The thing in my kitchen

I meant to put these pictures up awhile ago, but forgot about it. The apartment Jay and I live in is, in realtor speak, "cozy" and full of "character," which, of course, actually means small and old. Small is a matter of its own, but old doesn't have to also mean bad. Old can be very good. The pyramids are old, the White House is old, the Palace of Versailles is old. But old and shoddy maintenace can be very bad. Our bathroom is a disater (I like to refer to the cabinet door on the vanity as "the Mad Hatter Door" since someone decided to hang it up before the glue was dry, resulting in some whimsically sagging angles). One side of the fridge is on a plank of wood because the floor is that lopsided. We've had to plug various holes we've found with caulk or glue or whatever sticky, hole-filling goo we have around to keep the various bugs out. We have yards of cabling lining most doorways and many walls, much of which begins and ends (unconnected at both), at seemingly arbitrary points. I don't know who'd want a TV above a door in a hallway.

One of the mysteries of our apartment is this strange fixture near the floor by the fridge in the kitchen. Incidentally, the wall-patch job in the photo attests to the level of workmanship evident in all fix-it jobs around the house.

It's obviously some sort of electrical box thing, but why it's there, sticking out of the wall, exposed and dangerous looking is the mystery to me. Whether or not it's working or necessary are additional mysteries. Here's a close up:

I took these about a month ago when I was experimenting with the built-in flash on my camera and seeing if I could get any decent shots with it. I feel like the close-up was somewhat successful. The blue light on the left is ambient sunlight, and the warm light from the right comes from a continuous light on a stand. The flash was diffused with, uh, a paper towel, I think.

I have an external flash now, which I've been taking pictures with for about a week and a half now. I'll hopefully have some time while I'm here in the Snowy North (Michigan) for the holidays to get some of those up here. I have concert photos, modeling Jay photos, and family party photos. Coming soon...

P.S. The idea that was going through my head when I was taking these shots was of documenting all the gross, wrong or bad things in my apartment, like the ones I spoke of above. I started looking to take some pretty interior shots, but found there was little to work with. Anyway, that's why I didn't clean up the dirt and dust bunnies from the floor, which should be renamed dust kitties, due to their primary ingredient.