playing catch-up

we have been going going going over the past week. rich took the week off (we were supposed to go to lucerne, switzerland, but the weak dollar and the high swiss standard of living reacted badly with our frugality) and decided to stay close to home and relax, sort of.

to back up a bit, last week we adopted a dog:

meet paco

he is muy mellow, gentle, loves the kiddos, and doesn't bite. basically he is the polar opposite of every other dog we have ever owned. yay us! i really did trade him for a head of organic lettuce, and my friend julia really did find him living in a burrow of tumbleweeds absolutely covered in ticks and tines from the plants. he is one lucky puppy.

the week we adopted paco gus' camp-o-rama continued with the NMMNH (new mexico museum of natural history) "art adventures" camp. it was great--he went around to different places near albuquerque and did different art activities in plein air and got to run around a bit at nature/historical sites. he loved it. at the end he took me on a tour of the museum, which was mighty rewarding for me. rock on.

that weekend, which was last weekend, we went to the albuquerque gay pride parade with our friend terry and her son raffy--it was tremendously fun. gus raked in more candy and mardi gras beads than he could ever use and the spectacle was fantastic:

gus, raffy and terry at the end of the festivities (raffy's shirt reads: "got moms?" while terry's is self-explanatory)

so after that, gus had a sleepover birthday party at his friend max's house (and wished everyone a happy gay day--no one had a clue what he was talking about); we picked him up in the morning and headed to taos for rich's birthday. rich's goal was to ride the enchanted circle around taos, angel fire, eagle's nest red river and questa in one day for his 43rd. and he did it--but was fairly exhausted at the end of it all. the loop circles wheeler's peak and has some strenuous spots, like an almost 10,000 foot pass through the mountain, yet he did it. bully for him.

after we returned from taos, we got paco fixed, rich and i rewrote our wills and set up a trust, and then we all started madly cleaning the house for tomorrow's blog post...