And then some other stuff happened

AND THEN, after a summer-like break in the weather (sunny, in the 60s), the snow returned with a vengeance. Here are the local hounds braving the weather.

AND THEN last week a documentary film crew from the Exploratorium came, to make a short film about the project. Of course it was great to have visitors from home.

As Billy said one night after we all rode back from dinner in the van, “I haven’t heard so much English spoken in a long time…it’s doing something strange to my brain.”

AND THEN this weekend Schuyler and I went to Istanbul for a little shopping, and to explore Kadıköy, on the Anatolian side of the Bosphorus. I have one Turkish Facebook friend, an artist and a fellow member of the Automata/Automaton group, Eda Taşlı, who lives there and she graciously hosted us for the afternoon, showing us around her neighborhood there and taking us to her sculpture studio to see her fantastical work.

AND THEN we (and I’m including Tiny Dave in that “we”) ended up staying the night at a nice hostel in Kadıköy

The view from the window of our room:

AND THEN the following morning we had a nice wander around the neighborhood, ending up (again) at Ciya Sofrası, a most wonderful restaurant. Here are a bunch of images from our mini-adventure, in no particular order:

I call this one “Interesting Wall with Cat”

Bariş Manço is a famous Turkish musician, his house is a museum in the neighborhood. Schuyler is a fan.

This very nice flute maker took us into his workshop for some Turkish coffee and a nice talk about, oh, many things… .

Tiny Dave made a new friend, a frog, while the rest of us had coffee at the seaside and watched the sunset.

Finally, and apropos of nothing whatsoever, we found this thing in the workshop, and, well, of course we had to use it.