summer house, pt.3.

These are the photos from a different day, when my mother and I came over to settle some remaining matters with gas and electricity debts.  This is the last time I’ve seen the house.  There are no actual photographs in it here.  I concentrated on flowers and neighbouring properties this time around.

Also, cat.

Building castles where there shouldn’t be any.

OK, this photo?  I was trying to photograph a bird in flight.  Not exactly successful.  That oddly shaped blob in top left corner, that’s your bird.  In flight.

And in this one I’m photographing a resting bird.  That little spot to the left of the roof ornament.  There it is.  You’ll probably have to zoom in.

On our way back my mum and I picked up a lady and what looked like her granddaughter, quite by mistake too.

Let me relay the tale to you.

There was a bunch of people signaling for rides on an intersection.  On that intersection my mum and I decided to stop and think which route we’d like to take.  The lady mistook our stop as a reply to her signal.  She rushed to the car, opened the door, asking if we’re going to Kish.  Mother was dumbstruck, and the logical direct dumb me answered, "… yes".  They jumped in by the time we realised what happened.

It was odd.

She gave us a dollar when it was her and her kid companion’s time to get off.

We didn’t take it.

End.

 

(This post originally appeared on my old blog on 14 October 2011.)

summer house, pt. 2, mostly clouds.

This is my grandfather’s friends’ kitten.

(This post originally appeared on my old blog on 13 October 2011.)

a walk in the first serious snow of the year.

It’s been winter wonderland around here, with the added reality of ice patches, people snowed in at home, or worse, people snowed in on the road, broken arms and hips, and hungry animals.

Nevertheless, I love snow as I’ve the privilege of a warm house and winter boots.  So I took my camera out for its first ever winter walk.

But first I took realistic, not golden light, photos of the balcony my brother had to clean from all the snow, lest it begins melting, then freezes overnight, and I break my neck when taking a peek outside.

Heroically, he did it with a pink kitten litter scoop.  It took him some time.

Alternate edit.

Alternate edit.

Alternate edit.

a walk in february.

In the last days of February mum & I went for a small walk around the old part of Kish.  It was beastly cold, and I took only a few photos.  There’s a bunch more taken by mum.  Unfortunately, I have no idea where she put the camera, so this is going to be a two-part post.  This one is the short first part.

This particular building, my mum tells me, used to house the theatre costume shops.  When mum was a kid, she and her friends used to stand around looking into those windows (the ones behind the bars, below).  Sometimes the seamstresses would give them scraps of material for doll costumes and such.

It was a dreary day.

Twenty years ago, my late grandfather used to read lectures in this building.  Now it’s just a skeleton.

Insert some ‘two sides of one coin’ cheesy title here.  But it’s amazing, isn’t it?  How one side is well kept, and another one looks like it’s about to collapse?  Save for that shiny white balcony in there.  That one looks monumentally odd.

Such buildings is one of the main reasons I have so much trouble writing up regular posts for innermoldova.  It’s not for the lack of material or inspiration.  It’s because I seem to be incapable of writing something cheerful about the historical centre of Kishinev that isn’t entirely based on architecture and history books.  Reality, sadly, either looks like the photos above — or is mutilated into some odd semblance of modern buildings.  It seems that the birth of independence brought in death or total migration of the local school of conservation-restoration.

At the very least, most churches seem to be doing OK.

This is Saint Panteleimon’s Church.

It’s a comparatively old building, dating back to … 1891, I think.  Too lazy to go check my books.

I swear to God, when I first saw that sticker on the left, I thought it was one of those “we accept Visa &c” things.  SACRILEGE.  My mind is a blasphemous heathenish monster.

The picture quality is low, but I think the actual sticker informs us that the building is guarded by this or that security company.

When I was a teenager, I used to take violin lessons.  Very often before class and nearly always after I’d walk past this church to get home.  My class usually started way late in the afternoon, and since sometimes solfeggio, vocal, and even piano (I say ‘even piano’ because my prof was an early bird and preferred to have her classes in the morning hours.  Which is why as a teen I only had one day off during my week, if that.) classes were all aggregated in one day, I’d be heading home after dark during winter months.  And all these years ago ‘after dark’ sometimes meant ‘pitch dark’, because even central streets weren’t properly lighted.  And this church is eerie.  It really is!  So eerie in fact that it inspired me to write my old vampire epic.  Let me tell you, Twilight‘s got nothing on that masterpiece.  Too bad I never complete anything, so the story is forever stuck in its…  I think it’s a fourth revision/ draft.

Maybe when I’m 80, I’ll pick it up again and write Hindsight:  Vampires Ironically Reminisce Wild Nights of Eternal Yet Relative Youth.

Maybe not.

BIRDS.

Hitchcock would be envious.

And this is the last shot from that day.  Spot the odd sideways icicles!

(This post was originally posted 6 April 2011 on my old and obscure blog.  Published here with minor revisions.)

church exteriors.

Even before my renewed foray in Orthodoxy, I’ve always liked the way the churches look — outside and inside.  My photographic skills were naught and there’s not a lot of improvements through the years either, but that doesn’t stop me from taking pictures.

These are just a few photos that I’ve found on my external HDD.  The thing is, there probably aren’t many others.  But I’ll dig around when I have some spare time, God willing.

Now, these two pictures were taken back in 2005 (maybe ’06), with my mobile camera.  Which was something like 0.3 mpx, so ye do not judge.  😛  I’m showing these pictures because this is the church that I was baptised in.  There’s a funny story connected to my baptism, too, but I have no time to write it.

Don’t you like it when people say that?  That there’s something funny, but they have no time to write it?  Thought so.

Anyway, so this church is pretty old.  You know Pushkin?  The greatest Russian poet?  Right, well when he was in exile in Moldova, he reportedly visited this church.  It’s not the oldest one in the city, though.

These two were taken in 2005, in Novotroitsk.  This Peter & Paul Cathedral is new, built at the end of the 20th century.  Here is a picture of it in daylight.  I took mine when returning home from a trip around town.  It wasn’t that late, but it was late enough to produce rather dark and gloomy pictures.  I like them, though they were completely accidental.

And these three photos were taken in Old Orhei in 2010.  I am unsure about the church, but the chapel (its roof is seen in the first of three pictures) is old.  As it’s a historical complex, I assume that the church is pretty ancient as well, but one can never be too sure.  I should read up!

weather reactions.

It was raining (finally!), so I left the window open and went out of the room, telling my brother to watch the pot.  Few minutes later I heard his scream followed by cracking sounds.  Oh, well!  Not the worst thing that could happen.  Besides, this Euphorbia needed replanting anyway.

Nearly ran out of soil when replanting the bugger to a bigger pot, though, so now I cannot plant the pineapple that I have so diligently prepared.  It needs a special mix, though, so I gather it’s all for the best.

Anyway, so this is the video of the rain that committed the crime of dropping the plant.

Yesterday’s sky!