Originally posted on my old blog on February 24th, 2006:
After finding and logging the geocache, we went on to Roswell and checked into Motel 6. On the way in, we saw an Italian restaurant that looked good, so after checking in we went back. We've eaten nothing by New Mexican cuisine for the last several days, so it was a pleasant change.
The restaurant was the Pasta Café Italian Bistro. I had the Bucatini alla Puttanesca and Echelon Pinot Noir. Stina had the Sesame Salmon and Hogue Late Harvest Riesling. The puttanesca was delicious, the service was great, and the atmosphere was pleasant. The wine was very good - only the second Pinot Noir I've had. It was sweet, but not overpoweringly so, and had hints of pepper and dark berry flavors.
Another Open Mic Night at Andrea Kristina's, and it went well. For some reason, I was more confident, possibly because the PA system was working better and I wasn't standing up there wondering if my voice being heard. I got some good applause and even a few hollers from the audience, and the place was packed.
Incidentally, there is some really good musical talent that comes out to open mic night.
Originally posted on my old blog on February 24th, 2006:
We left Alamogordo and stopped at Three Rivers again to to visit The Indigo Lizard, a gift shop there, where Stina bought a gift for her little sister from the Big Brothers Big Sisters program.
After leaving there, we went to Carrizozo, then on to Nogal. Outside of Nogal, we stopped to hit a geocache at a rest stop. I got a great shot of the mountains from the geocache site.
View of the mountains.
Some tree fungus that just looked interesting.
Originally posted on my old blog on February 24th, 2006:
Now we are up to this morning! We checked out of the Super 8 and went to the Space History museum in Alamogordo.
A number of rockets adorn the outside of the museum.
A recovered part of a V2 rocket. It's seen better days.
This is the Sonic Wind II. It's a rocket platform attached to railroad rails. A test subject was strapped into the chair and the rockets propelled them forward to a high rate of speed, then the whole platform was stopped quickly to test the affects of rapid deceleration on a human subject. Where was OSHA? Who was running this test, Wile E. Coyote?
A sounding receiver. These were used to receive signals from test rockets.
I didn't take any good pictures inside the museum. It was mostly rocket models and other non-photogenic displays. We were going to go to the IMAX theater, but it was sold out due to a large group of school children who came in right before us.
It's supposed to be a Smartphone, but today, it was a dumbphone.
Over the weekend, my Smartphone, which is a Palm PDA and phone in one device, decided to quit accessing the Internet, which meant that I couldn't get my email over it, which was the whole point of getting the thing in the first place. When I called Alltel tech support this morning, I got shunted up one level, then another level. The last tech I talked to had me reset the modem, to no avail, then had me reset the whole phone. This worked, but that also meant that I lost all my settings - my custom ringtones, my Vox Mobile installation, my photos, my email preferences, my server settings, everything. It took me all day to set the thing up again.
The worst part? The tech couldn't tell me why the phone just suddenly quit working, which means that it could do it again at any time. My entire brain is stored in that phone, and at any moment, I may be forced to wipe it clean. Bummer.
Originally posted on my old blog on February 24th, 2006:
We came back into Alamogordo and ate at a small pizza parlor called Gigi's. It was decent pizza, but the restaurant was fairly uncomfortable, and it was one of those places where you order at the counter and take a number back to your table. Fine for a quick meal, but I wouldn't go looking for fine dining.
If you live "out East" and are thinking of moving to New Mexico, there are a few things you ought to know. I had to find out the hard way.
1. You might want to come visit us first, just to see if it's for you. No, you don't need a passport. Contrary to many, New Mexico really is part of the United States.
2. If you live anywhere east of the New Mexico-Oklahoma border, you may think that where you live has a distinct name, like "Missouri" or "Tenesee" or "Rhode Island." It doesn't. In New Mexico, where you live is referred to simply as "out East." Once you move here, you'll henceforth be required to refer to the place you came from as "back East." Furthermore, you, and all your kinfolk, are "Easterners." Nevermind that people from Arkansas would rather eat undercooked roadkill (and they really, would, too!) than refer to themselves as an Easterner, that is what they are to people in New Mexico.
3. Yes, that really is the New Mexico state seal. There's a reason why it's usually really small, so you can't quite make it out.
4. New Mexico is the fifth largest state (again, it is a state) in the U.S., but is 36th in population with less than two million people spread over 121,000 square miles. (That's two megapeople spread over 315,000 square kilometers, for those of you who use metric.) That gives us a density of about 15 people per square mile. Compare this to even a rural state, like Missouri, which has over 80 people per square mile. In other words, we're damned near empty.
I was actually driving to a conference in Hobbs, New Mexico, with a co-worker once, passing the vast expanse of nothingness that that is the stretch between Vaughn and Roswell, and she commented that there couldn't really be a population problem in the world as long as there was still this much empty space. "Millions of people could live out here!" she exclaimed. "Yes," I said, "but they'd get awfully thirsty."
5. Yes, Hobbs has conferences. Don't ask me why.
6. Not everyone in New Mexico believes in U.F.O.'s, but don't tell the tourism bureau that. They're actually counting Little Green Men in their visitor statistics.
7. New Mexico has a love-hate relationship with Texas. A couple of years ago, it was discovered that a sliver of the border area that had long been thought to be in Texas was actually in New Mexico, and subsequently all of the residents in that area suddenly became New Mexican citizens. A New Mexican legislator opined that adding that many Texans at once to the population of New Mexico would cause the state's average I.Q. to drop. On the other hand, a lot of New Mexicans are originally from Texas, so you'll find a lot of sympathy here for them, too. Texan refugees are usually identified by their accents.
8. Here's how you dress for a typical day in New Mexico: put on everything you own, and gradually take it all off over the course of a day. This morning when I went to work there was frost on my windshield. This afternoon it got to almost 80°F. Good luck planning for that.
9. Here's how you dress for a wedding in New Mexico. Wear a dark suit, preferrably three-piece, with a silk tie. Or, wear cut-off jeans, a Hawaiian shirt, and flip-flops, whichever you prefer. If you want to class up the latter ensemble, throw on a bolo tie.
10. Chili isn't what you think it is. Being from almost anywhere else in the country, if you order chili, you are probably picturing something with meat, beans, tomatoes, and various seasonings in a chunky, stew-like preparation. Chili is actually a sauce that is served over almost everything, and if you order anything in a restaurant in New Mexico, the question from the waitress's mouth will be, "Red or Green?" This has officially been designated as "the state question." This refers to chili sauce made from red chiles or green chiles. Be prepared to answer this question.
Red chili is somewhat spicier than green, usually, but many believe green chili has more flavor. If you aren't sure, most places will let you order it "Christmas" style, which is red and green together. In some restaurants, this is referred to as "de colores."
Chiles and piñones (a type of pine nut) can be bought from roadside vendors all across the state, and there are a lot of places you can go and get freshly roasted chiles.
However you get your chili, I hope you like it, because if you move to New Mexico you will be eating it with every meal, every day, for the rest of your life.
11. We aren't Arizona. For some reason, if people know enough about New Mexico to know that we are a state, they picture us as being full of saguaro cacti and being one big wasteland of desert and tumbleweeds. First, New Mexico doesn't have saguaros. That's Arizona. Second, as I mentioned, New Mexico is big. Very big. If you can think of a terrain type that occurs in the continental United States, you can find it somewhere in the state of New Mexico. However, don't be disappointed if you had hoped to see tumbleweeds, because we have them. We have many, many of them. You can come look at my back yard, if you want to see tumbleweeds.
12. Just because there is a road doesn't mean that your car can go there.
13. That's not Klingon they're speaking. It's Navajo.
14. New Mexico has the highest number of PhD's per capita in the country. All of them live in Los Alamos. Okay, there are a couple dozen in Albuquerque, and five or six spread through the rest of the state, but for the most part they live in Los Alamos, building quarks or something like that. Occasionally, they venture out through the rest of the state, pointing and laughing at the rest of us.
15. Glowing in the dark is perfectly natural. It doesn't have anything to do with the fact that you live on top of an abandoned uranium mine.
16. Yes, that really is a junked-out 1960's model camper trailer out in the middle of the sagebrush with no water or electricity and tires on the roof to keep it from blowing away. It's also someone's home. Don't feel bad for them; they like it there.
17. If you live in Santa Fe or Albuquerque, congratulations! Your vote counts.
18. New Mexico is a land of extremes. For instance, we have highest numbers of any state of Mormons with drinking problems and Baptist with sexual addiction of anywhere in the country.
19. Despite what you learned in your high school Spanish class, "mañana" doesn't mean "tomorrow." It means "next Tuesday." Ironically, "next Tuesday" means "when Mel Gibson is elected Prime Minister of Israel."
20. Gasoline is more expensive the closer you live to a refinery. That's because the gas is "fresh."
21. Finally, New Mexico is a diverse, beautiful, extreme, wild place, and a damn fun place to live. Don't worry, you'll love it. Just, don't tell anyone where you're moving to. They'll try to talk you out of it.
Originally posted on my old blog on February 24th, 2006:
We went back to the White Sands National Monument to take the Sunset Stroll, a ranger-guided tour that didn't start until about an hour before sunset. Before the tour started, we got some more shots of the dunes.
A sand pedestal.
Picnic benches in a sea of white sand.
Shadows on the sand.
Sunset itself was somewhat ruined by the clouds. But I liked the way the sun looked behind the clouds here.
Mountains to the north at sunset.
The clouds finally cleared a little after the sun had gone down, making the mountains look like their on fire. [Edit: I had the pic on the right blown up to poster size and framed it as a Christmas present to my grandmother.]
This is another one I listened to in audiobook. It's good, funny in a chuckles sort of way, but no guffaws. Some of the jokes get a bit tedius, like how the main character likes to irritate the other male characters with homosexual innuendo. These are series characters, and I think the characters may be a little more believable if I had read the previous stories.
Originally posted on my old blog on February 24th, 2006:
We returned to Alamogordo, and stopped at Eagle Ranch north of Alamogordo. It's a pistachio farm, the first one in the area. There are now several of them. We took the tour, which was interesting.
Our tour guide in front of a sea of pistachio trees.
