Santa Fe

A few weeks ago, my friend Rivkela and I took a jaunt up to Santa Fe. I know, all you outsiders think Santa Fe is a hip, cool place to go. Having spent most of my life a mere hour away from it, I've never had a very high opinion of the place. I guess the people seem all artsy-fartsy and hoity-toity. Everything is old, but on purpose. Some of it looks neat and historical, some of it is just falling apart crummy. Santa Fe is the kind of place where you can be in Joann Fabrics and a lady wearing a glittery masquerade mask is just walking around like it's not weird, just part of her outfit. And yes, that happened to me once.

So why did I want to go there? Two words: Rail Runner. That's a fairly new commuter train set up between Belen and Santa Fe, hitting Los Lunas, Albuquerque, Bernalillo and the rez in between. I was dying to ride the train.



Guess how much it cost, round-trip? Five bucks. That's right, $5. So we ride the train up and went on a museum adventure. Because if there's one thing Santa Fe has going for it, it's art and history. We started at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Georgia being my newest obsession. I don't even care about her art; I just am interested in her. This museum was small. And if I didn't get the half price N.M. discount, I might have been a bit miffed. But I got the chance to see some of her work in person, and watch two films about her. Georgia O'Keeffe spent many years living at Ghost Ranch, N.M. Incidentally, there is a new installment of Ghost Ranch photography by Craig Varjabedian currently showing at the Albuquerque Museum, and I checked that out recently with my friends Ren and Ken.


Photo copyright Craig Varjabedian.

I don't have permission to post it, but I want to say that it's a wonderful collection of photography. Beautiful black and white, with amazing use of light.

OK, so back to Santa Fe, poor Rivkela had just had an allergic reaction to Penicillin and was absolutely covered in hives. She was miserable and trying to stay covered up despite the heat. The second place we visited was the New Mexico History Museum. We didn't spend a whole lot of time there, but there was a lot of really neat stuff. Too much to read and absorb if you're in a hurry, but there is a fashion through the ages exhibit that's really neato. Again, really glad to have the N.M. resident discount.

At this point, I was really hungry, so we went to Upper Crust Pizza, a little pizza joint where you can eat in Santa Fe and not go broke. It's delicious.

You can see that we forgot to take pictures for most of the day ...

After this, we went to a really interesting place called Kakawa Chocolate House. It serves chocolate elixirs made from really pure, high-quality chocolate from Europe. Some of the recipes date back to the Aztec era and are several thousand years old.

OK, well here is where things get fun. You see, we had planned to hoof it to the Indian Arts and Culture Museum, which was a few miles from downtown Santa Fe where everything else that we did was. Several people warned us not to attempt this, and one lady showed us a bus to take to Museum Hill, where this museum is located. Only, we missed the bus, and the last bus back was at 5:45 p.m., since it was a Saturday.

The chocolate guy urged us to walk. He said it's not that far at all and a really pleasant walk. I guess if you like walking windy streets with no sidewalks and many cars zooming by, maybe so. We walked and walked. And then I realized that I had read the map wrong and we had missed our turn what seemed like hours ago. So we walked and walked some more.

At this point, we're not even hoping to see the exhibit. We're just worried about getting there in time to catch the last bus back. We did make it, with about five minutes to see the Native Couture fashion exhibit (that museum was free that particular day, so we didn't have to pay admission).

We found the bus stop out front and could finally relax.



Poor Rivkela and her itchy hives! I swear we walked 10 miles to the museum, but I guess it's only a mile and a half or so. I think google maps lies.

And so we headed home on the train, but not before enjoying some frozen yogurt at Yoberry.

Just let me go home

(That title is to be sung to the tune of Sloop John B by The Beach Boys...Lyrics here if you want to sing along.

I spend all day in Santa Fe for school on Thursdays. No, the classes I take aren't offered in ABQ. The more time I spend up here, the more I can't stand this town. Everything is old and run down. All the buildings look the same (brown adobe--even Micky-Ds) and the streets wind to and fro and take you in directions you didn't mean to go. Traffic was awful all the way to SF, in SF and home from SF.

I decided to kill some time and see a movie, but the close theater has crappy movies. The good ones are across town. So I got directions and naturally ended up LEAVING town accidentally. Twice. Uh-oh. Mrs. Cranky Pants is back.

Then there's the weird people. Like the lady at JoAnn Fabrics who was in her 50s and wearing a glittery pink eye mask like it's Mardi Gras or something. Only it's not. It's JoAnn Fabrics and she's walking around like it's totally normal. I won't even discuss her hat.

School was rough. The beginnings of these classes are tough and technical. Everything has to be so precise, and since you build off of it, you can't half-ass it and move on.

My first class is Flat Pattern II. This is a method of constructing garments from paper. It's all about measurements -- and precise ones at that. Think 1/16 of an inch is negligible? Well, it's not. It's a big deal if you're off by that. Say you're off by 1/8" somewhere. Well, since you're working off half a pattern, multiply that by 4 and you can be off by 1/2" all the way around, and that will mess everything up.

This is from flat pattern so far. My "sloper" (I know some patternmakers hate that term) came out way too big. I'm making adjustments. All the rough edges must be trued eventually:



This is my draping class, so far. It differs from flat pattern in that we start with this block of muslin:


And pin and mark and end up with this:


I know it's hard to see. Anyway, I'm just worn out and need to go relax. Santa Fe, I apologize. Better luck next week.

Don't hate me just because poems suck

First things first: I think I just made a blog discovery. Apparently when you make a blog and then save it as a draft to publish later, it publishes under the date on which it was written. I was featuring Etsy.com sellers this week and I wrote them up the other day and was posting them one by one. Well, I noticed some of the later ones got buried because I guess they posted for the date I actually wrote them and not for the date I hit "publish." Sorry to the sellers for not getting the top of the page!

Anyway, today was the first day of school. It was mostly short classes -- no real work. I worked till midnight last night and then watched "American Idol," of course. Then I couldn't sleep worth a damn and tossed and turned until it was time to get up at the crack of dawn (7:30!). I drove the hour to Santa Fe, attended an abbreviated first class from 10-10:30. Then my next class was at 5:30. Not wanting to drive home and back, I went to see "Dreamgirls." I think my expectations were set too high with all the Academy Award talk. Don't get me wrong, it was good, the singing was amazing and Beyonce is to-die-for beautiful, but I wasn't blown away. It was a semi-musical. I only occasionally like musicals because it's just annoying when they have to break into song every 5 minutes. You get 5 minutes of movie and then 5 minutes of song, etc. I just feel like, "Get ON with the story."

That's kind of how I feel about poems. They are just a way to beat around the bush about what you're feeling. Just SAY what you're feeling plain and simple. Don't make me guess through a bunch of metaphors and fancy-pants words. I'm sure I'm the only person on Earth who actually admits they hate poetry. Fine, I said it. I don't like poems.

Back to school!

School starts tomorrow! It means long, long Thursdays. I have to work late on Wednesdays (till midnightish) and then get up at 7:30 (yeah, yeah, well it's hard for ME) and drive to Santa Fe. I have class from 10-12:30 and then again from 5:30-8. Then I drive home. I have a horrible gap in there, but I think I can keep occupied with homework, my freelance work and attempted knitting. I can also read! Tomorrow, though, I figure there won't be any homework yet, so I will take the opportunity to see "Dreamgirls."

I can thank David for that. At last year's Gala, I was being photographed on the red carpet (see below) when I was informed that I had won movie tickets.

I haven't had much time for movies, so I still haven't used them. The time has come!