Day 79: Photos Taken Around the House - Living Room Edition Part Four - Celebrations: Babies, Champers and Coffee Cups

In the living room, Christmas 2003, here we have a rug rat who received a barking dog from his grandparents.




And here's Luke with his grandma, though the focus is on the background.

Still life in yuletide in the oh so brown late seventies.




Andy Morrison above a kitten on the keys sticker:

Another ex of my sister's, Jerry Sully. Is he wearing a Donny Osmond cap?

Unidentified sleeping bodies, sometime before 1984.

My sister, sometime in the 80s I think.

Party of my parents; Peggy Bartlett and Ann Martin.

John and Ann Martin

Their son, John.




This must have been a church people's party as I believe that's Pastor Ausland downing the champers.

Some of our fake relatives. We had so few blood relatives that my mom would invite family friends over for holidays. This is Helen on the left, and Evy Lind on the right. Both originally from Chicago.

And here's Hal Lind, with Evy behind him. Note the top loading Betamax.

Some neighbors were invited to this party. That's Fred and Cherie Eckert, who lived across the street.

Not sure why my dad is so dressed up! Maybe it was a party for their thirtieth anniversary or something; I wouldn't have been around. That's Barney Weltz, a friend of theirs from church, with the champagne this time.

Now we're eating cake... Fred Eckert and another neighbor who looks familiar but who I cannot place...

Back to church folk: Yvonne Ausland, Bonnie Werts and one of the Ausland sons, unidentified kids. From the mantelpiece I can deduce that my parents recently made a trip to Africa. That would have been in the mid 80s.

A different party; fewer things on the mantelpiece and my dad is now dressed casually, again with church friends.

Hmmm, I see something that looks like part of a wedding cake; maybe I was right about the anniversary thing. Here are June and Bob Weiss.




Going back forward in time to mid 2002; here's Luke before he was old enough to leave empty wrappers all over that couch. I had not met him yet.

Here is the only photo of me in this bunch. And it's not a great one, I need my roots done, and my Vidal Sassoon haircut (I modelled for them in late 85) had grown out a bit and was not styled properly. I was visiting over the holidays that year. Kurt was in Kenya so we were back to being a nuclear family.

But here's a smirking Kurt, a couple of years before that, on the previous couch. As I said many times before, that afghan is still on the back of the next couch. And spot the difference players, that fan has moved to the position where the guitar was.

A rare photo of my dad with his feet up!

Note that many years later, here in 2012 with a newborn Annabelle, he is still drinking from the same coffee cup.

And for completists, I photographed said cup this year before I threw it away. (By the way, right after the Annabelle photo was taken, I bought him a thermal Starbucks cup, which he used ever day right up until the end. I hid the green one.)

Day 78: My Forgotten Life in Art Part Four - Odd Todd Edition

Yes, as most, if not all, of these drawings were done when I was between the ages of 14 and 16, you might guess that my number one subject was Todd Rundgren.

Here I've got his seven colors of hair down, but his face and nose are not quite the right shape.

Not a very flattering portrait from 1974, but it does look a bit more like him.

I believe I was attempting to draw the photo on the back of Something/Anything? here.

Here come the Nazz... Or my attempt to draw the back of the album cover. I don't think Todd's overbite was quite that extreme!

This one of A Wizard, A True Star, being sort of cartoonish and primitive in the first place, fared a bit better.

The Todd LP cover:

Hmmm, here he looks a bit clownish... Or mime-ish?

Things are slightly lopsided here...

And finally, another attempt in color:

Day 77: Kitchen Stuff Part Three, or, Defrosting a Frost-free Fridge

As I explained in Kitchen Stuff Part Two (back in June if you want to view it), the refrigerator is in a weird place, sort of up on stilts on the back of the stairwell (the stairs, because our house is on a hill, go down). And although the fridge was replaced once, sometime back in the 70s, it has not been since.

In the previous post, I showed you the extensive collection of refrigerator magnets, but not the fridge's position in the kitchen. Since then I took a series of photos of it, but I will have to add them later as I cannot locate them. (And if anyone can tell me how to get Windows to stop scrolling through folders of photos at 90 MPH - I have googled, with no success - I might be able to post more often! One used to be able to click on the arrow and it would go down one screen, but that no longer works. Holding the scroll box or clicking below it, which also used to make it go down one screen, also revs the engine. I hate Microsoft. But nowadays, I kinda hate Apple too. Don't start me on iTunes!)

A short while later: I found the fridge photos! But only after I had stopped looking for them; I was actually looking for another photo that Windows had scrolled by at 100 MPH (never did locate it) and it stopped on the fridge. But I shall leave my problem above in case anyone can advise:

And now will show you the stairwell, and you will know why the ceiling juts out so; there is a fridge on the other side! From around 1973, there was a poster of the Hang in there, baby! kitten; I took it down when I was visiting in the early 00s as it had become quite battered, but I wish I had taken a photo of it...

Oh, here we go:

Anyway, here's the stairwell:

From this view, I can kind of almost see why Coco, the dog I was sitting recently, and who lives in a one-storey ranch house, was intimidated by these stairs, although they aren't that steep:

But what I do have for you is a demonstration of one of my father's favorite pasttimes, clearing the ice from the bottom of the freezer! As I explain in my narration, he used to have to do this weekly, or at least every other week, but I have only had to do it twice in the past year! (Cue Twilight Zone music...)

Day 76: Photos Taken Around the House - Living Room Edition Part Three

Here's Zowie when she was a kitten, on the back of the living room couch, which is still in the family room (where it moved in 1984.) This would have been around 1974 I think. I guess you couldn't see the TV very well from the couch, but it's facing my mom's old armchair with matching footstool.





The TV must have moved cause I seem to be watching it. Those coffee tables are still there, in front of the 1984 couch. Remember when remotes were attached by a cord? This would have been the original Betamax. This is 1981 or 1982; those are thrift shop bought Levi's from the 60s I am about to flog on eBay and an Ella and the Blacks tank top made by our roadie, Mel. Maybe it's morning as I'm drinking tea and OJ. Plus I have no makeup on yet and my hair is a mess.





Apparently this is Peter Schaaf, but I never would have recognized him without his glasses.

As well as here, without a face...

And here is my sister on the balcony. It must be around Christmas as my mom would have put up those Santa lights.

A friend of my sister's I think. I just threw out those Betamax racks; kept the tapes though. And recently gave away that painting and lamp.

My sister's friend Andy Schwartz with some mind-control invention made of foil.

I don't know who these people are (or I don't recognize them) nor what they have on their lap - a pool party bag, but my tiki lights, the same ones that decorated our balcony last month at Tiki Oasis, appear to be strangling them.

I have long loved this cheeky shot of Joe Mama Zinnato, but I never notice the corpse behind him before. I don't even know who that is! (/Could it be Geza X?)

You can see my dad's ukelin to the right of my sister.

That chair spun around and is where I would sit in the seventies when I listened to records on headphones. (The stereo was in the cabinet under the lamp.) I don't think I would have ever got through Beowulf without Electric Warrior in the background. But this is the eighties, and the last days of that particular chair.

My brother was home from college and in two weeks I would emigrate to the UK. So my mom took a bunch of photos of us on Thanksgiving 1984.

That's my Aunt Harriet, my mom's sister, in the background.

Probably earlier in 1984 or the year before, my brother watches TV with a weird haircut.

Day 75: My Forgotten Life in Art Part Three

 Let's start with Sparks. Russell had great hair to draw. But he ended up with a baby face.

His brother Ron was much easier to draw. But maybe I made him look a bit extreme!

I made Suzi Quatro look a little like a suburban housewife.

I think I did a little better with Greg Lake, though I still put a question mark.




Decades later, I do think it looks pretty much like Genesis period Peter Gabriel.

 
Continuing on, Terry Rae's name is surrounded by stars because he was in the Hollywood Stars.

I'm drawing that hair again. On some weird looking unknown dude.

And I believe this was an attempt at Todd on the left, and a better result, a hint of the next drawings blog on the right.