More has happened than I can write about . . .

Since my last posting I have begun teaching at UNM, I have almost finished unpacking, my friend's (we'll call her Edga because I always did) home was engulfed by water in New Orleans and she moved back here, I have made a few new friends, I have been besieged by allergies, and basically, I have been enjoying my time in Albuquerque, but I fear that the onslaught of student papers and job ads might just swamp me in the next week. I can't believe it's only the beginning of the fourth week of the semester and I feel like I am about to dip below the surface already. But after I grade the batch of 65 papers I get tomorrow -- and grade them, I should say, over a week or so -- then I can perhaps get to the real fun, new research.

All of that above was probably well and good, but not the stuff good blogs are made of.

So, Edga and her boyfriend and mom came back to Albuquerque after having been away for eight years. I visited her in New Orleans several times and twice this last year. If you read my other blog -- Southern Tier -- you saw pictures of her in that section of the blog. She really made a place for herself in that city and if they was anywhere my little half-Norwegian, half-Mexican Edga could feel at home it was in the muggy mystical-hothouse that was/is New Orleans. She worked at a coffee shop for a few years and then at a men's furnishings place called Adain Gill. Before that she worked at Juan's Flying Taco. She was and is tiny, dark-haired, high-voiced, funny, nervous, straightforward, Nuevo Mexicana, uniquely articulated, and a loyal friend.

We made cupcakes last October when I was visiting her the day before Halloween. Her little apartment on Louisiana Street was all decorated for Halloween and she had all of these Halloween mobiles on her front stoop and they made "scary" noises. We made faces for pictures, pretending we were scared. Her boyfriend N is very nice and had figurines of scary creatures on the bookshelf in the living room, with Edga's old Barbies. They were companions. We carved pumpkins and decorated cupcakes and I baked a loaf of bread with a wheel of Brie in it. It turns out that her friend who was decorating cupcakes and carving pumpkins with us that night thought I commandeered the cupcake-decorating. That enervated me when I heard it. It's not like I said, "Out of the way! Cupcake-decorating expert coming through! Stand back!" So that got to me. But we had so much fun that night and Edga had a cauldron of candy the scope of which I had never seen before. Apparently she had a ton of trick-or-treating kids in her neighborhood and when I called her the day after Halloween she told me she had in fact gone through all of that candy. We ate so much candy and so many cupcakes and so much bread and Brie on that night before Halloween.

Yesterday I finally got to see N and Edga. For the first two days they were here back in Albuquerque they were down at the Albuquerque Convention Center with other evacuees who had come to Albuquerque, some with friends or relatives here and some who just got transported here. Apparently everyone from the Red Cross at the Convention Center was very helpful, despite how busy they were, and in a day and a half, Edga and her mom and N got some clothes, communicated with their employers from Louisiana, heard about jobs around here, and learned about other resources that might aid them. They are staying in Edga's grandparents' old house, the house next to the one Edga moved out of eight years ago and never thought she'd return to.

When I picked her and N up yesterday, we were so happy to see each other. We went to Java Joe's and saw someone neither of us were so sure how we felt about seeing and he was so surprised to see us all he could say was "Weird . . . ." That was pretty lame.

We went and sat in the park after that and I bought green chiles from the organic farmers and two patty-pan squashes. We then went and had lunch at Lindy's. I am so happy to have Edga back near me, but oh the circumstances . . . .