Tag: harvard

Where’s My Film?

Hey CVS… 13 days… where’s my roll of film, bro?

I posted on an analog photography Reddit forum the other day asking for suggestions for film labs that operate online. Meaning, I ship my film to them, they develop it and send me scans of the images, or send scans and ship back prints (if I pay a little extra).

I book marked a few sites and made accounts at some of them. One had a page dedicated to expired film. There 30+ year old example was super dark. That’s what I expect the first of the two rolls at CVS to look like. My zeroth roll, if you will. The second roll and all that follow should be okay. I don’t really care about that. I just want to see some results. I want to know that the camera and the light meter and all of the stuff work.

I also spent some time recently looking for camera clubs to join. There’s one based in Andover that would be fun to check out but they are shut down for the summer. Thanks a bunch. There are some others in the general Eastern Massachusetts area, but they are kinda far away. Oh well.

My last research topic was free online photography classes. I found one through the Harvard Extension School! Awesome! I tried to sign up for it but when I clicked the “start class” button the link was broken. Sonofabitch! I’ll try again later. No biggie.

Unrelated note: Dinner tonight was 4.2 ounces of deli roast beef. It was delicious. When I was done I set a timer for one hour so that I could know when I would be clear to drink water again. 40 minutes later I changed my mind and went looking for a couple of ounces of grapes. I ended up with 2.5 ounces. Want to know how much that is in practical terms? It was 11 grapes. My dessert tonight is 11 grapes. This is a pretty goofy looking new world, ain’t it?

More Repercussions

Yesterday I mentioned that the city of Boston cancelled their St Patrick’s Day parade because of COVID-19.  Today I heard of another repercussion, Harvard has asked students not to come back from Spring Break.  They will hold classes online post-break.  Apparently Amherst College made the same call yesterday.

Still no word on whether or not Vermont is going to do anything similar.  Bellana is home for spring break right now.  She took her laptop home with her just in case.  The numbers are low in Massachusetts, and as of yesterday they were lower in Vermont.  Still, they have students scattered to the winds right now and they are all supposed to come back next week.  It’s not out of the realm of possibility that the number of cases will spike after that.

There is still nothing that directly affects me or my family, other than Jen getting some telecommute time.  I’m sitting at my desk in Waltham, and in about 20 minutes I am going to head over to another one of our buildings in another town.  No problems.  Tomorrow I will be in two of our buildings too.  Again, no problems.

I heard a few personal stories on Facebook today.  Nothing from anywhere near New England though.  I belong to a bunch of guitar related Facebook groups and one has a thread where people are reporting having gigs cancelled.  Most of us in the group are like me, weekend warriors.  If I play three gigs in a year I consider it a big year.  A lot of people are hearing from bars where they have gigs booked over the next few months and being told not to show up.  It’s understandable.  Yes it’s annoying and yes it might be an overreaction, but it’s also the safe and smart move.  I did hear from one guy though who is a professional and has just had a five date UK tour cancelled.  Ouch.  That’s a lot of paychecks to miss in a short stretch of time.  He says he’ll have to make sacrifices, but his family should be okay.

Am I worried?  Nope.  Not at all.  Just paying attention.  Keeping an eye open and an ear to the ground.  It’s going to directly affect us one of these days, probably sooner rather than later.  We’ll be ready and we’ll deal with it and we’ll be fine.  No problems.

On the upside, traffic has been ridiculously light during my commutes.  It’s not as light as Christmas Eve, but it’s in the ball park.  It’s like the song said, you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have the facts of life.  I have no idea how that applies in this case, but I’m 100% sure you sang along in your head while you were reading.