it shows. I tapped away at the MacBook in a crouch from the couch until I remembered the previous owner had left a cheapo desk and chair in a back room. Duh. That took a few of the kinks out of my process.
But I missed having the Turk sprawled out on my drawing board, and Mia peevishly demanding someone’s attention (“Meow? Meow? Meeeyow!”) So it was good to come home, even if “home” is something of a fluid concept at the moment — here today, there tomorrow.
And I even managed a ride, the first in a good long while. And just in time, too. Last night I dreamed that I had shed so much muscle mass since this two-speed exodus commenced that my bib shorts had become baggies.
Mad Blog Media 