Sense of Adventure

To fit in around here, you really have to be a character. For one thing, you need to help keep the other denizens of the madhouse entertained.

Emma continues to show she belongs in the Milán Pack. Just now, with the street full of youths, not all the most reliable-looking, and with bass thumping from the speakers of a truck across the street, what roused Emma to bark fiercely?

What but her nemesis, a young mother with a pram?

To be fair to Emma, the mother was walking a somewhat stout little dog. That’s got to up the threat factor.

•••

To further support Emma’s pack-appropriate eccentricity, on our walk today we got rained on. At home Emma doesn’t like to be out in any kind of weather. By which I of course mean weather, as in, the weather doing something, not just sort of being there. Today, though, she happily ignored the fact that it was raining. As long as the rain stayed light.

To my surprise she didn’t even react to fairly loud thunder. Usually if any kind of boom is even audible when she’s outside, she’s shrieking and thumping at the back door to come in. Out on the ditch this afternoon, she didn’t even blink. Apparently she figures Daddy will protect her.

(This might be ill-advised. Daddy is tall, hence liable to attract lightning.)

I enjoyed the rain myself. Mostly. It’s a rare treat to see New Mexico on a cloudy, rainy day. And light rain falling on me actually feels pleasant. Certainly knocks down the heat.

But then as we approached the point where I intended to turn around the rain began coming down for true. Then Emma was, like, “Daddy, can we seek shelter now? Don’t you know enough to come in out of the rain?” Fortunately there were trees with thick enough foliage to offer some respite.

Even then I was more concerned by the lightning. If I’d expected that, or if I’d heard thunder before we set out, I would have kept us home. Naturally it waited until we were on our way up the ditch.

(more…)

A bit of an experiment today - take that as yesterday, Friday, May 2^nd, the day before this nominally posts.

As I mentioned in our last thrilling episode (and, yes, I’m easily thrilled) I’ve got both Dragon NaturallySpeaking and my DVR up and running. So today when I took Emma Dog for a walk down by the Nature Center, I decided to try my hand at an audio diary. I keep a journal of our walks anyway, and it’s struck me several times just how convenient it’d be to be able to record interesting events, sights, impressions, and suchlike, just by speaking. I do carry my beloved Pilot T/X religiously, but writing into it’s … not so efficient. Especially since Graffiti 2, their writing interface software, basically sucks. Although in truth I’ve never been terribly accurate at writing on my PDA.

But talking, obviously, is pretty easy.

Also, of course, it’s my intent to dictate my fiction on the go, implementing what I’ve long thought of as my “Man in Motion” concept. So I reckoned this’d be a prime opportunity to test several things at once.

What follows, therefore, is my transcript of the day’s session. It runs 1006 words. It’s proofread, but not edited - I’m proud I only said “um” once. It’s as close to word-by-word as I could make it.

Feel free to skip this one. If not - here goes:

(more…)

I just got back from taking Emma on a walk on the ditch that leads along the eastern side of the RGNC wildfowl preserve. It was a beautiful Spring midday, mostly clear; the sun was hot and the breeze cool, a combination I really enjoy. Too bad we don’t get it too often.

As we were heading back to the car along the southern fence of the RGNC fields I saw a couple of ring-necked pheasant cocks (okay, get the giggles out of the way. It’s what they’re called. Deal.) Albuquerque’s North Valley down by the Río Grande is infested with pheasants. The males strut around, looking absurdly gorgeous with their shiny green heads, red-circled eyes, golden breasts, and long-feathered tails. And of course what they’re doing is trying to attract babes.

So these two cock pheasants came running toward the fence through green ground cover that was maybe chest-high on them, four or five inches on average. It looked as though they were racing. Their courses converged until they came within about eight feet of the fence, when they stopped ten feet apart. Then they turned around and walked back out into the field, again angling toward each other, until they were walking side by side.

Then they stopped and turned toward each other. They started doing this bobbing routine, one ducking low while the other rose up, like pistons in a two-stroke engine. It looked suspiciously like a courtship dance; I was wondering if we were going to see some serious gay pheasant action here. Right out in front of God and everybody. Think about the children! (Imagine that as said by Bill Clinton in his customary Berkshire hog-as-televangelist squealing grunt.)

More likely it was some kind of rivalry dance. As I watched this Emma and I started walking again. Before we’d gone more than a few steps this hen pheasant comes booming out of the low brush right by the fence. She flew off at an angle past the fancy-dancing males and out into the field. The nearer male turned right round and went running off in her direction, chuckling to himself in triumph. The other emitted a loud clack of dismay. “Dammit!”