Hell hath no fury...

This is a heartbreaking story. Serious Trekkie spends ten years turning his apartment into an exact replica of the Starship Voyager. Did a fabulous of it.

Even has a transporter room. (More pictures here.) The heartbreaking part is he didn't own the apartment. He now sooner finished remodeling, at a cost of about $150K, than his divorce was finalized after 16 years and the ex-wife wants to sell the place.

Story says he has to rip it all out. Don't see why though. Assume he spent all his money on the work, so he can't to afford to buy it, but I would think they could sell it as is to some other Trekkie fanatic. Probably for a better price then she could get if it's just a generic place again. Guessing the wife is still pissed and is making him do it. The story doesn't say.

Northern Lights

I've always wanted to go visit my brother in Alaska in the winter so I could see the Aurora Borealis. Never have because it happens in winter. It's damn cold up there. But still so gorgeous.

Apparently this recent display was particularly good because of the solar flares. Lots more pictures here. Every one is incredible. Was hard to decide which one to post.

It's winter somewhere

Thankfully my house doesn't look like this one on a track of the Sedivackuv Long dog sled race in Destne v Orlickych horach, in the Czech Republic. Beautiful, but it makes me shiver just looking at it.

Original photo and more pictures at this link.

The final frontier

With the GOP candidates talking about space exploration in Florida, lots of people on the internets digging up old space stuff. I'd forgotten how much I liked this show. Heck, I forgot it even existed until someone posted these opening credits.



Loved Martin Landau and Barbara Bain. Trying to remember, but weren't they also teamed up in the old Mission Impossible series?

Wipe out

Wondering how a kid from Texas gets interested in snowmobiling in the first place. Not many places to practice, but I guess if Jamaica can have a bobsled team, anything is possible.



Tough kid. Got back on the snowmobile and went on to win the gold medal.

Color my world

Outside of religious icons, mainly focused on the Virgin Mary, I'm not really much of a collector anymore. But this just crossed the radar screen and thinking what a cool thing to collect. Love the airplane box.

Definitely click to embiggen or just check out the original photo here.

Strange Days

Not at all complaining, but man is the weather weird. Of course, I'm still sitting on the porch in a winter jacket, but most of the people on the street are in sweatshirts at most. Not unusual to see some of the young and hearty in short sleeves and flip flops. January thaw lasted pretty much all month here so far. Seeing birds that shouldn't here for weeks yet.

Although I did see a couple of blue birds a while back, This isn't one of them. Just a nice photo that crossed the radar today.

[Original by Sean Paul Kelley]

No idea where this was taken, but I want to be there.

Here comes the sun

You may have heard the earth is being bombarded by solar plasma flares. Which created an incredible display of the Northern Lights. That's a time lapse video at the link. Wish I could have seen that in person.

Meanwhile, here's what it looks like on the surface of the that fiery ball in the sky that keeps us warm and cheery.

[original photo NASA]

Never fails to astound me that they figured out how to take photos like this in space, in my life time.

Dragon tales

A few days late but Happy Chinese New Year. It's the year of the Dragon, said to be the year of the Chinese zodiac cycle that brings change and prosperity. Wish I could have been in NYC for the celebration. Stumbled into Chinatown one year, not realizing it was the day, and it was awesome. People partying on the streets everywhere. The side streets were literally ankle deep in spent fireworks paper. This is what it looked like in the Far East:

More photos here.

I didn't actually celebrate at all. In fact life has been quiet in the little city so far this year. Took forever to kick that stupid cold I started with and I've been trying to catch up ever since. Finally renewed my driver's license yesterday. Feels good to be legal. Was kind of freaking out about being stopped on the way to the grocery store.

Anyway, my Chinese New Year present to you are a couple of links that can't easily be embedded directly. I know I keep saying, I don't do cute kitten pix, but this line-up of reimagined album covers is just too cute not to share.

And I really want one of these wunderbras. (Safe for work)

Might as well jump

When I was a kid, we spent a lot of time in jump rope games. Regular jump rope. Double Dutch. And Chinese jump rope which wasn't really jump rope although it did require jumping. As I recall, we made the "rope" by stringing together rubber bands and the rope "turners" held it in place around their ankles. It was kind of like a giant game of Cat's Cradle, only using your feet.

Had no idea that jump roping is now a competitive sport.



If you watch it via the direct link there's a bunch more videos on the youtube page. Pretty incredible gymnastics there.

Great White North

Love looking at the pictures, but still glad I'm only seeing this white stuff on the internets and not my road. My new favorite picture.

Can feel the joy in that shot. Nobody loves the snow more than a big fluffy dog. [original photo, by capecodgurl]

Lost from space

Of all the photos I seen of the wrecked cruise ship Costa Concordia, this image taken from space satellite really gives the visual on how big a disaster it was. That is one gigantic ship.

[Original image via my dear friend Michael Stickings]

I've always been of two minds about taking a cruise. I've never been to sea for a days at a time out of the sight of land. I think I'd like to do that once in my life. But it's expensive, it's slow, and the thought of being stuck on a boat with a bunch of tourists isn't all that tempting.

Let it snow

That is, let is snow somewhere else. Lots of people posting snow photos on the twitter machine today. Some beautiful shots, and it's all very pretty but can't say I'm unhappy that I'm not seeing it outside of my window. It's grey and wet here, but not that cold. Which is AOK by me.

Anyway, of all the pictures I've seen today, this one is my favorite.

Love when stuff like that happens. [original photo, via my tweep ahuntre.]

Sweet tweets

Don't like to leave a sad post on top so here's a twitpic I found in my timeline from Lizzie O'Leary, former Bloomberg economy reporter and now CNN's news transportation journalist. Apparently she's on a little vacation between the two gigs and took this somewhere in Prague.

Original photo.

Also, how cool is the relaxation room at the Prague airport?

Original photo.

If you're on twitter, I recommend you follow her at lizzieohreally. She has a wonderful, dry sense of humor and her tweets are always interesting.

Bye bye love

I've reached the age where I read obits regularly. And so I found out that Marty Najamy died last week. I went to elementary school with Marty. He was my first big crush on a boy. He sat next to me in the 6th grade.

I was so enamored with him that I let him cheat by looking at my answers on the tests. Which was a very big deal. I was totally little Miss Goody Two Shoes and always the teacher's pet all through grade school. The thought of cheating horrified me but I did it for Marty. Never did it for anyone else. Ever.

Haven't seen him or thought about him since the sixth grade really. Once we got to middle and high school we hung in different circles. But still I was sad to learn he died. Worse it appears it was a lingering illness that killed him. Rest in peace.

A man and his dog

This photo just moved me so much in a lot of different ways. Haunting.

Via Cape Cod Gurl, original photo here

Or if you LOVE flying

This video was posted under the billing, only watch it if you're not afraid of flying. Personally I didn't think it looked that scary. I've seen scarier stuff looking out the front end of an open cockpit puddle jumper. But probably you'll enjoy it if you love flying. I did anyway. Could have done without the soundtrack though. Didn't love the music at all.

Long time ago

Damn I'm old. The 1950s happened 60 years ago. And I remember this stuff. Thanks to my pal The O'Brien for finding this old ad. Back then it was all about the pinup girls.

For some reason that reminded me how much I loved the Piels Brothers.



Don't think I ever actually drank a Piels beer. Pretty sure they stopped making it long before I was old enough to drink. But I remember really loving the commercials. This was the only one I could find on the youtube. Wish there were more.

I want to marry you

I love Lego animations. This one isn't that impressive but it is a really cute way to propose marriage. But the reason I'm posting it is because my friend Maddy Peyroux is singing the song he used for the soundtrack.



If you can't view the embed, the direct link is here

As the crow slides

Here's the fun video of the day fresh off the Tweetie machine. Crows are so smart.



What language do you think they're speaking? Pretty sure I heard a nyet in there so I'm guessing Russian.

Turning the corner

So in case you were wondering, I had a nice birthday considering I was still sick with this ridiculously long head cold. Got lots of lovely birthday greetings and John took me to lunch at the senior citizen's favorite hot spot K&W Cafeteria, or as we old folks like to call it the Kane and Walker. After that meal, I needed a nap which seems to have helped with the cold. Don't really feel so icky anymore, but still coughing up crap so I've been avoiding people mostly. Only reason I'm seeing John is, he gave the cold to me.

Meanwhile, here's a couple of links that can't be embedded but are really worth the click. This looks like a Van Gogh painting, but it's a beautiful photograph of someplace in Europe. Be sure to scroll down at the link and look at the summer version of the same shot. And this short video, Wonderful World reminds us not to forget how magical the natural world is. Take a moment to appreciate it every day.

I've never been to the Bronx

I've spent a lot of time in New York City and Brooklyn, but I've never been to the Bronx. Don't even know how to get there, but after looking at this photo array, I really want want to visit someday. This is just one shot, the elevator doors in an incredible Art Deco building there.

Check out the rest of the photos. From the incredible mosiac outside the entranceway to the gorgeous lobby, it makes me want to live there.

Another successful orbit around the sun

Well, I made through another year and woke up with all the moving parts still more or less working. Have a feeling this could be a good year for me. Thinking it's a good omen that there's a full moon shining on my big day.

Good Lord, but I'm old now. Made a date to go sign up at the senior center this afternoon. Think I'm going to put it off because it's cold and rainy out there. And I'm not quite ready to make it official. Think I need to try on this age for a few days and get used to it first. [Photo: newmediajim]

Cold Faith

Not much of a churchgoer for religious purposes, but I do love churches for the art and architecture. Spent hours in many a cathedral as a tourist. Never saw anything like this.

Really quite beautiful in a stark and icy sort of way, don't you think? It's in Germany and the interior is lit in blue. To match your fingernails if you spend too much time there I suppose. Back story and more pictures here.

Life happens

This is just astounding. Guy takes a self portrait a day for years as an ongoing art project. Starts out as light hearted fun. Ends up in profound changes. Watch it to the end.



Watched it yesterday. It's still haunting me. If the video doesn't work on the embed you can access it directly here.

Meteor Shower Tonight!

I don't believe I've heard of this one before, but they're promising The Quadrantid meteor shower is likely to produce up to 100 falling stars an hour, between 3 to 5 a.m. this morning. Still feeling kind of crummy but thinking I'll go to bed early and try to wake up to check it out and see if can see it from here. Supposed to be visible all over North America.

Too many goodbyes

I've been down with a miserable cold, hence the lack of blogging for the last few days. But I've been aimlessly noodling around the internets and on a whim googled one of favorite clients from when I worked a the law firm. Paul Viveros, who had a really long running case with us. I worked with him pretty closely and we stayed in touch even after I moved here. Usually talked once a year or so. It occurred to me I hadn't heard from him in a long time.

Turns out he died over a year ago. Feel bad that I didn't check on him sooner. He was a good man. Larger than life kind of guy. A little gruff but with a good heart who was just trying to make a living and do something good for his town. Found a youtube interveiw the local paper did about his case.



Even if you don't approve of strip clubs, you had to love Paul. Or hate him I guess. Lord knows the city council had no use for him. He was creative in getting in their face. Sadly, the links to his art installation of toilets have rotted. So no pictures of that one.

Kind of pisses me off that one of his biggest critics bought his restaurant and is sailing through permitting for curb cuts and even thinking of putting a donut shop. Both of which Paul wanted to do as well, but the City Council shut him down on every proposal he made to create new businesses and jobs for a city that really needed them.

Rest in peace.