"sweet! 4-day weekend!"

this is what i woke up to this morning: a completely hyper, overstimulated gus running around the house yelling "FOUR-DAY WEEKEND! FOUR-DAY WEEKEND! WHOO-HOO!!!" school was cancelled today because maybe a millimeter of ice fell last night and god knows no one should go outside during that kind of treacherousness. people in iowa are so laughing at us right now. thus, in a classic example of no-good-deed-goes-unpunishedness (on my part), gus is not at school again today. and he has taken it upon himself to irk his sister to the fullest extent of his capacity, just shy of the point of getting punished. big fun.

but i did learn something cool today--has anyone ever heard the urban legend about millions of atari games being buried somewhere in new mexico? it's true! see this site for all the gritty info.

gus and his monday morning stomach ache

rich and sophie over the rio grande gorge (it was freezing and windy!)

gus, not so happy to be out in the cold

gus is home with a monday morning stomach ache. it isn't his first, but i was so mean to him yesterday that i didn't argue much about his staying home today. and he may really have one (but i doubt it). we were in taos all weekend, which was lovely and clear--a perfect ski day for gus and rich (sophie and i stayed in town). then on the drive home gus was being annoying so i basically yelled at him the whole way back, hence no argument about staying home today. if kids only knew the extent of parental guilt for whatever reason...

taos was incredible--really good food, really good beer, really good music, and the ski valley is 100% open. we went to the earthship community for the first time and were totally impressed. we're trying to figure out if we can retrofit our house to take advantage of the passive solar part at least. they use water four times before it is discarded, and all of it is sourced from snow melt or rain (however since they only get 8 inches a year it seems like there must be another source--that level of water certainly couldn't hold up to rich's obsessive bathing rituals). the first use is for the tap, the second is for the plants that grow inside along the south-facing windows, the third is for the toilets, and the fourth is for exterior plants. very cool. i have to say, with our energy bills approaching $1000 for this month alone i totally dig the idea of an energy and water independent home. we desperately need an energy audit.

it was great to get away from everything for a while--last week was no fun (but, thankfully, gus' strep was negative!), and unfortunately this week doesn't look much better. my mom is doing very badly with her move. she is depressed into total stasis and hasn't unpacked a single box. i'm going back to houston on friday to try and get at least her kitchen and bedroom set up, which means that gus and sophie will be left here FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER with their dad. i figure gus is old enough to at least feed himself; sophie is on her own. i'll make sure to leave some horizon vanilla milk boxes down at her level. i'm guessing i'll hear about this from rich for quite a while.

gus warily eyeing the entrance to an earthship

detail of earthship construction

the mission church at las trampas--san josé de gracia de las trampas--along the high road to/from taos (we took the high road back, which was a mistake, as gus cannot handle winding mountain roads)

detail of the outer wall at las trampas

side view of las trampas church--it was built in 1760 (the NPS site has the date wrong) and clearly needs some attention today...

wednesday 23 jan 2008

so. so here i am. so here i am, going in a thousand different directions, none of which are productive. i am trying to help my sister with her wedding from 1000 miles away; i am trying to help my mother with her move from the same distance; i am perpetually mediating between gus/sophie, gus/rich, mom/dad, etc.; and the cherry on top today was that both kids ended up in the pediatrician's office (resulting in a prescription for one and a strep test for the other). but i did get to have green chile sushi with tracy today, so that was good.



i did buy that awesome back for my hasselblad (see above). i still have little to no idea what i am doing with it, but i am learning. the main thing that i have learned is that i must become much more proficient with photo editing software. i have photoshop elements right now, but it is kinda weak for what i need. this picture hasn't been tweaked at all yet has a great vintage/nostalgic feel to the palette on its own. i do miss the super-saturatedness of my film...

(p.s. argusgallery.com t-shirt contest update: no winner! it'll go back in the pile until the next contest. the answer was that it was my neighbor's house in iowa city. he leaves his lights on the tree all year...)

happy birthday tracy!

happy birthday trace--see you for tempura-fried green chile sushi tomorrow!

as i slowly emerge from my viral haze...

...i realize it has been a while since i posted anything. somehow, gus' evil bug found me (two weeks and change later--is that even possible?) and felled me, greatly. it may not be gus' bug per se but it is behaving exactly like his did. and i have to say, he is a trooper and a half for allowing me to continue driving to houston while he was this sick. i think i might have welcomed death 72 hours ago. this has sucked and i am just praying that sophie won't get this, too. so that's what is going on here. aren't you glad this isn't your house?

the el vado motel is saved! (for now)

the el vado motel, in happier times (2001), as portrayed by ken rockwell


we've been home just a few days from the trip from hell, and we all kinda hit the ground running--gus had a sleepover birthday party then school started back up (and he is the weatherman of the day today!), sophie is busy growing teeth and an attitude, and i came back to continue an uphill struggle (with many others) to save albuquerque's el vado motel.

a "developer," richard l. gonzales, purchased the el vado motel a couple of years ago for about $680,000. his intention was to knock it down and build what he calls luxury townhomes. there are many problems with this:
1. the el vado motel is listed on the national register of historic places (since 1993);
2. the el vado motel is the best example of pueblo revival architecture in a motor court setting--a style that is specific to not just new mexico but northern new mexico and albuquerque pre-WWII;
3. the el vado motel has no structural or engineering problems;
4. the el vado motel is not zoned for townhouses;
5. the el vado motel is a city icon that is beloved by albuquerqueans and route 66 enthusiasts alike;
6. mr. gonzales is not a responsible, informed, concientious or desirable developer, as evidenced by his involvement in the shameful sale of the atrisco land grant (see this for more info);
7. without sounding religious, there is a moral imperative to maintain a sense of place and history when possible that supercedes an individual's short-term wishes;
8. the el vado motel was not in a blighted state before mr. gonzales purchased it--it was a fully operational motel that was above water financially--and gonzales closed it and shuttered it.
9. mr. gonzales is asking an appalling $2.2 million for this property that he has ruined and that has been most recently appraised at just over $300,000.
10. mr. gonzales should not be rewarded for blighting his own property and thereby force the city to approve demolition...and too many other things to keep listing them here....

so, once we got back from houston i was armed with all kinds of good info from my dad about how to argue against land development and my own research about the historical/architectural importance of the el vado. the city council held a meeting last night to decide whether or not to designate it a city landmark, which would delay mr. gonzales' plan to raze the site for at least another 60 days until a hearing could be held to determine appropriateness for demolition. i prepared a spiel to give to the city council and, to my and everyone's surprise, at the 11th hour the city council allowed no public comments on the el vado situation. there were several of us there prepared to speak but no one was heard.

but, after a grueling, two plus hour slogfest between the city attorney and richard gonzales' attorney, the city council voted to designate the el vado motel a city of albuquerque landmark. i sat through the entire thing in amazement--five of the nine city councilors voted to landmark it (isaac benton, michael cadigan, sally mayer, rey garduño and ron harris) and four didn't (debbie o'malley, trudy jones, ken sanchez and brad winter). and their decision-making processes were as varied as an informed professional considering the elements (cadigan, benton), to someone who genuinely cared about place (garduño), to someone with future political concerns thinking this might hurt their chance at someday being mayor (winter, maybe o'malley)... there will be another hearing soon to determine the demolition certification, which will now be made more difficult with the landmark designation.

there is a lot of info on the web, some of which has been penned by me, if anyone is interested:
duke city fix, "that was a close one"
duke city fix, "speak out for preservation"
duke city fix, "don't let albuquerque lose this"
albuquerque tribune, "albuquerque designates motel city landmark..."
the national trust's reportage on the el vado
new york times article with a favorable review of the el vado from 2003

let's hope things improve over the next couple of months and that the city and the owner can reach a reasonable agreement.

HAPPY (belated) 2008!

we are finally back home after a crazy busy two weeks. the day after christmas (merry belated christmas, as well), gus, sophie and i left for houston to go and help my mom move out of her house. i knew it would be bad--i had always thought it was going to be the trip from hell because a) sophie has never been on an extended car trip and gets impatient driving gus to school; b) my mom has lived in her house for 27 years and is VERY emotionally attached to it and c) my mom also has a slight tendency to hoard, so her rather large house is rather stuffed full of, well, stuff...and it is very hard to convince her to part with anything. so it was always going to be bad.

what i didn't foresee was that gus was going to contract a stomach virus, which kicked in two hours into the trip.

yep, that's right. i had a vomiting child in the car with me and sophie for two days. it was truly the trip from hell. the first day we stopped about a dozen times and ultimately ended up spending the night in fort stockton, texas. i was under the complete delusion that gus was throwing up because he had motion sickness (which he does get, just not usually on car trips) and that eventually his body would absorb enough dramamine to make him stop throwing up. it didn't happen. it did, however, create pretty orange designs all over my car. i kept asking him what he wanted to do--did he want to go home or go to houston--and every time he said he wanted to keep going. oddly, he felt fine after each episode--that was why i never suspected a virus (to my/our peril).

when we finally checked in to the hotel he really went downhill and started feeling terrible. sophie wouldn't go to sleep so she kept bugging him; the only pharmacy in town (wal-mart) closed at 6:00 p.m. and didn't reopen until 9:00 in the morning; and the urgent care center that served like a 100 mile radius was completely booked solid with patients having actual life-threatening disorders. gus wasn't dehydrated at that time so there was no way i was going to take him and sophie and go sit in a waiting room all night. we were 500 miles from home, 550 miles from where we needed to be--we were completely stuck.

eventually sophie went to sleep and gus stopped being sick long enough to snooze and the next day we headed out for houston. we got there at night, checked into a really nice hotel near my mom's house and went to bed. i genuinely thought i would have to sell my car after that experience, but the good people at bubbles car detailing took care of it and made it smell more like some form of chemical smart bomb had gone off in my car rather than what it had been. it still smells like a chemistry experiment in my car--there is no telling what it is doing to us. gus does have some lingering psychological damage from the experience, which might make me have to sell it anyway. poor gus.

suprisingly, the rest of the trip didn't seem too bad in comparison.

christmas eve is here!

i love christmas eve--today i am spending all day making cookies, tracking santa on the norad santa tracker, and making coq au vin for tonight all while listening to "a christmas story" over and over and over. here's hoping your day is happy!

argus gallery giveaway!

i'm in the holiday spirit...and wish to celebrate! how about the migration of argusgallery.com from the earthlink server (which i hated) to godaddy's server (which i love)? i will send one lucky person a very very very limited edition argusgallery.com t-shirt (i only have XL) if you can tell me where i shot the above picture. i'll give you a hint--you're not looking at new mexico here. i need an exact description, please, and bonus points for whose house is pictured. i actually have three other shirts as well, so if you are not so fortunate to recognize this locale yet still long for a shirt i will gladly sell you one for $20. expensive, i know--if i would have made 400 rather than 20 they'd be cheaper...but then i'd have 400 shirts...

good luck!

it's almost christmas!

pentti sammallahti's finnish holiday greetings

christmas is just around the corner...and gus is very, very excited. sophie entertains herself by taking all the ornaments off of the tree and bringing them to us; i spend my days trying to find new hiding places for the presents. rich is doing more surgery than he ever thought humanly possible since everyone is trying to get their work done before they have to pay another annual deductible. it must be the end of the year!

if you get a chance...

...please check out www.missygaidoallen.com. i am migrating my www.argusgallery.com site from earthlink to godaddy and i just wondered if the new site (which currently looks exactly like the old site) works on other systems. the new site will eventually be www.argusgallery.com, and has all kinds of forwarded domain names (basically think of every family name i or my kids have and it should take you to argus gallery) so if i am lucky enough to be bookmarked by you, the bookmark will still work. let me know what you find, and thank you!

i have to post this for all deadbeats (or wannabe deadbeats)

this is what i got in my email this morning from mary hunt, the everyday cheapskate...


"Wishing You a Deadbeat Christmas

Deadbeats. That’s what credit card companies call their cardholders who use their credit card, pay the balance in full every month and never pay a nickel’s worth of interest. Deadbeats drive credit card companies crazy! [i told you those bastards won't give me a new credit card!]

It does take some effort to maintain a sterling deadbeat status. But for those of you who will be buying things online or using a credit card for the purpose of convenience, it is absolutely mandatory.

Want to learn how to be a deadbeat this Christmas? These three simple steps, if followed religiously, will give you the title of a world-class deadbeat.

REGISTER AND DEDUCT. When you use your credit card, immediately deduct the charge from your checkbook just as if you made the purchase with a check. Use a different color ink, like red, to indicate these purchases. You spent the money. It is gone!

During the holidays, also keep a running total of your credit purchases on a separate piece of paper you keep right in your checkbook. It will become a visual reminder of just where you are with your holiday spending.

CHECK OFTEN. Even for the most diligent among us, opening that credit card statement and seeing that balance can be quite a startling experience. Here’s how to counteract that kind of shock:

Go to your card company’s website and register your account. Now you can check your balance online daily, or as frequently as necessary. Or call the toll-free number on the back of your credit card. During periods when you are particularly credit-card-active, call at least once a week to get your current, up-to-the-minute balance. Even with all of your careful tracking, just hearing that number will keep your feet planted in reality. [i do this online--it is rather alarming, but it will keep you from spending. it has prevented several heart attacks in my house--largely because i'm not totally sure rich knows what to do if i have one...]

WRITE THE CHECK. The very moment that statement arrives, write out a check for the full amount and send it in. You’ve already deducted the total amount (in increments) from your checkbook balance. You’ve known all along what the balance is because of your frequent calling, so all of the surprise and mystery has been eliminated.

Make sure you enclose the payment stub from the statement and use only the preprinted envelope. Your mission is to get that entire payment into the company’s system and credited to your account without any delays and in plenty of time. [better yet pay online--that way it is there on time and that really pisses them off.]

The trade-off for enjoying the convenience of using a credit card is responsibility. Practice it diligently and you will avoid paying a very heavy price."


this woman is cheap/thrifty/responsible, and she rocks. i so love that she posted this right before christmas! okay, enough preaching.

strange question about target

has anyone else ever gone into a mega-target and just felt like lying down on the floor out of sheer, overwhelming depression? i don't know what was wrong with me--i went into target to get sophie some diapers and it was almost closing time, so it was almost empty, and as i was walking around i just wanted to crawl into a display of hanging clothes and hide. and this is not the first time i have had that thought. bizarre, i know. i was in a fairly good mood when i got there. and i'm not agoraphobic--i live in a city surrounded by nothingness. maybe it is the soullessness of being surrounded by all that stuff that is exactly like all the other stuff in there. maybe it was something about the impersonality of everything in such a vast, exposed space. i don't know. i do know that telling rich about this was a mistake. maybe i just need to up my meds.

(p.s. thanks erin S!

"alitalia has NO culpability."

i had an unexpected phone call today from an attorney representing alitalia. unexpected because last week i and an attorney representing delta air lines reached a settlement in the case i filed against them (them being delta and alitalia together). and more unexpected because the delta attorney started off our first negotiating session with the statement that she would be representing both delta and alitalia. apparently she forgot to tell the alitalia attorney...who was not happy that we had reached a settlement. in fact, she was quite pissed. the entire purpose of the phone call was to make sure that i understood, and agreed, that "alitalia has no culpability." she said it, just like that, over and over again. and i kept telling her that, in fact, it was alitalia agents who prevented us from getting on the plane--before they ran and hid when i started taking down everyone's names i got a really good look at their uniforms--and she told me it wasn't so. she said that according to some montreal convention blah blah blah they were agents of delta. fine, but our tickets were purchased through alitalia as well. "doesn't matter." actually, it mattered very much to bernalillo county metropolitan court, but whatever. "alitalia has no culpability. alitalia did absolutely nothing wrong." after about 10 minutes of listening to this i acquiesced and said she could write whatever the hell she wanted to write in her letter, as long as she didn't tamper with my settlement terms (i, and cindy, worked hard for those!). she agreed.

it was odd.

so there you have it. as per alitalia's attorney, "alitalia has NO [fucking] culpability." and i still get my settlement. yay me!

perhaps we should buy sophie a proper bed with the settlement money?

the christmas card that wasn't

(i'm writing this while listening to holly golightly's, "christmas tree on fire" EP. if you don't already have this in your itunes library, you should definitely run to the site right now and download it!)

i finally managed to get our christmas cards out yesterday, but, alas, they were picture-free. and i did actually shoot them--they just completely didn't work because a)they were printed 4x6, and my cards were 3.5x5; b)the image couldn't be cropped without looking weird; and c)the printer completely screwed up the image and made sophie and gus' faces almost completely black, yet they are actually the whitest children in the world. pigment-free, almost. so the pictures were removed and recipients were directed here to see what they were missing:

this is the one that should have gone out

but this was a close second

followed by this one of the 50-foot baby

so there you have the insert for the christmas card that wasn't. next year i will buy appropriately-sized cards and make sure the photos are done properly by doing them myself!

(p.s. erin o--are you still stalking me? if so, could you please send me an email with your address so i can send you a picture-free card? you can send it to me via the comments--they don't get posted unless i approve them...which i won't with your address....thanks!)

another reason to love new mexico

the annual I-40 tumbleweed snowman put out by the arroyo flood control people. you can see him between carlisle and university, heading west, on the north side of the freeway. isn't he cute?

sophie channels her inner cy twombly

"untitled" by cy twombly, 1970

i love twombly's work--i even had the chance to meet him in the early 90s and speak with him, briefly, about art. he was a generous and interesting man. i especially love his work at the cy twombly gallery, where it is safely ensconced on the walls. i do not, however, love it when sophie decides to emulate his work on my beautiful, white, silk and linen sofa. i was packing up boxes to ship off stuff i sold on ebay (i am still raising money for that digital back!), and i was using a red chisel-point sharpie to cross out writing on the boxes and a black sharpie to write the buyer's address on them. i stopped watching sophie for a minute and she absconds with both of them. i didn't notice because i am working on wrapping stuff in bubble wrap...and then i smell that unmistakable smell of sharpie. sophie has a HUGE smile on her face as she has just finished coloring the armrests of the sofa sharpie red. she was so proud of herself. i was sweating and trying not to scream.

so, she didn't get in trouble--she's only 18 months old and she wouldn't understand why i was yelling at her (or what i was saying) anyway. i got out every toxic stain-fighting chemical i could find and just started drenching the armrests. my google searches from yesterday are: "permanent ink on fabric must remove cannot wash," "sharpie removal fabric silk," and "how do you get sharpie out of fabric," etc. the answer is that you really can't. so now we have pale pink (you can fade, just not remove) cy twomblys on our couch. and i'm sure you're wondering, "why the hell do they have a white couch in the first place?" good question--it is because we inherited this monster sofa, clad in a lovely linen and silk blend that we could never afford to replace, from my dad's mom when she passed away. it was part of her household when she lived in beverly hills, so you can imagine how nice this sucker is. also, through all of gus' early childhood it was hidden under a slip cover. my mistake for removing it and trying to have an adult-ish looking living room...

...and the worst part about this isn't the pair of twomblys on our couch, or the black twombly we found last night on the wooden toy box. no. the worst part about it is that we still haven't found the black sharpie yet.

sophie's touch

poor sophie. she inherited rich's touch (as evidenced by the video below, and please disregard my annoyance with gus and rich)--and that's not a good thing. rich has a rather overly-tactile way of approaching the world, which results in a not-gentle touch. and sophie's got it. when she wants something she grabs it with a vice-like clutch; when she tries to climb into my lap she uses her kung-fu grip to scale me. i always have little bruises all over my arms from where she has grabbed onto me for support/attention/comfort/etc. and gus is just the opposite--even when he was a little baby i never worried if he grabbed onto a dangly earring because i knew he wouldn't rip it from my lobe (sophie might actually do this). all of my friends were amazed that we left our good china out on display, at kid-level, the whole time he was growing up and even if he picked up a plate i just asked him to put it down and he did it--GENTLY. it is unfortunate for sophie--is there some form of occupational therapy that she can do to unlearn rich's touch?

so this is what i saw...

...when i looked up from my computer yesterday. i heard a bouncing noise, i looked up--fully expecting to see gus--and it's rich. and he's having way too much fun on gus' pogo stick. sophie is scared/thrilled; gus is bouncing alongside rich (without a stick). my family is silly.


*springs squeaking* *springs squeaking* *springs squeaking*...

...*springs squeaking* *springs squeaking* *springs squeaking*...

...*springs squeaking* (sophie runs for cover) *springs squeaking*

look how happy he is!

this is moments before crashing into tomas' pile of leaves

afterwards he finally let gus have a turn

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)