what about the plastic animals?

Early Portrait

This is me!  I "sat" for a bunch of photos when I was a few months old.  There were twelve photos of a giant head resting on forearms.  Five of the pictures were used in a large collage.  This one of me stuffed under a towel is at the center of the collage.  Pictures one, two and ten have gone missing!  I am hoping they have simply been stored in a different box.

Musical diversion:  Two videos I can't get out of my head.

Great things have come out of Columbus, Ohio - Wendy's, White Castle, Dane, and The Ohio State University to name a few.  All of these pale in comparison to the crabcore stylings of Attack Attack!.

To clear your mind of the auto-tuned-death-metal-euro-disco assault here's Julia Nunes performing Build Me Up Buttercup.

West Taghkanic Diner

I was inspired by The Wapa.  On the way back from upstate a few weeks ago I stopped for dinner at the West Taghkanic Diner.  The spaghetti with meatballs special was okay.  The food is almost beside the point when you have a sign that good!

Nevada Scenery

Nevada sure has some interesting mountain scenery.

Alma Mater

As of this week I can now say it has been more than 30 years since I went to school here.  The building and school grounds were looking good when I was there on Memorial Day.  Here's the front entrance from a few years ago.  Looking at the small size of the photos I used to put up here makes me want to put up larger versions (it's not going to happen).

Death Valley Flora and Fauna

In the late afternoon, when I was between the park headquarters and the road to Beatty, the road became filled with caterpillars doing whatever it is caterpillars do.  I had to stop and take a picture.  The yellow flowers were everywhere along the road.  The pink flowers were less numerous and this was the only one on which I saw a little red critter.

Liquor Square

A Syracuse landmark on Erie Blvd. East since I don't know when.

Artist's Drive

Two views near the beginning of Artist's Drive in Death Valley.  Pretty, eh?

Natural Bridge Canyon

There's a little trail that wanders up to a natural bridge in Death Valley.  The bridge is made of conglomerate, has plenty of cracks on the underside and looks like it could come crumbling down at any moment.  A little bit beyond the natural bridge is a feature that had me puzzled for a while until I realized it had to be a dry waterfall.

My picture-taking habits are kind of odd sometimes.  I took twenty photos of the natural bridge, taken from different angles, using two lenses and playing with the exposure.  A few miles up is a side road called Artist's Drive.  It was incredibly beautiful but I only took six pictures.

Lyndell's Bakery Half-Moon

New York City is known for its black-and-white cookies.  It is a mystery why as the cookies are almost uniformly mediocre.  The NYC black-and-white is based on a dough that is somewhere between a cake and a cookie.  The black and white icing is hard.

Venture to upstate New York or New England and you'll find the morphologically similar, yet gastronomically different, half-moon cookie.  The half-moon is actually a small cake with buttercream frosting on top.  Half-moons are classically made with cocoa in the batter, though the cocoa-less form seems to be more popular nowadays.  Upstaters take a lot of pride in knowing that half-moons are better than black-and-whites.

The whole upstate vs. downstate argument is pretty boring so let's skip to Somerville, Massachusetts.  Lyndell's Bakery has been in Somerville since 1887.  I went there a couple of weeks ago on National Doughnut Day, after first having a doughnut at the Gail Ann Coffee Shop in Arlington with my sister.  The powered sugar doughnuts at both places were great - light and not at all greasy.  (Why does anyone ever by the crappy greaseballs from Dunkin' Donuts?)  The half-moon cookie was for later in the day.  It tasted even better than it looks.

Badwater

Death Valley is largely a large dried-up old salty lake.  Badwater Basin, where all but the top picture were taken, is the lowest point in North America - 282 feet below sea level.  The actual low point is about five miles from the road.  For a sense of scale the foothills of the mountains in the second picture are a good ten miles away.  The snow-covered mountain, which I think is Telegraph Peak, is another five miles beyond .  I walked out a mile or so, but I didn't see any point in going further.  To be kind to tourists the marker is actually next to the road.

Don't mind me, I'll just jumping around between different locations here for the next few weeks.