--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophaneros Anartaxius" wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb wrote: > > > > So it's Friday, and the End Of The World to boot. Cool. > > > > So I finished all my work for the week a few minutes ago, and then > > chose to celebrate it by taking a walk around the 'hood I live in, > > prior to celebrating it by going out to dinner with my extended > > adoptive family. > > Barry, just wondering if you took that photo of the light on water from > the location pictured below.
Yes. It's a couple of hundred meters from where I live. Good Googling! Haarlemerstraat, at the upper left of the ariel view, is Leiden's main shopping drag. I went shopping on it today, with Paris and Pippin in their Christmas attire. The photo below shows them in their little reindeer antlers and Santa hat, but from an earlier Christmas in Paris, the city. The dogs are a bit greyer around the muzzle now, as am I. :-) [Barry';s Christmas Dogs] We were quite a hit. Stupidly, I forgot to bring my iPhone (same camera that took the other photo of the canal) with me, so I don't have any "reaction shots" of the often-dour Dutch cracking up and smiling. A few even laughed out loud. I consider that a win. Even though no one asked, dinner was smashing. We went to a Thai restaurant called Buddhas (http://www.buddhas.nl/ <http://www.buddhas.nl/> ) and it was delightful -- one of the few Dutch restaurants I've found in which the food was worth what they were charging for it. Spain and France spoil you when it comes to eating out. After dinner we walked around and looked at the Christmas lights and at the skaters on the rink they have erected over the canal in front of the town hall. Not Rockefeller Center, but cool. Then I let the others walk home and I climbed up to the Citadel (a castle from the 11th century that is one of the oldest (and interestingly, since it is in the center of Leiden, one of the most silent areas of the city) and meditated for a while. [http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2071/2115542556_1343492e48.jpg] Not because of the so-called Apocalypse, not because I wanted to tune in to some grand global W00 Woo Fest...just because I felt like meditating. It was an OK meditation, just your normal, every- day stuff like seeing visions of Shiva dancing Gangnam style with an unidentified Hindu goddess almost wearing the sexiest see- through sari I've ever seen, followed by God herself coming down for a chat, sharing a champagne glass full of soma with me and commending me for my infinite patience in dealing with FFL stalkers. Oh wait. That didn't happen. I must have been channeling that. That's what TMers might consider an OK meditation. :-) Mine was just silence. Pure, infinite silence.
