Pondering the world

Bottger Mansion of Old Town Bed & Breakfast

We own the historic Bottger Mansion of Old Town bed & breakfast in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Come stay with us--we have a great location and the best breakfast in Albuquerque! Click here to visit our website. Visit our B&B blog, "View from the Innside," for great recipes, Albuquerque events, history, restaurants, things to do, and much more.

Disclaimer: This is my personal blog, full of experiences and observations, craft projects, foodiness and frustrations. Depending on the day, it most definitely does not represent our business. Fair warning: observations and opinions different than yours may be present.

Stray cat neuter program in Albuquerque

Albuquerque has a special free program that tries to control the population of stray cats. They will provide humane traps, you catch them and take them in, the cats are neutered, then they will return them to the area where they were caught. Simply eliminating the cats creates a "vacuum effect," which then allows a whole new population of stray cats to move in and claim the territory.

Cats that have been neutered through the Best Friends Animal Society have had the tip of the left ear clipped, making them a little easier to identify. Once as many cats as possible have been caught and neutered, they will provide suggestions to deter the cats from coming in your yard.

If you are seeing a lot of stray cats in Albuquerque and would like to help control the population, please contact this program. If you've been leaving cat food out for the strays, the program folks say please don't--it only encourages more strays to move into your area. 

Apparently we have the "Kool-Aid" yard for cats--water, birds to watch or hunt, trees to climb and plantings to hide behind. Our area has a population of feral cats who don't belong to anyone and are not at all domesticated. Last year one of the cats had a litter of three kittens, so this year the population seems to have exploded, as other strays have also come into the area.

We aren't particular fans of cats. Besides being allergic to them, we find them leaving "gifts" in the flower beds, marking their territory, yowling and hunting my birds. The only upside is that we haven't had any mice at all this winter getting into my birdseed in the storage building.

Out of my research, everyone says the best deterrent is a dog. I'm good with that.

 

 

"Mardi Gras" doesn't translate so well here

I've always wondered why we don't have more Mardi Gras events in Albuquerque. It falls on March 4th in 2014. Even a Google search didn't turn up much this year. The only thing I found was "Carnaval 2014" at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, which appears to be a musical.

Maybe it's because it can be chilly in Albuquerque on Mardi Gras. If you think about places like New Orleans, Rio de Janiero and the Carribbean, they're a lot warmer in March. I've never been to a Mardi Gras celebration, but I've seen that Elvis Presley movie. Apparently people drink and wear skimpy costumes, and the party spills into the streets outside. We'd need warmer weather for that. 

There was a nightclub here that put on a "Fat Ass Tuesday" party for several years, but they're not doing that any more. Maybe too many ladies were sensitive about having a fat ass. That would be "una trasera gorda" in Spanish. Chances are good that a woman who identifies with this statement might not want to attend "Fat Ass Tuesday."

Maybe it just doesn't translate well. "El martes gordo" just doesn't sound as cool as "Mardi Gras."

 

for your utmost Groundhog Day enjoyment

Some of us don't watch the Super Bowl, so let's make the most of Groundhog Day. Here are some amusing captions I created without resorting to Bill Murray's film. Okay... maybe one.

 

More dog candidates for consideration

Just before I woke up, I had a bizarre dream that my husband came home with some Italian breed dog and announced that he bought it for us to eat for dinner. That's what it was bred for.

"Of course, we're not going to eat it!" I declared. "What's his name?" And the dog became ours.

It probably had a lot to do with watching this Budweiser Super Bowl commercial. I should really watch the other Super Bowl commercials to be fair, but this one has my vote!

 

The closest I can find to the IItalian breed dog in my dream is a Spinone Italiano, but it didn't look much like that. More like a Catalan Sheepdog.

Both are very cute. I would never consider either one of them for dinner. Well, having them come to dinner maybe.

the merry Christmas truck

Years ago when we lived in Aomori prefecture in northern Japan, the local folks would mount rice-straw wreaths and decorations on the front of their vehicles as a symbol of good wishes and luck for the new year. Below is a picture of a fancy one. Of course, all of the elements on their decorations have specific symbolism, and I don't know what any of them are.

In the rural area where we lived, the vehicle decorations weren't very fancy, mostly just the rice straw woven into shapes. 

I don't have any rice straw decorations, but I've adapted the idea to our vehicles over the years. Again, nothing fancy. But you'd be amazed how many people smile and wave at the sight of the wreath mounted on the front of our truck.

The snow we got last week was an added bonus, just to make it look more festive and seasonal.

Merry Christmas.

my Christmas tree is now un-pre-wired and un-pre-lit

I swear--all the lights on the tree worked last year when I put it away. About five years ago I bought one of those pre-wired, pre-lit Christmas trees. Just pop it up, plug it in, fluff out the greenery--it gets flattened in the storage box--and it just works, right? 

Not if you have those little twinkle lights. I must have bought the tree just before everyone started going to LED lights. If the little twinkle light bulb comes loose, you're hosed--the whole string goes out, as well as any other strings plugged into that one. Loose or broken wire? You name it, the string is toast. Have you ever tried trouble-shooting a string of lights pre-wired onto a tree? I spent several hours on that a couple of years ago. I was successful, but I had to wonder if it was worth it.

This year, I plugged in the tree and got maybe 10% of the lights working--the very top section and about one-quarter of the bottom section. In spite of my best trouble-shooting efforts, including trying every string separately, nothing would come on. I am SO done with this. My housekeeper and I spent two solid hours unclipping and untangling all those @#$% pre-wired lights off the tree. I now have a naked tree and will happily go to Costco tomorrow to buy four new strings of small LED lights. I will take them off every year and put them back on the next. Happily.

Remember the scene from How the Grinch Stole Christmas where the whos are quickly decorating for Christmas. They bring out trees collapsed like umbrellas, pop them open, and the tree is already lit and decorated! 

Thank you, Dr. Seuss.

no Black Friday shopping

No Black Friday shopping for me. Actually, I'm not much of a shopper at any time of the year. Much like my mother, I know what I want, go directly there, buy it and get out. I will go to great lengths not go anywhere the entire weekend after Thanksgiving, especially on Friday. Sometimes the traffic is so bad that even going to the grocery store is an ordeal. 

In the early years of the Black Friday phenomenon, I went shopping one year. I was younger then and it wasn't terrible, but the whole thing has gotten so huge I would just rather opt out. Besides, everyone I buy gifts for is older now, requiring much more thought about the gifts. We're all in the "downsizing" phase, so the gifts need to be absolutely useful. Who needs yet another candy dish?

How about Black Friday as a spectator sport? On television, in the comfort of my own recliner.

 

further adventures with Superglue

I have a longstanding love/hate relationship with Superglue. Yes, it's amazing all the things it can fix. It's also amazing how much trouble I can get myself into with it. Today's adventure...

The light fixture in the laundry room is dim, and I thought that one of the two circular fluorescent bulbs in it had burned out again. I can just barely reach the latch to take the plastic cover off, and it immediately fell on the floor and cracked the corner. (I was right about the burned out light bulb, though.)

Superglue to the rescue, right? It's great at gluing plastic things. In spite of my best efforts, I managed to get the Superglue on more than the light fixture cover. My success at gluing the cover back together was average at best, but I was WAY successful in Supergluing my finger to the light fixture as well as to the bottle of Superglue itself. I detached both before it became permanent, but the Superglue residue on my left hand makes me look like a burn victim on my forefinger, thumb and that crease between my thumb and finger. 

I have tried all sorts of things to get Superglue off, including nail polish remover and Goof-off, with only mediocre results. What I should have done was wear vinyl gloves like I did last time.

I would have ended up with the vinyl glove glued to the light cover.

dogs "speak" other languages, too

My first reaction was "Oh--a Border Collie who speaks Spanish!" From my two semesters of Spanish a couple of years ago and sporadic exposure to it from radio and TV around here, I know this says, "protect your lawn from invasive insects." Why would the dog care unless those insects were ticks or fleas? Part of guarding the house, I guess.

When I was in high school, I had a German teacher who owned a miniature Schnauzer. She was proud of him. Not only was he well-trained and obedient, he knew all the commands in English, French and German. He was a truly multi-lingual dog. When you think about it, why not? 

Our Golden Retriever could even spell. When she was a puppy, we'd ask her if she wanted to go for a walk. Then we had to be careful when we said that if we didn't intend to take her for one and it just came up in conversation. Otherwise, she'd be nose to the front door, looking expectant. So we had to start spelling that word and a number of others:  w-a-l-k, r-i-d-e, c-a-r, b-a-t-h.... Any of those would cause some kind of reaction, whether good or bad. The "bath" word would cause her to run and hide.

sandbag conversations

Following the terrible storm on Friday night and the water damage in our basement, I went to one of the fire stations to get some sandbags to put around our back door for the next big rain. They have empty sandbags and big piles of sand--bring your own shovel. You can have some interesting conversations with other people coming to make sandbags.

The young man said he and his wife just bought their first house in the south valley, which is low-lying along the river. A big tree has sent big roots under the driveway, breaking it up and tilting the concrete toward the garage, sending water inside the garage.

The young mother with two little boys said someone she knows got two feet of water inside her house and it's completely ruined.

Everyone has storm stories after an event like this. Where do you live? Where were you when the storm hit? Was there any damage?

A disaster ishard, but those of us who experienced it are on common ground. We also saw a lot of people pitching in to help, cleaning up debris, moving branches out of the road, and helping out neighbors. In the grand scheme of things, our damage was minor, and we only needed about six sandbags for the next time, but I filled a couple for my neighbor's back door as well.