kahunaburger

I was always interested to find out who’s actually looking at this site. With the help of a Moveable Type Plugin called Visitor Locations it now happens automatically. After going to the main page (by clicking on “home” on the left or “main” above”), look on the right hand side of the screen below the “Recent Entries” section and you’ll find a new section called “Recent Vistor Locations”. It shows the location information for the most recent visitors along with a neat little country flag. Cute! Thanks Gavin (author of the plugin).

Comments(0)

It’s that time of the year again where fires seem to flare up left and right of us. The picture below was taken on Sunday a few days ago, the day before we left for a camping trip into the Jemez mountains. What you see right in front of you *are* the Jemez mountains. Wasn’t that bad after all and I guess there were a lot less people because of this tiny fire in the distance.

Fire in the Jemez Mountains

On the other hand: Albuquerque had some pretty nasty fires right in town for the last two days. Interesting that it seems to happen always in the area where the expensive homes are. Also interesting that the fire department thinks it was arson in both cases …

Comments(0)

Well, some companies just make it way to easily onto my sh*t-list. Take for example: domainsforpeople.com (no link provided to make sure that you don’t accidentally do business with them).
(more…)

Comments(1)

Long time ago I saw a photograph of my dad and my aunt Monika in front of a city sign that read “Höllrich”. The photo was taken long before I was born. Here is some more information about this little town in Germany.
(more…)

Comments(3)

This morning my inbox contained an email that claimed it was from ebay (http://www.ebay.com/) and had the subject “EBay Verification”. When I opened the message, it really looked like an ebay email, but when I clicked on the link in the message, I knew that somebody out there was hunting for credit card information.

I decided to collect the information and make sure that everybody who comes here will detect the same scam in the future …
(more…)

Comments(14)

Just a friendly reminder for those of you in the Santa Fe area: Manitou Galleries on East Palace in Santa Fe has currently 14 of my pictures on display (and for sale, of course). So with all the rain we are getting it’s a good idea to hit the galleries and take a look at some of the artwork.

If you’re not in the position to go to Manitou, here’s what you would have seen in the Guest Gallery section on the first floor (apologies to our repeat visitors - some of those photos may look familiar). A click on each image will pop up a larger version.

There are three groups of photos.

The first group of three pictures were recently taken at Chaco Canyon:

Manitou: Chaco I

Manitou: Chaco II

Manitou: Chaco III

The second group is interesting, because it is one larger piece of work that is composed from nine different images. The 9 photos hang exactly the way you see them displayed below and there is a special (reduced) price for the whole set, because it looks so nice together:

Manitou: Textures-Tent Rocks	Manitou: Textures-Grass	Manitou: Textures-Gold
Manitou: Textures-Needles	Manitou: Textures-Spikes	Manitou: Textures-Aspens
Manitou: Textures-Contrast	Manitou: Textures-Brush	Manitou: Textures-Zabrieski

And the last two pictures were mainly chosen by Katherine at the gallery: Bill, because it looks so “Santa Fe” and “Frisco”, because she wanted the dog in the gallery:

Manitou: Bill

  

Manitou: Frisco

Comments(1)

… that we are pregnant there is no reason to make the cookies suffer in the pantry any longer …

She’s eating cookies again

… picture was taken this evening after a nice big bowl of pasta with bacon and cream.

Comments(0)

This morning we had our appointment at the Galisteo Ob-Gyn for the first Ultrasound. Candice had to drink a third of gallon before to make sure that her bladder would push the uterus to the front of the belly. She was almost in pain when we arrived at the clinic, because of all the water in her. Luckily she was allowed to use the restroom otherwise there would have been a mess during the examination …

In front of the Galisteo ObGyn

After waiting for 30 mins we were called into the examination room where little Mum had to expose her growing belly and Kim started working on her:

Checking Candice’ belly

If it is hard for you to figure out what you see: The gloved hand is Kim’s with the Ultrasound device in her hand. Back to the left you can see the screen (the green light below illuminates the keyboard). You can also see Candice’ belly with her little fishy tatoo and her hands crossed over her chest on the right hand side.

After checking out the head first, Kim did a complete scan of the baby and we saw baby feet, baby head, baby arms, baby hands and everything else. The moment of truth came when Kim scanned “between the baby’s legs” and there was … NOTHING.

Nothing most likely means that we don’t have to look for a boy’s name any more. Kim is 98% sure.

Hi Pia!

Baby scan: Face

 

Baby scan: Face

 

Baby scan: It’s a girl

Scans above are: face, face, area between the legs with a pointer to where one expect SOMETHING if it was a boy.

Comments(8)

For the last two weeks it’s been loud around the house. The reasons for increased noise level are millions and millions of bugs (some sort of cicadae) that recently left the ground and climbed up on the trees to hatch to their final form: huge winged bugs that make a hell of a lot of noise.
All around our house you can see the empty shells of those bugs on the trees and there are areas where there are literally hundreds of empty bugs on the trees:

Empty Bugs!

Once they hatch they turn into those little buggers:

Bug

While they are annoying when they constantly bump into you during our walks, they also seem to be a delicious little protein-treat for the dogs. We see them constanly chewing on those bugs during our morning and evening walks.

Another transformation is taking place in the high desert of Santa Fe. The warm days and some recent rain caused the cactuses in the area to add some welcome color to the scenery. They decided to bloom in the most incredible saturated colors. This is only going to last for a very short period and I captured two of them in full bloom in the pictures below.

Blooming cactus

Blooming cactus

Just the other day I also received a friendly reminder that we are indeed living in the desert. Every afternoon at about 3pm-4pm the dogs get restless and I put them out into the fenced dog run. They stay there for one to two hours before it’s time for the evening walk. A few days ago I put them in the dog run and while refilling the water bowl out there I noticed some movement close by. Turned out that a bull snake was enjoying the afternoon sun.
I wasn’t sure what the dogs would do to the snake or what the snake would do with the dogs, so I decided to move the 2-3 ft long animal out of the fenced area.
With a long stick I held down the head of the snake while I grabbed the tail and lifted her up. Bad idea, because the animal was flexible enough and tried to bite my hand that was holding the tail. Dropped her and gave it another go with a differently shaped stick that would keep the head in place while grabbing the tail.

Bull snake

Bull snake

Comments(1)

Totally unrelated, but this is an incredible artist with huge potential. Listen to the samples that “Wing” posted on here web site at http://www.wingmusic.co.nz/listen.html. #7 is my absolute favorite. Going to buy her CD right now …

Comments(4)