Wanna be me?

Apparently someone does...
and apparently you can buy enormous amounts of stuff in Australia using numbers that don't belong you...
and even though on the same day, things are being purchased in Albuquerque (where all of the previous transactions have taken place) the bank thinks that it's okay to allow those Australian purchases...
even though they are many, many more dollars than have ever been available attached to those numbers!!!
AAARRRGGGGHHHH!!!
And there was a fraud alert attached to those numbers for the last month...more drama that I would rather not deal with must be dealt with...do you think all those "A" confused the bank? What a way to start the weekend!

Thank you for listening...
love the drama queen... trying desperately to give back that particular crown

Love Thursday

Love Thursday...the food edition!

The summer of eating beautifully...

This is a typical dinner for me.

Rosy tomatoes, cool pale green cucumbers, green grapes, Rainier cherries, cold white corn on the cob and a good, rustic bread spread with pimento cheese.

And I seem to repeat those exact colors in every meal.

Do you have to be Southern to eat pimento cheese sandwiches?

Mango, strawberry and green grape salad...

Every night I seem to make something that pleases me even more.

Cucumber and avocado salad with lime juice and mint...

Tonight's yummy delight was a cheese omelet and lovely salad with added basil and peaches.

Made a wonderful vinaigrette with honey mustard instead of Dijon...

I seem to want to make something more beautiful than the day before, like some sort of summer delight competition!

Roasted green beans, yellow peppers and mushrooms...

At times, I think I should be applauding the summer bounty that gives me such great delight.

Cottage cheese with tomatoes, green pepper and those green olives stuffed with pimentos in a jar...

Okay, I'm weird but it's a good weird right?

And since I am sharing, I will tell that my very favorite meal -until this summer of beauty- has always been avocados and rice cakes, partly because how beautiful the contrast is.

What are your favorite summer combos? Do you ever "cook" for the color effect? Share, no judging here...

Synchronicity, yowsers!!!

Synchronicity... keep reading...
I know, I know I've been gone a long time and I do have tales to tell of adventures, good food, small graces, a dead computer and so many things I've missed with all of you. Those tales will be told and illustrated but today things aligned in such a way and it is so damn cool that I have giggled all day long!
Grab something cold to drink, plop yourself down in front of the swamp cooler and join me in my delightful tale.
In amongst the computer woes, Internet troubles and going back to work in a real job, I have had some interesting correspondence from afar. Could I be any more cryptic? Well, I suppose I could but anyway, a couple exciting opportunities are in the air for next April here in the land of enchantment and I have been thinking about them. Last night I was talking to a dear friend and asking her if she had ever heard of a book called You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination. It had been mentioned last week in conjunction with one of those cryptic opportunities. I hadn't heard of it or read much about it until last night. We thought it sounded delightful and looked forward to checking it out.
Today I visited the Albuquerque Museum as I usually do a couple of times a month. I hadn't been since Father's Day and because of the aforementioned computer/Internet problems, didn't know much about the new exhibits, except one was about some New Mexico photographs. The main exhibit was a wonderful traveling exhibit and I was delighted to find out it was about geography, maps and other wonderfulness like rocks. It's called Experimental Geography and it's fabulous. It "revels new and different perspectives of the interface between human and environment." There was an interesting piece called "Deconstructed Camouflage". The artist, Ellen Rothenberg, had taken apart all kinds of garments made of camouflage (and you know how I love me some camo...) and used the seams, pockets and other sewn parts to reconstruct a map of the world. It was wonderful. A film called "The Making of Lima" showed what 500 volunteers could do to move a dune just outside of Lima Peru. Amazing!! And on the table of books related to the exhibit...You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination! Giggling yet? And among the other books, Land Arts of the American West which included the VLA and lots of places in New Mexico. I loved the whole thing and plan to go back but ya gotta love the synchronicity. It gets better...
The photography exhibit was by Craig Varjabedian and was a many year anthology of photos of Ghost Ranch, a place I love and haven't been for a long time...and the location of the other cryptic opportunity! Can you hear the theme from Twilight Zone?
I've giggled all day, so delighted to be right in the middle of such delightful synchronicity...is there a theme song for that?
I leave you with not a list of small graces but a quote from the exhibit I am loving more each time I read it:

"Of all the things I wondered about on this land I wondered the hardest about the seduction of certain geographies that feel like home - not by story or blood but merely by their forms and colors. How our perceptions are our only internal map of the world, how there are places that claim you and places that warn you away. How you can fall in love with light." Ellen Meloy from the Anthropology of Turquoise

Finally!

I know, 2 in one day is way too much but I HAD to share this wonderful video of the lovely Laura in Santa Fe that supplies so many of us with really good junk! She has no web site, uses no computers and so this may be your only chance to see the wonderfulness.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alwqmjdH9fM

Mandalas farm style

Hollyhock season

Recycle.. City Different Style

All you need is an old Dodge Van, a few slabs of lumber and one of those metal ripper things and suddenly...you have a sightseeing van! And the best thing is...you have to climb over all of the first seats to get to the back ones and then climb back over to get to the only available exit...the passenger seat!