I've made a mission to get through constructing the updates to and posting the 1st Greece trip to Athens and Sounio (I know - the Map calls it Sounion, but all the signs say, "Sounio"...).  Anyway, it was an amazing day in Athens and would definitely want to return to Greece - in particular the Greek Isles, but that's another post for another day.
ENJOY

Throughout the last month or so, I've been taking lots of fall pictures - everywhere - from Newark, through NJ, and in NYC. If you're on Facebook, you might notice some duplicates; never hurts to see smiling faces again and again. Anyway, enjoy the photos!

We finished the first round of pictures. Check them out!! These are pictures and videos of us on our trip out to and arrival in Huntington Beach, CA, and then our day at Disneyland/California Adventure. It was a lot of fun.

Problem with Disneyland was it was built for 30K people, but they allow 80K+ people into the park daily. That makes park-goers pretty irritable, which makes the cast members irritable. No one smiled. No one laughed. No one was happy - AT THE HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH!! allegedly...

One cast member all day asked us how our day was going. We mentioned the rude, unfriendly, and unhappy people all over the park. THIS CAST member said, "Yeah... we've kind of given up. If my manager treats me a this level (marking off his chest height), then I'll treat him or her just above that. If a customer treats me at this level,(marking off his waist height), then I treat them just about here (marking off his belly button level). People aren't happy anymore and we're kinda tired of it here."

WE would NEVER that sort of thing coming from a CAST MEMBER at Disney World in FL. NEVER. They would say something like, "Oh, that's a shame; I can't believe people would be like that here! This is the most wonderful place to be! Here's an extra sticker for you. Have a Magical Day!" And we'd walk away with a smile on our faces.

Not in Disneyland. This was a conversation I had with a rude female cast member at a concession stand:

Me: "Hello. Could I please have a small cup of water?"
CM: "Why do you want water?" (stoic, standing behind the register, and not moving)
Me: "I'd like to clean off our table over there for the kids (pointing at the filthy table)."
CM: "Someone should be cleaning those tables." (still not moving from behind her register)
Me: "I agree; someone other than me should clean the table. No one is around for me to ask to clean the table."
CM: "Someone should clean your tables, sir." (still not moving or looking like she wanted to help me in any way)
Me: "Could I please have a cup of water?"
CM: BIG SIGH. Shuffle shuffle shuffle. She got a little cup and filled it up half way. She didn't look at me when she handed it to me. In fact, she looked away from me as she pushed it halfway across the counter.
Me: "Thank you." And I smiled at her, hoping for a glimmer of happiness or some emotion.
CM: Silence.

That would NEVER have happened in Disney World. I mentioned this interaction to Matt's sister, who's been to Disney World literally 30+ times with her family as a kid and with her family with her kids. She was appalled and relayed similar experiences. But nothing topped our two spectacularly unfriendly interactions with cast members that day.

I just wish we could have gotten to California Adventure a little earlier than we had. I would like to have seen more of that park. Seems like it was built more for older people (outside of Bug's Land).

Unapologetically and therapeutically, I have to post about this one instance that has remained for the last few days as one of the strangest things I've encountered in Facebook from a childhood friend. Someone from my childhood posted a picture (I have a copy of the picture for some reason in my collection) of our church van. I'm not sure where we were headed in the van in the picture, but our church did many puppet mission trips to NYC. We also took the van to week-long Southern Baptist summer camps and to ski retreats. On the ski retreats, we skied during the day, returned to the church-owned cabin, cooked & cleaned up from dinner, and had Bible study.

There have been various and many comments (50+!!) about the picture with memories of the trips we took in that particular van in the 70s and 80s, and that that van was replaced by a bigger van/bus with bigger windows, a great stereo, and A/C!!

One of the folks who posted - and the most recent as of Mar. 14 - is a couple of years younger than me, but we used to have sleep-overs together as kids, went to school with each other, and considered each other friends. His older sister was my age, but there's apparently no contact between them at all. I think I remember a few years ago his mother passing away, which made me sad. They had a beautiful home and she seemed like a good mom. She was always so sweet to me, too.

This was his posted comment to the picture of the church van: "I was not in that van. However, I love you all and ask if anyone remembers poop in a cup on the way home from a ski trip."

I have no idea if he's joking. I have no idea what kind of person he is now, although his pictures present him as a rocker - he plays the drums. He also looks vastly different from how I remember him and his hair at one point was really long and permed (80s scary male perms). The question left the inferred image of "Two Girls, One Cup" in my mind, although I never actually saw the video (thank goodness!!).

Comment welcome!

Here are some pictures that show the length of my beard - from brushed to unkempt. Enjoy!

From a picture two weeks ago when erstexman, bearzendurham and I met for breakfast over the holidays in Raleigh:





To NOW - TODAY. Jan. 8, 2010:







To scary, fluffy, burly Steve cheeks!!:

Today, a buddy of mine and I met for lunch at The Dish in Chelsea. I toted along my new Nikon D40 that some of you are familiar with already (from previous posts or replies). mondragon and I exchanged a couple of things today about his expired film work, developing them, and so forth. He does EXCELLENT work and I'm always impressed and in awe of the things he puts out. Great eye and composition.

Here is my first day breaking in my new camera that I bought from my partner's brother-in-law for a wonderful price. I've painstakingly picked out initially two really good lenses for it over the last month or so, along with a mounted flash (more for indoor and portrait shots) and two filters. I discovered today that I have to be more selective with the filters, even though they happily lend themselves to multiple mounting. One gets a black blur in the corners of the photos because the lens "expects" perhaps only one filter. Otherwise, I will expect to do some cropping and have to plan out the extra space needed to crop out the blurs.

I was working on field depth as well as the automatic settings that highlight either greater aperture or greater shutter speed. The photos with motion blurs are with a extended aperture, and the pictures with deep shadows are with quicker shutter speeds. All today were taking with the 18-55mm lens including both a UV and polarizing filter.

#1 - Joyce Theater Marquis (done with the Automatic everything setting)


#2 - Uptown Shot of 8th Ave from Chelsea (higlighted shutter speed - deeper shadow)


#3 - Uptown Shot of 8th Ave from Chelsea - Taxis in motion (higlighted aperture - greater blurs)


These are just a few. I'll post more tomorrow after I've looked at them a little more. There's one below that shows the profound corner blurs that I was mentioning due to the filters (I believe). I'm going to remove one of them to see if it makes a difference, and it really should. I will have to be more judicious with their use over time.

#4 - 6th Ave Library (served as background in The Fisher King) - Auto Setting - stark blur


All in all in was a good test day.

Last night after work, Matthew met me at the Sahag Workshop on 49th and Madison Ave. for a hair cut. He was treating me to my first (and definitely not last) celebrity hair cut. The guy who styled my hair, Johnny Wojtanowicz, was really cool. He styled a number of different celebrities in Vegas for two years before moving to NY, one of whom is Kathy Hilton. He still has clients in Vegas who fly him out freelance to do their hair. He's 23 years old and is already known in the celebrity community. How cool is that? The hair cut and process was definitely informative, educational, interesting, calming, and wonderful. The setting was serene and tranquil - water fountain adorned with bamboo shoots at my station and molded stone counter with an other-worldly structure holding my oval mirror. My scalp was massaged with the wash and conditioning and then the cut began. You can read about the cut and the styling on the website, but they cut your hair dry instead of wet, and follow the cutting with the shape of your head, rather than just snipping. The layering, the talking, the discussion, and ultimately the product rendered the hair cut below. It's pretty cool at the outset, but Johnny pointed out that they're "all about the grow-out here", meaning that it will look better and better as it grows out. (In some of the pictures I took, it almost looked like I have a forming bald spot. I wouldn't be at all scared of that - much like my gray hair, I would embrace it because it's about the man I'm becoming, but all the hair stylists have told me that it's not a bald spot, it's just how it looks directly after the hair cut. Maybe they're being generous, but until it's a proper, evident, no-bald-spot-barred bald spot, it's not one. LOL!) All in all a great experience and I'll do it again (and for the cost curious, it wasn't all that bad... not as expensive as I thought it was going to be.).

Here are the long-awaited photos from last weekend in DC. We went bowling, did horribly over all (madlizard keeps reminding me that my doubles weren't that bad). If you can't see any of the photos, please let me know and I'll see what I can do. They're in flickr.com, so I could just add you to my contacts list...

http://www.flickr.com/gp/10242246@N08/2MQnU6

Enjoy!