January 9th - NMAF and Corrales

January 8th, Wednesday, was the scheduled lunch meeting with the New Mexico Architecture Foundation. I contacted them for possible volunteering but I'm not sure how or what needs to be done.  This was the executive board meeting at Los Equipales Restaurant in Nob Hill. I met the various board members and foundation president. There were a couple volunteers and three presenters from the NM state tourism department.

The tourism folks were making a pitch for more cooperation between organizations and increased highlighting of architectural sites as a draw for tourism. New Mexico is lagging in tourist visits and dollars spent. State funding has greatly increased but NM is still funded at about half of what Colorado spends. "New Mexico - True" is the new slogan along with "adventure steeped in culture". There is always a slogan...but they seem to have put some thought and research into the plan.

One of the volunteers is working on redesigning the foundation's web site and there was a presentation on that. It's set up on Wordpress. They also want to do a face book page.

There is a plan for establishing walking tours focusing on Albuquerque's architecture. That sounds interesting but there are already a few walking tours out there that feature some architectural sites.

They are good and sincere people but I'm still puzzled. They do annual tours at one location somewhere in the state. Last year in October it was Isleta Pueblo and next year it is TorC....Truth or Consequences. They have a healthy bank balance.

My volunteer interests are in preservation and history and there is some focus there in the foundation but they are centered on Albuquerque and I'm not sure there is much left for them to do....there are other groups that are more engaged in preservation.

I'm going to stick with it and see what develops.

The meeting took most of the afternoon.

As usual I had dinner (chicken-pineapple stir fry) and TV in the evening.

Thursday, January 9th, was sunny and not too cold. Still cold enough to freeze the fish pond each night. The fish are doing OK....just staying down in the deep water.

My library DVDs were due. I renewed one (William and Mary) and picked up Spiderman and a couple mysteries. I want to see Spiderman so I have some notion of what Bjorn is talking about regarding the CG effects.

I spent the afternoon in Corrales. I'm sort of looking for a large picture to go in the TV room but I'm stuck. I don't know what I want. I went to a couple art galleries and they had some things that were costly but would work. I had lunch at the Corrales Bistro....a beer and my usual pastrami sandwich. I stopped at an antique shop and looked around and also at a ceramic tile shop. I bought a small tile with one of my quail's heads on it. That fills in a small gap i have -- I really needed another tile.

Supper was a pizza and I watched Spiderman. I never gave the CG effects much thought before. I can see what kept Bjorn busy. He's not listed in the credits but he was working at Sony, I think, devising the systems used in the CG effects.