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Friday / memories / photo — Comments Off
13
Nov 15

Memory week photos, day five

For France:

A dear friend of ours is working in Paris this year. I listened to international radio on the way home as they started sharing the first horrific details. And then one reporter notes that their audience knows more about what is going on than most Parisians right now. So I pulled over to message our friend: You must tell people you are OK right now. But she’d already done it; she was safe.

She was supposed to go to one of those restaurants tonight, but her evening meeting ran late.

And that is the way things happen sometimes.

We’re wrapping up a week of skimming through old photos last week and see where they take us. So far as I can recall, I haven’t published these pictures anywhere. The theme is signs or words.

Here’s our last two for the week.

These are both from last summer’s travels. The first one is in the bowels of the London Tower. They sell these stickers and someone was unsupervised:

I wondered at the time if there was a political statement here — the locals were and are getting stirred up over various European issues — or if this was just someone being clever. Maybe someone was running from England back to Roman Britannia. But I doubt it.

It was our second trip to London. We had a great time. Maybe we’ll get to go back one in the near future. We’ve had a lovely time there both trips.

And, finally, from Berlin, the orange garbage can that says “Give it to me!”

So orange its Berlin. It is a clean city, as you’d imagine. We walked all over Berlin. I think we walked everywhere. We hope to go back to Germany one day, there’s an entire beautiful country to see.

memories / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
12
Nov 15

Memory week photos, day four

We’re checking out some old photos last week and following them down memory lane. So far as I can recall, I haven’t published these pictures anywhere. The theme is signs or words.

Here’s two now.

A restaurant restroom here in town. It isn’t the most clever thing in the world, but then it started with anger or an accident, so someone with a marker and some imagination did the best they could with it.

The store owner can’t get the drywall guy in there fast enough.

On campus, there’s the printing department’s printing department. I just found this wandering around from one office to another one day.

Or it could be just one department, now with two fonts and working on two different mediums!

I’ve got a different version of this and it is going at the top of the page one day. Two times the printing for one low price!

memories / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
11
Nov 15

Memory week photos, day three

It was fun showing off old photos last week and following them down memory lane. So here’s some more of that for this week. As far as I can recall, I haven’t published these pictures anywhere. The theme is signs or words.

Here’s two now.

Ms. Buben’s 3rd and 4th grade class clearly had a big event at McDonald’s.

This is in Alaska. We were driving through this area as a wildfire was burning just a few miles away. Fortunately it was a very sparse area, so the human concerns were somewhat limited. But the sky was erie and all of the local store marquees were concerned with the fire and fire fighters.

Ms. Buben started teaching in the Soldotna school district in 1988. I wonder how many of those french fry crafts she’s supervised over the years.

These signs are for a dive restaurant near The Yankee’s hometown. It is one of those places that almost got washed out to see during Hurricane Sandy. I think it actually did and no one noticed. The stuffed burgers are good.

It is the best of the three or four places I’ve been that wound up on Guy Fieri’s show. The Italian place in front of the Duck, and beside this sign, is much better.

memories / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
10
Nov 15

Memory week photos, day two

It was fun showing off old photos last week and following them down memory lane. So let’s do that this week. As far as I can recall, I haven’t published these pictures anywhere. We’ll try to do a theme for the week. These are all about signs or words.

Here’s two now.

You just don’t see as much bathroom graffiti as you used to. Or I just go to slightly better places these days. Maybe you just don’t see clever graffiti.

There’s just something perfectly detailed in the vagueness of that joke that I find myself really appreciating.

But graffiti is bad, we can all agree on that.

It has been a few years now, but I found this in a restaurant somewhere:

Great! I’ve been looking for that! I don’t remember what I had, but it was a late lunch and it was probably comfort food and I wanted a lot of it.

memories / Monday / photo — Comments Off
9
Nov 15

Memory week photos, day one

Here’s two now.

The first one is a sign that shows you the Homer Spit in Alaska.

The Homer Spit is a 4.5 mile long geographical landmark on the southernmost tip of the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. You’ll find docks for hundreds of boats, camping, fishing, eagles and the longest road into ocean waters in the entire world, taking up 10–15 minutes to cover by car. In 1899 a railroad track connected the docks to the coal fields on the bay and that helped built the town. The 1964 Alaska earthquake shrank the spit and killed most of the vegetation. Today it is mostly gravel and sand and tourism fronts.

We were there with Jessica and Adam and the bald eagles. A few of the hills and the eagle that shows up in the banner here on the site are from the Homer Spit or nearby.

Have you been to one of those restaurants where people stick their money on the wall and write a clever message?

In this restaurant there was currency from all over the world. That was one of the more clever ones.