A Blue Door from the Sahara..........

It's always good to rest after sex..........a magical blue door from the middle of the Sahara....

What lives could there be behind this lone metal door?

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Connecting....the hardest door to open

To connect means to push open the heavy door of life.

This is not an easy. Indeed, it may be the hardest task in the world.

For opening the door to your own life is more difficult than opening the doors to the mysteries of the universe.

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Courage--This Week's Door

"When you master yourself, you become fearless."

..

Early Morning Snow Trees

A Hobbit-sized Tunisian Blue Door

Oh how I love this blue color.....so much so that I'm painting the back door of my house with African blue...as soon as it gets warmer....I've got a teen boy and a can of paint waiting.
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Every week, I find a quote on Sunday and place it on my weekly appointment calender. Something to focus on.....thought I would share my quote for this week.
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" A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born."
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---Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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That's nice isn't it? Every day there's an event that has the potential to awaken a new side of ourself....

This Week's Door Picture from Paris

Sometimes it's the simple, quiet, battered door that catches my attention. I found this door on a narrow street in the Montremarte district of Paris. In Paris, many front doors are entered right off a busy sidewalk....but sometimes when someone briefly leaves a door open you see it may lead into a huge foyer where stairways and hallways take you to apartments or even in some cases directly into a courtyard where Vestas and bikes may line the walls.

Feeling a bit melancholy today as I try and whip up my enthusiasm to finish my book proposal with a bang....this door spoke to me....I guess I feel...gray, banged up and a bit tired....LOL>>

This Week's Door Picture from Agadez, Niger

I've decided to come out of the closet ....or at least the closet door and admit I love to take pictures of doors. I was going through my African pictures and found several....I won't tell you how many pictures I have from Paris....lol...My bulletin board has doors on it from places I can't place to very distinct places such as Tazmania, Australia, Singapore. Every place I have traveled I find myself staring at doors. So I decided I'm going to share them. Why keep such passion under wraps?

This curious door I discovered down a back alley in Agadez, Niger. "Style Love" I don't have a clue why it has an English title or what it might mean. If you've seen anything in your travels like it..... let me know. Maybe an artist or a musician...a foreigner? How about a creative guess? Who would go through this door and where does it lead?

(a.gina.picture)

My New Profile Picture

(a.gina.picture)

My new blogger picture......I decided to leave baby Gina behind.....(the photo looked scary in the comments sections of some blogs..... a baby head commenting on world peace, sex, and noodles?) besides you'alllll want to see the puny white woman with the brave soul right?
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Besides I was thinking positive and practicing a book jacket pose.....it's either this or the black and white fuzzy photo ....where the woman has her hand under her chin and is draped in one of those black sheets with her cleavage down to ...well the place where crumbs go..........hmmmm cleavage might not be appropriate for a children's book hey?.....okay....back to turtlenecks I guess.....

Gina.

There Is Rest In Heaven

I Hope So!

(a.gina.picture from cape cod.)

Happy New Year

Happy New Year

(a.gina.picture)

Love

(a.gina.picture)

Jealousy

(a.gina.picture)

(gina.pictures)

Learning About Africa Restrospectively

Well....here I am on a Friday night, enclosed in my little computer room, working working working on my book. My writing group meets tomorrow and although I'm half way finished with the children's book, my drafts are handwritten and messy. I found I couldn't work on the computer. I needed graft paper and an eraser so I could play with the layout....a picture here....an illustration here ....moving a line here or there....when I could visualize the layout I could more easily see where the text should go and how much space there was for it.

In doing all this research on where I have been and what I have seen in Africa....I've stumbled into some fascinating stuff and well as some down right scary stuff that I didn't know at the time of my travels.

The fascinating stuff?.....well okay.....I remember sitting in the desert on a mat.....I pulled out my thermometer....this was a challenging thing to do since it was small and I kept losing it in my backpack all the time.....I remember the temperature registered between 110 and 115 degrees in the shade. One of my travel companions said why don't you measure how hot it is in the sun....and I answered, "Hell no, (weirdly appropriate at 110 degrees) I'm not going to stand in the sun to take a temperature" and that was that....

I felt a sudden small bite on my leg.....OUCH.....I looked down and there were ants on the mat....but not ordinary ones........ silver ones. It was as if someone had taken the ants and dipped them in chrome. I couldn't believe my eyes. Alberto said something about "Silver ants" and I tucked it away in my memory.

So I'm doing my research work and I stumble upon a wildlife article that mentions Silver ants of the Sahara. Okay not only do they exist but they exist weirdly......they emerge from their nests during the day only when the temperature is between 110-115 degrees....(the exact mat temperature if you remember) for about 10 minutes to swoop up dead things and the crumbs of puny white women and then go back underground..... AND to add to the strangeness......these silver ants are the tasty treats of a particular type of lizard that is inactive ......guess when...? ....when the temperature reaches 110 degrees!!!!!!.....Golly Gee ain't harmonious environments wonderful????

The scary stuff I've bumped into? Well, One of my favorite places in the Sahara was the Djado plateau.....and I discovered an article talking about the landmines that exist in the Djado....many still capable of killing you. Couple of tourists rolled over a few of them with their car last year. Timit....a beautiful oasis we visited....bandits swooped down a couple years ago and stole the cars, possessions, and cash of a whole tourist group......and of course .....just a week before we arrived in Niger......21 Italian tourists were kidnapped and held hostage for a week near Dogondoutchie......okay....like I said....sometimes it's good not to know things......

Ciao.

Gina's Got Legs! Nice Legs!

I've gotten a couple emails over the last couple months....asking me if I have legs since I always seem to be posting mug shots....so I thought I would post a pic of my legs.....in jeans doing some kind of twirly dance on the beach at Cape Cod.....yes the girl does have legs.

Got Cheche?

Brrrrrrrrrr........Don't think cheching is just for the Sahara.....here Diana and I ...decide to test out winter cheching on Cape Cod.......the strong cold winds off the ocean on Cape Cod spurred us on to do something..........but I think Diana looks better with all that curly hair billowing around her face.........I don't think I should cheche to the bank..........do you?

Cape Cod in Winter

Goats to Go