OOJ: Roadrunners are real!

they're real! but this one didn't say "meep, meep!" 

POD: Word Poem by Nikki Giovanni

pastels, Art Stix

lately, i've been feeling weighed down by numerous things: the inescapable ABQ dust; stories ppl tell me about their struggles; earwax, bellybutton lint, even the grease in my hair. at times like these, my energy tends to get sucked into thinking about absences in my life- mostly ppl i miss, but also things i haven't done or things i should be doing better. to combat the weight, i've been making more art + working my way through The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni. 

Word Poem (Perhaps Worth Considering)

as things be/come
let's destroy
then we can destroy
what we be/come
let's build
what we become
when we dream

OOJ: Dirt Art

abq ppl call this time of year "monsoon season", which means most afternoons, the sky lets loose and dumps tons of water on the city for 30 minutes. if i were a monsoon, i'd be insulted that these intense but brief thunderstorms are called monsoons. it's nothing compared to days of nonstop rain in other parts of the world, but i guess if you live in the desert, any sustained rain feels like a monsoon. the happy part is, at least we have some moisture in the air now. in june, we were at 7% humidity. these days we get a whopping 29%. when it rains, it floods, and then we get a ginormous puddle/mini-lake at school, which dries up in a few hours, leaving interesting dirt patterns on the ground. i have no idea how the dirt curls up like that, but it makes for a great sculpture.

OOJ: Chile Roasting Season Begins!

lovely New Mexico chiles + a propane-powered chile roaster

there we were, driving down the street in abq on another hot summer afternoon, when suddenly, we saw what we'd been waiting for all summer: large black iron mesh cylinders parked on the side of the road, givers of roasted spicy green chile goodness. tires squealing, we u-turned and pulled in alongside the chile roasters, rousing a guy who'd been snoozing in the shade, hat pulled down on his face. he gave us a choice of regular, extra hot, or "XXX"- of course we picked the hottest one. as i got back into the car, i felt like a "real" New Mexican. one year in abq, woot!

OOJ: Big Wheels

seen at a gas station in Espanola, NM. 

if you look closely, you can see the toy car is strapped down. 

there was an additional grownup 4X4 to the left of the green one in this pic, 

which made the contrast even funnier. 

OOJ: Nathan Adrian

i know, i'm a day behind on the Olympics- there's just so much to watch. 

today's OOJ is possibly the most beautiful man at the 2012 Olympics:

Nathan Adrian, a 23-year-old cutie from Washington. 

forget Lochte/Phelps- i wanna see more of this one.