what's up?

computer is dying too

1954 chevrolet bel air

here’s a shot from too early in the morning at pomona, while i waited for my nephews to show up. mmmm. chevys. (not the restaurant—lol.)

exposures slightly quicker since i’m shooting near the lights, but enough to still blur the moving parts, err, people.

ugh. this computer has probably reached the end of it’s usefulness. it’s more of a hassle to boot up anymore. well, it’s had boot issues for years anyway.

takes up a lot of desk space too.

my better half built it for me probably over a decade ago now, and the parts are so old, i can’t install the latest version of windows. same problem for his pc.

so my options are to transfer everything over the mac, or buy a newer pc. some of my software doesn’t work on the mac, so i’m kind of on the fence for converting over fully versus why waste the money on another computer.

i can pull the hard drives from this one if i have to. the computer keeps crashing, so i’m guessing when i took the cover off and blew the dust out of it a week ago, i probably knocked some part loose. it’s a heavy motherf*ckr, so i don’t really want to drag it out again, but maybe i’ll just pull the cover off and have a look.

just pisses me off when stuff he used to fix easily stops working, and i didn’t pay enough attention when he showed me how to do stuff with it. and i just lose hours farting around with his computers figuring things out, instead of getting other things done. bottomless pit of despair there, and interesting to see how his mind worked by how and what he saved there.

this just sucks. but i’m in a good place otherwise.

visiting

so i’ve been a bit of a shut-in lately. i do go for daily walks, but mostly, i’ve stayed home. i should be doing more cleaning out the clutter, but i seem to spend a lot of time catching up on tv series that i hadn’t seen before.

i enjoyed all the seasons of outlander; currently trudging through the fourth season of the witcher. henry cavill, i’m all about; the current season with one of the hemsworth brothers, meh. probably won’t finish, or watch the next season. he’s such a dud.

two of my better half’s nephews visited this weekend. picked through his books, guitars and skateboards. tried to get them to take some furniture, but they don’t need it. besides that, some of it is heavy oak, and one of the boys just had his appendix out, so no lifting anyway.

i guess i’ll be calling a junk hauler to get it out of the house, as i have no other way to get it out nor anywhere to put it. also would prefer to get rid of several of his computer monitors, which are actually smaller large screen tvs, but i have yet to find remotes for them. they’re good for the tall guy he was, but i don’t like them for computer use.

speaking of computers, mine is so old, i can’t update it to the current version of windows. i will need to figure out how to move over my files to his mac. mine now. finally hacked into it. take that apple. thanks for not helping with that.

anyway, one of the nephews intended to go to pomona for the swap meet. i hadn’t thought about it, but since they both said they were going to go, and be there at the opening of the gates, i told them i would go.

i’m quite glad that i did. perfect weather, lots of cars, friendly people. i arrived at five-thirty a.m., after about four hours of sleep.

i’d gotten a text message when i was halfway there, that the nephews had overslept, and would be arriving after six. they know where i hang out, and would find me when they got there, though they said it would be more difficult with their uncle nearby, since he was so easy to spot.

being there early, in the dark, it was kinda cold, but i hadn’t wanted to haul a jacket around after sunrise, so i quietly shivered while i waited out some long exposures.

one of the bridgetown guys came over to inquire how i was doing, and expressed his condolences. thank you, kind sir. i really am doing better than i should be, probably, aside from too much television viewing. a bit of escapism never hurt anybody.

as usual, i wandered here and there in the show area. i think it was more packed than i could recall it being in a long time. saw this lovely impala somewhere in the middle. told the owner i’d post a picture of it after i gave him my card.

i seem to remember it being more of a salmon color, but the sun hitting it, seems to have made it more red than i think it was.

it was good to get out and stretch my legs. i stayed just long enough to start feeling dizzy from skipping a full breakfast, so left after four hours, though i could have stayed the whole day otherwise.

only felt a little sad as i headed home, as it would have been the time better half and i would have chatted about what we saw and who we talked to at the show.

atypical

it’s been a weird couple of weeks.

standard work load. they gave me a new macbook pro to use. i hate laptops. i haven’t used a mac in years, so everything is so backwards in my head.

from shortcuts, down to the mouse wheel scroll, i just feel like i’m driving a car in london, on the wrong side of the road. and a bunch of network stuff is not doing what i want it to do. it doesn’t want to connect to my mom’s wifi, and i don’t want to change her password, that would screw up other stuff in her house. so i feel like i’m working with one hand tied behind my back.

almost to the point where i will trade my coworker for the pc laptop they gave her. she says it’s a slooooowwww pig, so not really selling me on the idea. might as well stick with it, as my better half left me with his mac studio, and this pc is going to crash one of these days.

other than that, i spent last saturday in temecula, visiting my kid and his children. then when we wore them out, i headed over to vail hq, for the ramble on the ranch show. perfect weather for it, and i was there early enough to still have some light to work with.

i started out in the parking lot instead of the space between the stores this time. in the summer it stays too hot out in the lot and i just can’t stay very long.

didn’t seem like there were as many cars as usual. i think there was some other bigger show going on that day. worked for me, fewer people in the way.

this olds was really spectacular. don’t see many like it. i probably should have posted one of the other shots, but this will do.

my daughter and her boyfriend had intended to meet up with me for the show. unfortunately, her dog sitter called to let them know one of her dogs was not acting right, so they had to turn around and head back home. fortunately, they hadn’t gotten to the grapevine yet, and all the terrible traffic waiting on the other side, so it only took them about twenty minutes.

she rushed him to the doggo er, and spent most of the day there. unfortunately, they had to make that terrible decision to let him go about midnight. heart issue, and though they drained some liquid off of it, it was not going to help, so decided it would be kinder to put him to sleep. he was an old, huge doberman, eight or nine. still didn’t think it would happen so soon, but big dogs don’t live as long as yappy little dogs. glad they were there with him at the end.

so i got a phone call at six am next morning, that my daughter wasn’t dealing with it well, so off to bakersfield i went. super foggy the past few days, and sunday was the same. was lovely and sunny up the grapevine, then descended again into pea soup fog on the other side. didn’t get a whole lot better for most of the afternoon.

long day there. considered staying in a hotel then driving home at three am, but didn’t want to get up early on little sleep. was home by ten pm. still needed to get up early for work and an appointment later on.

got through the week without much sleep. spent yesterday watching outlander. what a good show. i really have a lot of other stuff i need to do, but i just don’t have the mental capacity or energy to deal with it yet.

today, i pulled more of my better half’s shirts out of the closet, folded and threw them in a box. i need to get more boxes from storage. it’s already dark, so not today, and it’s supposed to rain most of this week. sorry, that’s what i wanted for xmas, and looks like i’ll get my wish.

p.s. - happy ninety-first bday mom!

winter of my discontent

quick look through some of my favs from the dia de los muertos show in whittier, and this one caught my eye today. looks clean. didn’t shoot it from the back, but the itty bit of the placa i can see, i’m saying it’s a 13 gents club car.

so i have so many things to do, i hardly have time to look at my pictures now. i guess i should put time down on my calendar to do that for myself. everything else is just exhausting and stuff i don’t want to deal with physically or emotionally.

it’s been raining the last couple of days. i laid around in bed this morning looking out at the overcast sky and waiting for some promised drizzle that really never happened in this part of town.

i have been starting to sift through better half’s stuff, deciding what to keep, what to give away, what to try to sell. it’s xmas time, so maybe people will be looking to spend some money anyway.

hoping to reclaim his office and make into a guest room again. i need to get his nephews or take the neighbors up on offers to help, to come over and break down his heavy oak desks and get them out of here. they’re too big for me, too big for that room, actually, but were perfect for a big guy. not sure what i’ll do with the really big monitors he had. they hurt my neck to sit in front of to hack into his computers. i want to be able to get to the window and open the blinds. maybe a smaller desk and a queen size bed will do. he had a big ass tv screen hung on the wall too; i guess i’ll leave it there, but it limits where the bed can go.

i want his bookcases downstairs, so have to pull everything off the shelves. his nephew expressed interest in selecting from his collection of out of print space and airplane books. otherwise, i guess i’ll try ebay.

my daughter wants *those* magazines *wink wink, say no more)*, as well as his mom’s national geographic magazines, to use for her artsy collages. otherwise, to the trash they go. libraries don’t want the nat geos, but i suppose it wouldn’t be hard to find takers for the naughty mags.

not sure what i’ll do with all his camera equipment and lenses. i don’t use all the various bits and pieces he has. shame he’d just bought a few lenses to experiment with and didn’t get a chance.

i need to pull down all those offensive t-shirts he liked from the closet, as the hang bar is about to pull loose on one end from the weight. the full length is packed with shirts and a few pants, and he really only ever pulled from the same small section of shirts anyway.

i’ve got three bins of his family photo albums, and there’s still more loose photos in his file cabinet.

i guess i’m trying to remember this place as it was before him, and reclaim some of that space again. i’m not erasing him, just finding the new me, without him.

much ado about nothing

here’s another car from uptown whittier. yes it was chillin’, just like the sign says. too early to be the happy ending after a massage.

caught it early morning, and before too many people showed up. i want to say i’ve shot it before, and probably here in whittier some other year.

so i have spent the last few weekends out in temecula, watching my grandkid play soccer. she’s more of a defensive player, and otherwise off in her own little world, but still aware enough to run back and forth on the field. first try at a team sport. maybe it’s not her game.

have also spent a lot of time at my mom’s. she came down with walking pneumonia. we think the antibiotics have knocked that down quickly, so that’s a win.

i’m about done with the checklist and mountain of paperwork that i needed to get through since my better half departed. weird to think in past tense. he died at home, so i prefer to think he’s still here in some fashion or other. he is, at least, in a little box. i pass by and tell him he’s lost a lot of weight since i last saw him. he has no clever response to that one, and the house is a whole lot quieter without the laughter.

i need to copy his website, or let it go. i managed to find the password after i’d already let the host know he’d died, and damn, if they didn’t lock that down so fast, i wasn’t able to retrieve the backups i’d requested. pretty sure the site will die this month. i’d put in my credit card to pay for another year, but i think that got cancelled, and the annual payment is due. oh well.

next project is to hack into the new mac mini had bought a month before he left. he’d moved all of his photos, family pics, etc. over to it, and pretty sure i’m going to have to erase it to get into it. i think the photos are mostly backed up on external drives, but the photo library probably isn’t backed up onto the cloud. same with his ipad—too many guesses and now i have no choice but to take it in for a wipe of it’s memory.

it also brings into question of what to do with his car pics, and someday my own. my kids won’t want them; they mean nothing to them. could say that about our belongings as well. i know i do not look forward to the house full of stuff my mom will leave behind. got no room for it, no matter how sentimental. my own stuff sits in storage as it is, so that’s another project for me to keep me busy — sifting through that and donating a lot of crap from a past lifetime ago. hopefully i can at least downsize the storage unit, since they keep upping the cost to keep it.

my daughter wants me to drive up to her place and take pics of her and the boyfriend and her dogs for an xmas card. told her i’m not so good at people, but maybe if they can hold still as a parked car…

had a doctor tell me he fears i may become a hermit. what’s so bad about that? i think that won’t happen until i decide to retire. still have a few years to go, or at least until i have a bad day, and the ‘i don’t give a crap’ wins out over the ‘i have nothing better to do’ thoughts.

seriously though, i’m doing ok. i’ll keep telling myself, i’m doing ok. and i am.

life goes on

and so it goes…

i went out to the dia de los muertos show in whittier. safe. familiar. we used to live down the street. better half had been gone three weeks by then.

we also used to go uptown at five in the morning, and find at least a few cars to shoot, people organizing things, etc.

so i park in the public garage just after five, and pull my bag out of the trunk. walking over to greenleaf, nothing there. the street cleaner, spinning his bristles, cruising up and down slowly.

i walk down towards the theater and rick’s. still nothing. now i’m starting to get creeped out. fortunately, the starbucks was open, and let me hang out in there for an hour sipping a bottle of water. not a coffee drinker, so it was a trade-off being cold and leaving vs smelling the coffee fumes.

eventually, i’m wearing out my welcome, and seeing some people starting to head out from casita del pueblo (the host). out in the street, vendors are arriving, but still no cars. i know that rick’s is open now, so i walk down there to have a breakfast i wasn’t hungry for.

eventually, i left to walk back uptown, hoping maybe something has shown up, or i’d be heading home. there are only memories in this town anymore, and it feels strange every time i come back.

luckily, i spied a handful of cars up by the winchell’s. they kept me occupied until others started showing up.

found the bomb club setting up cars on philadelphia, in front of the tarot card reader’s now shutdown shop. i wonder if the old woman that used to sit in the window knew she’d be out of business? always used to joke with my better half that she knew we’d never stop in, as we went to get a slice of pizza from marco polo.

they have a bunch of cars i like to shoot. this one was lovely. i was trying to stay out of everyone’s way, as they set up their ofrendas, as i was super early.

the cameras haven’t been used in a while, and though they aren’t that old, my main camera was acting a little screwy. hoping it isn’t the camera itself, and just some wonky knock off battery issue. they really are if you don’t use them, you lose them, in terms of holding a charge.

anyway, i don’t think as many cars as in the past showed up. the day stayed relatively cool, so i managed to stay long enough to shoot all that i wanted. still, i had been awake since threeish, so by eleven, i was done.

hoping i’ll still have the nerve and desire to continue doing this. it’s just harder and different without my better half by my side. still missing him, and mad at him at the same time, but that’s another story i’ll probably not tell.

dreaming of cooler days

it’s been my least favorite time of year long enough. i hate the heat of summer. i just can’t do it. my head has been a bit dizzy lately, so i don’t really want to go far without my better half by my side.

i hide inside all day if i can, dreaming of escaping the state soon enough for a break, but it still seems an eon away. work keeps me busy, and it’s never a good time to step away.

so of course, missing several car shows i’d have like to have gone to. had to do an overnight in bakersfield (hell in itself), a couple of weeks ago. was told there was also a show at the kern county fairgrounds the day we were leaving. i knew about it, chose not to go, but did see a small line up of a car club gathering on the road just outside of our hotel, as we left too early before sunrise.

so, yep, missed the viejitos show in anaheim that weekend, which we had planned to go at least a few hours early early. heard it was a hot day too.

missed the legends show, as we simply didn’t know about it until after it was already happening…hadn’t seen any fliers, though i did search for it a month ago.

also, have never been to the ventura nationals, but we typically don’t go anywhere on holiday weekends anyway.

so…here i am sifting through my trove of past show pics.

remembered the cornfed run in chino, on a nice, cool, rainy day. got drenched, looked like a water hag, but stayed around most of the day. got some nice shots of cars like this chevy, spotted with rain drops, puddles of water below, reflecting the sky, the cars, the people.

still not so sure about the newer camera. better half says i’m not using optimal settings for the lens i use, but i don’t like the shots when i do. will have to get back out more often when summer is done, and give the batteries and my mind a recharge.

monterey

bomb club-06377And8more.jpg

bomb club2-8639.jpg

bomb club2-8629.jpg

looking back at the bomb club pre-show staging area at santa anita.

took advantage of the delayed entry into the tunnel, and shot pics up and down the three long lines of cars waiting, waiting, waiting. enjoyed the early morning overcast, and how it muted the colors of the cars.

saw this mercury amidst the other fine cars. it stood out for it’s interesting color, which was about the color i’d had my ex paint his vw bug once upon a time. also, don’t often run across these montereys.

monterey…wouldn’t mind taking a trip there right now, to escape the summer heat. at least the evenings have been cool…i suppose before fall, the nights will get sultry soon enough. oh, how i hate the heat. unless it’s a heated pool or jacuzzi.

i’m rambling. running on fumes, and should really be getting to bed, but waiting on my hair to dry, which i think is probably good ‘nuff now, so off i go to dream of other cars and trips and projects…retirement can’t come soon enough. so close, yet so far.

super shiny

late night post.

had a busy week at work, then got called in for jury duty for two days, until they finalized a jury. that really threw a wrench into things, but my coworkers are great, and picked up where i left off.

there’s a car show tomorrow, that i would like to go to, but i don’t know if i have the energy. i have so many pictures saved for a rainy day, like a crazy squirrel bogarting all of the nuts. maybe when i retire, but then who wants to see years’ old pics?

for example, this tovar’s car, way early in the morning, the field lights are still on. how the heck does it get so shiny? sweat equity? a thousand fairies fluttering their wings along the curves? molly maid? liquid gold? wouldn’t mind my car being this shiny, but i’d be afraid the crows would target it more than usual.

hat’s off to the man—it’s a beauty.

i knew i had one

i finally noticed a message in my inbox from the owner of this car.

he was actually asking if i’d taken any pics of his car at the hawaiian gardens car show from last week. i said i’d get back to him, as i unfortunately had to work all day yesterday.

mentioned it to my better half, who had one, and i sent it off to the owner.

so today, when i finally had time to look through my images, i found that no, i did not in fact take a pic of it at that show. he had the hood open, and i usually pass those by.

but i figured he’d probably been to some other shows, so i looked through some older stuff.

yup, found i’d shot it, not long before i left the bomb club show last month. he must have arrived later in the morning, as i didn’t find it in the early morning shots from the parking lot staging area.

the hood was open, but for some reason or other, i took a couple of pics. maybe the light was right. maybe he was watching, and some guys are just hoping you take a picture of their baby. maybe i knew i was out of energy from the heat, and was heading out, and i hate to leave…whatever.

pretty sure if i keep looking, i’d eventually find it at some other show, especially if the hood was down. :)