Grecianland, Very Old

San Geraldo has kindly shared his computer while mine is being repaired. I received email today from Goldenmac Service that my computer needed a new fan and not a new mother-censored board. So, they´ve replaced the fan and are spending the next couple of days testing and re-testing to ensure all is well. And the price is unbelievably inexpensive. I suppose I should just say cheap because that´s what it is. (My English brother-in-law has told me my use of the word inexpensive is an example of informal and impolite Americans being formal and polite when it´s unnecessary. Well, at least that´s what he used to say. Maybe the Brits have picked up that habit as well now.)

DUSSELDORF, GERMANY, CHRISTMAS 1973.
YOU SEE? I ALWAYS HAD A HIGH HAIRLINE. (OK. IT´S HIGHER NOW.)

To the great delight of Sergio at Goldenmac, I do in fact regularly back up my computer. So, I´ve got dupes of everything on an external hard drive. I also have selected documents on a flash drive I keep with me at all times. I´ve got a bunch of new photos on my camera. But, moving photos back and forth from my camera or external hard drive using Jerry´s computer is a bit much, so I pulled up another oldie from the archives.

My sister was living in Germany. The parents of my roommate lived in Belgium. And my niece had just been born a month earlier. So, my cousin and I flew to Germany for winter break and then met up with my roommate in Dusseldorf (and then on to Brussels). We did what any dippy American college students would do while in Dusseldorf (when taking a break from beer-drinking). We went antiquing. The only English the proprietor of the shop seemed to know was: "Grecianland. Veddy oldt."

So, I bought myself two beer steins, clearly marked in German "Made in Germany"; and a hand-carved koi fish that I think was Japanese. But I was told they were all very old and made in Greece (well, at least, Grecianland). Here I am holding the carved koi fish, which it turns out was dried out and cracked and ended up splitting in two during one of our moves. I must have been into fish at the time. I´ve got a fish carved out of an olive pit (also Japanese) around my neck. I bought it at the Brooklyn Museum for 25 cents and sadly lost it about a year after this picture was taken.

Come to think of it, I also wish I still had the small sample of petrified dinosaur dung that my parents bought for me. My father attached a bell cap to the top and put it on a chain. It was charming. I used to love to watch people´s faces when they held my pendant between their fingers admiringly and asked me what it was.