what's up?

wanderlust

flipping through pictures from a few years back. looking for something interesting i may have overlooked, or just never got around to posting. cars that have been sold, or just don't go out to the shows anymore.

this one from two thousand thirteen, i think i've seen elsewhere, but i thought it was a decent shot.

..been crazy busy at work again. the holidays are definitely over. busier i get, the more my mind wanders, to memories of past road trips, future travel, pretty much anywhere but the office. even thoughts of what i will do when i get my house back from my kid—gutting it, repainting it, what furniture to get...

today, mostly thought of the trip to seattle last year, driving through the redwoods.

and every day, when i get on the freeway to go to work or heading home, when i get to my exit, i always have the briefest of thoughts to keep going, keep driving, get to somewhere different. i could buy clothes and whatever else i might need on the way.

and i would do it, except for these pesky responsibilities like a mortgage and a job, and oh ya, the better half. i'd have to stop and convince him to get in the car...so let's go. and he would have the same argument in his head. until he would call his sister to come and watch their mom...he would go...but not for any extended length of time.

one of these days...i'm going to do it. and call and say, "oops, i must have taken a wrong turn..."

missed mooneyes

i know, i know. should have been there. sorry, i was outta town. even managed to miss the whittier parade that passes outside the window.

back in whittier, watching the intersection. seeing my own parade of old chevys and a cadillac driving through going to who knows where. maybe uptown to the ceegar bar? maybe i'll wander down the street and see. those shots just end up on instagram.

couple more from the latin gents show. beauties, both.

was there at the end of the show. stayed for the awards, and the raffle. bought tickets, but didn't win anything. didn't need a tv anyway, though the cash would have been nice.

i see what i see

finally, the weekend. not too much going on car show-wise. some standard weekly shows. not sure if i'll go. probably should, as i'm out of practice again. can feel myself closing into my shell again. gotta get out to shows frequently to feel like i'm getting any better in my photography and/or getting out of that comfort zone they talk about.

got netflix playing in the background. watched a couple of stephen hawking shows, which were kind of interesting. how he explains the world and how we see things. we all see things differently. just ask my better half, he'll tell you about going out on photo shoots when we travel, and how i'll see stuff he just never noticed. is it his height, or just that he doesn't notice things i don't know. is it the difference between boys and girls and what catches our attention? don't know. just know it's fun to compare what we take when we go shooting in the same places.

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saw this bomb at the latin gents show. i don't think my pictures have captured what i saw. i'll have to try again if i see it.

loved the details—the engraved scrolling on the metal trim, the pinstriping, the paint—all good. not quite loving the window etching. did he do it himself? kinda ruins the perfection of the rest of it, but maybe it balances it out as well.

out of sorts

first, happy bday to my better half.

i gave him a woody.

the one from the pixar movie...i know what you're thinking... >:)

have had a very not feeling right weekend otherwise.

on friday, my better half walked five miles round trip, when he took his van in for service. ended up with a sore ankle, so he didn't want to go anywhere on saturday.

i stopped for about an hour and change at the latin gents show, then started feeling wobbly. probably because i needed to eat. weekends throw me off...i sleep in late, so i eat later than usual.

anyway, packed up and headed out, while seeing more cars arriving. considered going back later, more toward sunset, but just couldn't bring myself to drive back down there.

then today, there were a couple of shows i'd thought about going to, but, it's my better half's bday, and thought i'd just hang out with him and whatever he wanted to do.

this shot is one of the last couple i shot yesterday. couldn't resist that light and how it was falling through the trees. it just feels like fall. maybe that's why i feel weird...time to hibernate. i sure as heck don't feel like getting up at 4am and going to work tomorrow.

saved from an untimely crash

i was working on this picture a couple of days ago. i was about five minutes from calling it a day and posting it, and then wham, blue screen of death. shit.

i'd already put in a long day at work, sat in traffic for two hours in what should only be an hour drive, but is becoming a more typical evening drive. then to start playing with the pixels, and for it to bomb out at almost ten o'clock at night, just topped off my day and week.

going crazy at work, trying to meet multiple, overlapping deadlines, which is also par for the course, only more so with a redesign of monthly reports. also really lowering my energy to get to as many car shows after work as i used to like to be at.

thought about going to the broiler tonight, but after the drive home and being glued to an office chair and a car seat for hours, i just had enough fight in me to walk uptown for a slice of pizza.

there are a couple of cigar bars/drinking establishments, that i find more and more often frequented by owners of classic cars. tonight there was an old plymouth sitting in front of one of the wino bars. almost went in to find the owner, and ask if they'd be there if i went home and got my camera, but no. it will be back. if not another time, then maybe at the uptown show in august.

as i was saying at the beginning, i was afraid that this file was going to be corrupted by the computer crash, as has happened before, but shockingly, there was only a minor, fixable flaw. i liked the location, the sun setting behind the trees, but there was a decent breeze blowing the treetops a bit more than i like.

thinking of going to the show in rialto and/or the show at la habra high school this weekend. i wanna say there was somewhere else i was supposed to be, but it eludes me right now.

been busy

finally got a couple of hard drives and spent the weekend backing up stuff, getting ready to make room on my hard drive. plus it rained, so i skipped a couple of shows, assuming no one would go.

so, i'm still finishing up some back ups, but if its not raining tomorrow, i intend to check out a new show in el toro. i'm not quite sure why its starting, since there's still the one at fuddruckers at the same time. i've been away from it for a while, so maybe there's some drama going on with the organizers or the restaurant. maybe they intend to move it all over to the new one. i don't' know, but i'll check it out.

meanwhile, my better half's van has been having engine and/or electrical issues, and i have to drive him over to pick it up again in few minutes, so here's a quick post. it's a viejitos car. it's red. red's a bitch.

juicy

so i stayed home today because of my cough. been trying to do some real work, but the program that connects me to the company servers isn't seeing the servers. and the help(less) line to india couldn't figure it out either. so i've been sitting here all day doing what work i could via email, and expecting any time i had to step away from the computer, "bob" would call me to try and walk me through it again.

i'm sure they'll call me tomorrow, when i'm actually in the office, and it will be a moot point. doubt i'll try to work from home ever again. just isn't worth the aggravation.

so i've been putting final tweaks on this one in between monitoring emails. it is a beautiful car, but i really liked it best in this shot, though from the front the sunset was just beginning, and that is also pretty spectacular.

pretty, shiny things

another from the latin gents. i wanna say this belonged to the same guy that closed a bunch of car hoods last time i was at the show. and this time he was busily buffing the dust off this car before i got to it. i could totally be imagining it, but i like to humor myself sometimes. wish he would have moved the not so interesting sign further away, just for a few, but there you go. shot it as i found it.

fast food

this was a pretty nice convertible, again at the latin gents show. it looks black, but if you looked close in the right light, it's a deep, dark, blue. and so shiny, it really soaked up the refections.

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fast food implies crap food. well they try their best, at least you hope. you hope the food is real and not biomechanical by-products. would rather eat play-doh sometimes. i was given a handful of gift cards to crap food places i frequent on my weird work hours.

the habit has recently been popping up all over. first time i had it was at their original establishment in santa barbara last year. wow, it was good; ate there twice in one weekend. then had it somewhere else, still good. then a few months ago, stopped by one in san luis obispo. uh. college town, college students...i gave them a little slack on the quality.

a new one opened up in whittier not too long ago. first burger there was pretty good, but its been spotty since. tonight, i had a salad. it was awesome in santa barbara. it was average in san luis obispo. this one was soggy. instead of slices of avocados, a scoop of "fresh" guac. i had thousand island dressing, which definitely wasn't a name brand, if not just ketchup mixed with stuff already in the store. i ate the chicken and the bacon bits, and an occaisonal bite of wet lettuce and blue cheese bits. am i just catching a bad batch? or have the bean counters caught up with the success, and started cutting back on quality?

will they go the route of other food chains, eventually adding the brass bell to ring for (dis)satisfaction, with the employees like trained pavlovian seals to respond "thank you!" i always substitute "eff you!"

fortunately, i still have a full card for in-n-out, and they mostly are pretty good, about 95% of the time.

that time of year again

baby, it's cold outside. skies are spectacular. it's time for rain. and it's time for the tree carcasses. randomly discarded, used up christmas trees. arbitrarily dumped anywhere and everywhere. sure, this week, people are dutifully putting them, untrimmed, out with the trash.

then there are the people who make that extra effort, who actually take the time to put them in their car to find some lonely deathbed to toss them out on. usually just sitting by the roadside, but i did see one jauntily propped up in a bus shelter corner, still attached to the stand. wonder where it was going...

spent the morning at the honda dealer, for an oil change. of course, they found something else...back brakes almost gone, so replace them and resurface the rotors. never get out of there for less than $300. i suppose when it starts being more than $500 a pop, i'll think about getting a new car.

anyway, i managed to make it to the latin gents show yesterday. arrived a little late, stayed a couple of hours. probably left right when the light was getting good, but i thought i was meeting up with people for an evening at disneyland. i got there, but they didn't, but that's another story.

parking lot was full of chevys, mostly bombs. i was happy. lots of clubs too. i took a bunch of pictures, and just hoped my hard drive would fit them. it did, so i have a few good ones i'll post over the next few days. i can probably do about thirty more pics, then i'm done until i save up for a new drive. blah blah. whine whine.