They say you can never go home again. Perhaps not, but sometimes you can visit.
Despite having moved back to the part of the world I came from, there’s still some part of me that remembers Albuquerque as the place that was “home”. I suppose that happens when you live somewhere for sixteen years.
Ironically, this made it a bit more difficult to figure out how to occupy myself during the days on my visit there last week. I’ve seen most of the touristy things that might interest me there. As tempting as it might be to make a pilgrimage to all my favorite food places (and I did make it to several), I couldn’t eat all the time.
Thus, I found myself for a couple days sitting within feet of where my desk used to be, in what is now the Ideas and Coffee coworking space (I recommend it to anyone in/visiting ABQ who needs work space). It was a good, productive time. The Friday lecture there on themes for WordPress finally got me to stop waffling about setting up a child theme for this site, I drafted some posts, I got some coding done on some other projects, and more.
It’s a sad sort of voyage, however, that is all work and no getting the hell off the computer.
Which is why I found myself on Monday morning calling the Albuquerque Botanical Gardens to check on a detail in their photography policy and then plunking down the money and signing the forms for a professional photography permit. Unlike some other places, it’s not that much more expensive than the combination botanical gardens-aquarium-zoo admission and includes admission to them all.
In the end, I didn’t make it to the zoo or the aquarium – just ran out of time – but I don’t care a bit. I got some good photos out of it; probably five or six out of the ~200 I took are worth posting places, but as far as I can tell, that’s not unreasonable (particularly for a windy day outdoors). Best of all, I can do whatever I want with these photos without even the slightest qualm about whether or not it’s proper and ethical and legal for me to do so.
I’m still culling through them all to be sure which are the keepers, but in the meantime, here’s one that won’t be a “post-for-sale” … that I took for no reasons other than “it amuses me” and “posting it on the site to amuse my readers”. Click on it to get a bigger image where you can actually read the sign:
One can see why boojums are the most dangerous form of snarks … this thing is spindly, spiky, and spiny all at once!
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