All Windows Closed for Christmas

I'm hereby declaring a Windows Wednesday Amnesty for this week since you're on holiday and I've just been dropped from the funnel cloud. Took photos yesterday near Dover, but there were no windows in sight. So here is a pic that is window unrelated, but that I just like.

much silliness

yesterday jak raced his art buggy at the derby and won!
it was a beautiful sunny and crisp fall day at washington square park
and a good time was had by all.
more pics here

Autumn on the Canal

Yesterday Dan and I took the train to London with our bicycles. I'm pretty sure this photo was taken in Hackney, and is in a large area of East London that will soon be transformed beyond recognition for the 2012 Olympics.

Rainy Day London

8:04am London, 10 October 2006.

dutch tub

the dutch tubs at el cosmico come complete with wok
so you can snack AND soak

Monkey See

True to my word I'm submitting my second window pic for this Wednesday in September. Today Dan and I went to Howlett's Wild Animal Park in Bekesbourne, near Canterbury. In case you are ever asked, Howlett's was the first zoo in the world to breed the honey badger... and perhaps more interestingly (albeit macabre) it managed to lose two keepers to the same Iberian tiger in 1980 and another keeper met his death cleaning a tiger cage in 1994 (amazing, innit?). So you're not too sad, this is a major conservation park, not just an excuse for people to cage animals up for their personal amusement... however, if I were to guess I would say those tigers in question were either extremely amused or extremely pissed off. Anyhow, this is a photo through the window of the gorilla colony enclosure. If you look carefully you can see some lovely primates in the background. If it was "Cage Wednesday" they might have appeared a bit more prominently, but they didn't really get all that close to this window when I was taking the pic. The gorillas were incredibly animated and playful. Loads of young and babies too. They seemed pretty content, even happy, but maybe that's because they haven't been talking to the tigers.

mt airy village fair

sheep, a baby cow, too much iced coffee, lots of cute dogs, lots of cute kids, lots of groovy looking ladies wearing cute shoes, raspberry vinegar, organic fruit pie eating contest, crunchy corn stuff, the donegan, hanging with zeus, luscious looking key lime pie we didn't get to taste, she ain't no angel, peanut butter cookie

Old Craggy Tree

On the Grounds of St. Mary's Church in the village of Chilham, yesterday. After a day of driving (riding, on my part), many stops and hot sun that was completely unexpected, Dan made the keen observation that I had unintentionally set my camera to a parameter of high contrast and high saturation --- thus revealing the reason why I was heard to say throughout the day "everything is blowing out!" and "why can't I get this shot?". The bright sun and subject matter
of black and white tudor buildings made photo-taking a bit on the frustrating side (a challenge even without the wrong settings). Soooo... the tree is one of the few photos that I liked in the end.

Other notable moments of the day: Magners at a 14th Century pub in Lenham,

...and a brave moment of entering the arachnid tent (only 50p!) at the Challock Goose Fair. I didn't actually touch a tarantula or... well... get closer than 6 feet to one, but I DID go in the tent. Dan's hand will recover eventually from the squeezing (read: vice-like grip).

(By the way, in case you think a goose fair might contain lots of geese... or even one for that matter, think again. Not a goose in sight, and by god I looked! Silly me, thinking there might be a goose...)

from A to ZED

i have been cleaning out my hard drive, sifting and sorting through folders full of images, trying to get things more organized. sometimes the images are funny time capsules, especially ones around the house where there is something with a back story in the background. like a shelf with mary's london street map book on it:























or some pictures of the house just after we painted.
it was fall and i had purchased some blood oranges and pears:















this image sets my taste buds to wanting some juicy blood oranges and all those other fall tastes that will soon be coming into season.

our "daytripping" today involved dumpster diving, unfortunately i did not bring my camera along (shame on me) i will try to share pictures of our plunders tomorrow

Twitching

Oare Marshes Nature Reserve ... a snap while trying to figure out where to go that might provide better photo ops. Shortly afterwards we were blocked in from leaving our parking spot on the side of the road by three camouflaged men, two lovely black dogs, and a car hauling a boat hauling something recently killed. Imagine the audacity of parking in a wildlife refuge for a convenient departure after getting your jollies killing the wildlife over an unprotected boundary. Something tells me they didn't give it much thought at all.

And for a lighter observation, we discovered that bird watchers - "Twitchers" - bear an uncanny resemblence to one another. Hmmm...