Category Archives: photography

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Maps

I really like maps. I have a small hiking book for the area and a book of hikes. When I am riding in my daughter’s care, I admire a map of Colorado, a geologic highway map and shaded elevation map. My daughter says, “You gave that to me when I moved to Denver. Take it!” She doesn’t like extra stuff. Use it or lose it.

The geologic side fascinates me. It shows color coded zones of different rock formations and has some history. Rocks and mountains, delightful!

Some of the hikes here are also mountain bike trails and loop in all sorts of ways. I try to remember to photograph the map at the start of the hike, so that I can refer to it on my phone. Lots of hikes are out of the range of phone towers, so I won’t depend on GPS!

Grand Junction lies in the Grand Valley and runs mostly east/west along the Colorado River and Interstate 70. They have named the streets on a grid with letters and numbers. This has some odd charm: I live off of 21 and 1/2 road, which is 21 and 1/2 miles from the Utah border. There are some 1/4 and 3/4 roads too. The lettered roads start with A at Orchard Mesa. There is an F and 1/2 road. How fun! There is also a downtown switch, where suddenly the numbered roads go from 1 to 7 and drop out of the numbers set from the Utah border. There is an article explaining here.

The photograph is part of the Colorado Geologic Map. The altitude map is on the other side. Isn’t it pretty?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: guide.

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Pick one, delete two

I went through my blog this morning, picked a month two years ago, and deleted a bunch of photographs and the accompanying posts. More room! It is not a very fast process.

I am thinking about the Ragtag Daily Prompt today, hamfatter. It makes me think of Miss Piggy first. Don’t we all have a little bit of ham in us if we are in the right situation? Even if it’s just a dream or a daydream. Hamfatter also brings up ham and my inlaws. My son and daughter-in-law and daughter were all home for my birthday earlier this year. We also stopped at my daughter-in-law’s house, to pick my son up. Her parents heard it was my birthday and gave me a ham. How surprising and kind!

Yesterday I ordered prints of photographs to send to them, almost all with their daughter. She told me not to print any of the climbing gym or of the pets that her mother dislikes. Got it! I tried to pick ones that they will enjoy. It is a start of holiday gifts.

I am still having disaster nightmares, last night about my house. My house is far away right now and apparently my brain is worrying. I dreamed that there were clean baby clothes folded and piled all over the place in the upstairs bathroom, even on the commode. I took them off it and discovered that it was backed up. Then the walls dissolved and I realized with horror that there was water flooding through them! Then I woke up. Not a fun dream and no, there are not clean baby clothes in the upstairs bathroom. I think it is a combination of being far away and the coming administrative change. In some states it is illegal for a physician to discuss abortion. Will vaccines be next? And the most abortions are the spontaneous ones, where the pregnancy ends and passes. We call that a miscarriage but it is also called a spontaneous abortion. I wonder if those are illegal too.

I dress a bit more formally for work then at home. Maybe there is a bit of hamfatter there, too, entering the role of doctor.

I took the photograph in 2007.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: hamfatter.

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Who is there?

This is not a brilliant photograph, but it is interesting. This is taken from North Beach in 2022 with my cell phone. It was a very grey day and wet and we heard roaring. I imitate both animals and birds, so I roared back and tried to match the call. This is the response. These are sea lions and they can be enormous. The elders and biggest ones stopped and stuck their heads out, wanting to know who is there? Thankfully they did not come ashore, because the males can be 2.4 meters long (7.8 feet) and 390 kg (859 pounds). We did stop roaring, a bit intimidated. We had roared back at them other times. The sea lions are moving north, more information here.

I am trying to find time and energy to keep removing lots of old blogs and photographs to make room for the new. I could pay for more space, but then I have to keep paying for it, so I don’t want to. I have gone back and read my 2009 posts, no pictures, from the Mad As Hell Doctors trip and from writing elsewhere. I write more often with the Ragtag Daily Prompt, but the longer medical posts are intermittent.

Work has been interesting and I feel a bit off balance, because the plan is in flux and morphing. Right now I am in the same clinic Monday through Thursday, but at two different desks. I won’t be in this clinic for the rest of the assignment unless something changes. I don’t know where I will go next. Primary care has lost two providers in the six months I’ve been here, but I don’t know if that is an ongoing rate nor how many there are total.

My first job out of residency had a terrible turnover. I was fifth senior doctor out of fifteen in two years. That is a really really bad sign. By the end of the second year I was fairly sure that I would not be staying and that I could not change the culture. The three women doctors that I had joined had been trying for two years and one had already left! I was gone by the end of the third year.

And back to roaring with the sea lions. Here is Walt Kelly’s take on roaring, his poem Northern Lights.

Oh, roar a roar for Nora, for Nora in the night,
For she has seen aurora borealis burning bright.

A furore for our Nora! And applaud Aurora seen!
Where, throughout the Summer, has our borealis been?

_____________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: grey.

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Low fog

I took this on New Year’s Eve on a walk with my kids and old friends in Maryland. We fooled around in a park. I like the low fog hanging in the trees, always further away when we walked to it.

Seesaw, Margery Daw, Jackie shall have a new master
He shall have but a penny a day, because he can’t work any faster.

That is the version of an old nursery rhyme that I learned from my mother. There is more about it here.

I am going through and starting to delete old blog posts and photographs to make room for the new ones. Not one of my stronger talents!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: seesaw.

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Day denouement

This is the sunset yesterday as I arrive in Pendleton, Oregon to stay the night. The first stage of the journey done. Sol Duc is ok with the car as long as it is not moving. When it moved, she objected, for much of the first hour. She stops when I sing to her, so I worked my way through many of the old folk songs that I learned as a child.

And today, dust and ashes with the news.

We will go on, though. Even as discrimination worsens.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompts: denouement and dust.

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Sesame Street Soup

We did not have a television until I was nine and my little sister was the excuse for watching Sesame Street. We watched this sequence and asked my mother if we could make Sesame Street Soup. We wrote down the recipe and it was delicious.

The soup in my picture is not Sesame Street Soup. It is a Thai influenced soup, with lemon grass and coconut milk and fresh basil and fresh corn, from September 2023.

Sesame Street Soup is here.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: soup.

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Home!

I got home in the afternoon on Monday, a friend brought food and I crashed to sleep early. Sol Duc is a bit surprised to be here.

Tuesday I stepped in a puddle in the laundry room and uh-oh! The utility sink had filled and overflowed, though not much. There is a pump in the laundry room that handles the water from the kitchen sink and the laundry and it died. It was working when I was here for two days in October, I think. I can’t remember hearing it on this trip. I can hear the pump from the kitchen. As soon as I saw the water, I realized that I had not heard it.

The plumber came yesterday, confirmed that the pump has died and hopefully will have a new one to install next week. I told my house that I’d like a warmer and less wet welcome home, but never mind. Things wear out, leak, break down. At least I have the money to fix it since I am working.

The photograph is from Tuesday, from the Bishop Hotel downtown, the live music from 5-7. Casey Macgill and friends and they are fabulous! I got to see friends, hear the music and dance some! Happy!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: leak.