11th of December 2015 – after a day exploring Athens with the clan, mainly in the Plaka area, we started to head back towards the hairdresser we pass earlier… we made an appointment for haircuts for all, as it had been 8 weeks since our last trim and we wanted to look presentable for our return home to Australia. As we walked east along Emmou Street, I saw an antique store across the road. This image is probably the highlight of our time in Athens, which was unfortunately spoiled by a dodgy taxi driver ripping us off, not being able to find a decent souvlaki, and a minor flood in our apartment due to dodgy plumbing.
Athens Antiques
Planes Aren’t Stocking
Michele suggested that I invent something that will keep up her stockings that doesn’t irritate her skin. I told her, I’m not that type of engineer.
“Hey, you can keep planes up in the air, why can’t you keep stocking from falling”.
Can’t really argue with that now, can I.
Edicola Veneziano
Taken during our return trip to Australia. On the morning of our full-day in Venice, Dec 4th 2015, we stopped at a little cafe near our AirBNB apartment, and I saw this great scene with a newsstand between a canal and a bridge.
Balandra Breakfast
Balandra Breakfast was my entry for the “Art of 2014” challenge on DPChallenge. While it finished a respectable 20th with the voters, the real achievement was the Honourable Mention & accompanying “Green Splat” it got from the Jury, and the comment from one of the most respected artists on DPChallenge, posthumous.
The Last Supper reimagined as an absurdist working class cabaret. The indifferent Jesus, the stares into camera, the ridiculous interaction with a miniature tennis racket. As with a great Renaissance depiction of the Last Supper, we can only marvel at how much is going on, at the excess of beauty that we can appreciate so much better than the actual participants in it.
-posthumous
This is the third “Art of” challenge on DPChallenge that I’ve done well in. Back in 2011 “Christmas Day” took out the Blue Splat, and in 2013, I got a Green Splat for “Tight” (I really need to blog about that one too to give people the background story).
“Balandra Breakfast” was taken in Trinidad back in June 2014. We went down to Balandra on the east coast of the island to spend some time at Uncle Bruce and Auntie Marguerites’s holiday home… relaxing with family. During the few days there, many of the extended Trinidad family, uncles and aunts, cousins, and their kids came down to spend some time with us, relaxing… or as they say in Trinidad, “limin’“. One morning, I captured this moment at the breakfast table. Uncle Bruce, head in the newspaper (actually was probably a tablet) checking the football and cricket scores, surrounded by my six kids and three of his grandchildren at the table. The moment happens to have captured the expressions on the kids’ faces just as killed one realises she’s killed a bug with the mosquito bat.
Design History of the Keks Blog – Part III
For almost 3 years, this blog has been using the YAMINTH theme, but as of this weekend, it’s entered the world of Responsive Design with the purchase and implimentation of Readolog… the look and functionality of this design will no doubt be tweaked in coming days and weeks, but once established, this will be a design that will be around for a few years.
Kennedy Space Center
Kennedy Space Center (KSC) was one of our “theme-park” stops in our Christmas and New Year trek down to Florida. We needed to get away from the cold of Southern Maryland, and wanted to take the kids to the see the Harry Potter worlds at the Universal theme-parks… but that’s a discussion for a different post.
So… we made our way down to KSC on Boxing Day, 2014, hoping to avoid the crowds that were expected to visit Universal. We’d been to Universal on Christmas day, and speaking to the staff, they ALL said they were not looking forward to work the next day because it is the busiest day of the year for them… “wall-to-wall people”… “Black Friday for theme-parks”. Anyway, that was somthing we were keen to avoid, so thought we’d explore KSC as it was less kid-orientated, a little bit of a drive for Orlando, and a nice way to break-up the trip and avoid theme-park overload.
We got there a little later than we’d hoped, and by the time we did arrive, all the special tours had sold out, so we were limited to the standard entry package. Though a little disappointed at the time, given the crowds, the time it took to see what we could see, we were probably lucky we didn’t spend extra for the other tours.
The kids seemed to enjoy themselves, though, not as much as they did at the other theme-parks, but I had fun, and was very pleased I got to see so much great NASA stuff.
US Politics – SoMD Style
Mid-terms elections here in the US today, and I had to capture some of the local election campaign signs before they disappear. They’ve been up for AGES, and I’ve been meaning to take a photo of a few but have been too busy or slack to do so until now, the last minute.
Much like these photos, I’ve had the intention to blog about the experience of living in the US for some time, but been too slack. Honestly, there’s always something else that has taken priority over blogging, so it’s not entirely due to slackness.
Anyway, that all changes now, as I kill two birds with one stone today, taking these election sign photos and blogging about them… and hopefully, it will start the blogging ball rolling and I make good on my promise (to myself) to post a regular update on the positives and negatives of living in the US.
But that’s for another day… now, back to these Mid-Term Election campaign signs.