Monday, October 25, 2004

Sore, tired, but loving it

So there was no ...

Moved to caving blog

Friday, October 22, 2004

First real pitch at Dersios

pics here

Fear

So they had ...


Moved to my caving blog.

Thursday, October 21, 2004


Aqueduct of Valens

Thursday's rambling

Feeling really really tired and exhausted recently. There's good reason - I am tired and exhausted. Its the feeling dizzy that annoys me most. Been taking my vitamins again - the Bs. Obviously need them as my piss hasn't started to smell of B-block vitaimin pills - even 24 hours after starting to take them.

Went to Istanbul and Ankara earlier in the week, going back to Istanbul on Monday. Ping pong ping pong - haven't had an oppportunity for "tourism" since March. Grr. Still some stuff needing to be visited. Lips on Vatan Cad. and Gul Camii being two main ones, and of course St. John's Studio. And I wouldn't mind taking a better walk around the C4th church under the road that goes through the aqueduct - could I be more vague? And of course the walls need a good seeing to, as does the Mosaic museum, but with batteries in the flash, no?

This weekend will be tough - going to Dersios tomorrow evening, no idea when we'll be starting the journey to come back...

Later.

Friday, October 15, 2004

Smober

I have not smoked for like one week, five days, 11 hours, 25 minutes. That's 374 cigarettes not smoked, saving €50.53. Apparently, that's like an extra 1 day, 7 hours, 10 minutes onto my life - whoopy do. I have got over the stress of it all and almost back to normal levels of not wanting a cigarette right NOW!

That €50 is going into the hotel accommodation in Nauplion where I will be attending the 7th Panhellenic speleological conference this weekend. I have persuaded Korinna to come along. Hope it goes OK. We got five of our boys talking on the evening of Saturday.

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Weekend - another partial success

Well, before I had even managed to set off, the big and most significant disaster - indeed the only one - but one which managed to overshadow the whole weekend, happened.

It was not an uncommon thing to do, to put the GPS receiver on top of the car to get a signal before taking it off the roof again and putting it on the dash board. I had done it often. I had even done it once or twice and left it there only to remember it when it fell onto the bonnet after a change in velocity.

This time, too, I forgot it. Only difference was that it did not bounce off the bonnet in any way so I have no idea where or when it came off the car, and cannot search for it any more than I have done so already since Friday. Bollocks.

I am more annoyed about the stored data in the memory of the thing - all those waypoints from about two years of traveling in the Balkans, Turkey and Norway, and of course all over Greece. A whole bunch of restaurants, museums, things of note (various Byz. Churches in Istanbul, Greece and Macedonia, statues in central squares in towns, bridges, villages and most importantly junctions on dirt roads leading to caves and mountain tops).

Of secondary annoyance was not having any tools with which to record the where the hell all these holes that locals would be showing me while visiting my mum are. So I didn't go chasing holes so much as folklore and stories about holes. I'll write that up straight into Greek for giving to SELAS but might get round to an English language version sometime.

Losing the waypoints sort of brings into focus the whole what it means to travel thing, though. Do I do it to collect waypoints and collect pictures of these places and store them catalogue-like away in some place rarely to be visited except to satisfy the narcissistic need for self-confirmation? Don't know - only ever once have they been useful in getting me back to somewhere in the dark where without the GPS I would have been a little lost. Other than that, I've had fun half heartedly chasing confluences. I guess I can get over having lost all the waypoints.

More later.




Thursday, October 07, 2004

...and braces the languid sinew

October brings the cold weather down - except of course, not here he doesn't. Here we can still quite happily swim in the sea, and walk around in shirt sleeves. The suns of May are more descriptive of what our Octobers are like.

Going through one of these patches - and what should come to the rescue last night but - yep, ashamed slightly to say it, but ultimate regression to the security of childhood manifesting itself in the form of Giants, Raleigh, 3 yards and of course October. Even a goose's brain has uses.

I found it strange that google brings up no hits for nerves the limbs that are lazy grown or braces the languid sinew. Same for fog on St. Joles day. Who'dve thunk it?





Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Dress sense!


So here's a picture to sit on my profile - I have no idea if I can have it sit as my profile pic without it being also somewhere on the main blog page.

So what's going on here - well, this photo was taken last year while I was out in the mountains of Arcadia looking for one of two things. The first was bits of limestone which might have conodont elements hidden in them (and I got buckets full of stone waiting to be looked at). The other was "pretty colours" for crushing into fine powder, mixing up with slips and painting onto the pottery I was making at the time. The reds collected here were really rather nice grinding easily and slightly dissolving into the slip when the time came. The pretty colours did not really stay that pretty after the firing, but it's all part of the learning and creative process.

I now realise that the clothes I am wearing in this pic are really rather funny - like how many very different and non complementary colours can be worn at the same time??


Tuesday, October 05, 2004

Ho hum

Ok - so I've succumbed - here is my Blog.

Let's see how it all goes. I am rather cautious about this whole bloggy thing.

Cheers,
Stelios