week one ABQ tally so far: two yapping dogs accompanied by the classic “No No NO!!!” owner lady, two geriatric heeler mixes, one of which tried to have a little run, several unruly large dogs on 30 ft flexi leashes and one, only one very exciting corgi-heeler puppy, which, even in this altitude, didn’t have a chance with the MO.
with grass this nice and the immense hilly slope, what’s the deal?
this sentence has survived decades of editing, and now that i have the photo to go with it, it’s probably going to stay:
“In the winter the coyotes hunt in packs, but they all know to walk in the same exact footprints to give the impression there’s only one animal, ever, featured in profile on the cover of Après Magazine, its obsidian eye trained on the moon.”
i always knew at some point i would end up owning my own WOPR.
our kitchen sink clogged up a few days ago and our plumber came out to send in the snake. no, he didn’t have the rotating camera head with the LED lights, but he did say we had need of some cast iron pipe replacement, and also suggested putting in a water filtration system. because 2011 seems to be the year of the giant house expenses we agreed to install these two fat boys in the back, adding an industrial touch to our recent plantings of a straight Meyer lemon tree (just because it’s a Meyer, don’t be afraid to get rid of it if it’s all wonky—lessons from the lemonless), English lavender, Canna lilies, and white sage.
supposedly the system gets rid of chlorine and other chemicals in the water, and it descales the hard deposits that clog shower heads, ruin copper pipes and make your hair fall out and give you skin rashes. plus the water tastes amazing! yes! softer, rounder, not minerally, and it makes a fabulous espresso. now for our tea tastings, we can heat our fat boy water in a Lin’s ceramic pot, brew in Yixing, and drink out of purion… dreamy!
after the install a field specialist came to test our water. he put some white reagent powder into a little vial and filled it with water. the water stayed clear. if the water had chlorine in it, it would have turned pink. we probably didn’t look convinced so he tested water from the hose, which is not filtered, but that stayed clear too. then we sneaked some water from our neighbors and damnit, still clear.
the guy was pretty frustrated, and couldn’t believe that our street would have no chlorine in the water, so he he opened a new batch of reagent, thinking his current powders had expired, and looky – it turned pink! (that’s the neighbor’s water)
being a good specialist he did a second test, which was sticking a vacuum sealed pipette into the water and then breaking the tip so that the water went up into the glass. i think there must be a gas in the pipette, which turns the water pink in the presence of chlorine.
it all felt a little Chinatown (the movie)-ish, because he was full of useful water information. he said Los Angeles used to get water from 200 miles away, and now we get it from 400 miles away, which means we go through 4 chlorinating plants, not to mention the extra miles of pesticides and poop seeping into the H20. he said that Dasani comes from the Detroit River, and though Fiji Water does come from Fiji it has to travel so far in plastic bottles that’s not a good thing either. he also gave us a run down of how filters actually work. water needs time inside the filter in order for the unwelcome particles to wander into the little avenues and get stuck. if the water pressure is too high, or if the filter is too short, like a fridge filter, or a Brita, the bad stuff doesn’t have time to uncling from the water molecule. also, over time the water creates channels in the carbon so that after awhile when you run water through it just goes through the channels it has made, rather than through the filter. big sigh.
usually whenever i visit my Mom in Santa Fe i fly into Albuquerque, and she picks me up and we do all the things in Albuquerque that you can’t get done in Santa Fe. That means shopping at the one and only place in the state to buy Chinese vegetables and goods, with maybe a stop for fried okra and cornbread at Furr’s.
it used to be worse when i visited on college break. my parents lived in Los Alamos and that was a two hour drive home from the airport, and if you would rather starve to death then be deprived of Chinese food like my Dad is, you didn’t leave the Chinese grocery store until you were sure that you bought enough long beans and baked tofu and frozen squid to last until the next child comes to visit. after pulling a million all nighters and racing to make the flight i was generally not in the mood to help find the fish sauce from Taiwan or the pompanos with the flattest bodies, but even more so because the first thing anyone should do when they get to New Mexico is look up and see the sky.
this past week i flew directly from LA to Santa Fe, which was a first for me, on a little plane with propellers. they served juices on board—two kinds of tomato, plain and spicy, and no apple—which goes to show you the clientele they’re used to having. the flight was overbooked and the airline upped the offer to $500 credit to give up my seat and take a later flight to Albuquerque. in my head i imagined the “ground transportation to Santa Fe” the airline offered as part of the deal making the inevitable detour to the Chinese grocery store, so i hung on to my seat.
other than help my mom get to her doctor’s appointment and make her take a yoga class, i did some of the things New Mexico is fabulous for, such as eat as much New Mexican food as i can, go swimming afterwards and die from the altitude, look for Indian pawn jewelry, and spend endless hours at the Plaza watching the ladies try on and buy those jackets. yes, you know, those.
funny things tend to happen in New Mexico, and it’s not just because Mom has this on her front door,
or pictures of strangers printed from the internet pinned up next to a picture of her in the kitchen, though those things are weird, it’s my Mom, so i’m used to it.
on this trip i went for a walk around some new construction and found $20 on the side of the road (that kind of money will buy you 4 bags of dried posole), then i bought this from the farmer’s market, which is extremely good luck according to the Chinese,
and then someone dropped their Black and Decker drill in front of my mom’s house. we left it out all day, hoping that whoever lost it would come back, but after it started to rain we brought it inside.
a few days ago my mom told me she was planning on leaving Santa Fe and selling the home she’s lived in for the past 20 years or so. it’s not the house i grew up in, but apparently it does have some of my crap, which she of course, suggested that i come and deal with. Mom said that she’s been throwing stuff out for awhile, and this i cannot believe until i see it. when my parents were married my dad wielded the iron fist in terms of preventing crap from accumulating in the house, so after the divorce my mom’s possessions exploded like one of those magic sponges.
spearheading this move is a small surgery that Mom is undergoing, (her uterus, which, come to think of it, is really the old home) and her biggest fear is the Demerol she’s going to have to take. no biggie, i told her, that’s not the part you should be afraid of, but i booked a flight anyway, so i’ll be flying out to NM this week, just in time for more chiles.
not sure what i will find in the closets though. most of my crappy sappy letters and I-suck-you-suck writings i have either tossed or stored in my small current closet, and my paintings that she has hanging on the walls that make me want to die just need to go. what i’m hoping to find is my stash of rock concert t-shirts from the 80′s that somehow disappeared between high school and owning two dogs. back then only hard rock bands came to NM, and they only went to Albuquerque, which was 2 hours drive from where we lived. a lot of my friends were not allowed to go unless a parent did the driving so my mom always volunteered for the job. not only did that make her cool, she didn’t sit in the car during the show, or scream “we’re going to die like at that Who concert” when they unlocked the fence and everyone started pushing. she came to the concerts and head banged with us. Black Sabbath (sigh. R.I.P R.J.D.), Iron Maiden, the Scorpions, Rush, Yes, Van Halen, Rush, 38 Special, Journey, Rush. Rush came a lot. so did (and still does) Ted Nugent but he doesn’t count. i remember one concert being in the second row sitting on top of my friend Tom’s shoulders when my contact lens popped out. i leaned over and said “i just lost a contact.” he said “what?” and let me down. i looked around and found it on the floor and probably gave it a lick and stuck it back in. guess that explains the eye patch i wear these days. rather remarkable considering i lost a shoe for good at a Madness concert in Berkeley, guess that’s the difference between hard rock and ska.
in any case Mom’s probably going to be fine. but here’s to staying healthy. eat your yogurt, keep your head out of the sand, and always look both ways before crossing.
awesomeness like this on the side of an 18-wheeler just screams “New Mexico!” and when it’s Hatch chile season you’re going to smell it before you see it.
The “chile drop” was at the La Puente High School parking lot, with burlap bags everywhere, burritos for sale, and a whole host of confusing canopies separating the people into variations of walk-up, pre-pay, fresh, or roasted categories. god forbid if you wanted to mix and match between the categories.
i was in the pre-paid roasted section, which i assume was the most orderly, as everyone in line was only mildly frantic, confused, or salivating. mostly the conversation sounded like kids talking to overseas grandparents: “what time do you have?” but several people who had been standing in the sun too long offered up their opinion on how to fix the ordering system. in New Mexico you can smell the roasting from the side of the road and just pull over and pick up a bag, but here they assign everyone a check-in time, and then plead with you not to be late, but if you are late, they squeeze you in, making the people who actually do show up on time wait. as an owner of two dogs this is the most egregious example of “rewarding bad behavior,” but i didn’t mind because the chile lady said “there was a slight back up because everyone wanted Chavez,” and i got curious as to whether Chavez was a type of chile or a person.
turns out Chavez is a roaster, and he’s got the art down. some of those guys throw the chiles into the drum and put it on automatic. but not Chavez. Chavez roasts by hand, checking that the chiles are blistered just enough so peeling the skin later isn’t a pain in the ass, but not too roasted so the skin is carbonized to the meat. someone in line before me said “What’s the big deal, what difference does it make who roasts?” and the chile lady gave her a look of “if you have to ask, then it doesn’t matter.”
when it was my turn, the lady asked me whether i wanted to request a roaster. i said yes, and she said which one. turns out there’s more than one master craftsman roaster, but that was the only name i knew so that’s who handled our chiles.
the bagged goods.
the taste test.
the apres roast.
on the freeway coming home we passed a pick-up truck with two bushels of roasteds in the back. when we passed i gave him the sign of the coyote but the driver was too fixated on whether he was going to have enchiladas or burgers for lunch to respond.
last week i was poking fun at how a friend of ours who just got a completely spazed out puppy only posts photos of the puppy sleeping and being completely restful.
all photos lie, as we know.
couple days ago i took the pups on an errand at the corner of Washington and La Cienega (one heck of a busy intersection) and as we stood there, waiting for the light, which cycled three times without giving us the walk signal, i saw the skateboard coming, before the-one-with-known-skateboard-issues saw it coming, and i decided to go for it. so you can picture the three of us, one running like holy hell (having finally seen the skateboard), the leash stretched as thin as leather can go, me with both arms out looking in all possible directions, and the merle dog trotting behind, saying “excuse me, owner-lady, but you just dropped your phone.”
so its back to the Edge for me and my first generation iphone until i can get another one at AT&T’s upgrade price. good news is that i’ll be able to use that nifty little charging stand. bad news is that if i ever need to get back to Washington and La Cienega i don’t have a GPS anymore.
in 1907 Ernest Shackleton went looking for the South Pole with a motorcar, no sled dogs, and 25 cases of whisky. on top of that, the ship he took was called the Nimrod. now i don’t know when connotations of that word went south but i do know in New Mexico when someone broke into our car and left a screwdriver with their name written on the handle we told the police “some nimrod named *** broke into our car.”
[courtesy of NY Times]
in 2007, some workers restoring Shackleton’s hut way down south found three cases of Scotch, frozen in the snow. after a long journey back home and having its contents siphoned out and put under scientific analysis, the scotch has been replicated and is now being sold to collectors (complete with a box made in China).
i read about Shackleton’s Scotch in a NY Times article, where Charles McGrath mentions how tasting notes for Scotch now run as wild and crazy as those for wine, such as “This one is sweet and grassy, with a hint of barn straw and damp car seat; that one smoky and peaty, with notes of dried moss and wet sheepdog.”
i do think my dogs paws smell like Doritos, but i had never imagined i could enhance my Scotch with a quick spray of the hose on the resident sheepdog. but it works! after a day at the beach we gave the pups a bath, and i took a shot of Scotch (courtesy of Mom and her love of duty free shopping) and drank it while sniffing and snuggling. it had a little of both descriptions, wet sheepdog and damp car seat, but it was simply divine.
the city decided to lay down a slurry on our asphalt last week, and, giving less than 4-5 days notice, asked for all cars to be removed from 6 in the morning until 6 that night. in addition, there were several other warnings, like not to let water run onto the surface for at least three days, and even after the “curing period,” (where we shouldn’t be driving on it at all,) for the next several days we were advised not to turn the wheels unless the car was in motion.
not to worry. flyer with English on one side, Spanish on the other.
day of, all the neighbors got their cars off the street, even the jerks across the street from us who always park their van in the middle of the two available spaces (and we were so hoping they were going to get towed). too bad. then the city workers came (one of them had a highlighted map of the streets they were doing that morning, unfolded it and turned it around several times and said “where are we?”), put a lame little barricade on the fresh slurry, finished up and left around 10 am.
the thing about these kinds of city projects is that once they left they had no way to keep people off the street until 6 that night. there was a full 8 hours where people abused their power steering, over-watered their lawns and pulled out of their driveway, realized they screwed up, and pulled back in. the thing about wet asphalt slurry is that by the time the curing period is over you know exactly who on your block is an asshole and who isn’t.
