Musée du Louvre

This time around in Paris, I planned my time a little more carefully. Where before I gave myself less than an hour to visit the Louvre, I cut out a half day to explore it this time. It was a good time to go because there weren't as many tourists so we could get up close to the various antiquities and artwork. This is a photo of the inner courtyard of the museum. Looking forward to my next visit to France this summer!

Regensburg

The magical fairytale city of Regensburg in southern Germany. The city is one of the only cities that was essentially untouched in WWII and so the beautiful buildings constructed in medieval times remain standing today. The city had such a lovely community feel to it and everyone was so cheery and nice.

Went with Brendan to one of the Christmas markets with lots of little wooden stalls selling various crafted objects. The market also had a campfire for people to sit around and be jolly. There was mulled wine and sausage with various potato dishes, of which we had plenty. There was even a lady going around with a stick with mistletoe at the end and holding it above couples' heads so they would kiss. Storybook fantasy kind of stuff.

Something Strange Happened Here

Venice, Italy

Daniel Firman: “SSHH is a work that offers an extendable rendition of reality. The work provokes a questioning of one’s interpretation of the “world” in which we live. In this exhibit, SSHH submits itself to the extraordinary beauty of Venice, yet at the same time, to a vision even more complex and colossal such as that of our contemporary world. Without any explanation nor assertion, the work must simply remain a psychological or even a metaphysical question that one asks oneself.”

Mosaic in Ostia

The floor of one of the many ruins in the port town of Rome. Most of the ruins were not gated off so it was like a jungle gym for adults.

Venice by night

This one is a long exposure over the famous Rialto bridge. Venice is such an amazing little city with great restaurants.

Camp Falcon

Last weekend I got to hang out at the summer camp I spent at least 6 summers at as a kid. It was really cool to catch up with the other campers and staff whom I hadn't seen for a good 15 years. All of them were up to super cool things like: big time documentary film maker (including About Baghdad, the first film that came out covering the war in Iraq), PhD student of contemporary racism, a lawyer who works with national security, a PhD student of speech pathology, and yet another PhD of chemistry, and that was just the ladies! I was impressed with the diversity of smarty pantism that was represented by my fellow campers.

The camp opened up a bunch of the activities like archery which I was happy to learn I was still pretty okay at. Unfortunately I couldn't play on the beach as the waterfront was under a good 5 feet of water.

Here are some flags welcoming campers as they drive up the winding road leading to camp (taken with iphone)


This seat sits on a little peninsula that normally rises out of the water about 5 ft (Nikon D50)


This would be the water front that is under water. That diving board you see is the high dive (Nikon D50)

happy kitty

happy kitty, originally uploaded by animal nudity.

Happy kitty indeed!! I'm so excited about this weekend. I get to...

a) hang out with my old roommate who is on break from PhDing at Rutgers
b) go see three beautiful ladies perform their brand new music
c) go back to the summer camp I used to go to when I was a kid for alumni weekend
d) go on a bike ride with my favorite people and then do some glow yoga

Shawnee

Went out with a coupla friends for little adventure in an old coal town called Shawnee. This is a photo of Dave jumping in front of a brick wall.

Volunteering

Today I volunteered for an arts group in Columbus. They do all sorts of really cool activities including drum circles, spoken word poetry, hip hop, break dancing, and MCing. They also have a program at a community center in the inner city to give kids and teens fun art activities to do during the day. I decided to volunteer to help out since I was so impressed with one of their performances I saw recently. I basically just called them up and told them that I liked what they did and wanted to know how I could help.

The director told me to show up at the community center today at noon to assist teens with some art projects. We were doing portraits in different artistic mediums with the idea that we'd make a collage of the different portraits. It ended up not quite working to plan as most kids drew stick figures, but I got to do some fun paintings of random faces.