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Recipe: lime cheesecake with blackberry sauce

The travel continues – this time to beautiful Pagosa Springs, Colorado. We are visiting with the ILs this weekend. Jeremy and I took a slightly longer route on the way out in order to survey the remainder of the autumn colors. We are now at the tail end. The high winds and snow storms on tap for this weekend will surely put the kibosh on any more golden aspen stands. The temperatures have dropped and the winds were chilling on the drive. It’s both sad and happy… sad to see the fleeting glory of color stripped from the trees and carpeting the ground, but happy to feel the cold snow pelting my face.

Remember how I was testing out some flash solutions while in San Jose? I was too lazy to lug my tripod or external flash(es) and diffuser(s) with me because I was instructed by Dr. McHottie to take it easy on how much weight I lifted until 6 weeks after my surgery (which is tomorrow – and you can just bet I’m hopping on the rowing machine first thing). While I was hanging out in Grandma’s little apartment, I toyed with a few ideas. I wound up taking most of the indoor photos with my pop-up flash on the D200. Because I really don’t like the hard shadows from the little flash, I used a tupperware I had on hand to help diffuse the flash. After messing around with all manner of tupperware, yogurt cups, etc. that Grandma had, I decided to drop $20 on Gary Fong’s Puffer.

Recipe: shredded beef tacos

That phrase is the first sentence I learned in Spanish way back in high school, from a bunch of friends who took Spanish. I took French, see. So when I headed down to South America to do field work for graduate school I was all, “Guys, I don’t speak a lick of Spanish.” Well, except for por que tu eres un taco grande? Everyone assured me I’d pick it up.

I did pick up some Spanish, all with an Argentine accent. That got me a lot of funny stares when I flew across the Andes to Chile for work on a field project with Jeremy and a team of astronomers. When Jeremy met me at the airport in Santiago and we caught a cab, he was amazed while I chattered away with our driver in my Argentine Spanish explaining the geophysical research project I had been working on for the past month. Jeremy speaks Spanish. When he saw me off at the airport in the US, the only new Spanish I had learned was No me molestes! and Chupacabra (from an X-files episode).

When I say Jeremy speaks Spanish, I really mean that he knows a lot of Spanish, but the guy hardly speaks much in English and even less in Spanish. He actually *thinks* before he speaks. That’s why when he finally says something, everyone listens. It’s usually something quite good. But me, I run my mouth all the time and let my jabbering find its way around until I say what I wanted to say. I don’t hesitate to speak. Same goes for my Spanish.

**Jump for more butter**