1950 hudson
this chopped, custom, slammed hudson was out at riverside last weekend.
shooting into the sun, doesn’t show you that it’s actually blue, with blue metallic flake on the roof. they even split the back window. just a tad different than your average hudson.
1951 cadillac
found this lovely out in the parking lot of vail hq. not every spectacular car can fit inside the center court.
just enough light at dusk to have a blue sky above, and the parking lot lights shining down light tinged a pale yellow, makes a complement and pop of color on the cars.
i wonder what the girl in the car finds so much more interesting than all of the rolling art surrounding her?
i worked three days this week, then had friday off.
i’ve been trying to get over this cold. it’s mostly gone, but i’m really just low energy. no, i don’t have covid.
instead of hitting some car shows, i’ve spent my time sweeping the floors, which just always seem to be dusty. just pushing the dirt from one spot to another, i guess.
i haven’t gone far from the house since i came back home. i have been spending a lot of time with my better half. it’s nice we still enjoy each other’s company after all these years.
i wish i had more to say, or even be funny, but i just haven’t been out much to generate a story.
i hope you all have had a good new year’s day, and that this year will be better than the last few.
the moon in retrograde or mercury doing a thing to the tea leaves? these past couple of weeks have just been so stupid. best i didn’t place any bets in vegas…
first my car, in for a simple maintenance, now just a continuing issue to be solved. was again put on eternal hold twice before i was connected to the service manager this afternoon.
check engine light was still on when i took it back this afternoon, so at least they can’t say i’m making it up. left work an hour early, hoping to not get in stop and go traffic, and possibly stalling out on the freeway. finally lost my nerve about beach boulevard, and took surface streets the rest of the way to avoid all the freeway construction slowing things down toward the 605. red light intersections are only slightly less nerve wracking. didn’t use the air conditioner either, since it seemed to make the stalling sensation worse.
at least they saved me a loaner car.
next, work waited for me to get back, so it’s piled up, and more added. i especially like the rush jobs needed by thursday, mostly i suspect because of the holiday weekend.
so i’m pushing back what i can, finding out who is crying wolf on deadlines. otherwise, i’ll either work late if possible with the car sitch, or work the weekend.
now, figuring i’m in whittier, i might as well play with my pictures. no can do. my computer has decided to fuck up, and wants a boot disk we cannot find to make it happy. better half says he’s going to order me an upgrade of the software and a new ssd drive. basically, i’m down until they arrive in the mail, then for the period getting reloaded with all my software and tweaking the preferences for how i like to work. at least a week, if not more, given our schedules.
maybe i can get to a car show this weekend, but unable to download and process anything. frustrating it will be. humpf.
well, i can get back to posting a few of my old pictures on my ipad anyway.
back end of a riviera from mooneyes open house several years ago. amazing paint job; another that needs a ladder or scaffolding to get up above it to capture it better, but this is the best i can do with my tripod.
when i put it out on instagram, someone got sad because one of the people in the shot had passed away since then.
sorry to report the power is back on, so game over. probably a rolling blackout. same time, same length of time as last week. thanks dwp.
anyway, my car should be ready to pick up soon. got my mom to agree to going to the game with me. i think i will just randomly give the other two away when i get there.
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here’s one of the older pics that have been languishing in my to do list.
i like the owner; he always says hello. i think his daughter asked me to shoot her wedding a year or two ago, but i turned her down and pointed her to another photographer that does do weddings…not interested in that pressure.
not my usual shot my better half said. not a car i typically bother with is what he meant.
it caught my eye at the time, and i still like the picture months later, so whatever. probably was the pinstriping on the hood that got me.
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rained last night. still sprinkly and drab out—love this weather. hate summer heat.
feeling out of sorts lately and suddenly very busy at work. my younger brother has been in town visiting mom, so i’ve been trying to juggle my time to spend some with him before he leaves on tuesday.
i’ve missed a lot of car shows i’d normally be all over, but it’s beyond my control…
1953 chevy deluxe
so, i’m back at home. three weeks is a long time to be away. twelve hour flight back, followed by an hour in customs, and an hour and a half drive home. hint: after a twelve hour flight, don’t pick up people and make them sit some more in a space even smaller than what they had on the plane. almost wept cuz my legs hurt so much. almost told them to just pull over, and drop me anywhere…i’d call an uber, just so i could stretch my legs.
got dropped off at my mom’s, where i’d left my car parked. said my goodbyes to everyone i’d travelled with. mom had just returned from hanging out with my dad at the hospital, and she really hasn’t done a lot of cooking lately, so offered to go get me food.
on the flight, they’d fed us just after take off, and just before landing. food was crap. they ran out of the chicken option just as they got to me, so i was stuck with rice and zucchini, some weird cube of something that was neither vegetable or dessert, and something that wanted to be a cream puff, but wasn’t good. they doled out exactly one plastic cup of pepsi.
the latter meal was a cold sandwich, with italian ham, which is mostly fat, with some really crap apple juice, and another forgettable dessert.
so basically, i was starving, even though i’d also purchased oreos and a can of coke in between meals.
i was literally reeling from exhaustion, as i just can’t sleep on planes, so i’d been up for about twenty hours by then. told my mom, if she could just drive me to a fast food place, i’d be good. so the closest, quickest food was weinerschnitzel. quite a step down from all the pasta we’d been eating for the last couple of weeks.
anyway, felt somewhat better after that. chatted a bit, then went to bed.
next morning and today, have mostly been tired, but not crazy crazy jet lagged. i should keep the walking going, but just didn’t feel like climbing the nearest mountain/hill here in whittier. and it was almost completely fogged in around the house this morning anyway.
currently copying over about two-hundred and twenty-five plus gigs of pics from the trip, which will probably never be looked at more than once, but i’ll keep them anyway. better half, mom, and my sister all want to see them anyway.
still haven’t had time to go visit my dad in the hospital. better half needs to go the market, except he has overtime he is currently working on at home, and will still need to go to the office later, so i’ll be here watching his mom tonight.
i satisfied my in-n-out craving yesterday, and today od’d on guacamole. just not looking forward to work tomorrow, am a little sleepy, but resisting the urge to take a nap.
it’s good to be home.
back to a back end of a deluxe from the viejitos’ show last summer. in the shade, the details get a little hard to see, but there are some subtle pinstripes going on.
been a long time since i’ve seen a classic car that isn’t a fiat, bmw, or a vespa. not going to count the red fifty-six bel air that i saw uptown today, since that dude is always cruising uptown, and i’m over that car.
1953 chevy truck
almost midnight in florence, and my kid has found one way or another to get online and watch the dodger game. lol. would have thought the wine they drank at dinner would have knocked him out, but he’s all keyed up to watch the game.
no real plan for the morning, so sleeping in anyway. we ended the evening early with gelatos, but trying to upload pics for family to see just seems to make the time scream by, and now it’s later than i’d expected.
going to climb four-hundred-sixty-three steps tomorrow, to the top of the duomo—top of the cupola of this famous church—which is about double what we did today, so i need the rest.
posting this bad-ass truck, cuz it’s a beautiful color, and oh so shiny.
1951 mercury
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.
i’m in a mood today. so many things going on at work and home, and can only be in one place, dealing with one thing at a time. and there’s not enough time.
several deadlines today, yet i’m sitting here, waiting at the doctor’s office. for me.
my mom fell yesterday; probably should have made her go to get an xray on her butt, arm and noggin—everything she landed on, hitting the driveway. she seemed ok and of course said she was fine.
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don’t usually shoot or show these types of cars, but like i said, i’m in a mood. maybe something different can correct my attitude.
interesting paint job, no?
i’ve been waiting fifteen minutes for this windows update to finish, here at work. i actually have stuff to do, so this is slightly inconvenient....
ah, there it goes. only had to start a post on my phone to make it complete...blog blocker.
well, here’s a nice merc from last weekend at the park. interesting ghost flames in the paint.