I made my Brazilian friend laugh tonight...Usually, when I want to say 'how cool!', I say 'how legal!' -- 'que legal!' But I've been doing my Portuguese lessons, so I said a different word -- maneiro!, which means 'light' -- like 'not weighing much'.

He didn't know I knew the word, so it made him laugh. And he confirmed that I used it correctly. But he also gave me additional phrases to use...meaning I think the others would have been a better fit.

But it was good practice, and I like making him laugh with new words I learn!

Had lunch with some friends last Sunday, but then I have gone through a stretch of not doing much this week -- no social life, not much work around the house or anything!

Part of it is that I haven't felt well. I have a long term recurring 'costo-chondritis' condition -- where the cartilage around my ribs swells -- for me, it is along the V that your breastbone makes where the discomfort is. I had a flare up this week, so I haven't felt like doing much.


Last night, I did hang out with Nh, and we walked down to see the fire spinners downtown. I always like doing that, and it was a great night for walking and talking!










Sometimes, I like taking pictures of the crowd watching an event --

I like being called Uncle Bart, whether in English or, in this case, Portuguese. I gave my Brazilian friends some tomatoes from my garden.

This is a post that says on the right "Macaroni with a fresh tomato sauce. Puree of sweet potato, Boiled egg and cherry tomatoes from the kitchen garden of Uncle Bart."

Their 1 year old evidently loves tomatoes from my garden!

I go weeks between Portuguese lessons...This morning at breakfast, I went back online, and the lessons started me back at a quiz that I failed the first time....I have a vague memory from a few weeks ago of it being late at night and me getting exasperated and not re-trying the quiz again.

(You can retake the quizzes over and over until you pass -- the questions change a little each time. And you have to pass the quiz to continue to the next lesson.)

Problem with this course is that sometimes they ask me things in a quiz that I have NEVER heard! So, what happens is that I might miss that question and then see the correct answer. But this particular quiz had A LOT of things I had never heard. I tried the quiz about 4 times before I finally made it through!

Anyways, I've been doing the 'Portuguese' thing this morning, including listening to some Bossa Nova --

Nice weekend...Wine with 1 friend....day at a friend's with a visit to a wine tasting festival....found a thrift store clown to take (hopefully) creepy pics of...what more could I ask?

And I have a previous couch surfer staying again for a few days.

Book club was so amazingly coincidental last night!

Remember -- I am new. And the other guys have been doing this for umpteen years. But another new guy came last night. He's older, like the other guys.

The book we were reading last night was a set of vignette true stories from the city's 1890s. Think -- crimes and famous people and scandals from the 1890s. The book also mentioned my home county twice -- once for lynching a black man, and once for anti-women's rights.

So as we are discussing the book, I mentioned how depressing that my home county showed up twice for those kinds of activities. One thing led to another, and I found out that the other new guy USED TO BE MY TEACHER IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL...omfg. Really? I knew he had looked familiar...and he remembered me.  It was pretty crazy!

Turns out he was 22 when he taught me, and I would have been about 12...so he's only 10 years or so older.  

It was just a crazy fracking coincidence!

When I took pics before of a Hummingbird Moth before, it was a Hemaris diffinis. Diffinis is smaller and looks like a bumblebee. So unless you are watching how it flies around the flowers, you might never notice that it is not a bumblebee.

Today I saw one that was bigger and green... I submitted the picture to the online database, and it was identified as what I thought it was -- a Hemaris thysbe.

I really am fascinated by these moths that come out during the day, and which hover and suck nectar like hummingbirds...but have the proboscis of a butterfly!

I haven't posted much because I have been busy!

Very nice dinner 2 nights ago with friends, fun birthday dinner with friends last night, dinner tonight with friends from undergraduate...a cupcake birthday party for my Brazilian friends' 1 year old tomorrow...

Discussing Lycanthropy with the 21 year old....doing some gardening....all in all a pretty nice time, but busy.

One of the previous couch surfers is supposed to stay here in a week, so that gives me an excuse to have to clean the house!

I downloaded and watched a Sci Fi movie tonight called Interstellar. I often have pretty low expectations for Sci-Fi -- a lot of them are just intended to be action packed movies to sell tickets (I'm looking at you, Independence Day)...

But Interstellar had some meat to it! It was pretty emotional -- I'm not one to get emotional at movies too much, but I have to admit I teared up in a few places!

The title of this post is a line from a parent -- saying that after children are born, parents' roles are to be memories for their kids. That line resonated with me! But it's not just parents -- after a certain age, I think all older peoples' roles become to be memories for the next generations!

Besides being emotional, the movie also explored sufficiently nerdy ideas (like time as a dimension and space travel) to definitely warrant the Sci-Fi category, and the movie is definitely worth a watch!

I had a nice weekend -- hung out with the 21 year old friend Friday night, when we walked around the river and then had Ethiopian food for dinner. And another night, dinner with a couple of friends from undergrad - pizza and ice cream!


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One thing that happened lately surprised me...I think some of my friends had "assumed" that the 21 year old and I were aiming towards something romantic...but....um....he's still at university! And the difference in our ages is more than his age, lol!

I try not to judge someone else who might be in that sort of relationship, but for me there's WAY too much age difference in our ages for me to date him! Basically, when he and I get around each other, I go into "uncle mode", and we jabber about our lives for hours, and we text a lot. But romance? Not in the plan...

I was actually thinking about why - and I think it's because he is not on his own yet - he's still a student, and he has to decide what his life will be, so I would be interfering with that. I think he's planning to stay in town...and I do hope he and I keep in touch, but I don't think a physical relationship would qualify as "right action" (read "right action" as "ethical conduct"), in the Buddhist sense, lol

But I like hanging out with him....and I'm gonna keep doing it, as long as he wants to! Young gay men need older role models -- the AIDS epidemic took a whole generation of folks my age and older, so I think some younger gay men have never interacted with a stable older gay man. Not suggesting I'm hanging out with the 21 year old because of altruism -- I really do like him...but I also like being "Uncle Bart"...or "Pops" as he called me the other day, lol!


....Another thought about when something similar happened -- I remember when I tried my hand at nude photography back during my last Sabbatical, where the model was like 27 or something. It was a totally professional, legit thing.

But at least one guy I knew totally assumed that the model and I had had sex -- even when I explained that it was just a modeling session, I could tell he didn't believe me. And I don't know why -- because if the model and I had played around, I would have said so!


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Fast forward to the other end of the age spectrum, and my book club (the one I attended a few weeks ago for the 1st time) is coming up again, and I still have to read the book! In this club, I am the young one, where everyone else is about 10+ years older than me!


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I haven't been out too much with the camera -- mostly sticking close to home. Here's a photo of a dragonfly in the garden. I took it with a 70-200mm lens with a 1.4x extender. And I cropped the result

Basically, I did a macro shot with a zoom lens -- it's not like dragonflies want you getting up in their face with a macro lens!



I like how the yellow Coreopsis flowers show up in the bokeh blur in the background. I like how blue his eyes are (he's a "Blue Dasher"). I like that I can see detail in his wings, and also patterns in his eyes! And I like seeing the hairs on his legs, lol!