Beware Of Gifts Bearing Greeks

After meeting with Val & James I still had some unshot color film on the roll and decided to finish it off with a few self-portraits at my usual hang-out, the neighborhood Starbucks. I'm becoming more and more intrigued with Kodak's so-called "amateur" color print film, Kodacolor Gold 200. First it's cheap, especially in the four and five packs of 24 exposure rolls. Second, since it's designed for know-nothing amateurs it has great exposure latitude, and seems to give acceptable color rendition under all sorts of strange lighting conditions both indoors and outdoors. In this shot the flesh tones seem pretty decent and the shirt is portrayed just about the same color blue as it looks to the eye. The colors are a bit more vibrant than the "professional" films give you.

There's an old saying, "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts". I'm not really sure where that came from. Right now I have a "gift" visiting me, a Greek woman that I've known for 33 years. The first time I saw her she was in front of the day care center at Miami-Dade Community College and I was picking up my daughter Elena. Our eyes briefly met from half a block away, but except for remembering her voluminous mane of thick blonde hair that extended well below her waist I really didn't pay much attention, nor did I expect to be running into her again. Well, a few days later I came home to be greeted by the sight of her seated with my wife Stephanie. They were at the dining room table, one dissecting a rabbit, the other a cat. It seems that they were both pre-med and taking the same anatomy class.

The marriage with Stephanie ended shortly after our second child, Jonathan, arrived two years later, but I was a good daddy. I did my share of child care after the divorce. Dawn had a little girl, Melpomene, born six months after Jonathan. Many was the day I took both kids to the pony rides or had them sleeping over at my house. Stephanie is now a doctor, remarried and living in South Carolina, while Dawn also has her doctorate and has been single for twenty-eight years. She lives in Tampa. Jonathan is married and expecting the birth of a daughter tomorrow. He and Melpomene are thirty now! Time flies.

Well, Dawn, bless her heart, has told me in no uncertain terms that we should at last take Father Philemon Payiatis' advice, the advice he's been giving us for well over twenty-five years now. We haven't set a date but we decided to take his advice at last. It never bothered him that like him, Dawn was Greek Orthodox while I was Jewish, so at some point in the not too distant future Dr. Carageorge will become Mrs. Kaplan. Father Payiatis will be picked up at the nursing home and attend in his wheelchair. He's now quite frail as he nears 90.