why gus will live on the farm

a lot of families in texas have someone who is living on the farm or should be sent to live on the farm, as city life just doesn't suit them. this isn't necessarily a compliment--frequently when one says they have a relative living on the farm it conjures up an image of a male who can't quite find a job and likes to scratch himself in public, or a female who can rope, brand, castrate, slaughter, and process beef single-handedly. or it means the p-farm (prison). i am referring to the former not the latter (god willing). but in gus' case, and my dear uncle bert's, it is a compliment--it just suits him/them. and below are just a sampling of why gus will live on the farm:



ability to ride a 4-wheeler--rich almost had a heart attack when he saw this picture (many, many orbit injuries due to 4-wheeling...don't do it)



ability to get along with animals (gus and tyler, my parent's two favorite people--sorry sophie)



ability to enjoy walking the property (gus, daddo, tyler, thing 1 and thing 2)



ability to chill (gus and daddo and thing 1 or thing 2, and this is the most relaxed i have ever seen my dad)



ability to rope, or at least a willingness to learn



ability to look cool when riding off into the sunset



ability to enjoy actual tailgating--also good for football fans (this picture was actually shot in iowa, but you get the idea...)

we're public now!

after too many complaints about google's registration system, i decided to go public...and we'll see how long that lasts. thank you so much to everyone who took the time to register--it may still be useful in the future! today i am just posting some really old digital photos that i dug up out of storage:

happy sophie? no, it's gus! my babies look amazingly similar


gus and rich on gus' first birthday


gus and rich on safari at fossil rim in glen rose, texas (note the familial hair growth pattern)


rich being a really, really bad dad


my mom, who knows how to party.

composition by gus

today i thought i'd post some pictures gus has taken over the last couple of months. i gave him my old digital camera and he has come up with some interesting shots (well, interesting to me, at least!). he has a very good eye for composition, which is a hard thing to learn if you don't naturally have it. i think because he shoots subjects that he loves, they are necessarily more successful images. i always enjoy seeing images from another person's perspective, particularly when that person is 4' 5". i'm sure he'd love any comments you may have! and, if you can't already tell, posts like this come about when one has studied way too much art history...

sophie and the flamingo look great (try to ignore the scary giant pink woman)--perfect offset pyramid with a pyramid inside


this is what gus sees everyday in the car--another offset pyramid


gus' favorite park covered in snow (i love the angle placement on this one)--the tree placed right at the golden mean


what gus sees in the morning--double pyramid, nice use of lines, horizontal split at the golden mean


this is what gus was shooting in the earlier los poblanos balloon picture; i love that the fence is right there yet integrated into the composition

sophie discovers refined sugar!

mmm, sweet...


i finally managed to get the christmas tree cut into burnable-sized pieces and lit that baby up! there was a stray candy cane left over from the decorations that i put on the coffee table in our living room that sophie found...and ate...and hence the story of when sophie tried refined sugar for the first time:

gus: "sophie, stop running over my toes. you're being a bad baby" (sophie only hears a high-pitched whine)


sophie: "i noticed you have some sugar..."


this is how sophie looked to us for about 30 minutes


the inevitable crash

domestic horrors (an exaggeration)

i am feeling a bit terrified of my family at the moment:

sophie, who is usually a very good natured baby, has been a 17-pound ball of terror recently. i think she may be teething and having a growth spurt and honing her separation anxiety all at the same time. eventually she'll just rotate her head 360 degrees and i'll know for sure (that would actually explain a lot).

poor gus isn't necessarily terrifying, but he has had major worries today because he did something he rather regrets. he bought a pen at target this morning that had a stress-relieving squishy ball on top of it, and he put it in his mouth to chew on it (why?) and it blew up. orange-y, liquid-y, plastic-y goo was everywhere, and i'm pretty sure i saw the beads roll and reconnect with each other like the bad guy's matter in terminator II. it completely freaked him out (and me as well) and, ironically, this stupid stress-relieving pen has induced more anxiety in him than one could have imagined possible. he has come screaming out of the playroom several times this afternoon going "amigoingtobeokay?!? amigoingtobeokay?!? amigoingtodie?!? areyousurei'malright?!?" i should have taken pictures, but that probably would have been considered cruel.

and, rounding out the terror, rich has a patient with flesh eating bacteria. seriously. actual flesh eating bacteria all around the eye that he has to go in and see every 6-12 hours. i am keeping a 10 foot distance from him, alcohol-based gel sanitizer on me, and he isn't allowed anywhere near sophie (i figure gus is done for after today anyway, so they can keep each other company). rich keeps telling me "people are around bacteria all the time; as long as you're healthy, you're fine...blah blah blah (insert charlie brown's teacher's voice here)," and i'm sure he's right, but i saw the pictures of this poor guy and i am unsettled and staying the hell away from him.

quite a day...below are images of less terrifying times (last night).

sophie gettin' washed like a chicken


why does sophie get to take a bath in the sink?


big splash!


excuse me, but this is my bath...


what'd he put down there?

you know you're in new mexico when...

...the schools are cancelled for three days because it snowed five days ago! gus was supposed to go back to school today, but it didn't happen because the schools here apparently didn't realize that you were supposed to shovel/plow the snow off of the driveways, sidewalks, etc. rather than waiting for the sun to melt it. welcome to the land of mañana! so now the schools are closed all this week because there are several inches of solid ice preventing the kiddos from getting to school safely. actually, the really sad part about this is that apparently APS (albuquerque public schools) only has 4 people on staff to remove snow at over 100 schools (there are 90,000 kids in APS). it is a poor state, and you just have to feel sorry for those 4 people right now.

i thought we were supposed to be getting away from the snow?


please don't tinkle on my side of the bed



freezing gus and sophie at a mass ascension during balloon fiesta



gus watching a balloon land at los poblanos ranch (just down the street from us--it is our local CSA, a program which i highly recommend to everyone!)



yet another happy sophie!

why bermuda triangle?

to answer the question as to why i titled our blog as i did, and this may be obvious to some of you, this is the reason:

the bermuda triangle



the anatomical bermuda triangle



the allen family bermuda triangle

we have moved in a giant triangle, twice + 1 move, between houston, albuquerque and iowa city since 1995. our latest move iowa city to albuquerque broke the cycle only by going in the opposite direction from the five previous moves.

HAPPY 2007!

a new year with so much in store--and no immediate plans to move! what a great way to start off a year.

no one lost an eye last night due to frozen champagne (FYI: the answer to the enucleation question was 3). in fact, it was only garden-variety calls and not even any trauma. i think rich feels cheated, somehow. he just got back from call clinic and will now be here trying to figure out why our new roof is leaking (i think all the snow on our flat roof has turned to ice).

more family pictures from the past month or so...enjoy your day!

gus and i making pinecone bird feeders



gus in serious study mode



sophie trying to get gus and rich out of serious study mode



happy sophie!



another happy sophie!

it's new year's eve, and there's still a ton of snow outside

christmas spirited sophie!

surprisingly, the snow is still here--usually it is gone in a day or so, but this is sticking around. we have some giant old cottonwoods in the back that are dropping enormous branches full of snow (fortunately not on the house) and creating an obstacle course for gus. all of our neighbors lost power yesterday, yet we are still okay--we had to buy a ridiculously expensive transformer for our house when we moved in because the electrical system here was way inadequate and out of date, and i have complained mightily about it, yet it seems to have paid off!

rich is up at his call clinic, again, and hopefully there won't be anything too bad later--tonight is the night that people come in for putting champagne bottles in the freezer that then explode in the eye. september is when people come in for putting beer bottles in the freezer (to sit and watch football with a cold one) that then blow up in the eye. what's the lesson for the day? (email me if you need a hint.) i need to ask him how many enucleations he has done because of that. pictures today are from the last couple of weeks--since the holidays are almost over i thought i'd get these on while they're relevant. i hope everyone has a happy, safe, healthy 2007!


gus picking out our tree in the cibola national forest (yes, we had a permit)


gus with the conquered christmas tree


you can take the boy out of iowa...sophie looks totally frightened


gus with his first new mexico snow angel--this is what snow usually looks like in albuquerque

an iowa day in new mexico!

a familiar winter sight greeted us this morning--massive snowfall! and that sight was followed by another familiar one: rich trying to get to work, in a car he is still not used to driving, because the poor guy is on call. and not just the Corporation's call, but citywide call. so you can imagine the unbelievable stress he is under...and now he is out driving in a foot of snow. that much snow in iowa might not be so bad--the city would plow the streets and salt/sand the roads--but in new mexico, where this much snow is an anomaly, it is a rather scary event. but look how much fun gus is having! more pictures to follow...





UPDATE: rich made it back from the call clinic, and got to spend the rest of the afternoon doing this:



...and a little of this:



...and right now he is building a lego imperial starship destroyer with gus (i was told no photos until it is finished) and hoping that he doesn't have to drive anywhere else tonight. blindness having been abated in albuquerque for one more day...