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topsy turvy

this past week or so has just been a roller coaster, and all i can do is just hold on. i know you will either be relieved or terribly disappointed that i won’t spill details here—it’s still a pretty sensitive situation, and i suppose i overshare enough when it has to do with me.

apart from that time bomb, my better half has loaded windows ten on my computer, but i lost all my favorite settings in my programs, so maybe my pictures will all be shit for a while. last few i fiddled with today just seem really dark, though my better half disagrees. he says he can hook up my old drive and for settings i saved, there should be files i can just copy over; just haven’t been here enough to get it done. so excuse my pics while i just wing it for a while.

i did get out to the black widows car club barbecue or picnic or whatever last week. waited long enough other cars did eventually show up. stayed longer than expected, only because there was a breeze and shade under trees. otherwise, just the ugly light of midday, and the sun relentlessly shining on my roasting arms. forgot the sunblock again. hate that greasy stuff.

owner of this lovely said there was still another layer of paint and/or a good buff to do on this new paint job. really nice, and different, no? little bit of pinstripes, little airbrush, some flames, and a lot of glitter—stood out anyways.

fucksticks

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.

good to be home

got back from vegas yesterday morning. nice drive, though i hate waking up that early, but had a rental car to return by one o’clock.

briefly thought, i could briefly stop at one of a few shows on the way, in cucamonga, fontana, and places i would normally not get out to, but then thought better of it. the image of my better half on my shoulder saying, “no, kathy. you’ll never get back on time…” vs the devil on the other shoulder saying, “fuck it. work will pay for the additional hours overdue.” i didn’t, but wished i had anyway.

as it was, i stopped by the house and dropped off my bags, then had to go out and get some lunch for my mother-in-law. better half would have done it, but since his car doesn’t have a functioning air conditioner, except the roll-down kind, i thought i’d do him a favor. sort of felt like a hi and bye though.

brought the food back, and headed to drop off the car. got it back with about an hour to spare, so that part worked out fine. the guy there apologized again about calling me earlier in the week to search the car for the previous renter’s passport. turns out the guy had cleaned out a bag of trash when he dropped the car off. the other employee remembered seeing a bag in the trash can, which they checked, and found the passport after all that trouble. the guy was fortunate the trash hadn’t been picked up yet, and they overnighted to him, and they assume he was able to fly out, as he hadn’t called back.

then i called an uber to get a ride to the shop for my car. better half would have driven me, but i thought it was such a short distance from the rental place, it made no sense. took the drive about eight minutes to get there. watching the app, i knew he was hitting every red light on the way. he confirmed that was the case, and that his day was filled with red lights and closed freeway on-ramps that weren’t showing up on his phone. so my trip was a relatively easy one.

dropped me at the curb, and the guy i was supposed to deal with had the day off. they’d had my car all week, so the other guy basically said no charge, and had the car brought out. they even washed it, and had time to get the brake dust off the wheels. great. long overdue.

decided to drive to la habra to pick up some honeybaked ham for my mother-in-law. about ten minutes that direction, the check engine light came on again. fuck. called the shop back and was placed on eternal hold. got to the ham place, and finally hung up and got my order. figured i’d call again, and just start heading back to the shop while on hold.

finally got through to the same dipshit that gave me the car earlier and told him the light was back on. if they could just reaffirm that it was perfectly normal for it to come on for a period of time after a valve job, i’d be ok with that, but they don’t seem confident or competent enough to say that. i ask if i can again drop it off, and get a loaner car, as the other guy had offered, but this one said they didn’t have any. asked if the car was running ok, which it seemed to be. he asked if i could bring it in on monday or tuesday. i can’t, i have to have a car, i have to get to work and a doctor’s appointment, and at that point i gave up on being polite, and might have let some profanity hit his delicate ears.

so, monday, i’m going to drive it down to work, and if i get stuck on the freeway, will either have it towed all the way back or just take it to the closest shop AAA recommends and have them pay for the repair. fuckers. maybe i’ll head to my mom’s later, and take the surface streets. longer drive, but if i break down, less stressful for me.

an unreliable car, also means, i’m not going to a show today, though i saw only two days ago, a flyer for the legends car show by the sea, which i would have been interested in going to…you guys need to work on your advertising…i hope you got some cars to show up.

now my better half is making fun of me writing up my story for the day…”and there i was in vegas…”

roll with it

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.

——-

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.

power on, garth

well that didn’t last long. power back on just under two hours. so much for my game. just posting to end the game. back to work on today’s pics if my files aren’t corrupted.

——-

bike from the bomb club show at santa anita in june. fortunately, i shot low enough, that you can’t see the little car that was parked a bit behind it.

got the blues

missed the imperials’ show this year. dug up this pic from a couple of years ago for tonight. i remember there was a pair of impalas up at the front, but irritatingly roped off, so you couldn’t get a shot without the blockade there. more of a keep off / don’t touch the cars move, and i don’t blame them – they were pretty nice cars.

liked that they used blue lights on a blue car.

no idea where i might end up this weekend; all depends on how hot it is and what time i wake up…it’s been a tough week at work so i’m kind of burned out. gotta listen to my bod. probably will stay close to home.

would have been my dad’s birthday today. missing him extra.

sad and tired, so i guess i’ll go to bed.

hellraiser

glad this week is over. more overtime, but i think i just may have caught up to today’s deadlines. new onslaught scheduled for monday. i’m in no hurry, but weekends always seem to race by, only to find myself negotiating with the alarm on monday morning, or any morning lately, for just ten more minutes.

have had some hours off to go take some tests at the doctor. trying to figure out why i passed out in april. being very thorough, because i still feel wobbly a bit most days.

this week, they strapped something resembling a bathing cap on my head, that had holes in it in various places. these holes were then each poked and wiggled and scratched into my scalp with a large, somewhat blunt needle.

i imagined them jamming a needle into each hole, my face covered with a grid pattern…

said needle, did scare me a bit when i initially walked into the room and saw it sitting on the counter, atop the clean medical hankie, along with some other odds and ends.

nah, was just used to apply some sort of conducive gel, so that this lovely cap could zap electical waves into my head to brain waves.

the medical technician did not say, “prisoner, electricity will now be passed into your body until you are dead, in accordance with the state law. may god have mercy on your soul.” i totally would. that or, “is that the best you can do?” which is what the figure in an electric chair, that my better half gifted me long ago, said when activated, then commenced jiggling noisily.

i had a couple of little nippular looking hickies on my forehead for about an hour after, to which my better half said, “your horns are finally coming out of your head.” lol. i argued it involved an octopus.

the rest of my head has just been sore and itchy for a few days.

as they say, no news is good news.

—————

beautiful fleetline at the uptown show, much too early in the morning last week.

light sprinkles

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.

———-

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…

hammered

sorry i’ve been away from home for a while, and away from my computer. finally had a chance to go home for a night on wednesday. got dishes washed (better half has been sick and some had piled up), and had my dinner. packed my bag for the next day or two away.

finally, i was able to get to my computer. the power button is failing, but it started. had to do some tweaks to some artwork for my boy, who has quit his job and has decided to partner up with a fellow grad to start their own law firm. lemme know if you need an attorney or two—they specialize in personal injury and taxes, but can also do the usual contracts, wills, etc. that need legal attention.

that took some time out of the evening, but finally i could get back to my pictures.

i’d been to chicano park a couple of weeks ago, and took a couple thousand pics in the five hours that i was there. still sifting through those, and have only posted a couple.

last weekend, while most people were at the la puente kiwanis show, i was out at the front sight car show in diamond bar. apart from enjoying smaller shows because they aren’t as crowded, i was mostly there because the owner of this here car asked me to stop by. it was for a good cause…in honor of a veteran who had committed suicide, and to offer help to other veterans to prevent more joining him in the afterlife.

actually, most of the people i did talk to said they were there because tudy had asked them, or otherwise twisted their arms to be there. he’s a good guy, they were happy to stop by, but generally all were on their way to other shows shortly thereafter—la puente or one of several high school fundraisers.

back to the picture…let me explain. i’d spent almost a couple of hours fiddling with this car, getting the color as i liked it, spit shining the chrome, and adding my copyright to it. i saved the file, and had started an export so i could post it…

we live in an older place in whittier. his mother gets cold, so there’s a space heater near her bed. then the tvs are on in her room and the front room. i’m working at my computer with a fan running next to me, cuz i just overheat all the time. better half probably had his computer on, even though i think he had been napping.

his mom gave up coffee, and is now a big tea drinker. she sips at the same cup of tea for several hours, requiring multiple reheats through the day. not my cup of tea but whatever.

in the back of my mind i register the buttons on the microwave beeping as he punches in the time. he hits start and wanders off into the laundry room. thought nothing of it, as i’m overheating as usual. did not realize his mom had gotten chilled again, and had cranked up the heater.

yet again, the perfect storm of me saving out a picture and him overloading the circuits, and boom blows a fuse, and the lights go out.

he ain’t no dummy, that man o’mine. my computer has a battery backup. but either i’ve got the plugs on the wrong sockets, or it isn’t working, and my computer crashes. it used to happen so often, and the profuse profanity that would come out of me at high volume would make any sailor proud. now i just shrug, wait for him to reset the breaker, and turn the thing back on.

yup the file wasn’t done exporting, and both the export and the file i’d just spent precious time polishing were corrupted. the export wouldn’t open at all, and my source file was now flattened and only three-fourths there. just black at the bottom. so here it is, with a little embellishment, of what would have been a lovely picture of tudy’s chevy. not sure if i’ll rework it from scratch. i have so many other cars to look forward to sharing. oh well.

gotta kick that battery backup this weekend. one good thing i noticed though, was that the power switch seemed to be working properly again. maybe it got hammered the last time the system crashed, and this one cleared the problem up.

dammit anyway.

jaded

veteran’s show last spring over at rose hills. the “mayor’s” car, again. he always wonders why i take pictures of his car every time i see it. if i didn’t shoot cars that i’ve seen before, repeatedly, there would be far fewer cars for me to shoot around here. same guys go to the same shows, driving the same cars. but there’s always some variable that has changed, most obviously, the light and/or the location.

i’d never been to a car show in a cemetery before, so come on, that’s way different. no idea what those buildings/sculptures in the background are, but it was kind of cool, no?

my dad got out of the hospital yesterday. after three months of bland, diabetic diet food, he had my mom take him out for everything he had been craving: pho soup of some sort, ice cream shake, and diet pepsi, for starters.

this morning he was whining that the food in the fridge tasted funny and/or was out of date. reminded him that mom had spent most of the last few months driving back and forth to sit with him every day, so she really hadn’t done much shopping. pointed out the egg nog he was complaining about, was in fact, still good until the end of the month. it just tastes nasty, because…egg nog. ick.

this evening, i asked my mother-in-law if she would like me to get her something uptown. usually mentioning where i was going, leads her to remember something she used to order. tonight, instead of just california grill spaghetti, she wanted spaghetti with marinara, so i was going to have to drive out to a different restaurant.

went out to lascari’s. figured i’d just get lasagna. got mine for there; hers to go. most restaurants will hold off on the to go order, but no, the waiter brought it out with my dish.

the food there was always pretty good. is pretty good. it’s just that, after going to italy, it’s not the same. told my better half that the lasagna at the sit-down restaurant here, is on par with a fast food lasagna over there. just not very flavorful. my homemade stuff is better.

mother-in-law is happy as a clam. her spaghetti is exactly how she remembered and was craving. meanwhile, as my co-worker said the other day, i’ll continue to dream of gelatto…