Foreign Service Husband

Can you take one more?

2009-06-20T06:27:42Z

So I went to my 8pm physical therapy appointment. Anne had to take the car out of town, so I took a cab to get there. Good thing, too, as I was given incorrect info about where the place was. Athens is made up of 19 ... boroughs (for lack of a more accurate word) ... and you have to know which one you're going to, or the Pevkon St. that you're looking for will be the wrong Pevkon. My taxi driver was one of the smart ones who actually knows the city and was able to find the right Pevkon pretty easily. I was even early for the appointment.
The therapy involved massage, electro-stimulation, ice massage and some stretching exercises. The massage was pretty awesome. It was a lot more focused than other massages I've had. There's a muscle that runs directly under the tibia, and mine are as tight as steel rods. They're supposed to be loose and supple. So we worked on that a lot. In the process, I learned that pathological doesn't just apply to mental states. If you allow your muscles to become too tight, the clear tissue between them, which is connective tissue, like the silvery bits you cut away when cubing beef, can become diseased, or pathological. It becomes permanently hardened, which can lead to muscle tears. Luckily, the clear tissue in my calves isn't pathological yet, just well on its way.
The electro-stimulation was very cool. They put four conductors on either side of my leg and cranked it up until the bottom of my foot tingled. The purpose of this was to counteract the spasming caused by very tight muscles (are you catching the theme here?), and it felt very, very odd. The muscles were firing as with restless leg syndrome, except that my foot wasn't twitching all over the place. It felt a lot like I imagine magic coursing through the body of a wizard would feel (at least that's how it would be if I wrote fantasy).
The best part was the ice massage, oh yeah. You really ought to experience such a thing. The pain, especially over the area of my shin that's splinted, was shockingly intense. Oh it hurt. A lot. Every stroke of the ice cube over the area felt like a hammer blow. Then, it got even better, an ice wrap for 10 minutes. That allowed the pain to seep into my whole leg. Even more exciting is that I get to do this to myself, every time I stretch or exercise. Oh yeah. I get to go to physical therapy a few times a week until the leg gets better.
Rather than calling a cab (and spending another 13 euros) to get home, I decided to walk to the bus. It was further than I thought it would be, but it was a nice 10-minute walk. I ended up getting home at 10:30.

You know you're gay, right?

2009-06-19T20:44:09Z

Nikos, the lettuce dealer I like to go to at the street market (by the way, you should go to my new markets portfolio), is a good-looking, muscular guy. He has a blond Elvis mop of hair, square jaw and biceps like my thighs. Today, I'm across from his stand, buying some vegetables and he walks over to talk with the proprietor, a gruff, more traditionally manly Greek dude (he's fat and unkempt). As soon as Nikos walks up the guy says, "You're a sexy man. A very sexy man."
Nikos gave him a quizzical look.
"You are. But you know you're gay, right?"
Nikos' cigarette fell out of his mouth, he was laughing so hard, "What?"
"It's true, it's true. Only gays work so hard to look good." By the way, it's 1 pm, Nikos has been at his lettuce stand since 6:30, he's covered in dirt and bits of lettuce, rocket, spearmint, green onion, and half dozen herbs, bleary-eyed, ready for 3 pm so he can break down and go home.
"What?"
"Really. Real men look like me, they don't go to the gym and stuff like you."
It was funny, but I didn't stick around to hear the rest of the conversation.

at night?

2009-06-19T05:49:52Z

Went to the doctor to have a look at my shin splints. Still hurts. Not that I'm helping it by walking around Knossos or the Acropolis or climbing on 6th C. BCE gravestones at Kerameikos or any of that other crap. So the doctor wants me to go to physical therapy. He said the ultrasound and heat treatments and such should help me heal up, so that I can at least train on an elliptical or a treadmill, if not a track somewhere.
Go to schedule the PT appointment and it's at 8. PM. On a Friday. You think you're used to things like that, but you find you aren't. Last week I called the pet store to schedule a delivery of food. Called at 2:30 pm. No answer. 3:30 pm. No answer. 5 pm. No answer. Went in the next morning, 'cause I happened to be in the neighborhood. Lunch is from 2-5:30. Silly me.

so that's why it evolved that way...

2009-06-15T15:51:18Z

Last night, we're sitting there, watching The Good German (good movie, by the way...people in unusual roles), when we hear Mali make the strangest sound. She meows like she's in pain, but it's similar to the sound she makes when she has a toy in her mouth and wants us to play fetch (a cat that plays fetch...). She comes running in from the kitchen, looking around wildly. The apartment's dark, because we like it that way when a movie's on, so all I can see is some sort of white shadow flitting across the floor.
Mali chases it to the bookcase and corners it. "What do you have there? A moth?"
"Meeeerrrrroooooowwwwww."
It moves across the floor a little, in a very un-moth-like manner. We turn on a table lamp to see if we should worry, and the white shadow flits across the floor some more. I don't think it's a moth anymore, but I can't see it well enough in the dim lamp light. I turn on the overhead light, and holy crap! Mali has a lizard. A little, whitish-yellow thing about the length of my thumb. It's tailless.
With all the commotion of turning on the lights and us getting excited over a lizard, it makes a break for the whatever-you-call-the-cupboard-where-we-have-extra-dishes-and-napkins in the dining room, and dives under it. The poor thing doesn't know that Mali crawls around under bureaus and cabinets for fun. She looks at the tiny crack it ran through and whines for a second, pawing at the crack, before remembering that the front of the thing has a 2-inch cutout that she can easily crawl under.
While she's working on that, I'm looking for a piece of paper or something to scoop the poor thing up and take it outside to "safety." By the time I get back with paper, Mali's crawling out from under the cabinet, looking bewildered and distinctly unsatisfied with the game. We look around for a while, but the lizard is gone, and Mali has clearly not eaten it. Who knows, it might still be in our apartment.
A little while later, when were closing up the doors and windows for the night, I saw the lizard's tail on our kitchen balcony. Apparently Mali had been able to catch it at least once.
What I found most curious, though, was my own reaction. When Mali goes after flies and moths, I encourage her. Kill the vermin. But a lizard, I don't know, I felt a connection to the thing and wanted to save its life. She can still take out the rug-eating moths, though.

who, me?

2009-06-11T15:33:42Z

Without my even trying, I was made Featured Artist at http://www.imagekind.com. Check it out!

ruminations on satisfaction

2009-06-10T05:35:06Z

annesblog and I were having an incredible dinner at Tamam in Chania, Crete the other evening, and it led to a conversation about how incredibly lucky we are (and how aware of that we are).
I'm still amazed, and will probably continue to be, that a slacker like myself can a) marry a phenomenal woman like annesblog despite my best efforts to screw it up, and b) live such a great life as a result. Seriously, when I was a homeless 19-year-old, getting off drugs and utterly incapable of holding a job or stringing together a sentence of more than one word that didn't have the f-word in it (and even then, most of the one-word sentences were guttural, frustrated bellows of that most useful of words), I couldn't conceive of the twists and turns life would take. Or, frankly, that I'd make it to 20. And now, I live in Greece. Yesterday, I shot pictures of our ambassador meeting the new Greek ambassador to Washington...and there were only 4 of us in the room.
I can still barely hold onto a job, but I'm making progress toward doing well enough with photography that I may not have to. I still swear too much (as has recently become a point of discussion in the family). But somehow, I manage to make annesblog happy enough that she keeps me around. Good thing I love to cook.

the best thing about being an artist is the look of confusion

2009-06-05T06:45:10Z

I don't think my ideas are that weird...after all, they're MY ideas...but I always seem to spread confusion in my wake.
Today, for example:
(and this is all in Greek, so my interlocutor should have understood)
Veg Vendor: "What are you taking pictures of?"
Me: "The market. I'm working on an exhibit about street markets." (note: exhibit & report are the same word in Greek)
VV: "A report? For whom?"
Me: "Actually, it's an art exhibit, pictures for galleries."
VV: ?????????
Me: "I'm an art photographer, and street markets make a good subject."
VV: ???????
Other Veg Vendor: "He's a photographer, doing an exhibit about street markets."
VV: "But why? What for? He's just taking pictures of the market?"
Me: "Yeah. I like the fruits and the vegetables...showing how people live in other places."
VV: ?????????
OVV: "He likes the fruits and vegetables, and to show how we live here."
VV: "How we live here? What does that mean?"
Me: "Is my accent really that bad?"
OVV: "No. He just doesn't understand."
Me: ???????????
VV: "What I don't understand is why you would do this? What is it? You're taking pictures of fruits and vegetables and the market. Why? For what?
Me: "We don't really have markets like this in America, so I want to show my countrymen what life is like in other places."
VV: "So you're taking pictures to show people what a market looks like? Why?"

Mind you, this was one of the best bits of Greek speaking I've done. My tongue was loose and relaxed, so the words came out clearly, and mostly in the right cases and declensions and so on. My expressions fit the Greek way of thought. I was so proud of me. And this guy just wasn't getting it.
The good part, though, is that everyone at the first 5 stands heard the conversation and the Legend of the American Photographer Who Came to Markopoulo to Shoot the Market spread quickly, opening my road through the rest of the market. They let me get right up in their fruit & vegetables, fish and pots & pans. Some posed, some stood. They joked with me - one fish vendor, as I was shooting the fish said, "Fish, fish, fish" in heavily accented English. When I replied, "Ψαριά, ψαριά, ψαριά" he and his buddies slapped their knees and each others' shoulders and said, "He knows Greek! He knows Greek!"
It was a good morning, I have some great material to work with and my exhibit should be a nice one. I have photos from here, from Istanbul and from Kashgar, China, where Marco Polo traveled. The exhibition will be called, "Markets: Marco Polo to Markopoulo."

Santorini (or, sunburn, twisted ankle and allergic reaction)

2009-05-27T06:13:13Z

We had a mostly great time on Santorini. We went there with our friends sallysimpleton and tibadoh, who were fun to travel with.
I got a sunburn the first morning there. While reading. On our veranda. Before setting out to do anything. It was just on my legs, and it wasn't bad, but it meant that the two days we spent sitting on the beach for 6 hours and the afternoon we climbed the mountain to Ancient Thira I had to be pretty careful.
I twisted my ankle when I ran 10 miles a few weeks ago. Didn't realize how bad I twisted it until several runs later, when I could barely go 1.5 miles and had to limp that distance home. That made all the walking we did a bit challenging. Like climbing the mountain to Ancient Thira or walking down the 589 steps from the town of Fira to the port to go to the volcano.
I had an allergic reaction yesterday as we were relaxing before our flight. The gelato place took care with their product to avoid cross-contamination, and even rinsed the scoop between servings, but they didn't have running water to rinse it, so there was nut juice all over it when he scooped out my coffee-flavored gelato. That provided some excitement to finish things out.
No other people and no donkeys were harmed in our enjoyment of the island.
Now that I have the complaining out of the way - we had a great time. We got a lot of good relaxing in and saw some amazing rocks. Santorini is an active volcano. It's been asleep since its last eruption in 1950, and hasn't had an earthquake since 1956, but it spews a lot. When you look at a map, keep in mind that the island in the center of caldera didn't exist until 500 years ago and is made up of several different layers and parts of eruptive material. There are sandstone cliffs studded with huge igneous rocks. There are beaches made up entirely of igneous rock. There are cracks that run top-to-bottom all along the cliff face looking toward the caldera. And the Minoan civilization was destroyed 3700 years ago by the volcano.
We saw 5 amazing sunsets, ate a lot of great food, and I shot more than 750 pictures. Go to blog.bpsphoto.com to see some of them (the sunset our first night is up as I write this).

finally, nice weather

2009-05-14T07:02:16Z

Winter stretched deep into spring in Athens. Average daily highs in April are supposed to be 68. I don't think we had a day that warm until the 1st of May. We're supposed to get just over an inch of rain for the month, we got more than that during each of two storms, not to mention several drizzly days that weren't much in themselves, but probably contributed another couple of inches.

The upside to all of this is that Greece is greener than many Greeks have ever seen it. Fruit this summer should be explosively juicy. The first round of strawberries were some of the best I've ever had. You can almost forget there were devastating wildfires two years ago that destroyed huge swaths of forest and olive groves, because the grasses and wild flowers are beautiful. The poppies are so darkly red they look like velvet.

But we're in Greece. It's a semi-arid climate, like eastern Washington & Oregon, like Utah, like southern Idaho.

So when the sun came out last weekend, and it became so warm that a long-sleeved shirt was uncomfortable, that was good. And today, finally, I can wear shorts & a short-sleeved shirt in the morning and have the doors open all day. It's supposed to hit 81 today, which is right about where the temperature should be. Just in time for our impending trip to Santorini with sallysimpleton and her husband whose name I can't spell (why do the French need so many extra letters?).

In other news, the running is going quite well. I ran 10 miles on Sunday. Ended up with bruised soles on both feet, but they've recovered fairly quickly. It was hard, but I did it in 1:35, which is pretty incredible, because in November I ran 6 miles in 1:17. I now regularly run 7 miles on Sundays, and will soon be increasing that to a regular run of 10. I've begun to actually enjoy running. I look forward to getting out and stretching my legs, to seeing what I can do each run that I couldn't do a week before. My massage therapist said that my calves appear to have come to an understanding and are no longer as tight as a drum skin. And thanks to the 10-miler, I can now seriously conceive of running and finishing the marathon...and if I can maintain the pace, I might be able to do it in 4:30 or less. But my goal will be simply to finish it.

In other other news, I've come to the realization that I need to hire a marketing consultant to tell me what I need to do to give myself a chance at success. If it works, the debt I incur doing that will be paid for by the photography itself. How's that for a crazy notion. So if you've read this far and have a recommendation for a marketing firm, pass that along.

I like really, really old stuff

2009-04-22T15:20:06Z

Mom and I went to the National Archaeological Museum today, and I fell in love. I've discovered that yeah, the Classical Period stuff (around the time of Plato and Aristotle or so) is neat, but what I really like is the old stuff - Neolithic to Early Bronze Age, 6800-3300 BCE. Yeah, almost 10,000 years ago. What I found truly amazing in the Prehistoric wing of the museum were pots with decorations that Greeks still used into the 1st millennium BCE. It's beautiful stuff. I could go on and on and on and on about it. I'm sad that I waited more than a year to go to the museum. Now I need to go as often as I can to see everything...especially since my diplomatic status gives me free entry.

Ancient Olympia

2009-04-18T16:46:46Z

We're at one of the coolest archaeological sites yet - Ancient Olympia. It was a long damn drive to get here, but we saw some gorgeous country across the southern Peloponnese along the way. The village of modern Olympia is kept alive by the gazillions of tourists that come here every year, and it shows. Lots of overpriced souvenir shops and tavernas, though not significantly pricier than in the Plaka or Monastiraki areas.

The Ancient Olympia site itself has a museum that contains objects dating back to the end of the Neolithic Era, a little over 6000 years ago. The area has been continuously inhabited since then. There were mugs and cups and such from the Neolithic, the by-now very familiar plates and bowls and jugs from the Mycenaean period (3000+ years ago) and on to the Roman period 1400-2000 years ago. There were great explanations of the Olympian site, the games which started in the 11th C BCE, but weren't formalized until 776 BCE and ran until outlawed as a pagan festival in the late 4th C CE.

I'm on limited time due to the expense of our hotel's internet, but I'll write more later.

well that was fun

2009-04-09T06:26:47Z

Y'know how taking your car to the dealer for service is always a little weird? You never feel you're in the right line, you're not sure about what you're asking for, you don't know if you need your differential fluid flushed or your flux capacitor is shot, and they don't really know what you need either, even if all you're doing is coming in for the 50,000 mile check.

Now, do that in another language, in which you can talk about the plight of the Gypsies or Noam Chomsky's theories about anarchy fairly easily, but you can't get vacuum cleaner bags because you don't remember the word for bag. But instead of that, you have a warning light on your car that they've never heard of (you have a RAV-4, possibly the most common SUV on the planet, and you're at a Toyota dealer). Turns out the warning light only exists on American models, because the rest of the world looks at their tires to determine whether they're flat. And their services go in 15,000 kilometer segments, so you have 75,000 or 90,000 to choose between, and you're at 50,000 miles (times 1.6 or so, which comes out to about 80,000 km), but they don't have an 80,000 km service. Oh, and you can't find the letter from the MFA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, not Masters of Fine Arts) that says you don't need a registration, because you haven't paid taxes, because you aren't actually importing your car, because you're a diplomat.

After 45 minutes, you agree that they'll do the 75,000 km service, and that they'll see if their computer knows how to turn off the flat-tire light. And now, it's 8 am, so you head to the coffee shop on the corner for a cappuccino and cream pastry to recover from the experience.

Yeah, that's a fun way to start the day.

results from the Ymittos run

2009-04-07T13:10:51Z

Remember that 10K I did a couple weeks ago that turned into a 12K? Well I wasn't dead last as I had initially thought. There were two DNF's. ;-} My official time was 1:34:56, fully 10 minutes after second to last.

Still Life with Woodpecker

2009-04-06T10:41:10Z

When I first read Still Life with Woodpecker, I came face to face with people who felt about rain as I do. It's beautiful, lovely stuff. As a child I'd play all day in the rain. As a young adult, I'd find a place to walk to, just to walk in the rain. I'd take the least-sheltered path to feel the cold trickle of rain as it rolled off my hair, into my collar and down my back. I never owned an umbrella.

Somewhere along the way, I forgot. Years of living in DC trained me to use an umbrella, to run from the apartment to the car, then run from the car to the store.

Today, I met myself again. I forgot the umbrella as I walked out the door, and decided to just go ahead and enjoy the rain. It wasn't a downpour, just a continuous, light rainfall. Not even enough to get to my scalp, even after 35 minutes in it. Even so, it felt so good to be out. Hopefully I forget my umbrella more often.

interesting thing from the stats

2009-04-02T09:08:37Z

I like to check the search terms that people use to find my photo blog at http://blog.bpsphoto.com. Sometimes I find surprising things (if you're looking for B&H Photo & Video's blog by searching for b&h blog, BH Neely's Photo Blog is the first return, and THEN B&H Photo & Video). In a search for how to photograph flowers in a studio setting, my blog pages OF flowers in a studio setting are in the first 10. And there are a goodly number of Germans looking for vampire porn. A few Belgians and Dutch, but mostly Germans.

Huh? I have one entry titled Vampire Porn, because it's a photograph of a beautiful neck that's sort of accidentally erotic, and I imagined that it must be what Lestat sees when getting ready for lunch. And for whatever reason, nearly every day, at least one person from .de (Deutschland) searches for vampire porn and visits my site. Sometimes they even stay, despite their disappointment at not finding actual porn, and look at my photography. Sometimes they come back later, after they find some real porn and take care of things. Sometimes they don't. It seems to be about equal among the three.

ruminations on kayfabe

2009-03-24T13:54:24Z

I was watching the homoerotic steroid ballet (aka WWE wrestling) while eating lunch today, amused by the elaborate staging and bizarre, trailer-park story lines, when a thought struck me...they have this concept called "kayfabe," in which everyone involved, fans included, act as though the action, the fights, the arguments, the trash talking are all real. That The Edge and The Big Show would get so worked up over The Big Show sleeping with The Edge's wife, that they might just try to kill each other, and in the process, accidentally hospitalize the wife.

Their fight happens in the ring, or somewhere in the stadium, and of course the wife is around, in the ring with them, laughing at her cuckolded husband, so that when The Edge goes nuts and attacks The Big Show, the big guy moves out of the way and The Edge does his signature move on his wife, knocking her unconscious. As The Edge kneels, stricken, over his wife, The Big Show comes up and attacks him with a knee-drop or some other move that would crush his throat or break his leg if it weren't carefully choreographed. But The Edge ducks and the blow strikes his wife. So The Big Show picks her up to find medical attention, but The Edge attacks him, with an assault on his knee that would break it if, again, they weren't dancing. So The Big Show drops the wife. And so on.

But here's the thing...I'm sure that many of the actors are friends with each other. They work together, dance together, presumably oil each other up and inject each other up with steroids and so on. So what do "mortal enemies" do when they want to go out for a drink together? Even worse, what if a couple of them reeaaaallllyyyyy liked each other and turned it into a serious homoerotic ballet? How far do the rules of kayfabe apply? I'm not making the word up (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayfabe), but it makes me wonder what the rules are, what their contractual obligations are and so forth.

Yeah, there's an embarrassing, mulleted, '75-Camaro-wanting, small-town redneck just under the surface here. Sometimes he gets out despite my best efforts.

fshusband @ 2009-03-23T13:14:00

2009-03-23T11:14:40Z

So I told you about the 10K Vicki talked me into signing up for. Well, she told me about it and I signed up for it. But I'm still going to blame her.

Turns out it's much, much harder to run up a series of mountain roads, trails and stream beds than it is to run on even Athens' broken, poopy, interrupted sidewalks. Plus, from 1.5 km to 4.5 km, it was continually, seriously uphill. Imagine, if you're in Seattle, running from the waterfront to 6th Ave on Madison St. four times, without going downhill in that time. My glutes hurt from the work. Then, just for fun, part of the run went past a military installation, where they scramble nearby GPS units, so when the course was laid out, and they thought it was just short of 10 km, it was actually more like 11. They had kilometer signs set up, and the distance from the in-bound 9 km sign to the outbound 1 km sign was a kilometer itself. And, just to add to the fun, I got lost twice, going completely off the trail once for about 200 meters (then 200 back to the course), then taking the long way to the turn-around point, running backwards on the course for 1.5 km.

I'm not so much in love with trail running. Though at one point I found myself thinking, 'I'm Wudy the Wabbit the Winner.' Extra points for anyone who gets the reference.

I wasn't really the winner. The winner ran the race in 41 minutes. He was good. The ladies winner ran the race in 45 minutes. She was also good. Nor was I second or third. I was 200 and somethingth - dead freakin' last. 1:35 or so. But I did it. And unlike the first 10K, during which I spent a great deal of time saying to myself, "What the hell are you doing, Dumbass?" I did not question my sanity. I simply recognized my skill level and kept pushing on. So with the extra kilometer over the advertised distance, plus the 800-1000 meters I tacked on just for the fun of it, the hardest run I've ever had just became the longest run I've ever had too. Yea me.

a few bits

2009-03-19T06:39:40Z

On a recent run, I passed by a mother waiting with her son (13-14 yrs old) for the school bus. She looked at me as if I were running toward them with a bong and a bottle of Jack. "Don't you be getting my son interested in that exercise business! Running feet are the Devil's playground," her eyes seemed to say. Too bad I wasn't wearing a Black Sabbath or Motorhead shirt.

I went to the meat market the other day and on the way back to the metro, with 20 pounds or so of pork chops, ground beef and such in my backpack, I stopped for a gyro on the street. It's been a long time since I've done that. It was nice, to stand there on the sidewalk of busy, grotty Athinas Street, between all the parked scooters and motorcycles, watching life go past and looking at the Acropolis, just at the end of the street. One guy walked by, struggling with his rolling cart. Its front struts were rounded to look like wheels, and he was dragging it on those rather than with the wheels. I glanced over as he realized his mistake and corrected it. "I made a mistake!" he said as he walked along, "made a mistake. Mistake."

I love living in this city. I think I'm going to head back down to Athinas St. with 10 pounds of camera gear and see what presents itself for some photography.

running far

2009-03-09T05:06:57Z

My friend and pilates instructor, Vicki, suggested participating in a 3K, 5K or 10K fun run on Ymittos Mountain, the southeastern border of Athens, in a couple of weeks. She had an ulterior motive - help using the Greek-only web site - but that's cool. So I stepped up my training. I haven't actually run 10K since the race in November, and I've been struggling to run farther.

I had previously mapped out three different courses, one of 8.4 km, which is what I've been doing on Sundays already, one of 9.2 km, which I had planned to do for yesterday's run, and one of 11.4 km, which I figured I'd try in a few weeks. Since Ymittos is a mountain, I thought I should see if I could actually run 10 km on regular surfaces before paying to do so on a mountain.

Talk about a huge surprise - I ran the 11.4 km yesterday, and I did it 7 minutes faster than I had done the 10K, despite having to stop for a few minutes to take care of a case of the trots (yeah, that was probably more info than you wanted, but I felt it related enough to the story). Let me repeat that, I ran 7 miles faster than I was able to run 6 miles just 4 months ago. It was a huge confidence booster, and it made me realize that I have definitely moved out of the fat, out-of-shape, middle-aged image I've had of myself into a new image of an overweight, but thinning, runner. I've finally found an athletic endeavor that makes me feel good, both physically and mentally, and which I can comfortably do for a long time.

So yeah, stepping up the training program was a bonus. And with the routes I've mapped out, I can do significant incremental increases to my distances without having to commit to a doubling of the distance.

Well that's pretty awesome

2009-03-05T08:37:18Z

So I went to my lab yesterday to pick up some largish prints for my portfolio...I have enough work in Aphrodite's Hair to start shopping my portfolio around to galleries to try to do an exhibit in the fall...and the girl at the counter says, "We would like to use a couple of your photographs for an exhibition of our new papers."
What? Did I hear that right?
"An exhibition?"
"Yes. We're excited about our new papers, and you seem to like them as well. And we love your photographs."
Fucking awesome! My lab! where they look at photography all damn day! wants to use my! pictures! to advertise their stuff!
I said, "Hell no."
Kidding. Just wanted to see if you were paying attention. She (someday, I should start learning their names) asked which one I liked for the exhibit. So I said I really liked this one. She gave a pause and made a sound I can't imitate, but which means, "Nice try, but you're an idiot," and said, "We actually were looking at these other two, with the tattoos." One is the page referenced above, and the other hasn't been posted anywhere yet, but is a great shot of another of Stella's tattoos. The papers they want to print them on make gorgeous, rich blacks, so the shots they chose make more sense than the one I like (which I still think is a better photograph).
So that's really, really cool.

something funny

2009-02-26T08:23:49Z

So I was going through the stats on my blog at http://blog.bpsphoto.com, and saw the funniest thing. I have a post called "Vampire Porn, Studio, Athens, Greece." It's a luscious shot of a nearly perfect neck at an odd angle, and it made me think of how erotically Anne Rice writes about vampires. Someone got to my blog by doing a Google search for "athens greece and porn" (without the quotation marks). In fact, it's in first place with those search terms.

Other stuff - after a plateau in my training I asked a friend who trains marathoners a couple questions, and he gave me some good advice. It seems to have helped in the week or so I've had it in place. I'm running both just a little bit faster and further than I have in the past. Now I'm hoping to be able to run for longer, as a marathon doesn't really care how fast you run if you can't go 26.2 miles. Emil Zapotek, 1952 gold medalist in the marathon said, "If you want to run, run a mile. If you want to experience a different life, run a marathon." mile by mile. (it's amazing how once you commit yourself to something, you see big changes in yourself - such as quoting Emil Zapotek and saying things like "mile by mile.")

My first ad in B+W went to newsstands this week. There hasn't been a path beaten to my door yet, but most branding/marketing experts say that it takes 3 or more exposures to begin to see results. So I'll just keep rolling along. (And *you* can help by going to http://bhneely.imagekind.com and buying something.)

Something not funny - last night, just before going to sleep, I started thinking about what it must have been like on the 4 aircraft on 9/11. It was a horrifying image to have in mind as I drifted off. As you might guess, my sleep wasn't exactly peaceful for most of the night.

Bowling w/o etiquette

2009-02-15T06:31:40Z

Y'know how there's bowling etiquette? You don't mess around on the pine. If the person to either side of you has started his/her turn you wait. You roll the ball, don't throw it. You don't mess around on the pine.

We've discovered, repeatedly, that outside the US this etiquette just doesn't exist. We bowled at the Cosmo City Mall in Thessaloniki last night, and to our left was a group in their early 20's, and the girls kept attacking the boys as they were trying to roll. Over and over and over. Grabbing their asses as they were about to roll, grabbing their throwing arms as they were about to roll. I was a little disappointed that they didn't get 13 pounds of surprise on their feet.

And on both lanes, you'd be ready to roll, start your run, and they'd grab their ball and run right past you. It was very irritating.

Despite that, I threw a 182, my best ever, and if I hadn't thought about that halfway through the 9th frame, I might have thrown a 200.

getting really damn frustrated

2009-01-30T15:09:03Z

I've launched a shop at imagekind.com (http://bhneely.imagekind.com) and I'm having a hell of a time with it. I *cannot* upload images in anyway. FTP I get a permission denied, after successfully logging in to their upload area. Through their clunky web interface, where I can only upload one picture at a time, I get a connection error. Their handy-dandy desktop uploader, which can theoretically upload 50 files at a time, "throws an exception" when I try to launch it in Vista.

I like their purchase interface, and the quality of their cards is fantastic (I even get branding on the back of the card), but dammit, if I can't upload any fucking pictures, I can't sell any.

And I'm really impatient and don't want to wait two business days for their response to my ticket.

Shit, fuck, crap, damn, shit, fuck.

Edit 3 hours later - I received an email from an Imagekind.com representative offering help. Clearly, they're out there surfing for problems. Good for them. Hopefully a solution comes of it.

new sales source

2009-01-10T07:20:47Z

I'm testing out a new source for sales of cards and prints and such at Imagekind.com. If a couple people buy from the store, I'll be able to purchase a Pro account, which will allow me to have more galleries and more space in each gallery. They've recently been purchased by Cafepress, but it appears the site will be insulated from Cafepress' trendy mass appeal business model and will remain a source for high-quality art products.

This is a pretty exciting store, because there's a great range of prints and cards, with prints on stocks such as Hannemuhle's various fine art papers, Piezo's canvases and even basic stock. I can feel comfortable charging prices that are highish (which the spellchecker oddly accepts as a word), but still leave lots of room for me to charge really high prices for signed prints and such.

There've been a couple of minor bugs getting things started, and I'm in the midst of reloading a few photos, but I'm quite happy with them so far.

http://bhneely.imagekind.com

crossposted to bpsphoto

running story

2009-01-07T08:22:31Z

It's been a while since I've talked about my running. So I'll bore you now with it. I've been running a course that I thought was in the neighborhood of 3 miles, with Sunday runs that I thought were close to 5.5 or 6. When we were in Seattle on vacation, I clocked off a 3-mile course the odometer of a car, and in 3 runs, only once managed to go the entire course. I figured it was jet lag, dehydration and a mild cold that caused that.

I bought a running watch to time myself. Knowing that my 10K (6.2 miles) speed was 1:17, I figured 3 miles to be around 40 minutes. In PA, I ran a course that was 20 minutes out and 20 back, and when I had a chance to check it with the odometer, it was 1.5 miles out, so I know now that 20 minutes is 1.5 miles. Not exactly a speed demon, but for a guy who's been running for just a few months, still 30+ pounds overweight and not previously athletic, I figure I'm doing alright. But that 40-minute run still felt like an awful lot.

We get back to Athens, and I discover that my regular run was only 29 minutes - just over 2 miles. So what I had thought was a 5.5-mile run was probably no more than 4. No wonder the 10K was so frickin' hard. So I expanded the run a bit, but it was still only 35 minutes. Damn. How the hell far do I have to run?

I've started reading running magazines (you're probably wondering who the hell I am and how I got fshusband's password, aren't you). Yeah, I have two pair of running shoes, a running watch, some running underwear, more shorts than I've ever owned and I read running magazines. I even found a marathon in Norway this summer, the half-marathon of which would be a good gauge of my skills (think annesblog would want to visit Norway?). And one suggestion I stumbled across was rather than running for distance to run for time. So I decided to run for an hour for my regular runs, and work up to 3 hours for Sunday runs. How else am I going to develop the stamina to go for 26 miles, which will probably take me 5-6 hours at my speed?

I'm close, doing 52 minutes. I go downhill to the 1896 Olympic Stadium, give a quick nod to the Acropolis off to my right and turn around to begin the uphill leg. It's hard, I'm tired and weakened, having only done it twice so far, but it feels very, very good. Very good. I think there's a distance runner in here somewhere.

The best part of my run goes most of the way from the Microsoft office, past the US Embassy, past Evangelismos Metro to the statue of Harry Truman. The sidewalk is broad, mostly whole, not too much dog crap, not too much construction, not too many people. The part directly in front of Evangelismos is challenging, because the sidewalk is paved with rough marble cobblestones. That's a bit challenging for the footing.