Hee-haw

I love our neighborhood.  We live well within the city limits of Albuquerque, but we are very close to the Rio Grande and there are lots of large places with spacious lots and fun assortments of animals.  I guess the zoning must be different here than in the middle of the city, because it's pretty common to see sheep, goats, alpacas, and peacocks within a few blocks of our house.  Sheep, goats, and peacocks are all great, but truly my absolute favorite part of our neighborhood has got to be these guys:

This is Paco and Penelope.  They live two blocks from us.  I don't know their real names, but those are the names that we've given them.  They are miniature donkeys.  As if regular donkeys weren't cute enough!  Their backs are only a little bit taller than my knees.  Seriously.  SO.CUTE.  Once I saw Paco rolling around on his back, legs up in the air, just like a dog scratching his back in the grass.  I nearly lost control of my car.

It is impossible for me to drive to and from my house without looking towards their field.  It is impossible for me to not smile when I see them.  I love them so much.  Oh, and they share their field with two fuzzy alpacas.  You know, just to up the cuteness quotient a little bit.

Hot hot heat

Last week at work, my pencil melted.  So, think about me the next time you complain about the AC in your office.

Now I've got to spring for the expensive mechanical pencils.  Sheesh.

Twenty-eight

So old!

I have to say though, I'm not sweating this birthday at all.  One year closer to the big 3-0, but still far enough away from it to be in denial.

I had a very relaxing birthday weekend.  I got to eat crab legs, ride my bike, play pool with friends, go paddleboarding on the lake, plant some flowers, and spend time at home eating ice cream and watching movies.  Quite good.  Oh, and I got a promotion!!  Quite good, indeed.

I'm back in the field now and will be splitting my time between home and a hotel in Gallup for the next few months.  Updates on fieldwork and cool archaeology soon!

Back to the old MC

Last weekend we visited the 2012 field school at Mule Creek.  Sam and Kelly came over to Albuquerque from their new place in Portales, and we all loaded up in Sam's new truck and headed south for a few nights.

It was great to be back in Mule Creek and to see the new work that this year's crop of students had completed.  We got to spend time hanging out with our friends, sitting with our feet in the creek and drinking beer, and I even got to dig a hole in the ground!  Not much more I could ask for out of a weekend away.  The students this year were totally different than the gang from last year, but still a pretty fun bunch to spend some time with.  The site is still turning up some pretty interesting stuff (ahem, although none as cool as what I dug up there last summer) and hopefully they are now in a better position to answer some of the questions they had about what was going on there way back in the day.

Josh is always a very good sport when we visit archaeological sites, even though I know he is usually pretty bored by it all.  So on the way home from Mule Creek, we stopped by the Very Large Array and allowed Josh's ubergeek to jump out of the truck and run around taking photos of big huge satellite dishes.  He was very excited about it.  [As an aside, I was admittedly underwhelmed/disappointed when I realized that there were not nearly as many dishes at the VLA as had been shown in the movie Contact.  Those jerks added like 100 computer-generated dishes in the background!]

Conehead.

Poor Sienna.  She's so pissed off at me right now.

I told her that she needed to stop licking the wound on her paw.  I warned her about the cone.  But she wouldn't listen.  And now she's both humiliated and pissed off, on top of temporarily walking around on only three legs.

Made for walkin'

I own one pair of strappy dress shoes.  I'm pretty sure I bought them about 8 or 9 years ago, and they have not seen the outside of their shoebox in at least 5 years.  However...

I guess a girl's got to have her priorities, and one look in my closet makes mine pretty damn clear.

Ewww.

I guess every job has its downsides.  I'll be the first to tell you how great my job is, how much I love what I do, and how I can't imagine doing anything else.  Sometimes, however, my job takes me to places that are far from exciting.  Sometimes, I hike through gray, ashy sand on the edges of one of the EPA's least favorite power plants in the country.  Sometimes, while hiking through nasty, ashy sand on the edges on a gross coal-powered plant in 100+ degrees temps, I am required to wear air-tight protective goggles and a hard hat.  Sometimes, on the way to the project area, I drive past workers in biohazard suits working near a pond of ash labeled with signs that read: "Caution: ACID".  Sometimes, I listen to the hum of high voltage power lines directly over my head all day.  Sometimes, I stare at blackened turbine silos that are totally obstructing and ruining an otherwise really fantastic southwestern landscape of rocks and peaks and sky.  Sometimes, I count down every minute until I finish a particular project and can get back home from the field.

Luckily, most of the times, my work is awesome.  And if every now and then I have to put up with a little grossness to even things out, I guess I can't complain too much about it.  Although the last week or two have certainly made me think even harder about alternative energy in this country.  Power plants are disgusting.