Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack: Skies

All eyes on the skies today, which have been rather dramatic.  Like so...

Looking due north

Looking due west

Looking southeast

It would only follow that we'd do a little bit o' Floyd...



We get more than enough o' those crystal-clear, brilliant, and somewhat unforgiving blue skies in this part o' the world.  The sort o' days that we've been experiencing these last couple o' few are rare indeed, and we're drinkin' them in like a parched man at an oasis.  We've had a lot o' rain this week and our humidity has soared as a result but even in spite o' that it's oh-so-good, Gentle Reader... oh, yes... it IS.

My Favorite Kinda Clouds

Took a break during the second intermission of the game to step outside and was rewarded with these views:

Those are embryonic mammatus clouds.  They're not fully formed, like these (see the images at the foot of the article).  But, Hell... close enough for me.  We had a helluva good t-storm earlier this evening and these clouds are the result of same.

Now it's back to the game... Let's Go Broons!

Linkage and Similar

Our British Blog-Bud the Brighton Pensioner has been publishing pictures of picturesque ponts these last few days... and I REALLY had to work at that alliteration... all of which are most beautiful in differing ways.  You should go look... and scroll down, coz he's only posting one pic per day.

I've run a few bridge pictures here at EIP in the past but none quite as beautiful as Brian's examples.  Here are a few pics of a bridge that was declared "beautiful" by fiat.

Click all the pics to embiggen and click again, if need be.

I need to tell ya sumthin', though... it wasn't a beautiful experience standing in the middle of that bridge and looking down several hundred feet into the Rio Grande canyon while big-ass trucks lumbered by and the bridge moved up and down several inches in the vertical.  Especially when one has a highly developed case o' acrophobia.

Well, OK Then

Sumthin' else from The Shoebox Blog... "Why Are Americans So..."  in which the blogger lets Google auto-complete a statement about each of the 50 states.  Fascinating stuff, this, and you should go... coz there are all sorts o' fun facts and graphics.  And you KNOW what my favorite excerpt had to be, eh?

The single most common result of all was “boring,” which appeared for 18 states with no particular regional concentration. Other popular terms (returned for >10 states) were “humid”, “windy”, “expensive”, and “liberal”. Strangely, Connecticut and Pennsylvania both returned “haunted”; apparently there are a lot of ghost sightings (and related walking tours). My favorite result of all was “enchanting”: New Mexico is beautiful.

Well, PARTS o' New Mexico are beautiful.  Less so in my particular neck o' the woods, where there are no woods to speak of... just lots and lots o' empty spaces, which have a beauty all their own once you learn to appreciate it.  And have I ever mentioned our sunsets and the night sky?  Why, yes... I do believe I have.

Newsy Notes

This is good news:

Roosevelt County is bringing a new addition to the county fairgrounds in the form of a 12,600-square-foot windmill park.

Longtime Portales residents Bill and Alta Dalley, who have collected old-fashioned windmills for the last 30 years, now have more than 80 windmills stored at their home on South Kilgore in Portales.

“When we mentioned we were getting rid of them, some of the kids and grandkids got upset ’cause they said it wouldn’t be home without the windmills,” Bill Dalley said, laughing. “The kids are wanting to keep them within the county and close to home.”

The windmill collection is not being moved far, since the couple has donated it to Roosevelt County, which will turn the collection into a 12,600-square-foot windmill park at the county fairgrounds. The display will be located between the event center and the Jake Lopez building and is due to open by February of next year.

The last I heard the county was still debating the pros and cons of saving the windmill collection, and most importantly... where to put them.  It looks like that's all been solved, and Good On Roosevelt County and its pooh-bahs!  I've written about the Dalley windmill collection in the near-wayback, and the pic comes from one of those posts.

―:☺:―

Today's Lil Mystery...

The sponges, not the beer.  Why do these damned things get so grody, so quickly when they spend their entire working lives in hot soapy water?  I hate replacing them before their useful life is over, but OTOH I can't STAND lookin' at the damned things when they get that way.

The pic also does double-duty to illustrate what we're drinkin' at today's Happy Hour... a Sammy Adams Summer Ale (rated B- at Beer Advocate) (I'll prolly have more than one, actually, as I LOVE this beer.).  I've decided to be as Green as I can possibly be, so we're doubling up subject matter to save precious pixels and expensive digital film.  We're also re-using or recycling photos when we can.  Isn't that impressive, conscientious, and forward-thinkin' of me?  I need to research environmentalist awards as I prolly qualify for one.  Just don't look at the bulb in my table lamp, mmm-kay?  Shit.  Now I've blown my cover.

Gonna comment?  Read the post below before you do.  Blogger is bein' a shit today.

Kinda Cool

But ya really hadda be there.  Or here.  Whatevah.

Just a few minutes ago... people safely ensconced in pressurized aluminum tubes over The High Plains of New Mexico on their way to La-La Land.  Must be nice... for a weekend or so.

The Sailors Are Happy In Portales

Assuming there are sailors in P-Ville, of course.  It's that ol' "red skies at night" thingie:

I would have put this up earlier but we were distracted by a phone call.  Priorities, yanno?

All Eyes On the Skies II

Colors like those on the hem of God's Own Robe...

All Eyes On the Skies

That's the drill in these parts during After Dinner Whiskey Hour, at least where YrHmblScrb is concerned.  Herewith four of the 64 shots we took as we watched the sun sink below the horizon not a half hour ago.  As always and ever: click to embiggen.

More of my favorite type of cloud... mammatus.  These are embryonic, at best.

A longer view of the above and a testimonial for underground utilities, if ever there was one.

This illustrates where the dry line was positioned this evening.  This view is looking to the NNW of P-Ville.  If you chase the link and look at the graphic in the right sidebar you'll note the entire state of New Mexico is west of the "Idealized depiction of where a dryline is located around an extratropical cyclone."  While that's usually our normal weather pattern it's not been the case of late, as the dry line has been well to the west of the NM - TX state line.  We've had more than our share of thunderstorms this Spring as a result.

Yet another view of the dry line at sunset.  We may not have beautiful craggy mountains in this part of the world, nor verdant forests, nor rocky seascapes.  But I'll put our skies up against anyone's... any time.  And that includes Montana.  I've been there, done that, and have more than a few of those Big Sky tee shirts.

Well, Hell

Here it is... hard upon Happy Hour... and we gots nuthin'.  Except a moderate thirst, which we shall quench in the by and by.  So, that said, and since I know most folks are not in the habit of going back and perusing comments to old posts, I'll just give ya this lil vignette ya may have missed otherwise:

That's because Santa Fe didn't have an airport until then. Well, it had one, but it was only used by a few hardy souls. It was the only state capital without commercial service.

6300 feet of elevation + hot summer days = takeoff runs of truly heroic length. Albuquerque was almost as bad; AF pilots of the piston age used to joke that if you weren't airborne by the time you reached Tucumcari, it was time to abort.

That would be Blog-Bud Extraordinaire Gordon, commenting on my "Hot" post.  For those of you unfamiliar with New Mexico geography... it's 175 long and empty road miles between ABQ and Tucumcari.  Made ME LOL, that did.

(Full disclosure: The pic (click to embiggen, as ever) is actually US84 south of Santa Rosa, which is west of Tucumcari.  Not that THAT matters; it's just I'm too pedantic for my own good.)

Mammatus Clouds at Sunset

My favorite type o' clouds... at my favorite time o' day:

Mammatus clouds are fairly rare... they're also associated with severe weather.  Both images were taken with my SLR with the 50mm lens mounted, rather than the grab-shot camera.  The first pic was taken in full-auto mode, the second in shutter-priority mode at f1.4 and 1/320th of a second.  The second shot is much closer to the true color of the sky.

A Few Minutes Ago

We have t-storms in the area around us but not ON us... at the moment, anyhoo.  There were some interesting cloud formations right around sunset.  Two examples:

I'm more than a little disappointed with these shots; they're very grainy for ISO 400.  These were taken in shutter priority mode with my grab-shot camera at f/2, 1/1000 and 1/1200 sec (less than a minute apart), respectively.

Down On Main Street

Three shots of Main Street Portales and one of our courthouse, taken about an hour ago.

It was fairly breezy out... the net effect being the blossoms on the trees are rather blurry (my shutter speed varied between eight and 20 seconds).  I also couldn't seem to get the color correction quite right as you can see, even after messing around with the various white balance settings.  These are four of the 40 pics I took.

I think I'm gonna go to bed now.

Forgive Me...

... or indulge me.  Whatever.  Sakura... taken a few minutes ago:

I just love the delicate pinks and the contrasting copper-colored new leaves.  And no smart-ass comments about my manliness, OK?

Right Now

A trailer park moonrise... and sunset.

From the Archives

Occasional Reader Dee contacted me in an offline this weekend, asking me for a pointer to a pic I put up in the way-back of Portales' Main Street taken in the dead of night... the wee smalls of the morning, actually...  when absolutely no one was out and about.  It really strokes the ol' ego when someone tells me they like my photos.  So, we thought we'd put them up again (but NOT with the intent of soliciting compliments, yanno?).  One pic was published back in 2006 and the other two have never been seen in public.

Main Street Portales, previously published.

The Roosevelt County courthouse.  Our courthouse is on the National Register of Historic Places and I tried to find some background on it, to no avail.  But it looks like a classic example of 1930's WPA Moderne architecture to me.

A lonely Green Hornet parked on the courthouse square.

Re-doing these photos... or taking similar shots... has been on my to-do list ever since I bought the SLR a couple o' years ago.  That ain't gonna happen until the weather warms up a bit.

The Sun Peeked Through

But only briefly.  We did manage to get a couple of pics before Ol' Sol went back behind the clouds...

My cherry tree.  Forgive the solar flare, please.  Click for larger if ya wanna.

And icy fingers reaching for the sky...

 

We are ever-so-pleased we only got a little bit of ice, yanno?  We continue to keep an eye out and there's a distinct possibility we may get more sun before the day is done.

Update 1540 hrs:  Three more.

I particularly like the effect of the sun on the ice here; it's like hundreds of little white Christmas lights.  You really should embiggen this one.

 

It's just SO danged pretty when the sun hits the ice.

Farolitos

The image above is taken from The Wiki and shows the traditional New Mexican Christmas decoration... the farolito, also known as the luminaria.  You can see some pretty cool images of houses and neighborhoods decorated with farolitos just by googling the term.

Speaking of farolitos... The first Christmas The Second Mrs. Pennington and I spent in our Ferndale home we were startled to see both sides of Oakridge Avenue decorated with farolitos just after nightfall.  As a matter of fact the entire neighborhood for two blocks west and three blocks south (that would be six blocks, for the math-challenged) was so decorated.  The effect was stunning in an old, established leafy Deetroit burb that is a long way from New Mexico.  Yep... we most certainly did go for a walk that evening...

―:☺:― 

Tidings of Comfort and Joy Dept.:  I phoned my dentist a minute or three ago to see if we're still on for 1400 hrs today.   The answer?  "Yes."  The lab came through, the Good Doctor has examined the crowns, pronounced them acceptable, and we shall have five new teeth in our head this afternoon.  For those of you who have been with me for the last two years (and we do NOT exaggerate) you will know this represents the final step in our Adventures In Modern Dentistry, at least as far as this installment goes.  There may be more.


Your understatement of the day:  I'm a Happy Camper.

Earlier This Evening...

A trailer park sunset...

 

... and the Harvest Moon moonrise over a local landmark (heh).  I'm thinking I need a longer lens for these moonshots.  But... priorities.

All shots taken earlier this evening, 10-04-2009.  As ever... click for larger (if you've a mind to do so).

Happy Hour... For the Birds

Just a few minutes ago... the birds and I sharing a wee dram (well... me, anyway... the birds were just there to chirp amongst themselves):

There were tons more on the wire before I went and got the camera... click for larger, as always.