Month: December 2022

Resolutions

Anyone out there making New Years Resolutions this year? 2020-2022 will be remembered as a non stop avalanche of suck. Is that enough to make you not look toward the imminent new year as something to be endured rather than something to strive for?

I’m not making any New Years Resolutions. Mainly because the obligatory go to is to lose weight and if I lose as much in 2023 as I did in 2022 I’d end up weighing something like 40 pounds and that, dear readers, would not look very good on me.

I could resolve to get the band back together or to write more songs or to practice guitar more. None of those things really meet the spirit of the thing though, you know?

So yeah, no 2023 resolutions for this guy here. I think it’s more appropriate to just duck and cover and ride out the coming shit storm.

Happy New Year. Two hours and 24 minutes to go.

New Years Eve Visit

The kids just left. They got here about 1:00 and stayed for four hours. That’s more than I expected. I’m very pleased. I got to visit my mother and my father today too. That was tough, but I’m glad I was able to do it.

A nice big chunk of the packing has already happened. Well… our packing. The kids… not so much. That’s okay. They are coming over around 1:00ish on Monday with their bags. I’ll load them into the car and then load all of our bags, including all of the stuff that’s only there for the car trips.

As for the rest of New Years Eve? I had a less than good nights sleep last night and I was crashing hard around 3:00 this afternoon. I made our late lunch/early dinner a little after that and it fueled me up a bit. I’d say that staying up until midnight is a 50/50 call right now, but I’d still like to do it. Over the last month or two I’ve been setting an alarm for 5:00am so that I can get my exercise for the day done before anyone else wakes up. I might push that to 6:00 tomorrow… or maybe 7:00… we’ll see.

On an unrelated note, Jen and I have started watching the new Quantum Leap. It’s not a reboot. It’s more like a sequel with a redesign. We’re only three episodes in (or is it four?) but so far we’re liking it. The time traveling dude has yet to say, “oh boy” though, so it doesn’t feel quite the same.

Five hours and 21 minutes until 2023.

Oh boy.

Happy New Years Eve

So it is New Years Eve again. 2022 was a kick in the balls but it was probably better than 2021 and 2020. Not by a lot, but what can you do? Will 2023 be better than 2022? Who knows. Current annual trends imply that 2023 will be better than 2022 but it will still suck badly. It’s sort of the way things are in the 2020’s, you know?

So we’re all going to Times Square to watch the ball drop on New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, right? Yeah… no. I am going to do some errands this morning and then visit my parents. The kids are coming over in the afternoon. I think we’re going to have a late lunch/early dinner while they are here (gnocchi again?) and then… who knows? Staying up until midnight is even up in the air right now. We might just ignore all of the festivities and go to bed. It’s too early to say.

What are we doing for New Years Day tomorrow? I haven’t a clue. Nothing? Packing? Yeah, packing. Then on Monday, the kids will come over with their luggage for the trip, we’ll load everything in the car, and then Jen and I will hit the road. The kids will fly on Wednesday and if all goes as planned we’ll meet them at the airport when they land.

Will I play guitar this weekend? Maybe. Will I play with my new camera? Definitely. Will I spend quality time with the love of my life? Of course!

How Do You Spell Buoy?

robertjames1971's avatarRob Shoots Film

I had to Google “buoy” to make sure I didn’t misspell it, and I still typo’d it twice anyway.

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It’s New Years Eve and we are two days away from an epic road trip followed by an epic Orlando, FL vacation followed by another epic road trip. I am planning on shooting oodles of film, but I just got the sweetest 40mm prime lens for my new mirrorless camera and suddenly the draw to film and the draw to digital are pretty much equal. We’ll see how much film I use.

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Happy New Lens Day

WOOOOHOOOOOO!!!!

I have my first Z mount lens, my first prime lens that isn’t really my father’s, my first full frame lens, and my first lens with an aperture wide enough to do super sick blurry backgrounds like this!

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And this!

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Now that I have a full frame lens instead of a cropped lens I can use the full 24 megapixels that my new camera has to offer. The full sized images you see in this post are 6016 x 4016 and Oh My God That’s AWESOME!!!

Nine Minutes to Go

I am probably going to jinx things, but there are nine minutes left in my work day before the start of two whole weeks of vacation. I don’t know if I can hang on for the final nine, now eight minutes.

My clothes are all packed but I still have to pack my camera gear and my food/drink stuff and all of the toiletries and phone/watch/ear pod chargers. There’s still a ton of stuff to take care of. The punchline here is that we’re not leaving for three days so… maybe I’m actually WAY ahead of the pace.

The further punchline is that Jen is upstairs packing her clothes too. I think we’re both a little excited for this trip. Six minutes to go.

The last vacation we took was in February of 2020 when Harry, Jen, and I went to Disney World for Harry’s school vacation week. That trip wasn’t really planned. It was just a last minute idea that Jen had so we just jetted off like crazy people. We all know what happened when we got home… Covid… that prick. We’ve been more or less locked down ever since and have been afraid to do any traveling or any anything, really. We were supposed to go to Disney World for Harry’s high school graduation in June of 2021. That got postponed to June of 2022 and then re-postponed to January of 2023… next week. I don’t think anything shy of an asteroid colliding with our house would keep us away this time. Enough is enough. Let’s freakin’ gooooooo.

Three minutes left. All quiet on the Western front.

Two minutes left………

New Lens Day? I Hope!

We ordered a new Nikon Z mount lens and a couple of memory cards from Best Buy this morning. The intention being a curbside pickup in Salem, NH.

An hour or so ago I got a notification that the memory cards are ready for pick up. Jen got a notification that the lens was being readied for pickup in Nashua, NH.

Oops.

I don’t care where I have to go to pick the thing up, I just want it for the vacation. It’s a 40mm, f2 full frame prime lens and I am sitting here kinda drooling over the thought of it. Nikon doesn’t seem to have a 35mm or 50mm Z mount lens yet, so this puppy is pretty much the sweet spot in between them. It’s also tiny, which is super nice. I’m really hoping I can wander around Disney World with a 40mm prime on my digital camera, and a 50mm prime on my film camera. Double fisting like a boss, right?

Speaking of film, I am still waiting for the notification that my test roll of film scans is ready to download. It’s been a couple of days since the lab notified me that they had the film. Now I just need the scans so I can be sure using Dad’s Pentax lens on my Nikon camera will work. I know it will because the camera is an SLR and I can see through it without any problem. I just want to make sure the film shots look okay. I’m hoping the adapter doesn’t screw with the focus, or let any light leak into the camera, or anything like that. If I don’t see the scans today I will likely see them next week, but there will be a few days of picture taking opportunities in between. I’ll probably just use the lens that came with the Nikon when I bought it off of eBay. I’ve already packed up the film I’m bringing along. There’s more than I can see myself using, but I will be set no matter what. There’s also this groovy new mirrorless camera that will be drawing attention away from film, so I’ll likely shoot less film that I was planning. I can’t say for sure though.

I am a nerd. You knew that already though. I think we’re all good with it.

Three hours and 32 minutes until vacation.