Month: June 2007

I was hoping to show some nice pictures of outdoors activities, but hey, it was raining!

Anyway, I turned 40 today, so the obvious yummie thing to show is CAKE.

Cake

Cake

Cake

Cake

No Cake

These are rare images of a piece of home-made mascarpone cake (comparable to tiramisu, but, er, quite different) before I got my grubby little fingers on it. The white balance is not optimal, but I didn’t want to waste time adjusting my camera: there’s a time for fiddlin’ and a time for ladlin’…

Now that was yummie!

More “lekker” stuff:

• Mo6
• Capt.KRik
• Mavrtje

FJ seems to have taken a hiatus and left us without a topic for this week. This meant each of us had to come up with something original by ourselves.

As fate has it, I’ll be turning forty next week and it got me thinking about mortality, aging and all that. One of the things I’ve always wondered about is whether I would turn gray or bald. So far, I’ve collected a few white hairs, but most of them grow out of my nose, so that doesn’t say much. My maternal grandfather was balder than Yul Brynner (though not as mean-looking) and my paternal gramps had a head of (albeit slightly thinning) gray hair. I’m starting to look more and more like my father (gray rather than bald), so I’m guessing I won’t lose my hair just yet, but you never know.

So, armed with curiosity, camera and my trusty Gimp I hacked up some before and after shots:

Steven at 39

Steven at 40?

(click to enlarge)

Er, right. I think I’d rather turn gray…

Now I’ll send the “after” picture to Elisabetta by MMS, just to freak her out 😛

Other stuff I’ve been doing:

Baby, baby, baby!

So, this morning I started diving into my old record collection. Here’s a bit of nostalgia! Yes, I was a fan of Slade. In fact, I was a fan as early as 1972, when I was five years old and went to by a record with my father. The salesman refused to believe that I really wanted the Slade record until my father said, “Really, believe me. He won’t settle for anything else.” Bah, Fleetwood Mac and Pink Floyd thrown in for good measure to capture that unique 70s feeling (I chose hide my “Mud” record).

Viva vinyl!

Note the Joplin cover

Home, sweet home

My view for 21 years

We figured it would be nice to take a drive. We have a guest from Italy staying with us this weekend, and the weather was great, so I figured it would be nice to go back to my roots and visit the village I grew up in. Man, I haven’t been there in years. I was surprised at how small everything seemed. I mean, the chestnut trees in front of the church tower right across the road from our house were much bigger in my memory. Tip of the hat to the Captain who was confined to this place for ten years as well 🙂

The old house

The old street

That other “Hem” landmark

The later years

And then I went to live in Amsterdam. My university years were marked by sleeping during lectures and drawing. Anything to avoid paying attention. Here’s a couple of things I produced in those years. Warning: insider’s humour ahead!

This one’s for George!
(Click to read the whole thing)

Two legends

More?

More youth sentiment:

• Mavrtje.nl
• Capt. KRik
• Mo6

Patterns in pavement… Mmmh. During a little get-together in Amsterdam yesterday evening, I realised I hadn’t done anything on the subject yet. George gently reminded me that digging up old photos from the archives is not really in the spirit of this thing. Dang! So, my trusty old Nokia phone doubled as a paparazzi camera while we slouched off to the bar.

Church pattern

It’s quite possible you’ll find a similar picture on FJ’s blog… Oh yeah, his fourth picture is no pavement! 😉

More patterns at:

• FJ
• Mo6
• Mavrtje
• Capt.KRik!