Goodbyes

I took this photo of my co-worker saying goodbye to a friend tonight.

She is moving to another department at a different location after today and we were out celebrating and saying our goodbyes, however temporary. She's been with our group for many years, and we're not sure what the place will be like without her. I'm going to miss her very much. She can be gruff and hardheaded but I think this photo shows something else about her, the part I'll miss most.

The Internet and Experience

I don't think the internet is very good for me. I've spent the last decade bumbling around on it and haven't really noticed anything good come of it yet. It's kind of like spending a weekend watching a whole TV season on DVD: by the time you're done, you don't remember much. You had no time to digest it. Plus you wasted the whole weekend on it.

I'm wondering if it isn't better to have information doled out more slowly, so your brain can absorb it, reflect on it, do something with it. Books seem that way. And going to see a performance or play too. I just seem to remember getting more out of my experiences before I could substitute the internet, or get email, or watch TV on demand. Things seemed richer in their scarcity.

Now that you can find out anything and contact anyone and see anything essentially immediately and without discretion or investment, it feels a little emptier.

Or maybe I just doing it wrong....

Dizzy with Change

So, I haven't been feeling too well this week. Kind of dizzy and nauseous all the time, I actually had to go home Monday morning and then slept for another 7 hours until 6PM. Then of course I've had trouble sleeping at night. I've felt a little better the last two days, so hopefully I'm on the mend from whatever mysterious ailment has derailed me.

At work, two of my cohorts left our group in the last week (well tomorrow will be the last day for the second of them) and that's actually causing some stress. We had a pretty tight group of eight and now we're down to six rather suddenly. I'm sure we'll replace the two departures quickly, but it's still a loss and possibly the reason that I'm out of sorts.

Who knows? I'm off to have breakfast for dinner now so that should have some sort of positive effect at least....

25 Years

Here are my friend Jill and I 20 years earlier at a church youth group retreat. We've been friends for a long time.

Here we are over Christmas last year during a visit at a Starbucks near me. We both seem to be smiling more in this photo. I'm just thicker on the bottom and thinner on top. Jill is the same. She says High School was miserable for her. It was for me too. But we did have each other and I think I can see that in the first photo.

Old Photos

I spent the afternoon going through a bunch of old slides and negatives I had scanned back in 2004 and forgotten about. Most of them were from my High School and college days. Contemplating all these photos and the memories they were bringing up as I was went through them, edited them, and uploaded them to Flickr led to a revelation for me on the nature of memory.

Most of the photos were of church youth group friends (I loved church more than High School) and close college friends, but I found some pictures that other people had sent me of friends and myself from back then. Those were doubly strange as the perspective was totally in the 3rd person, I hadn't taken or seen them before. I at least had existing memories of the pictures I had taken.

The overall affect was a strange mix of nostalgia, joy, and loss. I found myself wishing I could exist at all points in my life at once so that I could go back and forth from moment to moment and enjoy them over again. And at that thought I realized that's what memories allow and that's why I like them so much: they allow me to time travel, and it turns out time travel is both heartbreaking and joyful. It may also explain why I'm unwilling to throw anything away.

Also, just having to take a tour of my hair styles through the course of the last 3 decade was pretty painfully funny. If you're ever having a bad hair day, just take a gander at some of my High School era haircuts on Flickr. I think I actually used a helmet to cut my own hair in one of them.

Ahhh, Sunday Morning

Tunes, coffee, the web.... who need church?

I'm just your average INFP, otherwise know as "The Dreamer"

So here are my Personality Type and Multiple Intelligences test results from MyPersonality.info. Not sure what it means but my bars are a lot shorter than some others I've seen so I'm a little worried. Dreamer and Visionary don't sound so bad though....

Pain Averted (for now)

Well today I had my very first root canal. It wasn't as bad as I had imagined it, 2 hours of progressively louder and louder drilling, going deep into my jawbone, the smell of grinding bone and infection hanging like death in the air above me as I lay strapped to a 1920's vintage dental chair.

It was only an hour. The drilling was over in 20 minutes and the endodontist (yes, that's right endodontist) even put his hand on my shoulder while he gently described the procedure as if to comfort me before pulling out that immense needle with all the novocain in it. After I was numbed-up, I relaxed a little and a lot of it was just tediously waiting while he cleaned out the inside of my tooth (teeth are hollow, who knew?).

It wound up costing a small fortune but hopefully dental insurance will actually be something of a benefit this time like my employer keeps telling me it is.

In other news, it's Friday. I spent 3 hours at Target. Tried to get a new LG enV2 phone only to be thwarted by Verizon on two attempts. And missed dinner and had to eat by myself.

The photo of my father-in-law's fiberglass elephant is done. 2 hours to edit it. I need to buy some real lights and a nice backdrop- it takes forever to remove all the shadows and color casts when you try to improvise with just sheets and household lamps.

It's about 3 feet tall in real life. Trippy right? It has a tail too, made out of twine but covered in gray fiberglass except for the last inch which is frayed.

Well I'm done....

Monday

I'm in for a real 5 day week after several weeks of non-standard 3 and 7 day runs. The weekend started well with my extra Saturday on Friday, and I did manage to get out and about on both Saturdays, but somehow wound up sleeping until 4 PM on the second one. So I'm only going to count it as a 2 1/2 day weekend rather than the 3 day weekend I was hoping for. I actually got up on Saturday and did some stuff but felt like someone had slipped me a rhoofy (how the hell do you spell that?), I could barely keep my eyes open. It felt good to sleep so who cares.

Sunday was Father's day and I got to do what I wanted, which was pretty much nothing. I tried to go out and take some photographs in the woods but it had rained the night before and I nearly lost my life to swarms of mosquitos. Seriously, I wound up running through the woods, waving my hands in the air, trying to escape them.

Tonight I had to take some pictures of a sculpture for my father in law, he's entering it in an exhibit coinciding with the Republican convention. It's a gray elephant standing on a big red R holding a blue ball on it's trunk. Reminded me of Dumbo a bit. He made it from fiberglass over different materials so it does have that Disney sort of look, it's trippy. He's usually much more morose. The photos seem to have turned out alright, it was an improvised setup with a giant sheet taped up behind it and my two "assistants" holding lights with diffusers for me.

That was actually my wife's Father's day gift to him, my services. Her mom made us dinner, which for me turned out to be Ceasar salad, butter soup with corn, mashed potatos, and bread. They had chicken, 2 kinds. Now I just sound bitter...

Lists and List of Things

I've always made lists, specifically of stuff I wanted. As a child, I actually learned to read by going through catalogs rather than books. My first lists were about toys, usually compiled in anticipation of a birthday or Christmas. Later this habit/compulsion would lead to lists of photographic equipment, audio electronics, books, music, movies, recording studio equipment, and anything else I was fantasizing about at the moment. Most of my lists never led to purchases, they were aimed at an ideal, not meant to be realistic, a form of escapism. For some reason, the path to my dreams was always guided by what I would need to get there. To be a photojournalist, I need this camera, these lenses, etc. To start backpacking the Rockies, I'd need this pack, this tent, and this sleeping bag.

A few years ago, after discovering eBay, I did indulge myself and essentially purchased everything I had on a list of my from back in college. It was what I considered a reasonable stereo then, completely beyond my means, but reasonable nonetheless: a Rega Planar 3 turntable, a Conrad-Johnson PV-10 preamplifier, a B&K amplifier, and Snell Type A speakers. Now that it was all 20 years older and available on eBay, I couldn't resist. I assumed it might cure me of my list-mania but it actually confirmed something for me, my list was dead on back then- it was a killer stereo. I even added some items from more recent lists, a Rega Planet 2000 CD player and some Kimber Kable and Audioquest cables, and found myself sitting in disbelief at the sound it was making, it was even better than the stuff I had lusted for in audiophile stores over the last 2 decades. Audio nirvana.

So this left me befuddled, as I'm now to believe that if I could actually afford all these things I put on all my lists, it in fact would make me happier. In fact, I also bought a camera I had wanted back in the 80's, a Nikon F4s and some manual focus lenses I had pined for then, and was met with the same result: joy and satisfaction.

I need money, fast....

Friday Summary

Well, I did manage to get out with the dogs, do some shopping, run errands, and I spent a good amount of the afternoon lounging around at the library. No photos as I had planned, but I was looking to take pictures of trees and it was too windy anyway. It certainly wasn't a wasted day. Now I just have to make sure I don't go and waste my second Saturday and I'll get my full three day weekend in.

It's the small victories I'm after.

My Friday is Saturday!

Well I had to work last weekend but now I get to take Friday off and get double-Saturdays. I always seem to waste Saturday so three day weekends are really the only way I ever get a real Saturday or a full two day weekend at all.

That should be enough but of course I've made a secret pledge not to waste the first of my two Saturdays this time. So I've made great plans to get out and take some photos early, walk the dogs later, get some exercise in between, do some shopping, run errands, and everything else that I usually put the word "should" in front of.

We'll see how I do but I'm already feeling amused by misguided sense of "shouldiness" so I don't think I'll take it too hard if I don't make it through my list. I do want to take some photos so I can put a book together at blurb.com and enter a photo book contest by mid-July. I have some ideas I think are worth pursuing so I'll be happy if I just get to that. Check out blurb.com if you've ever thought you "should" write a book- you'll find yourself literally a download and $20 away from doing it before you even know it. It's rather inspiring.