Here goes...

the band in which tim plays...

they played at some festival in chelsea, on a bridge closed especially for today for traffic... (as you can see, they are walking on the middle of the road). here they were just done..

it started out as a great sunny day and we were in the pool this morning by 8.30!! then somehow the sun disappeared and on the bridge it was really chilly.... i was not dressed for chilly....:( 

ah well, it was fun anyways...

Wedding chapel

many people asked us, after coming back from las vegas, whether we got married. well, we didnt.... if it even had been an option, it wasnt after i saw the chapels. it was all just so sad! placed a long busy roads, with a cheesy motel attached to it... beehhhh. here you can see one. its not even pretty!

but.. according to wikipedia, las vegas is the "marriage capital of the world". getting a marriage license is very easy, and costs very little, and thus many couples get married here ( i read somewhere 120.000 marriages/ year, that is more than 300 weddings per day!! i just calculated it 3 times as i couldnt believe more than 600 people get married each day in vegas.... we sure didnt see any happy couples coming out of wedding chapels...)

apparently, there are even drive-thru weddings in las vegas... can you believe it??!! here is the link (check the costs of different packages they offer... named "fast, faster and fastest" the "fastest" is the cheapest... is this the speed with whih you drive...??). you can also be married by an elvis impersonator... here a list of some "famous" people that got married in vegas (how many are still married..?!), and here the website for the above wedding chapel, because... forever starts now.... (ugh!)

Self portrait

i simply was too lazy to post last night, and today i dont have my computer (and i am lazy again), so here a self portrait, while we were in the desert in las vegas....!

Sobering epitaph

few weeks back we were heading home from a beautiful ride along the shore, around gloucester and rockport, an hour away from boston. we happened to drive by a cemetery and stopped to have a look. as you can see, the cemetery faces the ocean. it was just a small cemetery on a piece of grass, in between houses, and most of the stones were very old (i think the cemetery dates from 1630!), named the "old first parish burial ground". the late afternoon sun was still warm and i really liked to walk around this cemetery. most stones had interesting, down to earth inscriptions. some were hard to read, but it was really worth it to take a moment and decipher them. others, like the one above, were, given their age,very well readable. taking a readable picture ofcourse was yet another problem.... :)

the above stone belongs to the grave of ebenezer, died in 1793, aged only 1 year and 3 months. son of john v, and hannah cleaveland (i found it funny that when cleaveland didnt fit on the stone, they just put the remaining letters above; i saw this on several stones on this cemetery). and then the epitaph; "come mortal man, cast an eye, read your doom, prepare to die".

i have collected a few now, and i guess every now and then i will show you one. (unfortunately, i couldnt find anything else about ebenezer or his parents...)

a collection of taphophiles can be found here.

Pretty amazing

here a distant view of las vegas.... when the sun was about to set. isnt it beautiful? too bad i had to take the picture through the window of the car, as you can see....

our hotelroom was unfortunately not too high up (only the 23rd floor or so... haha), and we didnt face the strip (bbuuuuh), but the advantage of that was that we faced the desert (and an awful deserted parking lot and a hotel that probably wont be built soon, only part of it was..), and we witnessed 2 amazing sunrises. i usually wake up very early (only togoto sleep again), and these times it was just around sunrise. the first was a perfect deep red with some purple (i woke up tim, in the end i think he did like to see that sunrise), and the second was greenish like above. really beautiful... just for that i wouldnt mind spending some more time in the desert. (but the desert is pretty cool anyways...)

Tonight's movie

i took this picture very long ago, somewhere in the very first months we arrived in boston. i found it funny and put it in my "to post" folder, but i never did, as i thought, well yes, i post it, and then what do i write....?

tonight we saw a french movie "the intouchables". it was impressive. sad. very funny. i really liked it. you just have to go and see it. i didnt really know where it was about when i went; i didnt want to watch the trailer as it sometimes reveals too much. and now all i can say; just go and see it!

and dont read the review in the new york times (i just did, its here for the curious...). its a stupid review, on many levels. yes, the movie is about a very rich handicapped guy who hires someone to take care of him. that someone turns out to be poor, and very different and despite, or probably because their differences they really get along, eventually. yes, the idea is cliche (but based on a true story!!), but i think its execution is more funny, and more touching than anything i saw in a while (also, i suggest the writer of this review should watch more south park, this episode in particular). anyways, i think the pic somehow fits the movie.... so i can finally post it!

and now its again very late and time for bed....

Watching whales...

i guess yesterdays sunflowers helped; it was very sunny and warm today! we got up quite early, baked some bread (yumyumyum!!) and drove to gloucester. an hour or so from our apartment. there we got loaded onto a boat with many, many other people. whale sighting was guaranteed, and if not, you would get a season's pass to come back whenever (i dont know whether the whales ON the boat were regarded as sightings...). finally, we set off... for... cape cod... hahaha. we first drove an hour north just to sail down south.... it was more than a 2 hour boatride before we arrived at the whales territory where they were having lunch, dinner and breakfast.... despite the sun it was pretty chilly! the sea however was silky smooth, without any waves. we first saw a huge shark, which was amazing... click click click. and then we saw a few whales. click click click again... :D i kept thinking; should i watch, or should i watch through my lens...? i did both. it was really cool to see. they are sooo huge! their breathing ofcourse was funny (just like in the movies, hahahahaha), and their diving down. only one we saw did a tiny little trick, that you can see above. i could "just" see it; there were too many people in front of me to take a picture of it, but tim did! (a photoshopmaster then would magically erase and refill the right corner... but im not. so ijust give it to you as is). isnt that cool? it was quite spetacular to see them, even without any tricks orjumping in the air or whatever.i canonly imagine how amazing that would be!!

and then after a while of wathcing them swimming around, and saying ooh and aaaahhh! and tons of pics with a huge black shiny thing in the ocean, sometimes their fins, it was time to get back again, another 2 hours.... so now i have a tiny little sunburn and a lot of sleep! good night!

Sun flowers

its been pretty rainy the entire week. just today, around the time most people wanted to leave work, it suddenly started raining like crazy.... its often here like that. when it rains, its not just some rain, but downpour so heavy you will be soaked in seconds. sometimes that can go on for quite a while, but today it lasted only a few minutes (enough to make big puddles everywhere though).

i hope for some sun tomorrow! i want to have some pooltime... :) and then we go for whale watching, which ive never done before, 4 hours on a boat while sunny seems a whole lot nice to me than while its raining.. perhaps posting these sunflowers will help....?

Blue man

this is an old pic, from august last year when i was with sylvia in santa monica, california. as i was there again just 2 weeks ago (but now it was dark), i thought i could post this... :)

i was fascinated by the blue man, and he seemed fascinated by someone as well... :D

All shooting...!

when we were in san diego last weekend, me, tim and sylvia all had a camera.... but we didnt compare pictures! im actually curious how different they were....

during the week i hardly take any pictures. actually, i take none... :( so i always have to go through previous pics, and then i cannot decide at all which one to post. maybe i should install that on a set day each week i have to post a picture that i took that day.... in the weekend that will not be too much of a problem, so to make it harder perhaps i should choose a weekday.... ? lets see.... and which day? any suggestions?

Hidden cemetery

the now-apartment-complex-but-previously-state-hospital that i showed you yesterday also had its own cemetery, as was very normal, i have learned by now. above one of the (many) pictures i took. like this it just looks like a green field, but row after row of flat stones are hidden in the grass, spaced not too much apart (i guess you sort of can see the horizontal rows here). ever since we went to that first abandoned mental instution in waltham, i am sort of "obsessed" with them. i had no clue that there were so many in the us, the history and ideas behind it. the successes and (probably more) failures. but since then i have read a lot, really a lot, and my head is completely stuffed with information i would like to repeat here.... i guess it will come in bits and pieces, as its far too much!

anyways, when we presented ourselves as possible future tenants of the beautiful apartment complex, we were truly amazed how nice it all looked (pfew....). the guy showing us around didnt mention what the building used to be, and we didnt ask. i did wonder how many people already had taken a tour just to see the building, knowing it used to be an asylum...... we also wondered whether they actively do not tell people about the history of the building, as it might scare away potential tenants. moreover, how many current tenants are aware of the building's past? after seeing the apartment, we toured the grounds by ourselves. the building you saw in yesterday's post is just a fraction of the original building, which was built according to the kirkbride plan. (i would love to elaborate on that, but the link will explain it better than i can!). i do want to mention that the place, opened in 1878, was designed to house 500 to 600 patients. but by the late 1930s..... it had 2000 patients, some of them were held (yes, i can only call it held) in the basements.....  

now in its place are small 2 and 3 story buildings, ugly in design and made of cheap material (as all new apartment complexes around here).

and then... it was time to find the cemetery. as i had found some good directions on the internet, it was not that hard to find. we passed a place that looked like some sort of memorial, but the actual plaque was still missing. in other words; nothing was there yet!! i later found online that this is meant to be a memorial dedicated to the hospital and its patients (written in 2008!!). why was that still not done? again not to mention the past too much, strategically "forgotten" by the management of the apartment complex...?  we found the small path and finally were on the cemetery. it was hot that day. and so quiet there. had i been scared (really, i was scared) when we were driving to the complex, i wasnt anymore after visiting the brand new apartments and now being on the quiet cemetery. it did make me sad..... again row upon row of numbers. only later a special committee dedicated to improve this cemetery had added stones with names and year of birth and death....

here on flickr some more pictures of whats left of the building, the new apartments, and more of the cemetery (it does start with the bread we baked that day, im so proud of it...). and here the other taphophiles!

sorry for making it such a long read and still not telling you that much!!

Luxury & convenience

in danvers, which is not too far from our home, used to be an enormous building on a hill, rather isolated from the rest of the town. its roofline, with many sharp angles and spires, is visible from the highway. part of the building you can see above, as we visited it last month....

the evening before our visit we watched the horrormovie session 9, filmed when this building had been abandoned for some years. the plot; a group of men, hired to remove asbestos from the building after it has been abandoned for some time, seem not to get along, and it ends with the crew getting murdered one by one in the creepy hallways. in the movie, but also in reality, this used to be the danvers state hospital. built between 1874 and 1878, and also named "danvers state insane asylum". the movie was disappointing (although it did scare me, but more of what i imagined i was going to see than what i actually did see...); i expected creepy, but beautiful abandoned hallways that had been subject to years of neglect.  instead, most of the shots of the place were pretty bad. they had access to this building and could film anything they wanted, and they.... just... failed... :(

officially the hospital closed in 1992, and was left abandoned until 2005, when an apartment company bought the property and destroyed most of the original buildings, much to the dismay of many people (there was even a lawsuit, but they wanted and were allowed to demolish it as it was too expensive to renovate all of the buildings). at least they renovated the part above... now its the avalon apartments in danvers. everything new, everything fancy. i guess this company likes to buy abandoned psychiatric hospitals, as they also converted the hospital grounds i showed you recently into apartment complexes. i was somehow nervous when we went there. i really wanted to see what they made of the building, but i also thought it creepy that what once was a place everyone wanted to stay away from now was a "luxury" place to live, complete with basketball court, pool, gym, kids playground...  we pretended to look for an apartment and got a tour in the above building. gone was the feeling of creepiness! it was beautiful. yes, just like in our apartment complex the appliances were cheap, but the building structure was not, beautiful bay windows, high ceilings, lots of space. hadnt it been in the middle of nowhere, we would even considered moving there! (with a rent significantly lower than our current place).

tomorrow i will show you another picture, and a set i will post on flickr....

Movie poster

this movie poster was still hanging in chinatown, now with some drawings on it, somewhere in january, for the movie the rum diary with johnny depp. i dont really get why they choose this image... as during most of the movie he is "just" the pretty boy.... this is the scene the film starts with, showing johnny depp in a state i didnt really ever wanted to see him, haha. but it only gets better after that. 

we watched the movie again in las vegas, before we wanted to go out and see the casinos one last time again, and have something to eat. instead, we fell asleep. so much for vegas. or the movie...

so we saw it again last week (ofcourse we also saw it in the cinema!). its really great. and funny... i hope i somehow convinced you with this boring post.... :)

South boston

this is in south boston, taken quite a while ago. just saw it again and i like it, with all those cherrypickers or whatever you call them and 2 seemingly lost musicians.... (but i guess there were just going home after the st patricks parade)

Assisted living...

when we had friends coming over last month, the first thing they said upon seeing our apartment complex was; wow, that looks like an eldery home! and when in the staircase; oh, it even smells like one.... as they are real americans, i was surprised... :) (although we agree with them, haha!).

above the trash receptacle. atually, its better nowadays, but there was a time it looked like this quite often. then we got letters from "management" that we need to put the trash INSIDE the container, not next to it. but... how to do that when its already overflowing? in summer, these things also become inhabited by raccoons who rummage around and throw out quitesome garbage (probably the stuff they dont like). there was also a warning; if they would find trash outside of the container, they would go through it, identify the person and you would get a fine of a 100 dollars (if i remember correctly). never mind the raccoons, right...? they then also put up a sign (barely visible here); "private property, no trespassing", but i doubt raccoons can read....

anyhow. the rent is pretty high and in return theres quite some nitpicking (haha, what a funny word; i hope im using it correctly, in dutch it would be "betuttelen", or "bedillen"). other than the trash; its not allowed to paint the walls of your apartment, there is a door in the apartment thats locked, behind it is the heating system (during a heavy rainstorm water once started to seep out; pretty freaky if you cannot check whats going on!! we thus had maintenance coming over just to show us that the roof was a little leaky jut above the locked door), we cannot (temporarly) leave shoes outside the door, they could block the hallway! (or anything else for that matter, not even a doormat), and today we got the rules for the pool..... there were many, many rules for the pool. i will not bore you with them.. :) but it sometimes just frustrates me so much that i really had to dedicate an entire post about it, sorry.... :) assisted living can be quite tiresome, i now know!

despite all those rules and regulations, management cannot prevent that some *sshole smokes cigars in the garage, nor that one of our bikes got stolen from the garage. yes, the garage is locked, and so was the bike.... (their reaction; oh no, how terrible! we hope you have insurance...). 

good night! (at least i can determine what time i goto bed myself, although tim is complaining that i go too late)

Wrapped up

its late and i dont have my own laptop right now... so i was going through tims pics and couldnt decide... then i saw this one of me he took in february. hahahha, i look weird!! it was so cold that day, but sunny so i hadnt really expected HOW cold. then the gloves and the jacket and the trousers and the hat were not really fitting each other.... but at least i was less cold :)

now its really getting warm here. the pool also finally opened and last night we had our first swim. it was soo nice!! 

More desert

this was close to las vegas. from afar this looked like a giant stretch of water, glistening in the sun. almost, but not entirely. and indeed, when we got closer it was just this... we saw a photoshoot going on (it was right next to the highway), and then decided we wanted to see it from closeby as well! i think this place is used for many photoshoots, doesnt it somehow look familiar? the ground cracked, nothing nearby, just the mountains in the background and the hot sun above you.

i found it a little scary to drive there, somehow i expected it to end at some point. or that we would disappear into the ground as it could not hold us... but that all didnt happen!! :)

im just very amazed by the desert and the numerous forms it can take on..... wouldnt mind to go again and explore a little more...

Dying thirsty

when we were in las vegas, i wanted to go see a cemetery there. i found one relatively close to the strip that has been listed on the national register of historic places since 2006. it opened in 1914. but, when we arrived there we both find it a rather sad and ugly cemetery, with lots of fake flowers... i didnt even want to take a picture...

instead, i show you the grave of sergeant clark, born in canada in 1844. in 1862, he joined the new york infantry, actively serving in, and surviving, the civil war. after being shot in the hand and contracting typhoid fever, he was honorably discharged on march 6, 1863 as a sergeant of the new york calvary. he then emigrated to southern california. years later, while traveling from bakersfield to salt lake city on a buckboard (a carriage), he stopped in the valley of fire, tied his horse to the back of the wagon and wandered around, possibly looking for water.  eventually, he crawled under his buckboard and died, presumably from thirst, several days before his body was found on june 30, 1915. his grave is at the spot where his body was found, and simply says "clark". i got the information from the marker that is on the parking spot next to the road. to be honest, i did not walk up to his grave. it was so immensely hot, we had gotten out of the car for various photo opportunities already and at this point i was just too lazy....! but just imagine, we crossed the desert in an air conditioned car, with 2 gallons of water and even some ice (from the ice machine in the hotel), on a paved road. with enough food, directions and whatnot.... while sergeant clark survived war, being shot and typhoid, was brave enough to cross the desert without any of that and then died of dehydration....

for other taphophiles, go here!

LA sunset

we enjoyed the sunset on venice beach in los angeles, on saturday......

now its monday and we spent the entire day getting back home again.... we had a great time and im not done with showing you pictures of it just yet.. :)

at the airport i could not take our spray bottle of deodorant. it was too big. aarrrghhhh!! at boston airport the officer was very nice. i had not even taken out the toiletries. he did that for me and deemed it all harmless. in san diego the lady did not like the bottle. it was too big. "oh, they allowed it in boston? they shouldnt have. its too big." "but we imported it from europe, and its a brand new bottle!!" (deodorant is one of the things i have not been able to find a good american subsitute. i think there is none and thus we get it from the netherlands, haha) "well, its too big". and there it went, into the trash.... :( had it been 2 smaller spray bottles; no problem. really. grrrr....

ever since a recent south park episode where they install "toilet security", which they call the TSA, i think of them like the toilet security administration (instead of transportation). my goodness, they can be so anal!! (pardon my language). once an officer complained because the plastic bag i had my toiletries in was double the allowed size; even though i had filled it only halfway and had folded it. "but im not taking too much, right?" "thats right, but the bag is too big". "i folded it, essentially its half a bag". "the bag is too big, next time bring the right size bag". problem ofcourse starts with the stupid airlines that ask for a fee for checking bags; ofcourse now most people only bring carry-on, leading to all this nonsense. then at the gate its always the same story: "this flight is fully booked, space is limited, we will not to check-in bags, it wont fit, but now its free of charge". blablablabla... flying is becoming more and more complicated...

enough ranting, we had a great time! :)

Getty center

yesterday, saturday, we drove from san diego to los angeles to visit the getty center. sylvia and me had gone there last year already, but i was so impressed that tim had to see it too! it was very bright and sunny, a perfect day for some more hours in the car... ;) 

the getty center is situated on a hill and from many balconies from the 4 (or 3?) floor building you have an incredible view of los angeles and the ocean. it was built in 1997 and cost only 1.3 billion dollars.... it is a huge museum with lots of art, but just the building itself is already very impressive. the entrance fee is just 15 dollars per car regardless of the number of people... but well... mister getty owned 2 billion dollars at the time of his death, in 1976. we went to a photo exhibition of the work from herb ritts, an american fashion photographer who often shot in black and white. his photos really made an impression on me. you can take pictures of the human body, or you can make art of it.... and that is what he did.....so, if you are around los angeles; definitely go see the museum itself, as well as the exhibition! other than that, we walked around a bit aimlessly, which is not bad at all in this museum (just frustrating that we always seem to get lost in any museum...)

above, to the right you can see tim and sylvia enjoying the view.... the view from the terrace was endless yesterday, the sky was so clear, as opposed to last year when we were there.