sunday

chevy deluxe

made it out to the swap meet last week. not being in the area anymore makes it harder to rock out of bed even earlier to get to shows anymore. better half solved that problem and put us up in a hotel the night before, just a few blocks away. we followed a couple of classic cars around the backside of the fairgrounds, and then around the side to the public entrance.

i guess he figured i needed to get out and do something fun. well, he also wanted to see if there were parts available for his car, not that he’d know what he’s looking for. he makes fun of me, as for as many times as we’ve been to the swap meet in the past, i’ve never really made it over the parts side of the show…just always in with the cars, shooting pics. it’s what i do.

anyway, we got there a bit after the gates opened. bundled up, as the temp was in the upper thirties, i think. i always ponder whether to wear a jacket, much less a coat, as i overheat, then would have to carry the thing around or take back to the car, which is just a waste of time and perfectly good light.

with the sun still a glimmer on the horizon, i was just warm enough after hiking over to the show area, that i briefly considered taking the coat off. i guess it’s just as well i didn’t. standing there taking longer exposures, i did sort of feel the chill.

as the sun started to rise, this beauty started to glow.

i have a bunch of new pictures, and not a lot of time to play with them. usual story.

slipped

1957 chevy bel air

i remember this back end from the viejitos show in anaheim. i was there super early, before the club members even showed up. this was one of the first few that morning.

i do like the years with the big fins at low angles. i should have pulled in closer and distorted that thing more. maybe another show.

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been at home taking care of myself. slipped and fell in a puddle of water and landed right on my butt. just in time for xmas.

was going to go to ramble on the ranch in temecula this past weekend, but unfortunately, i wouldn’t have been able to lift my bag and tripod. my back is sore sore sore. skipped it, and didn’t even get out to see the grandkid out there either. :(

they tell me nothing is broken, just bruised bones, and will take time to heal.

mostly hanging around home or at my mom’s. took her out to dinner yesterday for her bday. happy bday mom!

trailer of dreams

holidays coming, my least favorite time of the year. but maybe i’ll find time to post a few more images more often.

helped the better half sift through storage this morning, to pull out the boxes of xmas decorations—from the back of the storage unit—of course. jammed my thumb helping to shove the perinnial, ancient xmas tree into my back seat. bent the nail back a bit, and now have an aching bruise going on the end under the nail. so adding that to my list of why i don’t want to bother with holidays.

makes my better half feel happy to decorate, but the pain involved wrapping the five- to ten-thousand lights on the damn thing sucks. guess he plans on the toy story theme this year, so it will also be covered with toys.

it does look good when it’s done, but the process makes me want to find some way to be able to throw it as is in a box every year. no way we could, though…the lights make it too heavy to even move. i’d consider just leaving it up year round, but our front room is too small here.

anyway, my mind is drifting to past and future trips. i think i’ve officially attained burn out at work yet again, but with the holidays, the work load is expected to be light through to january.

saw this truck full of project cars in october, out in seligman, arizona. the driver, who was across the street, spotted me shooting pics of his rig. he walked up and noticed i had a “real” camera. he was cool. said he and his brother—who had another rig full of these cars around the corner—were heading to southern california, delivering project cars to eager owners.

hope to see some of these at shows someday, but i’d never recognize them, probably.

out of touch

1939 chevrolet master deluxe

hello. just to be dull and repetitive, super busy at work, so nothing too much interesting to write about just now. back behind the orange curtain, leaves nothing but either souped-up hot rods or packards fixed up to showroom perfection. basically, i’m jonesing for the classics.

lots of changes at work, with people leaving, fewer joining. big workload. probably most people dos-si-do-ing to better employment options for a while. working half at the office and half at home sort of does suck, but better than all at the office.

yet, i still see no time to get to any shows for a few weeks. i’ve yet to set up my computer at home still, so there’s that problem. i think i’m just burned out from work, and just can’t.

flipping through some oldies, and found this shot from a show three years ago in montebello, which i missed today. mmm. master deluxes.

benefit show for the christian school, it usually fills the front and back parking lots.

i’d have gotten there when they are still setting up, and the sun barely rising. shoot the cars in the street, then inside the fence as it filled up. outta there by ten, when it would get too hot.

oh, and the pancakes…let’s just say, not my favorite, the one year i ate them.

i also popped or strained my leg at this show once too, so it kinda gives me the heebeejeebees if i think about it. made it hard to walk for a while. probably just pulling the camera bag into or out of my trunk did it. i dunno. the thing is kinda heavy when it’s loaded up.

hoping to get to a ruby’s show, or even the wednesday show in norwalk in the next couple of weeks. promised someone i’d shoot their car, but they didn’t show up last time i was there back in may.

i might have to do jury duty in santa ana, so i’d be halfway there already. i do not miss that afternoon drive…

bird feeder

1936 chevy master deluxe

i’m sitting here waiting on a delivery my kid ordered to the wrong address. the people on the hotline were too lazy to do their jobs, and didn’t want to bother changing the delivery location, so there we are.

out the front window, i have a hummingbird feeder. initially, it was very popular with the birds.

then i bought a new mix of food. not so many birds. then another brand, same.

there’s a cat, that likes to sit on the edge of the porch and watch the feeder intently. the dog barks at the cat everyday,

they went away for a while. my work day was a little more dull.

then i started mixing my own bird food with recipes from the internet. and i’ve found one they like. basically sugar water. so what i’m figuring, hummingbirds are just tiny little diabetics. or sugar addicts.

was confirmed this week that we’ll be required to be back in the office next month. i’ll miss the little flying spastics, the barking dog, and the cat that likes to pee in the neighbor’s planter early each morning. that neighbor is an asshole, so my hero, the cat.

i need to go shopping. i hate my old work clothes. i need shoes. i hate shopping. this will not be fun. i’ll miss working in my jammies with messy hair.

i had cut my hair the last time they said we’d go back to the office, then everything shutdown before we did. maybe i should cut my hair again…

i work late, because the work can’t wait, and my better half is still living in whittier.

they gave us a second computer, so i could still do work from home if needed.

better half gets to work from home permanently. he’s moving here next month, so the timing is great. i go back, and he stays home. sort of jealous.

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watched this beauty drive up and drop down. waited for people to move along to get a decent shot. it’s all right, i guess.

new camera. color is a little off, so i guess the color balance is a bit out of whack.

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these delivery boys are almost out of their delivery window. i guess i’ll hurry up and keep waiting.

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update: they just called. almost didn’t answer because of another situation. their truck broke down and had to reschedule. [shocker] did it really, now, or did you just not want to deliver at five o’clock? day wasted, sort of.

right. i’m off to whittier then. ttfn.

half gone

1938 chevy master deluxe

my company office was closed for the week. so, half-way through a pseudo vacation.

had to take better half’s car back to the repair shop. after everything they did to the car on monday, some type of liquid puddled out from under the car yesterday. and now it’s stuck there until friday, while they wait for the right parts.

hoping to see my grandkid tomorrow, supposedly stopping by my mom’s house. who knows where i’ll end up tomorrow for dinner, not that it’s any big deal. i doubt better half will go to my mom’s with me, as my daughter’s doberman doesn’t seem to like him. at least last time, the first time they met, the dog wanted to make a meal out of his crotch.

anyway, happy early thanksgiving, in case i’m away from my puter tomorrow.

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saw this car on the outskirts of the toy drive. i want to say it said tovars on it somewhere, but probably from the back, and i didn’t shoot that.

plenty of scratches on that paint; i wonder what story it would tell.

change of plan

1954 chevy

saw this chevy at the latin gents toy drive the other day. I think it belongs to the vintage ladies car club, if i remember correctly. the lady’s husband caught me on the way back to my car, to ask if i’d shot it, so yes, i guess i did.

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better half has been doing so many extra hours lately. he’d expected to work all weekend, and had gone out and done his shopping super early in the morning on saturday. found himself five cans of lysol or some type of cleaning thing, which somehow makes him feel like the king of the world. he got his car washed. he called about cars without permits on our block and watched the tickets get put on the windshields.

when he logged on to start work and checked his mail about six a.m., he saw that the sob had been cancelled; stop all work. almost immediately, his body was telling him to sleep. he called me first, at my mother’s, where i’d spent the night.

he was telling me the thing had been cancelled, he was getting paid for half a day anyway, his weekend was free, he planned to relax. i half jokingly asked where should we go? then he was all about it. he started looking for hotel deals while i wrapped up whatever it was i was doing at my mom’s.

he calls back and says there are great deals in san diego, but covid is rampant there. same goes for san fran, and really he only has one night to get out of town. we finally settled on solvang, since i’d gone there the weekend his mother passed, looking for a getaway that wouldn’t be crowded with people like a big city. he hadn’t been there in years.

our favorite hotel was sold out. other hotels were too run down or had bad ratings. he finally found one that was recently renovated.

i got home an hour later, threw a change of clothes in a bag, and we were on our way. for the two and a half hour drive from whittier, we never turned the radio on. we talked the whole way there. anything and everything. we haven’t had a lot of time just us, no work, no distractions. it was nice.

solvang was busier than i’d expected, but you can still avoid the people if you want to. after checking into our hotel, the sun starting to go down, we headed over to tower pizza. we hadn’t had it since the last time we’d been there together, as it was already closed when i passed through town months ago.

we took it back to the room, as we didn’t want to sit outside. i was wearing a long sleeve jacket, but also the shorts i’d been wearing that morning, and the temp was dropping quickly down to the lower forties pretty quickly. the pizza was so good. better than i remembered it.

we thought about going out for a walk around town, but decided it would be too cold.

he fell asleep, i sat in the big bath tub of hot water for an hour and watched tv until i got tired.

in the morning, we took that walk around the town. he wanted to shop for xmas gifts for the little kids in our life. my sister wanted some handmade chocolate stuff, and after waiting for the store to open, to be told it was already sold out, was kind of a bummer. guess i need to go back. that and he has a cuckoo clock that needs repairing from the store where he bought it. if you have to, you have to… ; )

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we stopped at in-n-out on whittier boulevard before we got home. spied a group of classic cars at a rite aid parking lot. better half wanted to turn around. no cameras, what’s the point. looked like a meeting anyway.

sitting in my car in the ino parking lot twenty minutes later, enjoying our food and watching the traffic on the boulevard, we see lots of classic cars driving by. those same group of cars too. at least one was from the bomb club. i guess that there is something going on at montebello park, which is not far away. better half says we might as well go look, but i say no, i don’t have my cameras.

i joked about going back after we got home, but as it was almost four in the afternoon, and i was tired from driving, i didn’t. but i saw you guys, so i was happy.

toy test

so i bought a couple of external hard drives the other day. better half said they were on sale at the lowest price he’d seen in a while. perhaps he was hinting that i should buy my own, instead of taking his.

i haven’t shot much in the last eight months or so, and had recently spent a lot on our trip across the country, and then getting an oil leak fixed on my car, so wasn’t too interested in spending more. but i did finally, which shocked my better half immensely.

as usual for cracking open a new drive, he said i should test them, meaning copying files on and off them, shutting them down and starting them up. i didn’t want yet another copy of files i already had, so finally got my butt up out of the lazy boy chair, and out to a car show.

i’d seen flyers online lately, but finally decided to go see what would turn up at the gents’ show. didn’t know if it would just be a drive thru thing, and therefore, nothing for me to shoot, or as the flyer noted, cars were welcome to stay and hang out.

i needed to get lunch and put gas in my car anyway, so figured i’d drive over and see what was up.

a lot of cars was what i found. hadn’t seen their show this busy for over a year, so was pleasantly surprised.

promised my better half i’d keep the mask on, but wow, it was difficult. the past week had been so cold, then today, in the eighties. so, i had to move quickly, because i can’t take the heat much, and i was wearing jeans.

was greeted warmly by a member of the latin gents. saw several guys i hadn’t seen in a while. everyone was in a good mood.

did i mention i’d chopped off my hair again? was half-way down my back, and just getting thrashed by seat belts, and hair-ties, so i had it cut to just below my shoulders. went back to red too. i started to imagine that i was sweating so much that the red was dripping down my face. it wasn’t, but it should have. haven’t decided if i should go shorter, but didn’t want to look too much like a karen, so i’ll just leave it for a while.

saw this green truck in the corner. i don’t remember if i’d shot it before, so waited for some guys to move out of the way so i could take some pics. it belonged to one of the guys, and he hurried to move a towel and some junk to the back of the truck, out of my shot. thank you. nice truck, nice guys.

after that, i really started to skip cars i would have otherwise have shot. hadn’t had lunch yet, and the heat was making my head swimmy. and the damn mask didn’t help.

woulda shoulda stayed longer, but headed out instead. blasting the air conditioner, and hoping tomorrow will be cold again.

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hard drives are working so far…

not much happening

1948 chevy fleetline

missing a few shows coming up. think i will be needing a new camera soon. don’t really like the sony e-mount cameras, but my big a-mounts are supposed to be discontinued. really hate the 6300 i have in my bag. mostly the user, but the glass i generally have on it is average.

taking a short vacation from the job. better half’s first get away in five years. thirteenth anniversary for us. bosses hope we come back.

not a lot of signal here in the middle of nowhere, so currently probably just chatting with myself. better half has earphones plugged in and actually posting on his blog again. been so long since we’ve traveled together, combined with he can’t understand what i say half the time, makes for some awkward misunderstandings. whatever. still having fun.

hoping to post some new pics from the road, but for now, here’s an old one from my archives. fleetline from the oc viejitos show last year. fewer cars showed up, which didn’t matter this early anyway. miss the morning light. i should really get my ass outta bed before the sun on weekends and go shooting again.