Category: Albuquerque

From sunshine to snow

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
Headed east toward the Sandias and El Rancho Pendejo via the Bear Canyon Arroyo bike trail.
Headed east toward the Sandias and El Rancho Pendejo via the Bear Canyon Arroyo bike trail.

Another BRAIN deadline beaten, if only barely.

And thus yesterday afternoon I was able to get out on the bike for a couple of hours. What a beautiful day it was, too — warm and sunny with a slight wind from the south, and a temp of 63 by the time I rolled home.

Today is supposed to be even nicer, perhaps with a record high — 71? In February? You shittin’ me? — and I will be at it again, having awarded myself a day off without pay. Hey, when you’re a freelancer, every day you take off is a day without pay.

But a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. We’re fixin’ to switch from chart-bustin’ warmth to snow on the deck by Sunday. So it goes in the upper reaches of the Chihuahuan Desert.

In the eastern reaches of the Ay Chihuahua Desert, meanwhile, the usual shock-‘n’-awe continues largely unabated. Nobody seems to be able to pry the phone out of Beelzebozo’s stubby lil’ fingers; the national security adviser is said to have had an illegal back-door chat with the Rooskies; and America’s newest senator is so swampy the Swamp-Thing looks at him and goes all like, “Dude, you make me look like Justin Timberlake.”

So far the only bright spot has been the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals punking Tweety Bird, and it’s anybody’s guess whether he continues to have that burning, itching sensation once The Supremes have weighed in. If they get the case before the Repugs can install their ‘bot on the Court, I’d put my money on a 4-4 split; afterward, all bets are off.

Rain and shine

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
It's still colorfully humid for New Mexico, but you won't see me complaining. The trails are marvelously tacky.
It’s still colorfully humid for New Mexico, but you won’t see me complaining. The trails are marvelously tacky.

This past weekend’s precip’ was a record-breaker, according to the Albuquerque Journal.

We didn’t get any snow here at El Rancho Pendejo, just a daylong, soaking rain that had miraculously evaporated from the trails by the time I went running yesterday. Only a couple smallish puddles remained.

And warmer, drier weather is on the way, which is good news, as I have video to shoot.

Things are looking a little sunnier down Chelsea Manning’s way, too. The Crypto-Mooslim Kenyan Socialist Usurper has commuted the bulk of her sentence for leaking classified documents, and she will be a free bird in five months instead of 28 years.

 

Sky yi yi

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments
Steven Spielberg with his trademark boiling clouds ain't got nothin' on the real deal.
Steven Spielberg with his trademark boiling clouds ain’t got nothin’ on the real deal.

I’m glad I saw this before Darth Cheeto’s “press conference” yesterday. Otherwise I might have thought it was God coming down to dick-punch us all for putting this two-bit totalitarian in the Oval Office.

Sure puts the “dick” in “dictator,” doesn’t he?

Shoveling

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments
Behold the Driveway of Doom.
Behold the Driveway of Doom.

Jaysis. Some days, the writing, it goes smooth like butta.

And some days, it goes more like shitting broken bottles into a flaming toilet. Something of a pain in the keister, is what.

This is the grotesquely scenic route toward explaining the recent dearth of bloggery in these environs. With mots of the bon variety proving elusive I felt compelled to corral the few I was able to catch, hoping eventually to assemble them into a remuda of paying copy.

Nix.

Notions kept arising with malicious intent, like Martin Sheen surfacing in the lagoon en route to snuffing Marlon Brando in “Apocalpyse Now.” False paths with bad endings. Curiously shaped bricks that, while fascinating in their own right, didn’t quite fit in the wall.

Gah.

Also, it snowed. One of those obnoxious, featherweight snows that, coupled with a stiff north wind, basically glazes a steep, north-facing driveway like a cop’s donut if the homeowner is distracted by journalism and forgets to clear it first thing.

Sheeeeeeeeeeeeyit.

While all this was going on I was striving mightily to avoid the actual news, which, wow, talk about your false paths and bad endings. The road goes ever on and on. Here be dragons. This way to the Dark Side. Thus I shunned The New York Times and NPR in order to remain blissfully ignorant and focused on the task at hand, viz., to wit, earning the meager handful of coppers I require to purchase my common groats and lentils.

And now I believe I need a break from all that. It’s the weekend, f’chrissakes. The toilet will still be on fire come Monday morning.