what's up?

shoes

here’s a bright light on a cloudy day. it’s really, really orange. like fire. like fluorescent. it cuts through the gloom. it’s a fuckin’ beacon in the dark. everything is more drab because of it. i loved it.

and then it drizzled on it, and it kept on burning bright.

shoes on the wire above it, though you don’t really notice the dirty, dull white things so small in this shot, the car keeps your eyes’ attention.

thank you sir, may i have another?

i have too many cars sitting in the queue to posted, and nothing interesting to write about. so imma gonna just start throwing two or three up for a while, for no reason at all. make space for some fresh ones.

i have been getting a lot of emails lately from people asking for registration for shows or vendor sign ups. i then have to inform them that i only list shows i’m interested in, that i’ve heard about, or seen a flyer for.

curious as to why, i searched the internet. i think i know why—some bots have been crawling my site, and on some random page, and are showing me listed as the organizer. as if.

i end up digging up the flyers and sending them contact info. only a couple have written back to say thank you. they could have done their own digging, but it is my list, so i feel responsible. maybe i should take it down permanently, but it helps me remember what’s coming up, should i have the opportunity to get out.

this car is from a couple of years ago, at a fundraiser at jfk high school in la palma. been to a couple of shows there. usually a pretty good turnout. usually see some guys and cars that come out from closer to home, coming out and hitting up this show.

this one was just a beauty, and the color really popped under that sun that day.

sonata time

apparently, the xmas sonata is going on uptown. no idea what they’ve scheduled this year. usually at least a horse-drawn carriage and carolers. the carriage i could get into, but never have; the carolers, i could do without.

better half has hauled a buttload of xmas decorations into the house, and they are deciding what colors to use on the fruity tree. already know it’s toy story again for the theme, but now it’s what color balls to use <she said balls>. at least it gets his mom out of her bed and into her wheelchair.

i haven’t been home since last weekend, for random reasons, including rain and my mom’s garage door not wanting to open. this is the picture i was working on last week, when the fuse blew. yay the new photoshop actually does a decent job at recovering a picture after a crash vs frying the file.

knocked the color out, because the light flares were just oddly bugging me, but i still liked the car.

i probably mentioned it before, but it was odd the lot was so empty as compared to previous years at this time of morning. makes me want to sleep in too, but i like the early morning light too much.

i should talk. i haven’t been getting out to any shows at all for the last month. and the past weekend and this morning have been perfectly gray and cold. just not feeling up to it. i have all sorts of excuses, but i’ll just leave it at i haven’t had the energy to get out. miss you guys tho.

packed

bag is packed for a weekend in sf. one three hour meeting and i’m on my own until sunday. not supposed to rain, unlike here, where it started a couple of hours ago and will continue until after i take off tomorrow.

better half should hire someone to watch his mom and come with, but he’s had no time to even research that, especially on short notice.

no idea what i’ll do. taking the a6000, which isn’t my favorite camera. but it’s lighter and travels easier. i’ll take pictures that will never see the light of day, unless i come across a car show. haven’t looked one up and haven’t seen mention of one, so probably won’t happen.

—————-

car from a lovely cloudy day last year that one time i made it out to a show at in-n-out in covina. don’t think they have it anymore…cops kept shutting it down i heard.

get baked

doing a lot of baking lately. stuff my dad would’ve liked. apparently, everyone at work is on a New Year’s resolution not to eat sweets. so then I’m stuck with this stuff and what to do with it.

Not going to sell it like the guy across the street, who says he doesn’t run a business from his house cooking stuff in his garage. going to ignore all the people that double park and pay him for something he’s not selling. he might be full of shit.

Better half is exhausted by the weekend and I always end up washing a load of dishes by hand in the sink, using gloves that fit his gigantor banana hands, but on me, feel like NASA space gloves. there are no fine motor movements going on here...i can hardly hold the sponge without it flying into the soapy water.

the thin womens’ gloves i usually use tore last time i used one to open a bottle cap—the rubber gives a better grip. (that’s what she said. ) i just haven’t gotten around to buying a new pair.

womens gloves are like one-thirty-second of an inch thick vs the one-sixteenth of stuff on his gloves. pretty sure he bought them at the hardware store and they are for like mixing cement or working with electrical cables.

—————-

also had the weirdest whirlwind of a cold or flu over the weekend. had to leave the office early on friday cuz i felt like i was on a boat on rough seas, and i was listing to the right when i walked. fever jumped to not quite one-hundred and three that evening and for the next two days.

stayed home today with a lower fever in morning and a cough.

went to the doctor, who gave me cough med that will stop the cough but make me too sleepy to drive, maybe. plus, i’m still walking on a tipsy boat. see how things are in the morning. maybe i’ll show up to be shunned at work.

hey, i wasn’t patient zero this year…

do i still want to get a flu shot? no, never.

———

missing my computer. here’s an old pic from last year at montebello park.

shadowy and windy. maybe it’s on the tipsy boat with me.

back home

finally made it home yesterday night. quite sure, i’ve completely used up my time off with pay for the year and then some. but an emergency is an emergency, and i am glad that i was there to help.

my brother is back home, physically all right. still a little on the loopy side, but hoping that will go away after he gets back on his regular schedule.

he has a lovely hospital bed smack in the middle of his office now, and will be visited daily by nurses or therapists or some such personnel.

hopefully i will not feel scared enough for him to have to fly back, but i would.

one more from dolphin park last week. isn’t it lovely?

countdown

i’m officially on vacation time, but still in town. already had a call from work yesterday, after one coworker realized i was still around. last minute edit to a poster needed yesterday evening. i was busy at the time, and had no access to work files, so got her to contact another designer, who lives closer to the office anyway. problem was solved, tragedy avoided. lol.

really, though, a few more days, and i’m gone, and really on vacation. i’ll be enjoying france and italy, while my better half stays behind with his mother. sucks. at least his niece and nephew will be coming down one weekend, to give him a short break from the monotony.

and for the new readers, no, i’m not planning trips without my better half; i sort of fell into it, taking the place of someone who cancelled on my kid. pretty sure i explained in some other post.

not sure what my connectivity will be over there, so i may not post anything until next month, not like i’m posting daily anymore anyway. i guess i really do need a reason to slow down and sniff the roses right now.

my dad has been in the hospital now, for two weeks, and about to get released to a nursing home for another week or two. pretty sure he will be mostly bedridden for the rest of his life, if he doesn’t partake of physical therapy this time, and really try to get off his ass more. hoping he’s around when i get back from vacation. mom has already said if something happens, it happens, no rush to get back. really.

another story i heard at work the other day:

coworkers were sitting outside at tables, eating their lunch. some guy, with an armload of packages, trips on the sidewalk in front of them. boxes pop open, contents fly everywhere.

turns out it was food.

the guy spends ten minutes scooping stuff back into the boxes with his bare hands, cleaning things up. he goes quickly back to his car with the boxes.

they go back to eating their lunch.

they see him again, this time carrying one of those food service delivery bags on his shoulder. hmm. they say.

he continues into the building. a few minutes later, they see the guy head back to the car with an empty bag, who gets in his car, and drives away.

a few ticks later, the male coworker, thinks, “hmm, did he just make a food delivery? of that food he just dropped?? OMG!!!”

they inquired at the receptionist of our company, when lunch was over, if there had been a delivery, and told the story of what they suspected happened. no one in our office. there are several businesses in our building, so security made some calls.

i think they figured out where it went, and security has footage of the whole food scooping incident, since he tripped right in front of one of the security cameras.

i’m gone from the office now, so won’t learn the rest of the story until i get back, if i even do then, since it was another company. hoping the people in that meeting noticed the extra grit in their meal and stopped eating it.

here’s a studebaker i saw about a month ago at ruby’s on a friday evening. i think i’ve only been there twice this season, and this particular evening was a piss-poor turnout. compared to previous years, there was hardly anything. don’t think there was a holiday, so i don’t know what was going on.

the front of these cars always look like they are smiling, so that’s the way i like to shoot them.

gotta get packing. i don’t know italian. i don’t know french. to quote my better half, who probably stole it from a movie, “i don’t speak french, i only kiss that way.”

waiting/stressing

why is it repairmen and plumbers always give you a two-hour window for their visit, knowing they will always be there in the last five minutes of said window? i know they are padding their time from the previous appointment, or are they expecting you to be the one running late?

i’m punctual. i’m on time. hell of a day going at work, and i had to get home to facilitate their schedule. dude has another forty-five minutes, then i’m just going to wait some more.

i will have to go back to the office to make up time, then probably stay later working on some hard deadlines.

the only bright spot in the day is that i knew about the staying late part. i brought my cameras, so i could possibly, actually make it out to the orange county cruise night at sonic in anaheim. i may be on my way back to whittier during show hours. hoping there may be a few cars to shoot anyway.

———

here’s a merc i saw at pomona a few months’ ago. i liked the color. the fisheye distortion is a little much, but it just makes it look like it’s smiling.

tyson

shiny back ends from pomona a couple of months ago. pretty sure my better half was with me that morning, so this must be from march, actually. before his sister took off, and didn't come back to help with their mom. seems to be how we tell time around here...days blur together anymore.

queue the long, poorly told tale of yesterday evening—in case you want to opt out, and continue to some other post. i'm pretty tired.

took me an hour and a half, at least, to get home yesterday. i left work at three on a friday. just my daily hell.

ordered some dinner from one of the uptown restaurants. fuck cooking. didn't even want to walk over to pick it up...drove over to get it, and the order was just being brought out when i walked in the door, five minutes before it was expected to be ready. sometimes things just work out as they should.

then my daughter sends me a picture of my mom.

she had just gotten home from work. she walked into the kitchen, where my mom was apparently behind the doors of the pantry, trying to figure out dinner herself.

kid calls out to her, and my mom peeks out from around the door. she has a black eye.

daughter is like, "wtf." my mom said she'd gone for a nap around four, just fine. apparently, she woke up like that. slept on that side.

i previously mentioned that my mom had fallen backwards on the driveway. so that can't be a good sign, right?

thinking something bad was going to happen, kid sent me the picture. she tried talking her into going to the hospital to get checked out, since she'd refused the day she fell.

she wasn't having any of it, very, "it's nothing." really didn't want to go to the hospital.

i, of course sent the pics off to my brother and sister. other bro is off on vacay somewhere or other.

sister got on the phone to her before i could. brother responds with a comment about maori warriors. i say mike tyson.

i call my kid, who says gramma is on the phone with aunty. i can hear in the background, that my sister is having no luck convincing her into going. my dad, is meanwhile, upstairs sleeping and unaware.

finally, she's off the phone, so bye kid, calling gramma now. my turn goes better. point out that she may be bleeding into her head, and the pressure is building, she may have a concussion, she could lose her eye, she could have a stroke, and any other outcome i have seen on all the medical shows i've ever watched.

she was still saying no, that it will be too busy on a friday night, but i just said that i was coming down there, so she might as well get ready, make a list of her meds. i was going to be there to check her myself. she relented for whatever reason, and agreed to go then.

notified bro and sister that i'd gotten her to agree to go to the emergency room. back on the road south within about five minutes. sister calls about twenty minutes later saying she was going to meet up at the house and go with us.

blah blah blah. cutting to the chase, because i assume everyone knows the drill at a hospital. she'd fallen, so that called for x-rays, blood work, ct scan.

while she's off doing her thing, kid sends another picture. dad this time. he's got his own issues. he'd also fallen down earlier in the week, but hadn't told anyone until the day before. without going into specifics on him, he's got some bleeding going on somewhere, and it looks worse then ever. so we're off showing the pictures to nurses, asking their opinion on if we should make him come in. nurses do not want to give legal advice or opinions, but would say that is not normal.

we're on the phone with him, saying we'll come pick him up and bring him in, there isn't much waiting, and we could have both parents in the hospital together. we know how to rock a friday night. he refuses, saying he has doctor appointments lined up already for the week, and it can wait. he says no, it's a no. men. pfft.

meanwhile, mom is returned to us in the waiting room.

she'd landed on her ass, so that's bruised and sore. she walks slowly, and refuses to really be pushed around in a wheel chair. she'd also bumped her head on the cement. under her queen of england helmet hairstyle, she's got quite a pointy bump growing as well. i think she's going to be a unicorn if she doesn't get some ice on that.

only really waited about an hour to get an exam room. doctor comes in, with his dictation lackey behind him, typing up everything being said.

tests are not showing anything that would cause the bleeding. he keeps saying it looks like old blood, and that it will probably look worse before it looks better. says had i brought her in the first day, he'd have kept her overnight for observation because of the meds she takes, but now that it was several days later, he could see what's going on easier.

all in all, unless she feels worse, starts throwing up, feeling dizzy, vision problems, she should be ok. rest, and ice packs advised, and we're sent home within two and a half hours.

it's after midnight. kid has been up, keeping an eye on grampa, waiting for us to come home. he's had a late, late dinner, and is going to bed, not the hospital.

that late, i'm staying there, knowing my plans to go to one of six or seven car shows is blown. funny how easily it is to know what and where is more important to be, and how often lately i have had to skip anticipated car shows. next year, they will always come around again. parents, are on a limited clock now, so priorities.

this morning, i was awakened around eight by my kid's dog, who is barking out the window of the next room. kid has left for work already.

figured he needed to go outside, and/or eat his food. i slipped on the top stair, but luckily had my hands on the rails for a change. i totally would have fallen on my ass, and broke something otherwise. must be a ghost tripping people in the house, right?

i intended to wait until my dad got up, see how he was doing before making a decision on heading home. better half needed/wanted to get out of the house and to the market.

dad came down the stairs on his little mobile stairs chair thing around noon. made him a deal: mom would call his doctor's office, tell them what's going on, and if they said he needed to go to the emergency room, he would go. he agreed, just said he wasn't going to make the call.

his doc is out of town for the weekend, so she talked to the other guy. had to tell the whole story all over again. both times i hear her just throw in at the end of the story that he'd fallen, might that have anything to do with this bleeding?

they end up agreeing to see the doctor on monday, since he is otherwise not having any other symptoms or pain. like moving a mountain. at least he'd agreed to go if they'd said to.

i was free to go. day half over. stop for lunch. freeway traffic sucks. made it home at almost four o'clock.

better half is out driving around somewhere. i'd suggested he hit up the santa fe springs swap meet, see if anyone is playing a concert. he seemed more inclined into going to fry's or guitar center. will probably end up at in-n-out, since it's open late. or, for all i know, he's just in the back of his car sleeping.

i don't know how tomorrow will go. it's already almost eleven pm. i want to go to a car show in the morning. there are several. i'm tired. pretty sure i will just go to the closest—up the street at the high school fundraiser.

better half needs to do some overtime for work, so i will also probably have to get to the supermarkets. hate shopping. oh well. priorities.

don't hold back

beauty of a truck here in whittier, from a few weeks ago. had to do the waiting game for several shots; for another photographer, for a videographer, for the background traffic, for other random people. it's a car show, so it comes with the territory. i'm not in a hurry, so i wait. or come back later.

trolls. i have trolls. not for me, specifically, more as a conduit. they're frustrated, and rattling cages, and can't get through to the person they want, so hello me.

don't want to shut down commenting, but thinking about it, at least for a little while, until they forget about me. i don't got time for dat, and it's not about me anyway. sounds like i need some sort of salve.