`
Do you ever wonder what might have happened to people who are essentially strangers to us?
Next door to my office building is a retirement & assisted
living place - it used to have the word "Alzheimer's" in the name and
we joked about just trading one place for the other as our minds went; usually with the assumption that too much work was going to cause such a decline.
Anyway - over the last couple of months every morning, as I've walked past, an elderly man has been outside hiding behind a pillar enjoying a cigarette. Every morning I would say "good morning how are you?" and he'd respond with a loud and cheery: "Good morning to you and I'm great"
The last few mornings he was not there and I wondered if he had died or been caught. It crossed my mind that I might never know - I don't think I would've gone inside to enquire about the health of a man having a forbidden cigarette.
I was so relived to see him back this morning that I almost said "oh thank God you are ok".... I really had been quite concerned about someone whose name I don't even know.
*******
The bike below used to appear near the office during the day and
then be gone by evening. Then it arrived and stayed. And stayed and
stayed. If this had been anywhere near I live, it would've
been stripped within a few hours. After more than a month the rear
tyre is flat but no-one has stolen the helmet or attempted to steal spare parts from the bike.
So, where is the owner? Did they die at
their desk? Did they walk to the shops at lunch time and get run-over
crossing the road? Or perhaps they developed Alzheimer's and forgot they owned a bike.
I hate not knowing..... and unlike the missing elderly man, where I
could've enquired if I'd wanted to, there is no-one to ask about the bike's owner.
November 6th
`
With us all diligently slapping hand sanitizer on our hands to kill 99.99% of everything that might make us sick..... where do all the killed germs go?
These have nothing to do with dead things on hands - I just thought they were pretty. Taken on walk around the neighbourhood next to ours on the weekend:
.
When Michelle & I went to the Outer Banks of NC in September, we stopped by a really nice store called Sandy Bay Gallery. After making our jewelry purchases and chatting with the owner, we walked back outside and stopped to admire the hippo pottery. But oh look! Hippo Mouth has a resident!
Is that the blurpiest little frog ever? The shop owner saw us looking and came out and said he lives in there, and that sometimes there is another one that hangs out close by. But before I could get more photos inside the hippo, she coaxed him out onto the wall:
and that is about half of my vacation photos right there....
~
I am scared of squirrels. Irrational I know and I'm annoyed at myself for being afraid of such a cute looking little thing.
I'd
never seen a "real" squirrel until my first day here and when I saw
them I raved over their sweet little faces and bushy twitching tails.
My second day here I met a kamikaze squirrel. Instead of running away from me it ran straight at me and stamping feet and noise did not deter it. It only stopped when I ran away and then, looking over my shoulder, I swear I saw it smile.
This fear is especially pathetic as I come from the land of more than a few of the world's top 10 deadliest snakes, the small Funnel Web Spider and the Blue Ringed Octopus. I have a healthy respect for these but am not particularly terrified of them.
But squirrels... I give way to even if it means walking onto the roadway; I give wide berth to trees where I spot a squirrel and I never stand still in a park!
We don't have any squirrels in our little yard; I suspect because of all the pepper (chili) plants we have around but yesterday I noticed a neighbour is actively encouraging them .... I would never be able to leave the house if this was at my front door!
This little girl was having a feast. Of course this was taken from well back on the sidewalk!
Originally published at sixhours.net. You can comment here or there.
The colors aren't quite right, and I want to add a lot more detail, but here's what I've been working on for Calobee Doodles. My initial thought was to have this be an animated Web layout... when a user rolls over one of the houses (presumably they'd each be a link), something happens. Maybe a kitty pokes his head around the corner, the chimney smoke moves, or a curtain is pushed to the side to reveal a little boy staring out.
But then I'm not sure I want to get so involved... I have a tendency to lose interest when a project takes too long to complete. I may scrap this as a Web layout altogether and just make it into a print for the shop. Or maybe I'll do both! Either way, it's fun thinking up all the little bits and pieces that bring the doodle together (I'm particularly enamored with the mini clothesline for some reason) and watching each house grow into its unique personality.
(Click for a larger version!)
So, I've been using my Typepad account instead of VOX, and whenever I come back over this way I have shit loads of spam comments to delete. Surely, VOX, if you delete a spam account, it should automatically delete all of the spam comments they've left as well?
Originally published at sixhours.net. You can comment here or there.
I had fun designing this one, if you couldn't tell. It gave me a chance to flex my (rapidly deteriorating) Photoshop muscles and better familiarize myself with the WordPress Theme structure. A huge part of this redesign is not only design, but a re-branding of sorts. I decided to treat Sixhours.net less like a photography portfolio and more like a personal Web site... and so the design is a little more me and a little less Serious Business (tm). Speaking of which, it's been eight years (!) since I first bought this little nook of the Web. I think this is the domain-equivalent of a birthday at the spa.
I'll be the first to admit I've been in a rut, and I know it's because I've defined my creative life by my photography, but photography isn't doing it for me lately (there's also that pesky new-baby-itis problem, but I'm recovering). When I allowed myself to apply my creative energy to other tasks, I found I had a lot of ideas and more motivation to work on them.
So now I have a list of projects that should keep me busy for a while. I'm already working on a new look for Calobee Doodles which will hopefully be up soon. Another thing I've been meaning to do for a few months is doodle a desktop calendar/wallpaper for each month... and now is the perfect time to start those for the new year. In the same vein, I may open a new "downloads" section on Calobee Doodles. The problem is I'm always working on someone else's projects and I don't make enough time for my own (tsk tsk!)
I'm also working on a "bucket list," a la Mighty Girl, and that has me thinking about the big picture--the things I'd like to do that might seem too big or too scary to accomplish at first glance. One thing I'd love to do is write and illustrate (and maybe publish?) a children's book. I've been thinking about that since Elspeth was born. Even if no one else ever read it, I'd love to make something for her to enjoy when she's older.
Saturday night I experienced the awesomeness that is Zombieland. This
movie was hilarious. The guest cameo was perfect for the movie. The
main character was channeling Michael Sera, and doing a good job of it.
It makes me wonder if they actually wanted him for the role but he
turned it down. Woody Harrelson pulled off the role perfectly. Great
movie. Not for young audiences due to sci-fi/horror violence and
language.
Before Zombieland we were graced with the preview for 2012. At ten
seconds into the preview I broke out into uncontrollable laughter. A
few seconds later someone else shouted out "oh, come on!" The preview
is completely silly and does nothing to make me want to see the movie.
It actually had the opposite effect. Who approved this preview? Who
approved the scenes from the preview in the movie? This one is going to
bomb badly in the theatres.
