Foreign Service Husband

got a job, and some other stuff

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:39:50 GMT

Yep. I'm gainfully employed. Sort of. I'm the embassy's official photographer...or Special Projects Assistant, as Photographer isn't an available job title. What a week to start. In addition to the usual insanity surrounding 4 July, there's a Greek-American organization that's having its first conference in Greece in 38 years. Usually it's in New York, Baltimore, Boston or Ft. Lauderdale, where the Greek-Americans congregate.

Well they've got event after event this week, celebrating the mutual love Americans and Greeks have for democracy and freedom and talking about how great they are. So yesterday it was a morning of visiting Important Statues and surrounding them with laurel wreaths. We visited the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Harry S. Truman, George Marshall and a guy whose name I didn't catch, but who was an American very helpful in 1821, when Greece decided it was time to tell Turkey that 400 years of foreign rule was enough.

Then they had a symposium last night where various important Greeks and Americans and Greek-Americans could talk about how great Greece and America and democracy and freedom and being Greek-American are. And today was a short photo op for some of the high-level people in the org with the ambassador.

Along the way, though, I met a fashion and commercial photographer who said he'd give me a call to assist him in his studio - "I have all the best equipment, and there are always beautiful girls there." The best equipment? I am so there! If something cool comes of it, great. If not, that's okay too. But it would be awesome if something came of it.

Yesterday, happily, was quite cool. The high barely broke 90. It was such a relief after several days of upper 90's to low 100's. But the temp is supposed to climb again. Not much - just mid to upper 90's for the next, oh, two or three months. No clouds, either. If you think I'm kidding, have a visit to http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/businesstraveler/tenday/GRXX0004?from=36hr_topnav_business, and note that by Sunny, they mean "not a single cloud in the sky at any point." I was talking with a friend, on a windy, rainy, beautiful November day in Seattle about how I was going to tolerate months on end of sunshine and hot weather. I'm a Seattleite, through and through, but I'm finding that I can be quite happy, thanks, in hot sunny weather. Cool beverages, some shade, the occasional trip for a swim in refreshing salt water, and I am golden.

Greek radio

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 09:14:56 GMT

I've found a radio station that's by turns funny and irritating, in between some pretty good songs. The other day, for example, I got to listen to Free Bird, followed by Wanted Dead or Alive. Not exactly No Quarter or For Whom the Bell Tolls, but I'll accept it as music (okay, I turned the radio up really loud and sang along - yes, even to Bon Jovi). They do this moderately humorous thing where they take a song you know and love, run a couple bars of it unedited, then sing their tag line in the same style (GNR's version of Knockin' on Heaven's Door - "Knock, knock, knocking on heaven's door/rock, rock, rockin' on Radio Gold" for example).

But they have this ad for a 10-disc set of all the best power ballads, soft hard-rock songs and such. The ad is more than 10 minutes long, and the announcer is boring as hell. "You get to hear Def Leppard, Metallica and Boston, on one album," in a soporific voice that you expect to be saying, "Tiger steps up to the 18th tee, one shot back, but he's eagled this hole three days in a row. Can he do it again?" Immediately after hearing a snippet from The Unforgiven, they run some Hall & Oates tune. Really? You're following Metallica with Hall and Oates? 10 minutes. It'll put you into a coma. But the set is only 110 euros.

Then today, they had a guy with a devil-announcer voice (y'know, they slow it down and add a bunch of bass) saying, "Radio Gold, home of 60's music that kiiiicks asssssssssss." (Yeah, in English.) And they proceeded to play a bunch of songs that decidedly did not kiiiiick asssssssss. They were good, but Lollipop, Return to Sender, Surfin' USA do not, in any world, kiiiiick assssssss. Venus and Black is Black nearly kiiiiiicked assssssss, but seriously, if you're going to make that claim, it should be some scary, edgy music - a little Sabbath, maybe some Yardbirds or Zeppelin. Even the Beatles from The White Album. But not Elvis. He's not scary. Except in the 70's if you got between him and the Vegas buffet.

Finally

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:54:47 GMT

So in a massive push I went through our 1000 pictures of Paris (two digital cameras together is a dangerous thing), and put together a gallery at the family site.

Blessedly dry

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 06:27:18 GMT

Finally, the humidity of spring has ended and it's nice and dry. Yesterday, the high was 90, with a humidity of 17% and a light breeze, making the wind-chill factor 87. Nice. We did some laundry, hung it out to dry at sunset, and it was dry before sunrise. I love hot dry summers. I feel like going down to Winegar's Dairy and buying a cone of freshly-made coffee ice cream and glass bottle of milk. I miss Winegar's. (No, I don't expect most of you to get that Ellensburg reference).

You want what?

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 13:29:44 GMT

I have the special skill of confusing the crap out of people I talk to. Language doesn't matter. It seems that I view the world so oddly that even my own people don't get me sometimes. But that's not what this story is about.

I went down to see Ares the Butcher (if you're gonna be playing with blood all day, you couldn't really have a much better name than that). I was on a mission for some pork ribs. Seems like it ought to be pretty easy, since when you get pork chops, you get a good chunk of the rib bone with it. Ares' shop works with beef and lamb, so I go to the guy next door for pork products.

Ares and I started with a nice conversation about music (I had just purchased a ticket to see Iron Maiden in a few weeks, and he was the first person I saw afterward, so I had to show him the ticket). He appreciates a little "hard" rock (I used quotes, because he said "σκληρή" - skleri - which is the same as the root for (multiple)sclerosis, which I thought was an interesting side note), some Metallica, but not all, a few Iron Maiden songs, but really, it's Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin and some pop that he likes. After agreeing that Joss Stone is beautiful and has an incredible voice and an amazing depth of feeling when she sings the blues (especially considering how young she is), we got to business - 2 kilos of hamburger and 5 beef "chops." Again with the quotes. Basically, the word that translates best as chops is any big slice of meat with the bone still attached. More or less. So Ares set to work on that.

Meanwhile, Pork Guy (whose name I'll have to ask next time) and I went to work on figuring out how to get baby back ribs. I saw a rack of uncut pork chops and said, "Okay, here's what I want...I'd like this part (pointing out the ribs) as one piece and then the chops otherwise (I couldn't remember "separate" or any derivation therefrom)."
{utterly blank stare}
"This part, as one piece, from here to here, and then the part with all the meat in chops."
"I don't...uh...what do you want?"
"I want to buy this whole piece, but before you cut the chops, can you cut this part off, and leave it as one piece?"
"And then cut this part into chops?"
"Exactly."
{the look that means, 'what the hell is it with these Americans and their weird meat?'} "Yeah. I can do that."
"Excellent."
And he did. I'll have to take a picture of the cooked ribs and show him.

Ares finished up with his work, which turned out to be 3.5 kilos of huge beef slabs. When I got them home and set to work packaging them up for freezing, I realized I had a great pile of bones for soup, about a kilo of stew meat, some rib eyes and some strip steaks. So that worked out great.

And right now, the pork ribs (along with some chicken legs) are sitting in a slow oven (130C, about 250F) for the next couple of hours. Salt, pepper, a little ground chipotle, then I'll hit them with some KC barbecue sauce for the last 20 minutes or so, then broil for a few. Cannot wait for dinner tonight. Wait, wait...I think I'll do some cornbread, too.

I'm melllllllllting!

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 13:31:53 GMT

Get this...at 7:30 am it began sprinkling, and it didn't stop until 8! That's right, 30 minutes of unbroken light rain. And it remained cloudy until after 10:30. What the hell? And next week, on both Monday and Thursday, they're predicting PARTLY CLOUDY. Jeez man, where do you have to go to get nice weather?

In other news, got a hair cut yesterday. My last one only lasted about three months, so I got it cut pretty short this time. Hopefully I won't have to get another before September or so. I really hate getting haircuts. It's just so silly. Not as silly as wearing a silk rope around your neck or a jacket when it's 85 or a belt if your pants stay on by themselves, but silly nonetheless.

Got some 16x20's printed for exhibit and hopefully sale in a fairly well-traveled area of the Embassy. They look great. I'm very, very good. And so is my print shop (To Tipoma, on Koniari, behind the Panathinaikos football stadium, should you be in the greater Ambelokipi/Kolonaki neighborhood). So hopefully I can make a few bucks. If you want to buy any of my work, let me know what you've seen that interests you and we'll see what sort of agreement we can make.

went a little crazy in the kitchen

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 05:56:14 GMT

One of the great things about our lifestyle is that we get a refund of our VAT (value added tax, sort of a national sales tax). Since VAT is 19% here, that's pretty significant. Unfortunately, you have to spend at least 75 euros, ask for an itemized invoice, fill out some paperwork, send it to the MFA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) for approval, then go back to the store for the refund. What a colossal pain the ass it can be, as when I walked a couple miles at midday on a day that turned out to be 95, only to discover that we'd filled the form out wrong and wouldn't be getting our money back.

It seems as though it wouldn't be difficult to spend 75 euros on groceries, but it is - we have a European fridge and Athenian cabinetry, so our fridge is about 40% smaller than a small American model, and our cabinets are not what you would call capacious. And we're shopping for two. And even with the VAT refund, produce at the grocery store tends to be more expensive than at the farmer's market, so no oranges or lettuce or tomatoes from the store. It requires some forethought and creativity to spend the money.

So the other day I bought far more food than the two of us can possibly eat, and the freezer was already somewhat full. The freezer, being attached to the fridge, is also 40% smaller than your small American freezer.

At 7 am, I started a stock pot of stock. I had some rabbit parts, some chicken parts and some lamb parts, some of them already roasted, some of them still raw, added some onions, potatoes, tomatoes, herbs and such. That cleared two bags out of the freezer and a couple tupperware containers out of the fridge. And it made the apartment smell like soup. Now I have 4 liters of stock scattered throughout the fridge and freezer.

Then in the afternoon, I made galuptsi (or galumpki) - cabbage rolls in tomato sauce. That got a head of cabbage out of the fridge and a pound of beef out of the freezer. Now they're in easily stackable containers.

Finally, for dinner, I thought I'd try my hand at spanakotiropita - spinach-cheese pie. That was a labor-intensive endeavor - rinse and sort the spinach, mix with egg, feta, salt, pepper, layout the phyllo dough, put some olive oil on each layer (I cheated and only did every other layer, and that turned out to be a mistake), spread the spinach and cheese mixture, lay out the rest of the phyllo, still oiling each layer (still cheating). annesblog brought a couple Greek co-workers home and when I asked to clarify the directions on the box of phyllo, they got into a...lively discussion...over proper spanakotiropita construction. One advocated for 6 layers of phyllo below and 4 above the mixture, the other was vehement that it had to be 5 and 5. Since the box also advocated 5&5, that's what I went with.

It turns out the olive oil is supposed to help the phyllo stick together, so you get a flaky crust that remains cohesive, rather than a shattery crust that, well, shatters. I now know for next time. It was tasty, but it took more than an hour to put it together, as washing spinach was very time consuming. But, we have lunch and dinner for several days, and once I figure out what kind of soup to make with my three-meat stock, we'll have even more ready-made food.

The opportunity to spend all day cooking is fantastic. Cleaning up after myself really sucks, but that's the way it goes.

Oh, and I spent 140 euros on groceries (also bought several picture frames to put some photos up in a well-traveled area of the embassy, hopefully selling some), so we'll get back close to 30 euros.

Paris is okay

Tue, 27 May 2008 11:34:00 GMT

Not great. Not The Greatest Place I've Ever Been, but okay. I know, I may be the only person on the planet who feels ambivalent about The City Of Light, but it's just a place. Notre Dame was cool. The Arc de Triomphe was there. Sacre Coeur was another big church. Montmartre was a place to go be a tourist or a caricaturist. The Louvre is very large. The people are big-city folk.

The food was great. Especially the pastries and desserts and meat and sauces and freedom fries. Did you know they don't call them frites de liberte? Crazy, I know. Seriously, the food was worth the trip. Don't go if you are trying to control your weight and can't control yourself around amazing food. The coffee was not great. Except one. Across the channel, on the Gauche side, from Notre Dame's front door, we had cafes au lait that will rank up there with the cappuccinos we had at St. Mark's in Venice. But otherwise, coffee was very hit or miss, with more misses than hits.

And you've no doubt noticed the elephant I haven't mentioned yet. That's right...my friend Steve. We haven't seen Steve since he managed to make it to annesblog's swearing in party (4 years ago), and before that, we had seen him once or twice when he made it out to Seattle (4 years before that), and he came to our wedding (4 years or so before that). We don't see him a lot, though he ranks as one of my better friends. We'd never met his wife. Happily, we rectified that. We had dinner with him one night and brunch a couple days later. It was great to catch up, talk about people we used to know, things we're doing these days. He's become something of a food snob, and makes his own ice cream from 4 ingredients (in this case, cream, sugar, baker's chocolate and mint leaves). Holy crap...there is nothing better than someone who loves to cook sharing his food (at least when it's good). His mint ice cream is amongst the best ice creams I've ever had.

Okay. You want to hear it? Fine. They have this building that at one time was the tallest building in the world. It's made of nothing but exposed steel beams that rise like a tower, if you will, into the sky. It has lovely graceful curves at its base. If you should go to Paris, there's only one thing you must do. Skip Notre Dame (unless you're Catholic and want to see a significant piece of what they've done with all your tithing). Don't bother with Sacre Coeur (go to Orvieto, Italy, and look at their cathedral instead - far fewer people). Don't go to the Louvre (really, it's just paintings and sculpture and such...you've already seen most of what you want to see on the Web anyway). Go to Trocadero near midnight, walk down toward the Seine, and be prepared to gasp. The beauty of La Tour Eiffel lit up at night, reflecting in the Seine, dominating the world, cannot be beaten.

My friend Brad and I left our wives to sleep while we went for a shooting walk. We left at 11 pm and got back around 2, having walked 4 or 5 miles on our tour. I shot 80 pictures just on that walk of the Tower, shadows of bridges on the river, an abandoned bicycle, the Tower. It was the sort of experience I will remember long after I've forgotten everything else except the pictures.

In other news, there are some foods you should try, if you have any adventure at all in the way you eat (and stop reading if you get squeamish about food that is unusual for you). Tartare de boeuf (or steak tartar), is ground beef, onions, garlic and spices served up raw. It's delicious. They don't grind it into paste as we do for hamburgers, so it has some texture, and the crunchiness of the onion adds a nice texture to it also. Another is andouillette, sausages made from pork tripe. Not only is it in a natural casing, but the meat inside is tripe. It isn't ground, but sliced and just sort of stuffed into the casing. It has the texture of well-cooked kalamari and a flavor that is just spectacular. Don't forget the mustard. Grey Poupon is a pale, sad imitation of good French moutarde.

And seriously, the fries are delicious. Have some.

Pictures start tomorrow at blog.bpsphoto.com.

What have you read?

Tue, 20 May 2008 09:10:29 GMT

I lifted this from my friend 31504

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina (2 languages)
Crime and Punishment (2 languages)
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion (but I've tried, several times)
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces (I felt stupid for having suffered through it)
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye (another waste of good reading time)
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island (recently reread it, still brilliant)
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

None of the unread ones are sitting on my shelf, nor do I care to read most of them. Though I would like to get through Ulysses & The Silmarillion someday.

Strike update

Thu, 15 May 2008 12:49:01 GMT

So the strikes are all well and good and a little humorous, until they affect my family. Dyma, our borderline diabetic cat, is down to where the vets say he should be, around 16 pounds. It has taken us 7 years to get him down from 25. He eats a high-protein, low-sugar food, that gives him nice, firm scat and keeps his weight down. As a result of the strikes, though, it's getting harder to find pet shops that have the food he needs. Poor guy may be eating junk food for several days, which means diarrhea, irritability, constant hunger and weight gain (even if we only give him the same amount of food as his regular stuff). I'm a little pissed about that. And not just because I'll have to clean the messes, but because the poor guy gets all out of sorts. Oh well. The joy of vibrant democracy.

If you never work, are you still a worker?

Thu, 15 May 2008 06:42:59 GMT

These are the strikes planned for today:

The “Pan-Hellenic Laborers’ Fighting Front” (PAME) will sponsor a gathering at Omonia square 12:30 hrs.
The “General Confederation of Greek Workers” (GSEE) will sponsor a gathering at Kanigos square at 12:30 hrs.
The “Civil Servants Federation” (ADEDY) will sponsor a gathering at Korai square at 12:30 hrs.
The "Communist party of Greece" (KKE) will sponsor a gathering at Syntagma square at 20:30 hrs.
The employees of banks (National, Alpha, Eurobank, Probank HSBC, Citibank, American Express and Bank of Cyprus), O.T.E.,
and ports will be on a 24 hrs strike.
The employees of the Olympic Airways, Public Power Company (D.E.H), Water Company (EY.DAP),
and post offices will be on a work stoppage from 12:00 – 15:00 hrs.

The Pan-Hellenic Laborers' Fighting Front ("pame" means "Let's go") makes me think of that scene from Life of Brian - "Are you the Laborers' Fighting Front of the Pan-Hellenes?"
"Sod off! We're the Pan-Hellenic Laborers' Fighting Front. Sodding Laborers' Fighting Front of the Pan-Hellenes. [shouting toward a small cluster of people] Wankers!"

In other news, annesblog claims to have seen our car in the parking lot at work. I'll believe it when my eyes doth see it. The gas truckers' strike is over, so the gas stations have gas now, but we can't get subsidized gas yet, so we'll have to pay 1.15-1.20 euro/liter, which means it'll cost us about 50 liters x 1.15 = 57.50 euro x 1.58 = $90.85 to fill up our 13-gallon tank. 90.85/13=$6.98 a gallon. That's nice. Subsidized gas is only $1.70 or so per liter, so it would only cost us $85 if we had any subsidized gas. I am so glad we have a 4-cylinder, 30 miles to the gallon car.

Walk this way

Tue, 13 May 2008 15:14:14 GMT

It has been requested that I share photos of the hazards of walking here in lovely Athens. Have a good time, and, uh, clean your shoes before you come back in.

http://bpsphoto.typepad.com/photos/morning/index.html

cross-posted to bpsphoto

And I walked, I walked so far away

Fri, 09 May 2008 15:40:33 GMT

I saw a photographer at my lab with medium format film. So I asked him where I might find some. He said, "At Photo Market in Exarchia." That sounded straightforward enough. Uh, yeah. I found two camera stores in Exarchia (a neighborhood sorta near Omonia, the University, Monastiraki and Kolonaki). I've been wanting to extend my walking route, so I headed over there - it's about as far to Exarchia as my entire regular walk. Got to store number one...no MF film. But they helpfully said I could go to this other store (which was store number two).

I was kinda tired by the time I got there (I've walked about 3 miles at this point), and my Greek came out as gibberish. "Do you have the bleakenwhite film?"

"Black and white?"
"Yes. Black and white. The Ilford in the 120 size (because all I could think of was the Russian word for medium format)."
"Ilford?"
"Yes, from England?"
"No. Just Kodak."
"Okay. Do you have the juice? For the delivery of the film? No, not delivery...the de...develOPEment of the films."
"Juice? You mean chemistry?"
"Yes. Chemistry."

At this point, a friendly man said, in English, "I can show you. It's easy. Just a minute." So he finished buying his simple 35mm Agfa 5-pack and told me to go straight up the street a couple blocks and I'd see the sign for the black & white store on the left. Holy crap! There it was, exactly where he said. That's gotta be a first when traveling.

As I walked into the shop, I could see the golden chalice glowing above the castle of the 3-score nurses between 16 and 19...wait, no, that was from a movie...but I did see developing tanks and graduates (I broke my 500cc one the other day) and bottles of Ilford and Tetenal and Kodak. Paper of various sizes and types and brands were stacked along one wall. And film! Beautiful film made of silver gelatin with no silly color dyes!

Their selection turned out not to be spectacular, however, and their prices were A little steep, so I'll probably go back to ordering from the States, but they were there. They even knew of a place where I might (might) be able to rent some darkroom time. Yea! So I picked up some film, some chemistry and a graduate and headed out.

I trudged on over to Kolonaki, picked up my knives which I dropped off a couple days ago for sharpening, then up to the farmers' market. At the entrance to the market, a knot of French tourists was completely blocking the street. I mustered up my most disdainful expression and said, "Excuse moi," which garnered a small gap to squeeze through. I got some eggs, wine, lemons, onions, zucchini, tomatoes, the largest leek I've ever seen, some bananas, some big-ass green onions and strawberries and headed home. I was exhausted by the time I got home. I'd been walking continuously for about three hours at that point, and was carrying about 10 kilos of stuff. But it sure feels good to know where I can buy my B&W supplies finally.

(cross posted to bpsphoto)

he did what?!

Tue, 06 May 2008 06:43:28 GMT

Inspired by a number of factors - 40 pounds overweight, exhausted by all the walking in Prague, sallysimpleton & grok's recent participation in marathons, annesblog's taking up of Pilates, another friend starting to play soccer, and a love of walking, I've taken up serious walking. It ain't much yet - just 2 miles around the hill we live on - but it's a start. Takes about a half-hour, has two really good uphill stretches, and gives great panoramic views of Athens. I'll work up to more...if I stick with it...but I've actually walked two days in a row (this may be a first).

When I was young I walked all over my hometown...I'd even take the long cut I liked walking so much. To get downtown, a walk of about a mile if you go straight there, I'd walk a mile or so to the train tracks, then a mile down the tracks to downtown. There was something very peaceful about walking on the tracks (and of course there was also the notion that instead of turning right, I might just turn left to see the rest of the continent on foot). I've been missing that the last few years. My favorite city to visit so far has been Venice, because you have to walk or take the vaporetto (or walk, then take the vaporetto, then walk some more, as was more often the case).

But we didn't hear "Winds of Change"

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:15:08 GMT

As we were standing in the Prague airport last night, waiting for Sky Europe desk agents slowly check people in, listening to Europe's "Rock Now (Rock the Night)" we realized that for the first time, we had been in a former Soviet (or Warsaw Pact, if you want to get technical) country without hearing The Scorpions' "Winds of Change," The Pet Shop Boys' "Go West" or Ace of Base's "All That She Wants." It was remarkable. Hopefully we've turned a corner and don't have to hear those songs again.

Prague was incredibly beautiful. Even the Soviet-Realism-inspired architecture fit into the city's Renaissance and baroque neighborhoods. I took my film camera with me and shot about 20 rolls in the three days we were there, inspired by the architecture, the weather and the history of Czech photographers (the best eastern European photography, especially during the Soviet period, was Czech).

We walked a lot, probably 8-10 miles each of the first two days, then only about 3 miles yesterday. We looked at a lot of buildings, shot pictures of old doors and gazillions of tourists gazing at and shooting touristy things, drank some great cheap coffee and great expensive coffee (you think Starbucks is expensive where you are? we had an iced grande chai and an iced double tall latte for $13, and that wasn't the most expensive coffee we had), looked at some overpriced tourist shops and had Thai foot massages (that's very nice after walking around all day).

One theme that seems to be popping up for us in our travels is reconstruction and restoration. The Pantheon is covered with scaffolding, and Charles Bridge, Wenceslaus Square & the Basilica of St. George were under construction. Maybe they'll be repainting the Eiffel Tower and cleaning the exterior of the Louvre when we go to Paris.

debit and credit and double entry and assets = liabilities and what?

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 07:20:35 GMT

So I'm trying to learn some basic accounting, as part of making a business of photography. What the hell? Damn Luca Pacioli and his silly double-entry system. Okay, it makes it nearly impossible to lose track of money or cheat on your taxes, and it provides employment for millions of accountants, but it's making my head hurt. This crap should be required to graduate high school or at least college. I think it would have prepared me a lot better than Algebra II or pre-calculus did.

Oh well. Back to owner's equity and revenue and draws and...

mirrors and razorblades

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 08:03:20 GMT

Okay, so my addiction requires ibriks and presses and bialettis rather than mirrors and razorblades, but damn...I found a coffee dealer in Kolonaki called Coffees. Just beans, no liquid coffee, like Starbucks' first couple of stores 25+ years ago.

My favorite growing region for coffee is Ethiopia (with Indonesia a close second, and the rest of East Africa/Arabia right behind that), and they have an Ethiopian coffee. It's roasted to a very light city roast...the chaff is still in a papery form it's so lightly roasted. I thought I'd see how it compares to the SBUX roast of taking the coffee right to the edge of an espresso roast. The SBUX claim is that this unlocks more flavor, burns away all the excess water and such. I'd have to agree. The very light roast of a very good coffee isn't bad as such, at least it isn't sour and bitter like a light roast of average or bad coffee, but there was no flavor. You could tell it was coffee, but the sweet, fruity, lemony, berry-y characteristic of Ethiopian coffees wasn't there.

So what's an addict to do? Well hike the mile and a half or so back to Coffees, get 500 grams of espresso roast to add to the Ethiopian (we'll see if that brings anything out). But while there, I saw that they have a Java with a nice dark roast. Indonesia being my second favorite, I decided to pick up 200 grams of that, too. When I bought the Ethiopian, I picked up a couple hundred grams of finely powdered coffee to make Greek coffee (or Turkish or Albanian, depending on your specific prejudices), and that has been wonderful.

And the cost? Well...$2-3/lb more than you'd pay at Starbucks in the States for whole bean, but competitive with the prices for grocery-store branded coffees here.

Thanks

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 04:54:48 GMT

Rather than doing several thank-you comments, I'll just say thanks to everyone for their input regarding photo books. The math is that if I make one and sell two in addition to the one I have to buy, then it's paid for itself. I think those are odds are worth exploring, so you'll probably see a notice soon about a book you might want to look at (even if you don't want to buy it).

To be honest, I don't often buy coffee-table books unless they have a textual purpose (usually related to cooking - I have a soup book, a bread book, a garlic book and a spices book).

Writer's Block: Lightbulb Goes Off

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 04:50:16 GMT

What was the last great epiphany you had?

View other answers

That the phrases "lightbulb moment" and "aha moment" have the same amount of syllables as "epiphany," and they utterly lack the character and style of a word with such ancient roots.

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<accent="bronx">You suck!</accent>

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:30:41 GMT

What do the most active fans in baseball do when Steinbrenner spends a quarter of a billion dollars on a guy who's good, but not good enough when it counts (really, $25 million/year for 10 years on one player? And he chokes in the playoffs)? Why, they shout from the stands at the player in question.

What do the fans of Panathinaikos Football team do when they're pissed off at the team's management? They hold a protest march in a highly-frequented location on what promises to be a gorgeous Sunday afternoon. Now that's active fanship (fanhood? fandom?).

Market research

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:54:25 GMT

Would you pay $20 for a 7x7", 35-40 page book of photographs? Would you want them to have a theme, or would a random collection work for you? What if I made it a portfolio book, so the theme would be, "These are the photographs by me that I love the best?" What question am I not asking that I should?

Even if you're a lurker and have never said anything, say something. I'll be happy with an anonymous response that you don't want unscreened. Just don't be a jackass (you know who you are).

If you have never seen my photography, now would be a good time. BH Neely's Photography (blog.bpsphoto.com).

Thanks for your time.

Writer's Block: Lost & Found

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 07:50:33 GMT

What have you lost that you wish you still had?

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My friend Lloyd. I betrayed him 22 years ago, and I'm still haunted by it. My one regret.

New portfolio

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 11:12:51 GMT

Upon researching the fine art market, I found that my portfolio wasn't quite appropriate (relative to the work I do that I think of as "fine art"), so I made a 2nd portfolio at http://bpsphoto.typepad.com/photos/fine_art_portfolio/.

On a side note, I hate referring to my own stuff as fine art. I hate it when others refer to their own stuff as fine art. "Art," okay, since its purpose is to artistically move others, but "fine art" is something that history decides. Oh well, that's what the market demands. I also hate names for drink sizes (why can't we just order by the size it actually is - 8 oz., 20 oz. - because "small" is no more meaningful than "tall" or "large" more meaningful than "venti"). Again, oh well. Go to the aforementioned portfolio, tell me how great my work is, or tell me why my work isn't great (if that's what you think, though you'd clearly be wrong).

the things you learn

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 06:52:19 GMT

In an effort to reduce the amount of "necessary" paperwork we need to bring with us in carry on luggage, we've begun a massive scanning project to put it all on a CD (much smaller than a 6-inch pile of folders). Yesterday I scanned my medical records going back to 1975 (forgot about falling on a rock on the playground and putting a big hole in my knee), and my earliest blood test for cholesterol, at 12, showed that I already had too much - 222. It's fluctuated between 215 and 230 ever since, but really a 60-pound 12-year-old with cholesterol issues? The really shocking thing is that no doctor said anything until I was a 200+ lb. 32-year-old.

a break in obsessive habits

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 06:10:58 GMT

So when I find a book or a subject I'm interested in, I tend to go a little crazy. I read 4, 5, 6 books in a row (sometimes simultaneously) on one topic...Civil War, History of Numbers, Greece, Atheism, Evolution, Adventure Travel...and burn myself out. The most striking example of the burnout was when, after a year or so of reading about the Civil War (and very little else), I went to the Gettysburg Battlefield one morning to do some photography. Instead of communing with the ghosts (no, I don't believe in such things, other than our own ability to place ourselves in the mindset of someone else in a different time and place, which is what makes all storytelling work, but "ghost" is an easier way of saying all of that), I found myself sickened, utterly sickened, by America's love of war.

But that's not the purpose of this post, so I won't go further up that stream just yet.

No, this is about reading "variety." The last three books I've read were The Ancestor's Tale, by Richard Dawkins - it's an interesting look at the history of life, going back through the last branching point with each form of life. Six million years ago we met the chimpanzee, a few million years before that the rest of the apes, a few million years before that the monkeys and so on. Along the way, he discusses scenarios for how the eye probably evolved, how and why language & religion probably evolved, a bacteria that evolved a paddle wheel form of locomotion that's very much like the paddle wheel on a riverboat.

The next most recent was The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk. It looks at the struggle between Britain and Russia in Central Asia from the early 18th to the early 20th C. Having lived and traveled in the area, it was very interesting to see it in a completely different light. You'll recall that annesblog and I went for long lonely drives in the region. Well 150 years ago, even less, to do so would have been an invitation to get kidnapped and sold into slavery.

Then, most recently, I read Without Reservations, by Alice Steinbach. It's a light, fluffy, quick read about a woman living and traveling alone through Europe in 1993. I'm not sure that I learned much, or will remember it long, but it was a nice sorbet after the rabbit stew and lamb shashlik of the first two books. And I don't feel depressed or full of angst about how the Russians and British treated the peoples of Central Asia, or how those peoples treated each other for that matter (makes the Russians and Brits look positively benevolent, much as we think of ourselves right now in the same region, even as we kidnap people and send them to Cuba).

So what's the point? Just that it was nice to break out of my obsessiveness and read three very different books. Now I'm ready for the next weighty tome. Maybe I'll finally get through Faust or the Divine Comedy.

Foreign Service Husband

got a job, and some other stuff

Greek radio

Finally

Blessedly dry

You want what?

I'm melllllllllting!

went a little crazy in the kitchen

Paris is okay

What have you read?

Strike update

If you never work, are you still a worker?

Walk this way

And I walked, I walked so far away

he did what?!

But we didn't hear "Winds of Change"

debit and credit and double entry and assets = liabilities and what?

mirrors and razorblades

Thanks

Writer's Block: *Lightbulb Goes Off*

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Market research

Writer's Block: Lost & Found

New portfolio

the things you learn

a break in obsessive habits

Writer's Block: Lightbulb Goes Off

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<accent="bronx">You suck!</accent>