Between San Antonio and Carrizozo, New Mexio

Every semester I teach the raku firing process along with hand built pottery for Continuring Ed at the U. It is a spectacular process with dramatic results. Sadly, the colors are transitory, the process stinks and I wheeze for 2 days after every firing. I love the teaching, but wow, the firings are miserable. The thing that kept me teaching last semester was that I was going to take the proceeds and buy a lens, a 70-300mm telefoto. In the end it almost didn't happen because the feds and state ate a third of the paycheck and I really didn't have enough for the lens, until I was fortunate to find a used one on Amazon.

Today was the Native Plant Festival in Alamogordo, about 200 miles from the big Q. The kids and I decided to pack up the granddaughter and head out. I drug my feet delaying leaving until I could pick up my new lens. It is wonderful and fun, but it turns out that a lens that long is a whole different critter than my beloved 35mm macro lens. I shot like 200 shots today and over half were unacceptably blurry. Another half of those are badly composed and the almost all of the rest were icky. This was a day of learning.

This is the one I liked best.

At about this point, the baby decided she had enough of the car seat and reallys started to wail. It tooks us 3 hours to go the last 100 miles because every few miles we had to stop and feed her, change her or just walk her around. Still a very nice day, and I have fun trip to the botanic gardens by myself to play with the new lens by myself.