Freshness

Albuquerque has a Farmers Market! Several actually but one big one downtown on Saturdays. It's not as wonderful as the Santa Fe one but it has more fresh organic produce than we can eat, it's within bike riding distance and has FRESH CORN-ON-THE-COB!!!
So we've been eating corn pretty much every day (in between the Belgian chocolate we're still trying to finish off) and have also developed a wonderful new desert; mango-vanilla soy ice cream with fresh raspberries and blueberries... and it looks pretty too ;-)!!

Resume

I should have titled this blog post 'procrastination', that would have been more appropriate.

I'm working a short term job in adult rehab for another few weeks and have a short term adult acute care job lined up for after that. Neither of them are thrilling, but the money is good and it helps me avoid looking for something more permanent, which I am grateful for.
I am cleaning the house, pulling weeds in the yard, cooking, browsing the web, going for work-outs, doing plenty of library runs, keeping up with the laundry, ..... anything really not to get started on updating my resume.... I'm amazed by all the things that not really need to but can be done, in the interest of not having to sit down and think about longer term professional goals.....

One day I will... and I'll be sure to blog about it ;-)!!!!

MMMmmm.....

When up on the Sandia Crest, we saw some people playing on the thermals with their paragliders..... It looked wonderfully peaceful and made me wish I was up there... After a little research at home, I found out there are 2 paragliding schools in Albuquerque.... MMMmmm.... Who knows......

Are we nuts????

for getting up at 5.00 am on a Saturday??? We probably are but it was worth it.

You can't really call yourself an Albuquerque hiker until you've hiked 'La Luz', an 8 mile trail up the Sandia's on the West side. So I guess we had to go ;-)!
It turned out to be a gorgeous trail but I wish we would have gone on a weekday. The trail was just too busy (If you want to listen to bad -or even good- music when hiking, - please use earphones!!!!). I guess it is good that people are out in the mountains instead of spending their Saturdays in casinos or malls, but I love the silent peace of having the trail mainly to ourselves (Yes, we are spoiled!!!).

We did successfully avoid the mid-summer-heat by leaving very early. The sun didn't really make it over the Crest until we were out of the high desert into the pine trees! The tramway brought us down in 15 minutes.... a great way to avoid the afternoon heat!!!






I still found time for wild flower pictures along the way....

Zion National Park?????

Another visit??? No!!! This is 'our backyard'!!!! The Sandia mountain range....

Quiet before the storm....

In between 'Public Health' and 'Anatomy', Doug had a weekend off so we headed to Santa Fe (surprise?). We 'borrowed' a friend's dog, Wiley, and headed up SF Baldy. It rained, it hailed,... and in the midst of the hike Wiley decided to create some of his own fun and rolled around in the biggest piece of cow poop you've ever seen; fresh, moist, incredibly stinky and an interesting accessory to Wiley's lovely long hair... Luckily there was snow so we (the royal 'we', meaning Doug) used it to clean him off enough until we made it to the creek below where he received an improvised shower.



All clean!... Well, more or less...


There are no pictures of gorgeous vistas as the we were up in the clouds and could barely see a few feet in front of us. The moisture did bring out 100's of mushrooms though and there were still plenty of lovely flowers to be enjoyed. These were my favorites:




We met up with Hans, Josh and Barb and Art over the rest of the weekend and despite the weather challenges, it was great!