Saturday, December 21, 2024

Ornaments


Last year’s Christmas tree has been put to good use.

Step 1: use bandsaw to cut trunk into round “wood cookies”

Step 2: drill holes

Step 3: find the old snowflake generator

Step 4: make a spreadsheet with an algorithm to turn people’s names into a seed to feed into the snoflakerator and generate SVG files

Step 5: laser etch snowflakes onto wood cookies!


Wednesday, December 18, 2024

Holiday card prints in process

 Madly rushing to get the Christmas... er... New Years cards put together.


The Wise Man





Busy singing season

 It's holiday singing season these days, evenly mixed between informal and formal concerts in venues in and around Santa Fe.  Fa la la la la!  Chad is very patient with the schedule.




Friday, December 13, 2024

Cat adventures

 Things the cats have been up to (aside from eating sleeping cuddling wrestling etc)

Hanging out in their backpacks.

Learning to take walks





Getting into the food whenever they can.  How Arp managed to knock this off the counter without spilling any is beyond me.

Taking umbrage at the lack of wet food?  Again, a very talented move.

Adjusting to snow.  We eventually got them little coats, at the hardware store, of all places.





Taking over the firewood bucket

Mousie play.  Arp will play fetch.  And drop the mouse in less-than-ideal places.


Attacking the laser pointer.  A favorite of Charlie's.


Trying to inhabit the piano.  This is verboten.

Attacking the Christmas tree.  We've gotten lights up and nothing bad has happened, so might try some non-fragile ornaments soon.

Grooming Chad's beard.  Arp thinks this is serious business.

And they've been GROWING!  They are basically double the size they were when we got them a couple of months ago.


Thursday, December 5, 2024

Starting the snow recreation season in earnest

 We got out a couple of times to really recreate in the snow this week, once to snow show out near Aspen Peak, and once to skin up the hill at the ski area to check out the early season skiing.  Yay winter!



Wednesday, November 27, 2024

DRZ exploring

 I (Chad) took a ride out on the Caja del Rio on the DRZ, hoping to beat raindrops (maybe snowflakes) that seemed imminent -- good views although a bit chilly!











Tuesday, November 26, 2024

Snow ho ho


 We went up beyond Valles Caldera onto Forest Road 144 to cut our Christmas tree this year, and managed to pick one of more reasonable size than last year.  It now remains to be seen what the cats think of it.



Sunday, November 10, 2024

Snow Abiquiu

 After digging ourselves out of the snow at home, we headed out to Abiquiu for the weekend.  There was a little less snow there, but still enough to necessitate some modifications to the rather ambitious hiking plans...

Short walk out to see snow-covered ruins.


The sculpture garden at the hotel was somewhat buried.

Ghost Ranch was incredibly scenic in the snow (as it is always).




By Day 2, things were starting to melt out.  On a local's recommendation of where to go that might not be too muddy, we headed out to Plaza Blanca to check out the rocks and a small slot canyon.





By the third day, it looked like we could try heading into one of the canyons I had originally wanted to poke around in, so we explored the area around Red Wash.  It is quite remarkable how quickly the snow melts out and things dry up around here.

Someone upstream is missing a toy.


After exploring the drainage, we climbed up a hill to enjoy the view,


though I do need to admit that the last hill we climbed proved to be muddier than some might prefer.

All in all, a great weekend!  We need to explore this area more when the conditions are clear.