Wednesday, May 26, 2010
El Rancho Mobile Home Park, Albuquerque, NM: Nov 1-Jan 31
We stayed out our month in ABQ with many enjoyable highlights and some very cold weather. The weather was more tolerable due to our purchase of a new ventless one-brick Empire propane heater and two MEDIUM-room electric heaters. The medium-room heaters do a much better job heating our small rooms than the small-room heaters -- despite their all supposedly being 1500 watts.
We were able to get tickets to the Met Opera HD broadcast of Carmen and were treated to one of the highlights of the season. The singers were excellent, the staging was gorgeous, and she must be the sultriest Carmen in opera history -- or at least Met history. These HD broadcasts spoil you because you get such great sound, great views, informative interviews, backstage tours, and fun views of the audience between acts.
Another unique activity we attended was First Friday Fractals, which is held monthly at the NM Museum of Natural History Planetarium. For more information see their website at http://fractalfoundation.org/. It was excellent and something we want to return to when we're here again.
The main reason we extended our stay through January was so we could attend the Regional Duplicate Bridge tournament held annually in January. It really turned out to be worth it for us. Wescheduled lots of playing dates for team games with a variety of partners and did fairly well with each one. The highlight was winning the lowest bracket of one of the 4-session knockouts. There isn't much gold awarded at such a low level, but it's still fun to win. We did well in another knockout and in two Swiss Team events, so we ended up with almost 13 gold and even more red points. This means we have over half of what we need for our Life Masters, which seems like a pretty attainable goal at this point. We will continue to strive for it at our minimal level.
The final highlight of our stay in ABQ, and the reason we stayed through the 31st, was the visit by our good friends from Cleveland, Sally & Tom Mortimer. They could only be here one night and their schedule was inflexible, so we stayed a day longer and had a wonderful afternoon with them and a delicious breakfast the next day before we both went our separate ways. It had been around 20 years since we had seen them, but it seemed like only a few weeks. No one seemed to have aged!! I hope the next 20 years treat us as kindly.
We were able to get tickets to the Met Opera HD broadcast of Carmen and were treated to one of the highlights of the season. The singers were excellent, the staging was gorgeous, and she must be the sultriest Carmen in opera history -- or at least Met history. These HD broadcasts spoil you because you get such great sound, great views, informative interviews, backstage tours, and fun views of the audience between acts.
Another unique activity we attended was First Friday Fractals, which is held monthly at the NM Museum of Natural History Planetarium. For more information see their website at http://fractalfoundation.org/. It was excellent and something we want to return to when we're here again.
The main reason we extended our stay through January was so we could attend the Regional Duplicate Bridge tournament held annually in January. It really turned out to be worth it for us. Wescheduled lots of playing dates for team games with a variety of partners and did fairly well with each one. The highlight was winning the lowest bracket of one of the 4-session knockouts. There isn't much gold awarded at such a low level, but it's still fun to win. We did well in another knockout and in two Swiss Team events, so we ended up with almost 13 gold and even more red points. This means we have over half of what we need for our Life Masters, which seems like a pretty attainable goal at this point. We will continue to strive for it at our minimal level.
The final highlight of our stay in ABQ, and the reason we stayed through the 31st, was the visit by our good friends from Cleveland, Sally & Tom Mortimer. They could only be here one night and their schedule was inflexible, so we stayed a day longer and had a wonderful afternoon with them and a delicious breakfast the next day before we both went our separate ways. It had been around 20 years since we had seen them, but it seemed like only a few weeks. No one seemed to have aged!! I hope the next 20 years treat us as kindly.
# posted by Doug and Willie @ 9:56 AM 
