adventures at metro court

yesterday sophie and i went on a BIG adventure to bernalillo county metropolitan court. after some serious help from my friend cindy, i finally got up the nerve to file a complaint against delta air lines and alitalia for their refusal to let us board the plane from venice to albuquerque after our trip (it was an ugly scene for all involved--i'm fairly certain that i have never acted that badly in public in my life). anyway, very long story short, delta/alitalia claimed we were too late to board, we disagreed, and we ended up staying an extra day in venice mestre--which is pretty much the equivalent of staying in east orange, new jersey when you are supposed to be in manhattan. and we were forced to rent a hotel room (that took us two hours to find--everything was booked), and pay a fortune to change our tickets, and all that good stuff. so i finally filed a complaint in metro court (it's like small claims court). but before it was filed...

sophie and i got to the courthouse and were stuffed into a claustrophobia-inducing vestibule with about 100 other people trying to get through the metal detectors. it took 20 minutes. i was being paranoid and worried that someone was going to cough on/steal/look at sophie; sophie just sat there in stunned silence. the guy in front of me was there to reschedule his court-mandated DWI education class (third offense); the guy behind me was talking to his friend about the newest restraining order his girlfriend had put on him and together they decided that that bitch was crazy. i stopped listening to conversations after that. i learned a lot about non-trendy tattoos. i totally looked like i fit in with them, though, because i have this giant bruise on my jaw from where i had to have a permanent crown removed and i was clutching onto sophie--i'm guessing i most resembled a domestic-abuse victim with a pending custody issue. anyway, when we finally got through the metal detector, which i set off over and over again (bra wires?), a guard started yelling "whose purse is this?" of course it was mine. she was holding it up (sideways) and i watched as all of my stuff gradually fell out of it. then she bellows "you gotta cell phone in here. you can't have that in here. go put it in your car and go through the line again. you must exit the building now." and i'm just shooting this woman daggers but she's obviously seen far worse than me so i gather my junk, sophie, and what's left of my patience and i leave.

so we do the line again. this time sophie is not so complacent or stunned or silent (she can't believe we're there again either). we get through much faster largely due to sophie's volume. i get to the clerk's area and they get everything done and the complaint filed for me in about 20 minutes as well (maybe there's a target time quota for everything at the courthouse?) and before leaving i mention that i received a parking warrant in the mail that i need to take care of. she hesitates for a moment and points to the most congested area yet and says that that is where we need to go. even including the DMV, i have never seen so many pissed-off looking people wringing their hands and grumbling in such a densely-packed place ever. it is like a two-hour wait. the clerk kinda looks at me a little longer and asks if i still have the little piece of paper with my number on it, i tell her i do, and she bypasses that line entirely and puts my number back in the system! we get called next. so i walk from her window to the next window and start working on my parking warrant.

once the next woman pulls up my record, she says "you don't have one parking warrant." and i'm like "yeah, i think i do, it would have been about october 26th..." and she just looks at me and, rather flatly, says, "you have four." okay, that actually did surprise me a bit. they were from like 2003 (when we lived here last time...and i do vaguely remember getting lots of tickets before we left and not being sure that we would ever come back so i didn't worry about them...). she kept saying "you shoulda been booted by now. you got lucky. i can't believe they didn't boot you." and i'm like "yes, thank you, i'll pay them all, let's just get this over with (so i can leave this god-forsaken place)." so i paid them, and now i'm all squeaky clean again. and i didn't even get shanked on the way out for bypassing the two-hour wait-a-thon. yay me!

so today i spent the day poring over the internet, trying to figure out how the hell to serve delta and alitalia with these complaints, and most importantly who to serve them to. i figured out delta but alitalia is a toss-up between a registered agent and an office that accepts processes, both in new york city. i hired a really nice process server in manhattan who is going to do it for me for the alitalia one--new york state requires that a process server be registered and all this other professional stuff; in new mexico a process server just has to be over 18 and not a party to the lawsuit. my friend julia is going to go with me on friday to santa fe and do the honors then we're going to cafe pasqual's for lunch. doesn't that sound like fun? and isn't julia amazing for serving papers for me? i have wonderful friends.

pretty, pretty bruise (FYI: rich is right-handed)

deadbeats, we

i love words--i love playing with meaning, trying to create neologisms, and oddities of the english language. one such oddity is the autoantonym--a word with two meanings, one being the exact opposite of the other. like cleave ("the icicle cleaved from the eave." "we cleave together like white on rice."), left ("he finally left!" "there's one apple left!"), overlook ("please overlook the mess." "lovely overlook at the dam."), and my latest favorite, deadbeat. in normal everyday parlance a deadbeat is one who doesn't pay what he (or she) owes. in banking parlance a deadbeat is one who pays what he (or she) owes, in full, every month, and thus the banks don't make a red cent on your ass and further will not issue you a new credit card to buy some camera equipment that you really, really need...yes, i still can't get a loan. rich and i are deadbeats. so i still don't have either a physical darkroom or a digital darkroom, damnit. i even took my name off the prius list to free up any possible earmarked car-loan-type credit! i am obviously not creative enough with my finances.

surviving black friday

you know the shopocalypse has hit when stores are opening at 4:00 a.m. to sell things. can you imagine how much it would suck to work at one of those stores today? celebrate buy nothing day today instead!

happy thanksgiving!

i thought a glimpse of thanksgiving, via 100-year-old postcards, might be interesting. enjoy and have a happy day!

you know this kid is losing a finger


where are this giant baby's parents?


before cooking the turkey, it is best to poke him with a stick,


and make him play dress-up,


then have him tow a cart with a heavy load (rich thinks there's probably a hatchet hidden somewhere),


and then let the cook get in on the action


but of course 100 years ago people didn't actually kill the turkeys themselves, they just sent them outside to let the eagles do it for them (who is sending a card like this?)


worst thanksgiving costume ever.

my new CD is out in germany!

okay, it isn't exactly my CD per se, but that most certainly is my image on james galway's cover! it is from the series iowa spring and i think they did a great job with it--sony/BMG has rights to it for i think one year. sweet!

one more way that being a woman can get you killed (slowly)

when we lived in houston, rich used to give me much grief for always wanting to get a pedicure at tulip nail. i loved tulip nail--dozens of southeast asian women chattering loudly in their respective language/s while giving the best, and cheapest, mani/pedi in houston. it was quite a sight and a bit dangerous--you didn't want to stay in there too long with all the fumes and nail dust. anyway rich would ALWAYS either discourage my going there or berate me for doing so because he was convinced i was going to contract hepatitis C. granted he was probably right but i really loved going there and he really ruined pedicures for me. and i resent that--god forbid i should paint my own toenails. so that is one way being a woman can get you killed (slowly).

getting your eyebrows waxed is now one more way that being a woman can get you killed (slowly). rich recently had to admit a patient, which doesn't happen very often, because she developed MRSA after having her eyebrows waxed. yuck. for those of you who aren't familiar with MRSA, it is antibiotic-resistant bacteria. yuck, again. poor woman. spas are not the cleanest places to begin with--even at tulip nail you'd see them lug out the giant vat of paraffin that gets reused for every client (not the haired wax, just the dippers and applicators and--gross--the paraffin foot dip is communal to all this). so apparently someone with MRSA went in, got her eyebrows or lip or whatever done and then this poor woman caught it soon thereafter...i would make a bikini wax joke but i don't think it'd be funny. is it okay to joke about MRSA? i don't know the answer to that.

i actually do know someone whose family has been battling it for about a year...it is a mighty sucky disease.

rich may be...

...the face of the Corporation, but I am the face of albuquerque! well, one of them at least. there are seven digital billboards around town (click here for locations) that will run 30 selected images for two to six weeks. if you stand there and watch, it takes about 5 minutes to view the entire exhibition. i am thrilled!

post-new orleans restoration

daddy long legs and miss sophie

we're back! did you miss us? i've been so bad about writing regularly that i bet you didn't know we were gone...but we were. we went with rich to the AAO conference in new orleans for four whirlwind days. we stayed at one of my favorite places--the olivier house on toulouse just north of bourbon. the building dates from the 1830s and i'm guessing it spent some time as a bordello...but that just makes it more fabulous. my feeling (and cindy's) is that you can stay at a marriott or a hampton inn or whatever in any city and have the same experience, which is sometimes just what you need, but i would much rather stay somewhere that is entrenched in the style of the city. and our room at the olivier house couldn't have felt more like new orleans--it was a two story room with a fountain and 15-20 foot overgrown tropical plants inside. it was kinda like living in covered patio/greenhouse and it was awesome. it was the fifth or sixth time i have stayed there--all of their rooms are different--and the third time in the waterfall room. gus loved it, as did sophie who couldn't stay out of the fountain.

and, we got to see cindy, cole and rory who recently relocated to mandeville! we all went to the zoo (me, gus and sophie with cindy, cole and rory) and that was wonderful. i also saw carter and erin o, who are doing beautifully and are much missed (rich saw tons of people at the meeting but of course we weren't there...) and as an extra bonus, we had the same return flight as andrea, one of rich's co-residents at iowa. she and i got to talk and catch up for a couple of hours as we all flew to houston. she was travelling solo, sans her seven kids and husband (yes, seven--and to make you feel even worse she is a full-time ophthalmologist! and what did i do today?) and looks remarkably unchanged. it was a good trip. but i'm glad to be home.


sophie in our tropical apartment


gus discovers the joys of cafe du monde


(as does sophie)


the olivier house has a pool and gus was determined to get in (although it was a tad frigid), but didn't advance any further than this until...


...the next day when sophie jumped in, all by herself, in her dress and everything, and scared us both to death--gus grabbed her and pulled her up so she could breathe. now we have both saved a sibling from drowning!


in retrospect, i did have a lot of warning that she might want to jump (like this)


and this, and the fact that she couldn't stay out of the fountain in the room


silly sophie


meditative gus, during a rare quiet moment in jackson square


are you going to eat all of that?


creepy clown at blaine kirn's mardi gras world


gus in mardi gras regalia!


(sophie didn't want to play)


gus on his best behavior at mardi gras world--but this wasn't the highlight of the trip for him...


nor were the penguins at the aquarium...


...it was seeing his buddy cole!

happy 99th gammy!

today would have been my grandmother's 99th birthday--happy birthday gammy! this isn't at all how i remember her--i think this photo was shot about 10 years before i was born--but it is a nice image all the same. she looks exquisitely proper and manicured. it is the companion portrait to my grandfather's picture. she died almost 7 years ago and i still miss her terribly. i'm going to try and go to austin next year and have a picnic with her for the big 1-0-0, but today i will have a glass of veuve clicquot, her favorite champagne, and think of her.

naked sophie and a couple of movies

yeah, i'm naked, and i'm makin' a funny face. whatcha gonna do 'bout it?

my children are silly. gus is silly all the time but sophie is figuring out the silliness and is catching up to his frequency. this is sophie, a couple of days ago, on her bouncy horse (also known as best. goodwill. find. ever.)




this one isn't silly, but rather kinda unusual--not really something you see every day. it is a short video of the dancers at el kookooee

is this "the face of albuquerque"?

probably not--it isn't as sharp as it could be, and i'm guessing better balloon fiesta images were submitted by others

so maybe this is it? i think the lack of focus might be a turn-off to a company called CLEAR channel...ha ha bad joke...

clear channel is introducing a bunch of digital billboards around town and they are looking for local artists to submit work for display before they are turned over to entirely commercial use. they are calling the competition a search for "the face of albuquerque," a title which definitely befits a model/calendar girl search better. these are the two images i submitted and i'm fairly certain they won't be selected...but wouldn't it be cool if they were? i heard through friends, though i never saw it myself, that after i left albuquerque in 1996 (the first time) one of my pictures was used on a billboard to advertise for a development in the sandias:



sadly, i no longer have the negative for this image--i sold it, along with all rights, to kodak/high desert (forgive the wonky angle--i was trying to avoid flash glare). i don't recommend selling your rights, ever, as i'm not even sure i'm allowed to reproduce it here. it is a strange thing not to be able to display your own work, you know?

art-o-mat update

one of the 50 art-o-mat images

okay, i am psyched--i just got an email from someone in louisville, kentucky about my art-o-mat pieces so i guess that is where they were placed. if so, they are at the kentucky center for the performing arts. very cool, indeed. if you still haven't checked out art-o-mat, click here.