After a whole summer where almost every time I wanted to take the camera out during the morning golden hour the sky was an unbroken, unending ceiling of clouds, the three days I’ve had to go into the office this week have been greeted with blinding sunshine every morning. Not a cloud in the sky.
Figures.
I am about to do the most pretentious, nerdy, narcissistic thing imaginable…
I am about to quote my own blog. You’ve been warned. Put on your tin foil hat and say your prayers, here it comes…
In my previous blog post, I wrote this:
I am going to have a super busy, super stressful work day today.
Woah, boy was I ever right on that prediction! This morning has been CRAZY! My head is spinning right now. One thing after another on top of the next thing along with five other things at the same time. What a morning.
I haven’t had a bite to eat in five hours and I don’t feel any hunger pain. That’s a good thing, right? I’m about to break for lunch. Here’s hoping the universe leaves me alone for a while so I can eat it.
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Today is Wednesday and it is my third consecutive day in the office. The traffic was bad. I want to go home. It’s not even 9:00am yet and I already want to go home. I am going to have a super busy, super stressful work day today. I just don’t feel up to it. Ugh.
As I walked in this morning the guy who sits next to me said good morning. I said good morning in return, but the thought that went through my head was something like good morning apart from the usual soul crushing existential dread. Another day, another walk through the shadow of the valley of emotional wreckage. You know how it is. Of course I exaggerate a little, and I also… ya know… edited my thoughts… like you do.
That lead to another thought. A lyric from a Triumph song. “Another day, another dollar, another pretty face. Another chance to lose yourself in this endless race.” That’s from the song Hold On from the album Just a Game. It’s a good record.
I think I am feeling gloomy for a physical reason. Let me tell you all about it.
When I was a high school brat I had a period where I dealt with some pretty bad acne. Not as bad as some of my classmates, but for a little window of time there it was bad. Bad enough that we asked a doctor about it. They put me on some Retin A (or whatever it was called) and it helped a little. Mostly, just getting through puberty is what resolved the issue. Fast forward to yesterday and I felt like something was in my eye. Weird. My right eye kept getting watery and that would blur my vision just a tiny bit. I thought maybe it was the start of a little conjunctivitis. Yippee for me. This morning I discovered the truth. It’s not pink eye or anything like that. It’s a pimple… on my lower eye lid. No, let me rephrase… it’s a great big muther of a zit and it’s on my lower eye lid. What the hell?
A zit on my eye that is big enough to cause my eye to water a little and I can just about almost see it. Again I ask, what the hell?
So if you’re wondering why I am in a weird funky mood today, that is probably it. Chalk it up to teenage acne coming back for another round of fun in my 50’s and punching me right in the freakin’ eye. Stupid zit. Stupid, stupid zit.
Nothing. Sorry.
Pretty sure I just snapped my first picture using a medium format film camera. Also sure that I screwed up and wasted one shot before I did it. Also also sure that the one photo I took is going to be a blurry mess.
Happy New Camera Day!
After the disaster that was the election last week I saw a handful of people on various social media sites posting things that looked a little like this:
Q: Are you from the United States of America?
A: No, I’m from Massachusetts.
Thinking back to the disaster that was the presidential election in 2016, I was thinking things like that all the time. I remember commenting that watching my country elect a fascist president instantly turned me into a states rights kinda guy who put my state, Massachusetts WAY ahead of my country.
The way it felt in 2016 though… it was nothing compared to the way it feels now. I am not going to say that I am now a secessionist, but if New England, New York, and New Jersey wanted to make a go of it on their own, I’d be down with giving it a shot. You wouldn’t have to twist my arm very hard to get me on board. I would have to check out a map of election returns to see if we could maybe add Deleware and Maryland to the team. I know Virginia went for Harris, but that feels a little like a false flag to me, though that state has been voting Democrat more and more in recent years. I worry about including any state that can be described as Southern.
Maybe this little Northeastern Alliance could work something out with the West coast, assuming the good folks in California, Oregon, and Washington State would want to join us in our brave new world.
Again, I don’t feel as though I am a secessionist. After the bullshit demonstrated in the election last week though, I also no longer feel like an American. Any allegiance I feel at this point is to Massachusetts, not to the United States. If the rest of the country wants to embrace fascism let them. Leave me and my home state out of it.
It’s silly that I still do the whole photo a day challenge project thing. It’s almost always going to be a picture of a cat, or a guitar, or the view out of my home office window. It’s bad on the days I have to travel into the office because then it is likely going to be a picture of the parking lot, or my keyboard, or… nothing.
This week I may be in the office four days. That’s crazy in this post-covid world, but that’s how it’s working out. Often on in the office days I take a picture of something when I am in the cellar doing my morning exercise. Yesterday it was a guitar. Today it’s a candle. Let me show you…
Who knows what it is going to be tomorrow and the next day.
As it turns out, I actually ended up with options today. Surprise! I had to put gas in the car so that I could make the long (44 miles, about 90 minutes) commute. I could have used this picture for today’s photo a day instead of the candle…
Or, I could have used this one…
I mean… are those puppies art or what? I can almost smell how impressed you are (#sarcasm).
I added a melody and lyrics to one song.
That’s all.
I decided to make today’s pointless photo a day photo black and white. Why? Because my new 40ish year old eBay camera purchase is scheduled to be delivered tomorrow, and the first roll of film I bought to test drive it with is also going to be delivered tomorrow and it’s black and white film.
See how everything ties together? I hope the camera works. I hope I don’t screw up my first roll of 120 film. I hope I don’t find that I hate using a TLR camera. I hope I have a chance to shoot the roll (the camera shoots 120 film in square format which I think means I only get 12 shots per roll. We’re going to need to make these suckers count!) soon so that I can send it out to get it developed and see if the camera actually works. I didn’t pay much for it so if it doesn’t work I will be pissed off but I won’t be pissed off, if you dig where I’m coming from.
Anyway, here is today’s pointlessly black and white pointless photo a day pic.
Inside the Red Head's Head 