KDW

My mission today took me to Kalaeloa Harbor.  I sort of knew where it was, and I was sure I had seen signs pointing the way.  So I set out.  Yes, the signs were all there and I was driving down the road in a very industrial part of the island.  Lots of big commercial truck, and burly men in huge pick-ups.  And me.  In my little old lady Saturn.

Then I didn’t see any more signs to the harbor, so I thought maybe they took them down or something.  But I want around a bend in the road and saw…boats!  However, none of them looked like the one I was searching for.  And the sign said “permit parking only”.  There were 2 security guards there in a golf cart.  I told them my daughter was away at college and when she heard the Black Pearl was here she begged me to take some pictures.  They laughed, and pointed me in the right direction.

So here she is…

You would be grouchy too if you had icicles on your elbows!

I repeat :  Please do not pet the musk ox!

Whew!  Good thing I didn’t push Joannie off the edge!  They were watching…

Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope!

Helen Dittrich poses on couch in her nightgown, sometime in the early 1950s, gazing at an electric candle. The red ambiance maybe from a lens filter, or shooting without a flash.

Words fail me….

This is a plastic supermarket shopping bag similar to the kind you might find here in the US. But the logo is very different. At first I thought this character was an alien or maybe a superhero. But when I looked more closely and did a translation, I found out he was really a cartoon representation of a luchador (Mexican wrestler)  and he’s holding up the mask of another wrestler. In the lucha libre, the greatest shame for a wrestler is to be defeated and have his mask torn off by his opponent. So this little guy, holding an opponent’s mask and surrounded by other masks, embodies the store’s logo of “Unmasking (defeating) the prices of the competition.” Cultural context is everything.

Ilio the Dog gets too excited when he rides in the car. Usually Violet is with me when I take him for his annual check-up at the vet. But this year Violet wasn’t here. I had to think of something to keep him in the back seat, or he would try to sit on my lap and drive. One time I restrained him with his leash and the seatbelt, but he chewed through a seat belt. Not the one that was holding him in, but I still lost a seat belt. So this is what I came up with! I bungeed a baby gate to the seats of the car…and it worked!!

Magiver would be proud…

OK I know he’s sideways, but it took me so !@#$%^ long to get this to work, I’m keeping him in!

This is Ilio the Dog! Wearing his neon green bandage from his visit to the vet. Happy with his clean bill of health!

Did you Elvis was alive and well in the Pacific Northwest in the early 1990s? And he coaxed me into a photo booth to have my picture taken with him?

On Thanksgiving Day Alex, I, and his sister Lourdes visited Woodland Park Zoo. It was dark, drizzly, and cold, but we practically had the place to ourselves. My favorite animals there are the gorillas. Here a mama gorilla lounges in front of the observation window — heat lamps are there to draw them to it — with two sulky teenagers. The one on the left is actually sticking his or tongue out while the teen on the right was restless and seemingly preoccupied with being “cool.”