Steven Rubio's Online Life

xmas eve monopoly

white elephant

A few pix from our family's belated White Elephant day (photos taken by my daughter).

This was my contribution to the White Elephant pile ... the person who ended up with it pretended she liked it:

nerja photo dump

View from our balcony:

Churros con chocolate at Anahí:

Our street:

Mi esposa:

Rocks from our balcony:

Esposa on the beach:

Beautiful esposa:

Lovebirds:

Our address:

Looking towards Ayo's:

starbuck and boomer

Must be time for some cat pictures.

opening day update

photo dump

(Many of these photos were taken by Robin)

Me at the British Museum:

Robin at a yarn store in London:

A nightly ritual in Nerja: Robin eats ice cream at the Balcon:

Moon over Nerja:

The legend, Ayo:

Celebrating Robin's birthday month:

Nighttime in Nerja:

Lovebirds:

 

brief photo essay of the balcón de europa

graduation

Been away for a few days, attending my niece's high-school graduation in Washington. Here is a picture I took through a window in their house (the window explains the random streaks). Some people live closer to nature than I do:

Here's a selfie we took of six grown-ups, from left-to-right: Uncle, Dad, Mom, Aunt, Uncle, Aunt.

Finally, a picture of the grad and dad that I stole from Mom's Instagram:

fleabag and flowers

smith-rubio family xmas update, 19th annual edition

Our lives in 2020 were a lot like everyone else's during this pandemic. On March 11, we went to the movie theater to see Emma. We haven't been to a theater since. We've hardly been anywhere since, just a couple of visits to family in our "pod". We got refunds for the plane and apartment tickets for our planned trip to Spain. Boo hoo ... there are a lot of people suffering far more than we are. But we couldn't have predicted the direction our retirement would take. (That is a definition of the pandemic: no one could have predicted what life would be like.)

Oh, Spot wasn't much affected by the virus:

Count your blessings and all that.

I started using a CPAP machine:

Another sign of the times: almost every picture we took in 2020 was of cats, since we didn't have to leave the house to take the photos:

Of course, when everything else brought us down, there was Félix:

What does it mean that the musical moment that had the biggest effect on me in 2020 came from the performance of a James Bond theme song for a movie that because of the pandemic has still not been released? When Billie Eilish suddenly dug down and expanded her voice as if she were Shirley Bassey, she gave the lie to everyone who thought she could only whisper. Fool me once, fool me twice, are you death or paradise? Now you'll never see me cry.