Category Archives: Uncategorized

Imagine that you’re planning a driving trip to the West Coast and want to leave right after midnight so you can avoid traffic congestion in Phoenix and Los Angeles along the route you’ve chosen. You’ve loaded up the car with your luggage and other items the evening before so it will be a quick exitContinue reading “But what if I need someone to fix a flat tire at 1 a.m.???”

I know all of you are busy getting ready for a big Thanksgiving feast, so I’ll keep this short. For several years, Thanksgiving became a bad luck day for me. This mostly happened when I was much younger and I think the stigma has gone away. For example, one year I was playing in someContinue reading “It’s a great day if you’re not a turkey — or me…”

Police in Albuquerque are searching for two armed robbers who came into a Halloween store before the holiday and forgot something essential for someone contemplating such a crime. A mask. The store was probably full of them, but the armed robbers apparently were clueless about security cameras in place and allowed their faces to beContinue reading “Another Halloween tale…”

A befuddled bicycle rider recently wrote to the Albuquerque Journal concerning the sudden appearance of spiders painted on bike lanes in the city. “Riding my bicycle throughout the city, I have spotted stenciled spiders in various colors in the bike lanes,” the note to the Journal said. “I was thinking they were some kind ofContinue reading “A little late for Halloween…”

More than 50 years after I graduated from college, I still have occasional dreams about not finishing a final assignment in class, missing too many classes, flunking a final exam and not being able to graduate. I’m told that this is a fairly common phenomenon, probably because for the first time in our young livesContinue reading “Some things never change…”

—Mark Twain on a speaking tour of England in 1897 I’ve written two earlier blogs about people who were reported dead, even though they were very much alive. One involved our good friend Cheryl who discovered on her Ancestry family tree that she had been listed as dead since 2011. She is still very muchContinue reading ““The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated…””

I’ve completed my first week as a clerk in an early voting polling place at the Mesilla Town Hall. Everything has run smoothly, except for a couple of hiccups I created when registering people to vote. My fat fingers on a tiny keyboard didn’t help and some misunderstanding on birth dates and name spelling byContinue reading “Emilio Naranjo would be rolling in his grave…”

At my temporary job as an election clerk for the November general election, I’ve been tasked with doing same day voter registrations. We don’t expect many of them — at least at my polling site — but we do have to follow specific procedures in order to register someone on the same day. One ofContinue reading “This probably won’t work…”

During the next couple of weeks, my posts may be a bit sporadic — if at all. I decided earlier this year to answer the call for people to serve as election clerks in Dona Ana County and I’ve been assigned to do an early voting job in Mesilla starting Saturday, Oct. 22. By theContinue reading “The black widow spider voting conspiracy…”

Last weekend, I attended a reunion of the New Mexico State University rugby team, which I coached for many years starting in the early 1980s. I think I was coach for more than 10 years. During that time, I had one team which finished third in the national championships, several teams which won regional championshipsContinue reading “On being a coach…”

I read with amusement in last week’s Albuquerque Journal about some skullduggery by two contestants in an Ohio walleye fishing tournament. The two claimed to have won the tournament by catching fish that weighed more than those of any of the other contestants. After some eyebrows were raised because the winning fish seemed to beContinue reading “Big fish, no weights…”

The October 2022 issue of Car and Driver magazine arrived in my mailbox last week and included a story which triggered memories of another story which I helped circulate many years ago when I was New Mexico bureau manager for United Press International. The story in the car magazine talked about research being done onContinue reading “A different kind of black gold in New Mexico…”

This will be kind of a mish-mash of short subjects that occurred to me last week and during one mostly sleepless night when a late evening glass of iced tea was responsible for my caffeine-charged brain wandering around aimlessly in my skull. __________ The first involved a trip to the Southern New Mexico Fair, whereContinue reading “The Red, White and Moo — and other musings…”

You’ve got to give it up to the kids in Clovis. They know how to get in on the latest online challenges. And also how to get the attention of their school nurses. A report last week said that the nursing staff in Clovis schools had suddenly been inundated with treating kids eating a newContinue reading “Flamin’ Hot Cheetos are so yesterday…”