Category: New Mexico

Uh oh

She’s borrowing from the random idea generator again.

Herewith, my list of my ten favorite quotes, in no particular order.

“Life is too important to be taken seriously.” – Oscar Wilde

I don’t actually read Oscar, or know much about him. This quote was told to me when I was in high school looking for a quote to go with my senior picture.

You know the drill, we all had to have a quote, our defining statement. I liked the sentiment, so I went with it. My alternate was something about describing the taste of an olive, it was a weird quote. So of course they used that one.

But the Oscar quote has stuck with me.

“Talking about music is like dancing about architecture” – generally attributed to Martin Mull, but source is unclear.

First heard this quote in the little known and way under appreciated movie “Playing by Heart“.

This was before Angelina Jolie was, well, what she is now. She was only sort of known back then and is adorable in this movie. Her character is wacky and everything I wish I could be (including six feet tall and drop dead gorgeous), and she talks about this quote (attributing it to a musician friend), then subs in that “talking about love” is definitely like dancing about architecture.

I don’t know, it’s a quirky line. I like it.

“This is a simple game. You throw the ball. You hit the ball. You catch the ball. You got it?!?” – the Skip in Bull Durham.

How many times, as a manager, have I wanted to throw a sack of bats at the feet of my employees and holler at them about being lollygaggers?

The answer is: a lot

There are a lot of life lessons to be learned from the game of baseball. This is a fave quote I remember when I tend to overcomplicate things that should be simply elegant. Like the game of baseball.

“…and when we win this game, we’ll buy a keg of booze, and we’ll drink it to the Aggies ’til we wobble in our shoes…”

That is actually the actual words from the NMSU fight song. It always appealed to me greatly that at an institution of higher education, we were encouraged to, you know, drink.

Our forefathers from 1888 saw the future. They saw it clear. They knew exactly what my alma mater would be.

Makes me proud. : sniff, wipes a tear away :

“Hey, minion! Bring me a beer! And don’t lollygag!”

And by minion, of course, I mean The Good Man. (juuuuuust kidding!)

Speaking of those college days….how about:

“It’s only love when you’re loved in return.”

Ok, sure, it’s a quote from a Steve Wariner song.

But it was said with *meaning* by my best friend, back in college, when I discovered that the guy I’d been dating was cheating on me. It was my first taste of heartache. The guy was truly a cad.

Now that cad has been married to another friend of ours for the better part of twenty years. Proves that sometimes it’s not the boy, it’s just the wrong boy for you.

My bestest friend and I had occasion to recall this conversation recently, with a laugh. This was while recounting the story to my husband.

So all’s well that ends well, I believe.

And speaking of The Good Man…

“To my heart you have the key/It you who set me free/And time will surely show/That our love will grow and grow.” Lyrics from “Positively Meant to Be” by Jimmie Vaughan

The words on the page don’t really have the same impact as they do when heard on top of the low and slow blues guitar sound from Mr. Vaughan (brother of Stevie Ray, totally different style).

It’s a song I sing to my sweetie. I know, I know…too goopy for words. But it’s my song for, or rather about, him.

Ok, let’s ungoop this thing…

“No matter where you go in life after this, it will always be better than Tucson.” – From the movie “Hamlet 2”

Ok, apologies in advance to anyone from Tucson or anyone who actually *likes* Tucson.

I have had several occasions to spend time in Tucson. Not the least of which is that the Colorado Rockies have their Spring Training facility there. In the City of Tucson, I’ve been treated bad, eaten awful food, my friend had her car towed (from an unmarked area) and been lost in muther f-word “downtown” Tuscon with confusing highway markers.

And when, while watching Hamlet 2, they said that line, the beverage I was enjoying came rocketing out of my nose like Ol’ Faithful.

Well said, sir. Well said.

And just to prove I can be fair, I’ll also include:

“Even for Albuquerque, this is pretty Albuquerque.”

Also a nose geyser line, spoken seriously and rather snidely by Kirk Douglas in the movie Ace in the Hole.

An utterly forgettable movie with an unforgettable line.

Ya gotta be from ABQ to understand it. But you know, there is a lot about Albuquerque that is just soooooooo Albuquerque.

‘Nuff said.

“May the bird of paradise fly up your nose.”

If Little Jimmy Dickens wasn’t a poet, I don’t know who is. In fact, country music is ripe with quotable quotes. Country living and cowboys tend to have some colorful descriptors, but that’s a whole other post for another day.

Ok, ok, I’ll end on an inspirational note…or something…

Seems fitting, uplifting. Don’t let those bastards getcha down!

“Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?” – Frida Kahlo

Beautifully painful and erudite, all at once.

I’m sure I’m forgetting quotes I adore, but can’t quite access in the ol’ brain matter today.

It happens.

Maybe I need to go out and flap my yapper and make some quotable quotes of my own…..

My favorite time of the day…

Growing up in the high desert, I learned a lot about the cycles of the day. Especially the cycles of a good and hot day.

Living at over a mile in elevation, you can expect some really spectacularly hot days. One hundred degrees plus. Burn your leg on a hot seatbelt, sweat out your body weight, run through the sprinklers kind of heat. But you are rewarded at the end of the day by the cool that comes with sundown.

Living in the desert, you can expect some really spectacularly windy days. The kind that knock you down, dump over your trashcan and send it a mile away, tip patio furniture and blows the shingles off the roof. But you are rewarded at the end of the day by the calm that comes with sundown.

And you are rewarded, at the end of the day, by the fantastic pink melon and deep blue and yellow and purple and red colors that come with sundown in a dusty climate.

Where I come from, sunset is a show. It’s cooling and it’s calming and it’s a fine time to pour a glass of sun tea over ice and sit in a lawn chair and slap at mosquitoes and smile and remember just how great the summertime really is.

Today was a pretty hot day in the Bay Area. Not New Mexico hot, only in the low 90’s. But add a dash of humidity and it was a bit of a broiler.

There was an kerfuffle at a factory near where I work, so we were instructed not to go into work. Today I got to sit in my little rental home and watch the cycle of this day.

The morning was nice, clear, warm, but pleasant. Birds chattered at each other as they stole figs from our tree.

Noontime brought the heat. And the birds and animals sought cover. The Feline laid flat on the floor, making sure no limb touched any other limb.

By 3:00, it was oppressive.

By the time The Good Man got home from work, it was really pretty disgusting. A haze hung in the air with a lingering shimmering heat.

But…now it’s just past seven, and the sun is setting. The day is cooling.

That nasty haze is converting the sky from gacky gray to a pinkish blue.

Sundown hasn’t let me down yet.

(Unless you live in Phoenix. That place never cools off.)

Image removed at the request of the photographer, Glenn Hohnstreiter. You can view it on his webpage. Go take a look. You’ll be glad you did.


The three books on my bedside table

Here’s what’s been lingering around my bedside table over the last month. Click the book cover for the link to Amazon for more info.

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls.

This one was a gift from my best friend when she came out to visit about a month back. She is head of the English department where she teaches, and so gets to read a LOT of books to evaluate for use in class. Thus, she’s got really great taste in books. This one was a winner!

The author, Ms. Walls is a freelance writer and sometime contributor to CNN. She writes her real life story in what can only be the definition of non-fiction that reads like fiction. She’s got an amazing writing style and an even more amazing story to tell.

She and her siblings were brought up by nomadic, and in the case of her dad, alcoholic, but well meaning parents. It was an early life raised mostly in poverty and marked by drifting from town to down, or “doing the skedaddle,” when things get tight. There’s also a theme of outrageous parenting decisions.

Ms. Walls has an amazing ability to tell the story with non-judgment and even respect for her parents, who she comes to see almost as children through her adult eyes by the end of the book.

It is a can’t put down read. And if you *ever* thought you might have had some, erm, oddities, in your own growing up. Well. This will put all of that right into perspective. It’s almost unbelievable, it’s so outlandish.

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As They See ‘Em: – A Fan’s Travel in the Land of Umpires by Bruce Weber

The Good Man had heard the author, Bruce Weber, on NPR, and talked about the interview and this book’s concept very excitedly.

TGM and I are both huge baseball fans, and this was a little understood aspect of the game for us.

The concept is that Weber, a baseball fan, and a reporter for the New York Times, was sent to umpire school in order to write a story for the paper. That set off a much larger odyssey to discover what really goes on in the land of professional umpires.

You get two aspects in this book, one, Weber’s own struggle with learning the aspects of umpiring, such as stance, where to go on what plays, how to call a strike, how to yank your mask off without upsetting your hat, and always, always keeping command of the game.

The other aspect was talking to actual big league veteran umpires. Hearing their stories, talking about their history, the big threatened ump walkout in 1999 that adversely affected plenty of men, and so on.

I found this book hard going through a lot of it. Though I loved the concept, I thought Weber labored the point an awful lot. I get it. Umps are the goats of the game. No one likes them. They are treated crappy. When they do their job right, they are ignored, and when they make a mistake, they are yelled at, name called and in some cases physically threatened.

But, to be fair, I also learned a lot from this book. I watch the umps a little more closely now to see how they do their job and I give them quite a bit more leeway in making tough calls in a game.

It was sort of strange timing, but just as I was reading this book, I witnessed three of the worst umpired games I’ve ever seen in the many, many years I’ve been watching baseball. There were egregious bad calls, and try as I could, with a new outlook from reading Weber’s book, I couldn’t accept the terrible calls.

But, as Weber is quick to point out, those kind of situations are not the norm, and truly, umps are the metronome that keeps baseball playing in perfect rhythm.

An essential part of the game.

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And currently, I’m about halfway into a Michael Crichton book called Timeline.

I haven’t read a Crichton in quite a while and I always did love his style.

Ok, to be fair, this isn’t great American literature. This is a good, easy summer read. The first 100 pages were deadly boring, but as Crichton always does, soon after, he hooked me right in.

And now, I’m in for the ride. I don’t care of his explanations are based on shaky science, I’m BOUGHT in baby!

This is a classic time travel book. A group of research assistants are sent back to Medieval times to rescue their professor who’s gotten himself stuck back there. Only, the home base necessary to get them back home, the evil labs that sent them, has just experienced a massive explosion.

This book has the added bonus that the evil labs, makers of the time travel devices are located in…wait for it….New Mexico! Over by Gallup.

So okay!

TGM read this book on the plane when we traveled in May, and I read snippets over his shoulder, so I’m happy to dive in. So far, so good.

There you go, that’s what I’m up to.

What are you reading these days?

Juvenile Humor = On

“…watchers are flocking to Conchas Lake State Park near Tucumcari after the first confirmed sighting of a…booby in New Mexico.”

Well I’m sure it’s not the *first* time people have gone booby watching at Conchas Lake. But whatever.

Don’t you just love ellipses? They can do so much to change the tenor of reporting.

I feel like a true media denizen now!

Ok, ok, here’s the real quote from this ABQJournal story:

“Bird-watchers are flocking to Conchas Lake State Park near Tucumcari after the first confirmed sighting of a blue-footed booby in New Mexico.”

I guess it’s rather a big deal!

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