Category: Life Is A Spell

I love this landscape and the weather we have been having. We’ve been heading to the beach everyday to ski and marvel at the forever changing landscape. There was no open water a few days ago. It was all floating ice chunks as far as you could see, but an offshore breeze has taken it all out to sea. We do not have a rocky coast. These ice mounds are exactly that, all ice, and you can walk on the lake up to the edge. Yesterday we strained to make out what the white and sometimes dark things were that were floating near the horizon. Drama and mystery is a powerful lure.

Margaret Explosion returns to the Little Theater Café for the next thirteen Wednesdays.

Skiing along Durand Eastman beach was so much fun we did it two days in a row. The beach is quite a bit larger now because it’s frozen for a ways out and the ice cliffs that have formed at the edge are quite dramatic. They will all be gone in a few weeks.

Only the hardy types were out today, a crystal clear, blue sky day with temperatures in single digits. There are far fewer people out on days like this but they are much friendlier. They want to say say hi and exclaim how beautiful it is. If it was this pretty all the time we wouldn’t appreciate what we have. The so called bad weather puts things into perspective.

I’m quite certain not even the locals of Arcos de la Frontera can believe how beautiful their place is. The old section is a narrow white village that runs up a mountain and offers spectacular views from both sides. We spent the better part of a day trying to walk around their mountain but were forced to take a bus when the road got too dangerous. We spotted an intriguing sign for a place called Boabdil and followed it down a path on the side of the mountain.

A sign out front claimed the place was about three thousand years old. There was no one around and the tiles on the walls looked like they had been done by a madman. We entered cautiously and a man came out from the back room. “Pasa, Pasa,” he said, encouraging us to enter a cave that went straight into the hillside from his bar. We looked inside and came out quickly. He seemed friendly but we both felt paranoid like we were being set up.

We ordered a beer and I noticed he poured them from cans. I looked at his Cruzcampo tap and detected it had not been used in years. We sat out front at the only table in the place and both felt like we were being drugged. But the music got better and then sounded great. Peggi asked who it was and jotted down the flamenco artist’s name. A local stopped by and ordered a beer. He was all smiles. The drugs were good.

After quite a few trips to España we finally came around to ordering coffee without using the word “café,” the way the locals do. You walk into a cafe where the doors are usually open to the street, you say Buenos Días or at least Hola upon entering to the barkeep and the nearby patrons. To skip this stage is very rude. This was pointed out to us in a good natured way many years ago and it seems so right.

Today, we said, “Hola. Dos con leches por favor” and it did the trick. You typically stand at the bar and the coffee is made to order as you watch. While the coffee is being pressed, the server will set a saucer with a small spoon and sugar packet on it onto the the bar in front of you. He or she will pour the coffee into the cup, or glass in the funkier places, and then they will steam the milk and add it to coffee. We like this routine so much we do it at at least two times each day in Spain.

It was raining when we stopped in Sevilla. The locals were acting like this was a big deal because it had been raining for a few days. It was ten degrees where we came from so we couldn’t take them seriously. The streets are lined with orange trees down here and the rain dropped the ripe fruit everywhere. The municipal workers had their hands full cleaning them up.

At the cafe where we had coffee we watched the woman behind the counter throw oranges into the Zumex machine like she was playing basketball. We couldn’t resist and ordered dos zumos de naranja.

With only a couple of hours of sleep we walked in a daze around the old section of Madrid stopping for cafe con leche a few times before checking into a hotel. Instead of crashing, we went for it and headed back out. We found the quintessential Spanish cafe slash bar slash restaurant. I love how the Europeans seamlessly meld these three essential environments. We were in the literary section of Madrid near Plaza Santa Ana with its statutes of Calderón de la Barca and Federico García Lorca, near Cervantes’ home on Calle Lope de Vega.

People were eating in a back room with long tables and tiled walls but we sat in the bar and ordered Pimientos de Padrón, cerveza, vino tinto, aceitunas marinated in onions, manchego y pan. We believe we have found civilization.

I’ve carried my Nikon 7000 in my left front pocket for four years now. I can barely get the lens cover open now. Lint takes a toll. I bought a smaller Sony pocket camera, an RX100, and by default it is set up to shoot photos in the traditional 3×2 aspect ratio. My first digital camera, a Kodak DC210 used that format, same as the old 35mm film cameras, and I thought I missed that but I am having a hard time adjusting. I’m thinking the 2×3 format might be the way they designed the sensor and therefore it might be the optimum ratio. Does one fit mobile platforms better? I don’t really care about that. I’m just on the fence as to which ratio works best for me. I’ve been using the 4×3 for so long I kind of frame shots that way before I shoot. I’m gonna have to think about this for a while.

The blow up above is 4×3 and the this link is 3×2.

Many years ago I bought a few boxes of slides at a garage sale. The person attending the sale said the woman who used to live in the house had traveled all over the world so I gambled on the lot. I used one of the photos on the cover of the Invisible Idiot cd and I think the goat photo above is one. They’re in the public domain now like my Flickr photos. I put a slideshow together of these found photos and they are serving as a short winter vacation.

I stopped over to visit Sparky, our former neighbor, and he had just finished lunch when I walked in. A dirty pot was still in the sink and empty can of Popeye spinach was on the edge of the sink. I felt as if I had finally discovered his secret potion and asked if I could take a photo of the can.

I will have to add this to pictures of Sparky on his mini website (sparky.com) I think the last update was the “Sparky Dolls.” His counter is still broken and there is an ongoing slew of “Episodes” to add but it will be hard to top these gems.

Sparky Recycles Aluminum (he pronouces it ally-loon-ee-mum) – smashes up old lawn chairs, dimantles lawn mowers in his garage. Has an old scale in there to weigh the recyclbles..
Sparky’s Boat Cuts Loose From His Trailer And Passes Him On The Road (he says)
Sparky Changes Rusty’s Name To Little Man And Then “Little Manny”
Sparky Takes Little Man To The Vet Because He Can’t Poop
Sparky Goes To A Body Building Contest In Buffalo
Sparky Shoots At Squirrel With Homemade Slingshot

For a couple of seconds I was thinking about getting it on with this mannequin in Lord & Taylors. We were out at the mall to pick up a wedding gift for some friends and we found exactly what we were looking for. Pretty easy ride out there, enough time to listen to two Margaret Explosion songs and then two more on the way back. But when we walked into the reception with our gift we saw that the bride and groom already had what we bought so we left with our bag and will have to return to the mall.

We planned on getting in Duane’s car and riding back to New York with him after Christmas but his Brooklyn apartment building had a serious plumbing issue while he was up here so we decided to stay in town where the toilets work. The ride back was a black ice nightmare for him so we’re happy to have missed out on that.

We knew there wasn’t enough snow yesterday to ski through the woods so we put our skis in the car and drove along the lake. We stopped at Horseshoe Road and skied out on to the golf course but the snow stuck to the bottom of our skis so we turned around. Today we walked on the road but we’re attracted to a loud industrial sound in the distance. We followed our ears and cut across the marsh off Hoffman Road where we found this big blue ball. We would never be able to walk out there in the summer without sinking in mud. The temperatures have been hovering around the freezing mark and we’re making the best of Limbo.

This morning was a mix of low lying misty clouds and brilliant sun and it looked especially dramatic from Joe Marchese’s fifth floor office at Monroe Community College. We would occasionally catch his one hour “Managing Your Money” show on WXXI and always thought he made a lot of sense. When a listener asked where he or she could get more advice he would say I do consulting on the side. He charges by the hour and neither buys or sells stocks or funds. He establishes an equity/fixed income balance that works for you and recommends a balanced batch of no-load funds that you can purchase on your own. We see him every couple years and think he’s the greatest.