Not much was ever going to happen today. I put this one up in vague homage to this weekend’s Hebden Bridge ‘Steampunk Festival’, as for some reason lovers of this genre hang around HB this weekend looking vaguely Victorian and take photos of each other and admire lighting like this. Well, that seems to be how it works, though I guess I just do not understand it.
The “Deaf Institute” might seem a strange name for a place that puts on regular gigs, but that’s what its called, or more precisely, it’s what the building was when it was first built in Victorian times. For the last six years it has been running as a rather decent bar, club, venue arrangement. The gig tonight? Tom McCrae, one of the wife’s favourites. I guess he’s decent enough. I quite like this shot because of the microphone.
Began a long journey home at 10.30am in Indiana. This is the O’Hare stopover. Farewell to the USA, thanks to my colleagues at Purdue for organising it, and I hope to be back…
The very first time I came to the USA was in 1989, to New York City, and I remember that the first meal I had was in a place just like this. That seemed somehow so quintessentially American that I have not forgotten it. This is more of a recreated fake than the genuine diner — being in the basement of the Purdue University Union — but it still served a decent breakfast.
Another campus to add to the list — Purdue University in Indiana, the people who were good enough to invite me to the USA in the first place on this trip. This place is especially known for its programmes in aviation and spaceflight — Neil Armstrong studied here (which is a cool alumnus to have) — and engineering, hence the nickname of its football team, the Boilermakers. This mural in the campus’s new learning center, open only a week, reflects this. It was a day where I was too busy to particularly get around to taking many photos, so this was a rush job I know, but there’s one thing I do like about it, which is the apparent anachronism of the guy standing on the left of the big picture: is that a cellphone in his pocket? Sure looks like one. (Actually it’s a slide rule, apparently.)
This bar stands across the road from Carbondale’s Amtrak station and was therefore a suitable place to wait for my train back north. It seemed to be the kind of place where most of the clientele probably never went anywhere else — so I kind of liked it. PK’s stands for Pizza King, by the way — the matriarch who ran the place explained to me that they started out being the first people in Carbondale to open a pizza parlour, but when everyone else started doing it, they decided to turn it into a bar instead. Which must have been a good move, because apparently that shift took place fifty years ago.
Carbondale also gains for itself the distinction of being the 200th different identifiable location to appear on this blog. Thus, about every 11th shot on here is taken somewhere different, which is a decent amount of variety, I guess.
Not an accomplished photo — but I don’t care…. Finally, we have a new carpet in our living room. Is it consumerist to welcome this arrival? No — you wouldn’t think so if you’d lived for months after the Great Halloween Plaster Disaster by crunching bits of old gypsum underfoot every day.
Here went my day, and expect to see more of this at points over the next few weeks, as the house gets a much-needed lick of paint here and there. I did say it wasn’t going to be an exciting period. But I will do my best to retain the photographic interest.
The title is irony — as this was an indolent day all round, back at home after our week in the Lakes. Don’t expect much to happen this week…
Venue for Joe’s fortnightly extra-curricular entertainment (involving the mass genocide of small lead figures representing orcs, wizards and other fantastical beings). Normally we leave him to it but tonight we went up to this Victorian chapel on the moors to get dinner at the nearby pub and celebrate the fact that I’ve been off work today and will remain in this state for the next 16 days. The pools of light and colour in the chapel caught my eye on the way back home.
Being 42 