Happy Anniversary

Hi All,

Cheryl and I are celebrating our 5th Wedding Anniversary today. This is our first (and hopefully last) anniversary apart. In honor of that wonderful day back in 2003 I thought I would pull out a few of the wedding photos that were taken by family and friends. I might try to add more if time permits.

Cheryl's Maid of Honor Edi and my Best wo-Man Karen.

Jeff and Judge Darrel

The parents: Jerry, Anna Lee, Nan, & Joe.

I want you to know that this was the only piece of cake (it's a butterfly of course and obviously the best part so no complaints here) I got on that day. I don't remember what the comment was that made me look over like that.

Below you can see a few pictures of Cheryl and I through the years.

This is Cheryl and I back before we were married. I believe this was New Years Eve 2001. Cheryl's dad took this picture. I know we were in Chicago but can't remember the name of the restaurant.

Cheryl and I, on the 30th of August 2003, at Cheryl's parents house in California.

Cheryl and I at Akaka Falls, Hawaii in 2003. No not on our honeymoon, we lived there for 3 years.

This one above is of us in September 2007 at 2 Amy's Pizza in DC. The picture below is me before I've had my coffee and my morning hug. I miss you Cheryl. I'll be home soon.

Actually the picture above is from our honeymoon in Costa Rica. I'll probably share a bunch of those at some point in the future.

Cheryl, its been a great five years. Who would have guessed all we've done over that time and all the places we've been. I can't wait to see what else our future has in store for us. Love You,

Dave

Oh Yeah, Happy Anniversary to Adam and Janet as well. They have been married for absolutely ages.

Cambridge

A few weekends ago I ended up in the small college town of Cambridge. This must be a pretty cool place to go to school except for all the tourists. Two of the the things I noticed about this charming little town were that you never seem to be alone here and I always felt like I was being watched. Not the London kind of being watched where your every move is recorded on CCTV (I've always wondered what good all of those cameras are doing as whenever you see footage the criminal always looks the same. It's always fuzzy pictures of the same guy wearing a hood. Oops lost track there). Where was I, oh yeah being watched, I'll get to that in a bit.

Cambridge University, in which the town was built around, is a conglomeration of some 31 different Colleges. I know it doesn't make any sense to me either. There is no central campus like you would see at universities in the states. The picture above is of Kings College. The pictures below show the Kings College Chapel.

Most of the colleges were pretty impressive but a few were just wow. Kings College, Trinity, and St. Johns were the most impressive. I believe that's Trinity College to the left of the Chapel (looking at the Chapel from The Backs) and The Senate to the right (go to this website to learn more about Cambridge and its buildings).

Speaking of Trinity, the college of Sir Isaac Newton (apparently there is an apple tree in the courtyard that is descended from the one at his home in Lincolnshire where the whole gravity thing took place), has what is called The Great Gate. The gate which leads into the college grounds (seen below) was built in 1530. Above the gate is a statue of Henry VIII.

If you look closely at King Henry, I like to call him Hank, he is holding a chair leg. That's odd. Anyway the story goes that a few students decided to steal Hank's sceptre and replace it with a chair leg. Nobody knows where the sceptre is now and I would imagine that they probably can't find the chair with the missing leg either. So if you happen to know an old Cambridge grad have a look around their attic, you never know what you might find.

Well after looking closely at good ole Hank, I kind of felt I was being watched. The two lion like things holding up the coat of arms (ok you have to admit they are a bit funny looking) seemed to be following me with their eyes. Ok maybe it was the sun getting to me, but as I looked around the town I noticed there were a lot of really nosy statues looking over me. Here are just a few.

This trio probably has a story behind them, in fact all of these characters probably have stories. Ok I don't know those stories so feel free to correct my assumptions (you knew they were coming). Well these guys above are apparently up to no good. If you look closely you can see their eyes are scanning the crowd. I figure once they find the unlucky soul, I'm sure they are going to throw those objects that they are holding at him or her. Punishment for making them wait around so long. I'm happy to say they didn't throw anything at me.

This is one of my favorites. I don't know why she is standing on this poor guy but he must have done something really awful. Notice she also has something to throw, they were an angry lot.

I almost caught this one staring at me but her eyes glazed over when I took the picture (I get that look a lot so didn't think too much about it). I actually did catch the guy below just staring, he didn't even look away when he knew he was caught. Don't worry I didn't hear any voices, that would just be crazy.

There were hundreds of these little statues hanging around on the buildings. Pretty cool stuff, I wonder what their real stories are. I'm sure I could find out but that would take too much time.

This poor little guy wasn't feeling very good when I took it's picture. I did feel sorry for it but what could I do.

A few more things about Cambridge that you should know. You are never more than 100 yards from a church, a former church, or a chapel. Maybe I'm exaggerating a little but not much.

I think this is the Roman Catholic Church called the Catholic Church of Our Lady and The English Martyrs. Not a 100% sure about that since the one from the other side of town (below) looks somewhat similar. I'm still looking for the name of the one below.

Ok, I'm running out of time for this post. It might be getting a little long and I have so much more to say. So stay tuned for part two where you will find out more about St. John's College and my night of choral music and even a Shakespeare play. I'll leave you with one more statue with something to throw.

He kind of looks like Robin Williams in one of his not so good movies.

Birthday Wishes to Me

Hi All,

I had a birthday just the other day and thought I should share the video made by Joe and Deb featuring the monster children. Somehow I had managed to fly to Virginia to be a co-star in this video although I seem to have gotten shorter and my hair is a bit longer. I think I'm looking more like one of the members of ZZ Top. I love the impression of Slam. You can really tell he loves the monster children. I also have included a don't miss video of the monster children that I might have mentioned before but thought I would put it here for easy access.

Also since I figure only family members will have read this far I have put up a bunch of pictures at another site. Lots of family pictures (the latest are of Charli and the Grandparents) (hopefully more soon), lots of Jean Steinberg's pictures, and crazy ramblings from me (not so much of that yet but I'm working on it).

Video: DSCF0458



Video: Family

I Want To Believe

On Wednesday, I decided to attend the UK premier of the new X-Files movie in Leicester Square. Well I guess it wasn't exactly attending the premier since I didn't have tickets for the movie but instead I got to see a bunch of people walk around on a red carpet. Some of these people were even famous. Well, to say the least I wasn't alone. There were thousands and all of them had cameras and/or things to be autographed.

I used to be a fan of the series although I have not seen all the episodes (yet). For those of you that don't know the last show of the series was on TV some 6 years ago. The series ran for 9 seasons starting in 1993 and ending in 2002, they made 202 episodes (read more about it here). Well in any case there are much more obsessed fans out there than me. A lot of them were here and from what I heard they started leaning on the barricades at noon.

These people were still a good distance from all the TV cameras. I was a bit further away than that but as it happened I wasn't too bad off. So let me say that first of all if you are going to do something like this get there really early or have a great camera with a big lens. By the way, thanks to Cheryl and all of the Braunstein and Pollock like people for the birthday present, I've now got a great camera and a lens (Thanks Jerry) that allowed me to show up at 5:15 for the 6:00 pm start.

Once the stars started showing up, the whole area in front of the casino and even where I was turned into a very loud and crazy place. I could barely hear myself scream over all the noise everyone else was making.

First to show up was Chris Carter, the shows creator and the biggest reason the series and this movie were made. After he got out of his car he walked in pretty much the only direction where I couldn't get a clear shot. Luckily for me he got a call from his mom and I was able to get this shot before he had to run inside in order to hear anything. He did come back out to sign autographs later but not anywhere near me. But that's ok, this guy below arrived shortly afterward.

This is David Duchovney who plays Fox Mulder in the movie. He did a lot of autograph signing and actually seemed to enjoy the screaming where as I thought he would be a little too cool to put up with all of this for very long. Whenever he would turn, the crowds in that direction would scream even louder to try to get him to come over and on most occasions it seemed to work. Notice I have been successful in framing all of my shots between peoples heads, it's really not that easy, especially when they get farther away.

So I decided at this point I should probably just take a few photos without other peoples heads framing the subject. Here are a few.

Gillian Anderson who plays Dana Scully arrived shortly after David, unfortunately I couldn't get much of a picture. She didn't work the crowd anywhere near where I was but she also had a pretty good excuse as she is over 6 months pregnant. Here are just a few of my attempts.

I don't think she meant to be this hard to photograph so I didn't take it personally.

If the lady in white wasn't so rude this might have been a good picture. But since this is the X-Files we could just say that Scully has found a way to climb out of this ladies head. Notice the lady on the right sticking her head out of some ones shoulder. Maybe this is just a preview of the next movie and it just took a keen eyed photographer to catch their subtle hints.

Another of the major forces behind the X-Files is Frank Spotnitz. He came along somewhere in the 2nd season as a story editor and stuck with the program until the end and even beyond where he was also a major part behind this movie.

I'm not sure who this is so if you have a name please send me a note.

The guys below apparently belong to a band called McFly. No, I've never heard of them but there was a lot of screaming when they came by so I took pictures of them too. I figured that if you could wear such a cool shirt under a suit jacket then you couldn't be all bad.

So that's it for me from the X-files Movie premier. I'll actually go and see the movie sometime later today. I can't wait.

If there are still a few of you out there that want more premier stuff here is a You-Tube video from http://www.youtube.com/user/elizabethtoni. It was taken from much closer to the action than I ever got. It's not bad, a little long, check it out only if you are interested.

Calling all Stones

Went to see Stonehenge on Sunday (13 July 2008). It's a pretty remarkable place which is a good thing since it would make this a really boring blog post if it wasn't. To get there from London, I found it rather easy to go by train to the town of Salisbury. Salisbury is a small very old town that has a very nice cathedral. By the way, Salisbury is pronounced as Salsbry, why they continue to waste those extra vowels in the spelling is a mystery to me. I might do a small post a little later about the town and the nearby Old Sarum Castle.

Salisbury Cathedral

Stonehenge is about a 35 minute bus ride away. I hopped on the Stonehenge Bus Tour. It's a nice way to get to and from the henge as a recording tells you all about the area as you drive a long. It was also nice because you can buy your admission tickets to Stonehenge from them, rather than wasting away in the line at the park. I had only a couple of small problems with the bus itself so Bus Tour people if you are reading pay attention to the following. Replace the brakes pads already, squealing brakes, not that good. But even worse, it's probably time to change the tires. I wish the guys in front of me hadn't pointed out how bald they were. Hopefully the tour company will have fixed these small little problems by the time you all go visit.

It was a beautiful day in southern England. Above is the view shortly before you cross the road via the tunnel. For some reason I wasn't expecting the surrounding area to be so much like farmland. It turns out that some of the surrounding area (owned by the National Trust) is being converted back to a natural chalk prairie. Anyway as you can tell I was not alone. There were 1000's of people all with cameras (go figure).

So I didn't feel any greater connection with the earth than normal. No overriding sense of peace and harmony, but of course they don't allow the general public amongst the stones unless it's during the solstices and equinoxes (or with special permission).

There are a lot of theories about how and why the stones were arranged in this way. I of course have come up with the only right answer as I seem to be much more clever than the average human (ok stop laughing already). I'll tell you my theory later.

The Stones are thought to have been erected sometime around 2200 BC, the earthbank and ditch surrounding the stones came much earlier than that at about 3100 BC. I of course get a lot of my (so called) facts from the Wikipedia so check out the link to read more in depth stuff. The stones were thought to have been transported by humans from the Preseli Hills of modern day Pembrokeshire in Wales (160 mi away). A newer theory is that they were transported from glacial deposits much nearer to the site.

I of course don't believe that prehistoric people went to all this trouble. I also discount the idea that they were erected by aliens or brought to England from Ireland by giants. I think that the suggestion that Merlin might have placed the stones here would have some merit if I didn't already know the answer.
After spending time with the stones the answer was obvious. The stones simply walked there, it is taking a lot of time but all the stones should be there shortly (that is a short amount of time for a stone, a really long time for humans).

You can almost see the worried look on the face of this stone, as it rushes to get in place having realized it was late. Luckily it made it across the road safely and prior to the fence being put up.
I know everybody thinks stones don't walk they roll. I of course agree that it's much faster for them to roll but that only works for the downhill bit. Can't roll uphill now can you. Ok so now you are saying why would they walk to this area. Obviously the answer is to have a meeting of sorts. We can't really comprehend what would be so important to a stone that would cause it to undertake this journey and to do so in such a hurry.
Anyway as you can tell time is much different for the stones. You can see that from looking at these guys.

Pic borrowed from here http://www.nme.com/news/the-rolling-stones/38010

Apparently they formed shortly after the Stonehenge stones were thought to have been erected.
Let's take a closer look at these stones (you have to click on the pics to see the details). The one in the center of the shot above is having a look around to see who might still be coming. It seemse to have some sort of smirk in its features. The stone immediately to it's left has apparently learned to write (in English) and is sending us a message. We probably won't see it in our lifetime as after all this time it's only come up with E. Just have to be patient and hopefully our descendants will be able to get the message.

This poor chap has a bad case of yellow lichens. It must be similar to our acne and there is probably a cream that will clear it right up (I heard that over 90 species of lichens can be found amongst the stones, haven't located the reference for that (yet) so don't quote me).

You can see some of the younger stones in this pic. So this meeting might be just some sort of family reunion.

This is obviously a group of entertainers, quite possibly former circus performers. It takes some skill for a rock to able to make that jump and lie about without falling. Family reunions are always a lot more fun when these guys show up.

The stones probably don't even care all that much that they seem to have been adopted by a bunch of birds that like to sit on their heads. Although every once in a while the birds fly off which is probably due to an imperceptible (to us) shrug from the stone. Below you can see a few close ups of the birds.

The birds above are most likely Jackdaw's (Corvus monedula) (let me know if you think they might be something else). And the bird below is a Rook (Corvus frugilegus).

Anyway there you have the answer to the how and why of Stonehenge.
If you still don't believe me check out this website National Geographic as I'm sure they will back up my thoughts (eventually, give them time). No really you should go check out the National Geographic site (they have actually made some more scientific studies than I have and have even come up with a few other ideas about Stonehenge. It has stories, videos, photos, and even a game.

I thought this was a pretty cool picture taken in 1877. You can certainly see that some restoration work has taken place. (Most of the work took place between 1901 and 1964) Either that or the stones finished standing up over the last hundred or so years.

Stonehenge from January of 2008. Picture taken from similar viewpoint as photo from 1877.