Project 365: Day 88

Ah. The last day in BHouse. :-/

Project 365: Day 87

Mad Men has been David and my obsession so far this summer. We counldn't manage to coordinate the watching of the last two episodes, so we watched them on our own. It was intense. And today was Mad Men Day. (Oh yes, also my last day at the library!! Bwahahahahaha!)

There's a feature on the AMC site where you can make a mad-men double of yourself. Of course, you can add cigarettes or drinks to your hands, and dress yourself in fabulous clothes, circa 1961.

Project 365: Day 86

My lovely ex-wife planned a lovely little get together at Richters to sort of celebrate and sort of mourn my immanent departure from New Haven. It was fun; half-price half-yards all around!!

Also, Bill took this AMAZING photo, which might be my favorite ever:

Project 365: Day 85

Tuesday night, we had a little pizza party at BHouse, my last big get-together in New Haven. As you can see, it was a great time all around. :-)

Project 365: Day 84

Ok, I apologize for the not-amazing quality of this photo. But it was not that easy to manage with any kind of decency. And, to top it off, it doesn't look anywhere near as bad now as it did this morning or last night. But that lower back sunburn is bad, and made sleeping a pretty tricky proposition. Not as difficult as this photo, though.

Project 365: Day 83

The crew, about to split up on Sunday morning. Happy birthday, Chris!

Project 365: Day 82

The swanky beach at Westhampton Dunes. I didn't get a shot of the bajillion dollar houses there, but let me tell you that I had no idea that there were people that rich.

Project 365: Day 81

A few of us ventured out to Long Island for Hudson's birthday, which meant taking the ferry from Bridgeport. Scenic Bridgeport above, scenic Port Jefferson below. Honestly, the thing that struck me most about Port Jefferson was the degree to which it was not Bridgeport.

Hurray!

I got my camera back just now, and it works! It only took 5 weeks to get it repaired. But it was a whole lot cheaper than buying a new camera, so that's good. That means that I'll start taking photos again today. Expect them to be up Monday or so, since I'll be out on Long Island for the weekend.

woo, sort of

Good news: my camera was finally shipped.
Bad news: I still don't have it.

Temporary photo-project hiatus

It is with great pain that I have to say that I am putting the Project 365 on a temporary hiatus. My nice camera is still in the shop (grr! They told me I'd have it by now! It's been there over a month!) I had been using my old camera, an ancient early digital. But it progressed from being a bit slow and clunky to eating batteries faster than Barry Bonds takes steroids to (also like Barry Bonds) being utterly uncooperative and a total jerk. It doesn't turn on much now, even with fresh batteries, and freezes like old operating systems when it bothers to turn on.
Thus, until my real camera comes back, I can not sustain a picture a day. Several days would have already have to be "cheats"; since AJ went back to Ithaca with his normally functioning camera, it's been very hard to make photos happen. I'll resume my day count when I have a working camera again, so you will still get 365 days of photos. (I know how worried you all were!)
You haven't missed much-- a few more dull photos of the library or my books, or of the near constant rain or thick clouds of fruit flies that have moved into BHouse. I'll be calling the camera place tomorrow and demanding my camera back, or that they replace it if they don't feel like sending it back to me.
Love,
Katie

Project 365: Day 80

Please notice the factory, the metro-north train and the baseball all in the same photo. Hurray for Bridgeport!

Project 365: Day 79

 

I made a pretty sweet dinner on Sunday-- homemade, hand-breaded chicken parmigian with homemade sauce! We also had a really incredible bottle of 2005 Italian chianti that I'd been saving for a special occasion, and it was fantastic. 

 

The cooking adventures of Sunday morning were somewhat less successful, though-- I mis-measured everything in the pancakes, adding 2/3 of a cup when I thought I was adding a half cup. The didn't turn out that badly, but AJ thought they made better masks than breakfast foods.

Project 365: Day 78

Look! It's me, standing behind a totally sweet (and not at all to-scale) sand-castle model of the Giza Plateau! Alan, Gonzo, AJ and I went to the Milford beach, which was hosting a sand-castle competition, and this was of course my favorite entry. The one below was almost certainly the best sculpture there, though-- some of these people had truly impressive talent.

After that, we went to the free Sister Hazel concert on the Green, which was pretty great. AJ sort of fell asleep in my lap, while Alan, Marcus and Taylor danced and the drunk lady behind them tried to join in.

Project 365: Day 77

BHouse spends another thrilling Friday night, this time bluebooking.

Project 365: Day 76

 

Ah, The Hill. What a thriving part of New Haven! I had to go down to the Hill Health Center to get a vaccination for Hopkins, because no one else would see me. It took three-plus hours in which I got bounched from nurse to nurse and never actually saw a doctor. It was a vivid illustration of the miriad ways our health care system needs reforming. But of course, this was the highlight of the whole trip:

So wonderfuly expressive!

Project 365: Day 75

Yale: Under Construction at all times.

Project 365: Day 74

Harry Potter Premiere!

Project 365: Day 73

A slight cheat; a few minutes before midnight waiting for the metronorth at Harlem-125th coming back from Chicago.

Project 365: Day 72

Project 365: Day 71

Two of my favorite pictures from my graduation party! There are plenty more-- Claire posted them on her facebook.

Project 365: Day 70

I met Errol for lunch. We got some sweet Thai cart, and ate on the Green. The weather was just about perfect. All in all, a quite good lunch! Then off to NYC and then home for the weeked.

Project 365: Day 69

Sadly, this picture doesn't really capture the movie magic that was going on in the library. I guess someone was making a promotional video or something? Anyway, it enlived the library a little bit.

Project 365: Day 68

The hot sauce I snuck back into the country. We only brought carry-on bags, so I stuck the hot sauce in my bag with my shampoo and such. It's more than 3oz though, so my bag got flagged going through American security. The security guard looked at it, and looked at me, and said "It's good." And thus I was able to get my hot sauce! I put it on my dinner tonight and it was oh-so spicey and oh-so delicious!

mexico, coming soon

I'm too tired to deal with real blog posts now. But! Photos are up on facebook if you want to look there. If not, come back tomorrow and there should be more photos for you.
To whet your appetite:

Project 365: Day 67

This is my mosquito eaten leg. They devoured me! Damn Mexican mosquitos. So itchy! I woke up the last few nights I woke up in the middle of the night because it itched so badly. It's getting better because a doctor told me to start taking much stronger meds for them.

Project 365: Day 66

Waiting in the Cancun bus station for our bus to the airport. Near the beginning of a very long day of travel after an amazing trip.

Project 365: Day 65

So, when you think of Cancun, this is what you think of. The beach was amazing! The water is the most incredible blue-- really, I thought all of the photos were enhanced or something. But no, it's just that color. The sand was soft and white, and the surf was pretty intense (by my standards, at least). And the flags were red, which meant that technically we shouldn't have been swimming at all. And really, "swimming" isn't quite right. We waded out into the water and played in the waves. The surf was full of sand and seaweed, and it snuck into hair and swimsuits and such. (Ask AJ about a great quote from that one. hehe.)

After we got tired of fighting the waves, we decided to take a walk along the beach. So pretty, but covered in kind of horrible looking resorts. (We were on a public beach, with the rest of the non-resort crowd. It was nice to be on a beach in Mexico with Mexicans.) We decided to try to find some Mayan ruins that I'd read about, but we ended up on the bus again. At a whopping $7.50 mxn (~$0.60), it was a great way to get around the city.

When we got to El Rey (the site), it was closed. We were about to go try to find the bus back when a guy sitting outside started talking to AJ in Spanish. I'm not sure exactly what he said, but he had the keys and led us into the site via a crazy underground passage. We got in, and he pointed at the ticket booth, and asked us for the admission fee. Since it was about $3 each, we gave it to him, and he let us in.

 (That's AJ pointing to an iguana, if you can't tell. They're pretty good at hiding in the scrub, but they were scurrying everywhere on Cancun island.) We had the site completely to ourselves, except for the bajillions of iguanas that have burrowed into every concievable nook and cranny at the site.

Pretty great, even if somewhat dubious. Of course, the site was nestled into the corner of a resort and a big, wild looking golf-course. It's not that often you get to spend some time basically alone with buildings that are nearly 1,000 years old. It was a neat way to spend the evening of our last night in Mexico!

Project 365: Day 64

Naturally, on the 4th of July, what could be more patriotic than visiting ancient Mayan ruins? We sojourned from Merida to Chichen Itza on a second class bus, which was amazing (in hindsight, if not so much when we were on it). Eventually, we made our way back to Cancun to stay the night there.

 

Here we are standing in front of El Castillo, or more properly, the temple of Kukulkan. 

  

And the neat structure at the end of the ball court at Chichen Itza. The court is the largest so far discovered, and it is indeed huge! I have absolutely no idea how anyone could manage to play anything, let alone anything like the descriptions thus far offered for the ancient Mayan game, on a field that huge, especially without shade and in the heat. 

  

We also visited (but alas, did not swim in) the sacred cenote, or sinkhole. The huge sinkholes in the local limestone often hold a lot of fresh water. The Mayans threw offerings to the gods into this one, though not into all cenotes. 

 

This picture was taken before the others, but I felt it belonged down here. I took it from our second class bus between Merida and Chichen Itza. The bus was cheap, but it took forever since we stopped in every village, crossroad, and plenty of times where we saw only scrubby trees. I really liked this one, though, because it combines several of my favorite aspects: the gorgeous trees with bright red flowers, the great colors of the houses, and the well-made shrine to the Virgin outside.

Project 365: Day 63

This photo is a bit more of a candid than it was supposed to be... taken by a local guy handing out coupons for the restaurant in the hotel in the background. We spent Friday wandering around Merida, shopping and sightseeing and meeting interesting people. We met a guy who instructed me on Panama hats, then "guided" us to the "right shop" where another guy told us how they were made and I ended up buying one. It remains unclear to me if I got ripped off.
Eventually, we went the very same restaurant (in the background) for dinner. It was our first taste of the amazing Yucatan cuisine, and we met a Mexican guy named Jean-Luc (yeah... his mother is Italian, he said, as if that made it all obvious). He ended up sitting through most of dinner with us, giving us further pointers on what to see and do and buy, and telling us stories. By far the best was when he began to describe his encounters with aliens. He spoke English well, but sometimes he got excited and slipped back into Spanish-- one such (amazing) moment included a full, leaping pantomime of one very strange encounter with aliens/electricity(?) on light poles in Merida. He advised us to look it up-- he reported it to CNN, the FBI, etc, and best of all, there is a video on YouTube. Not very intelligible, but it does make his jumping around the restaurant make a bit more sense. The video.

More of central Merida. That's a neat, old cathedral. Not the oldest in the Americas, though-- that's a few blocks away.

This one. It's very imposing, and not very pretty. It's built out of the ruins of the Mayan city that stood on the site before the Spanish arrived. But it is old! Jean-Luc informed us that it's a very rich church, because it's old. All the high-society folk get married there, apparently.

Project 365: Day 62

 

AJ and I arrived safely in Cancun, and took the first of many such photos. We ate, and then bought our first bus tickets to get to Merida. Merida is about 4 hours away from Cancun by road-- it's the largest city in the Yucatan, with a population of nearly a million people. It's also the capital of Yucatan state, and not very touristy. 

Here's a map, if you're curious! 

 

And the main square of Merida, as we walked toward our hotel late Thursday evening.

Project 365: Day 61

 

My "special project" at work: catalog these 1725 or so rolls of microfiche.