Listening: Lover's Rock, Sade
I'd rather be: warm
Desiring: skinniness
Enjoying: near end of the week

I'm afraid I can't think of anything to write about. snatches here and there to toss out I guess. Nothing to go on at length about.

Vacation was awesome. You all should visit New Mexico at some time. I imagine it gets hot in the summer but considering it snowed up in the mountains at the end of April and stayed relatively cool the whole time, I figure the Spring is a great time to visit.

First we hit Powwow which was totally rad. There were bright colors and feathers everywhere and something like every fourth person was done up in a traditional dress and raiment. the sound *kish*kish*kish*kish* was constant as each of those dressed up people was wearing something that made noise, either tin bells lining every seam of a dress, nut shells of some kind wrapped thick around ankles or (sleigh) bells worked into the get up.

Got see lots of fancy dancing. Some of those boys are *damned* talented. Sadly we missed lots of the women's dances.

Yum, fry bread with honey. (my diet went on a vacation what with so much fry bread and sopapillas available in NM.)

Vendors had *lots* of jewelry. Had to keep my hands in my pockets and remember I don't wear jewelry, though I own more than I let on. ended up buying a couple things - earrings of a canine wearing a kerchief and howling, and a pouch to wear around the neck. Geekily enough, they were with a mind on my gaming characters. But I also liked the earrings. And the pouch is insanely soft leather. Was surprised by how many folks were hawking pelts, and there so many kinds! Rabbits and other rodents, of course, but also deer, bear and even wolves, and stunned the heck out of me.

Lots of artistry, paintings, engravings and pottery, also several music stands not just of folks doing traditional music but hip hop and rap stuff by Indians. Some amusing bumper stickers and t-shirts with slogans like "First Nations - Fighting terrorism since 1492" with a picture of Geronimo. Another one that I remember less clearly said something like "America the beautiful, We Told You It was Worth Fighting for"



It's about three hours from Albuequerque to Taos, and the countryside is pure Sonora. The sky is huge and the horizon goes on forever. Taos is considered a village and no wonder. It's teeny tiny. If you've ever seen a building or even a room done up in in a SouthWestern motif, then you've seen better than I can describe what Taos looks like. Many buildings are purposefully built to look like Pueblo homes. The whole place is an artist's paradise, though it's pretty hard to swing a dead cat and not hit an artists' store.

The town is replete with stories of artists trying to pass through and failing and falling so in love with the area that they stay and call their artist friends to move there. In the sixties it was good sized hippie town, but the first known artist was over 100 years before.

Being a goob, of course, I kept wondering where exactly it was that Tori Amos wrote and recorded Under the Pink, imagining her put the sounds together while taking in the mesas and pueblos.

Up the road some 20 miles (most of them going up on a windy mountain road) is Angel Fire. That is tiny ass ski resort, the kind of "best ski resort no one knows about" that would be really cool if it was ski season and I were any kind of a fan of skiing (did it once, very not in a hurry to do it again).

It was tiny enough that getting to and from the cabin was an ordeal typically done in complete dark since the people there don't believe in street lamps and on a dirt road since we only saw two main streets that were paved. Course the lack of humans meant more wildlife, we got to see a bunch of huge deer wandering idly by the road really close to town and I even saw a coyote. The coyote was really cool for me, they're so gall darned neat. The only thing that burns me was that I didn't have my camera on me when we saw them.

It was definately very beautiful up there and it was nice to just hang out at the cabin and vege. Definately had too much stress and it was great to get rid of it.

In the area we checked out a Gorge Bridge which is a highway bridge over a huge gorge carved into the land like a great scar by the Rio Grande. From the bridge you can look down to the water, some 600 feet below.

We visited Taos Pueblo, the church of San Francisco de Asis where they have a "miracle protrait" of Jesus that, when the lights are turned out, Jesus has a shadow over his left shoulder of a cross. It was painted well over a hundred years ago and the painter said he had thought he was going crazy when he first saw that effect. What was spooky for me was that behind Jesus is the Sea of Galilea and the sky and *that* practically glows. Nothing else does.

we also visited the Kit Carson museam and this one hacienda that had been kept to showcase life on the frontier. The hacienda was kinda cool as it was designed on the outside as a fort and on the inside it was very simple as a house with a *whole lot* of rooms as befitted a very wealthy family.

We headed south again, aiming for Albuequerque before heading west to Arizona. We were forced to stop in Santa Fe which was definately more cosmopolitan than Albuquerque and Taos because Agent Orange's (his hair isn't orange anymore. I may have to rename him) car was having Major Issues. The mechanics said they could either do a major fix that could take a while and be very expensive (amounted to disconnecting things like the heater and speedometer and completely rebuilding the transmission) or they could unplug the bits that were the symptoms that were bugging us.

He decided for the quick fix, intending to get more thorough work once back in CA. Once that was cleared out of the way headed on our way and finally stopped for the night in Gallop. Gallop seems more industrial than anything else I saw. It was also small and had lots of Indians visibly working in normal jobs (which I hadn't noticed in Taos or Albuequeque). There you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting some kind of emporium for Indian jewelry. Maybe because it was night and *very* windy the town seemed dirtier than the other places.

Gallop is about an hour east of the Arizona/New Mexico border so the next day was all about AZ.