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aaa again

another strange week starting. i’ll blame it on the santa ana winds...

quick post, since i’m pretty tired from this day’s issues.

second night of few hours of sleep, got up and off to start work after five am, as i had a doctor’s appointment later in the morning. better half also warning he may still need to take his mom in to doctor later as well.

worked a couple of hours, then off to my appointment. nothing special, just annual physical. but that also requires fasting for the blood tests, so i’m also pretty hungry, but not quite hangry. no surprises, just getting older and fatter, of which only the latter i can do anything about.

needed to pee in the given cup, and i really needed to pee by that point. of course, as they send me around the corner to the designated collection point, some random patient is locking the door to the designated bathroom, and seems to be settling in for some thoughtful time for reflection. they should have used the public restroom down the hall.

instead, i wait impatiently just outside the door, so i could glare at them when they eventually made their exit. took a while, and was dreading what i might be walking into. ended up being an ancient asian lady with a cane. she just smiled as she slowly moved towards the lab waiting area. so i had to stifle my hangry outburst, cuz she was just old and needed to go.

anyway, done did that, and also felt like a keg getting tapped for vials of blood. not a fainter, love horror movies, but don’t want to see the needle stuck into my own arm. “that hurts, you bitch.” thanks for the flourescent pink bandage; i would have preferred the blue.

quick breakfast/lunch, and back to the office. wasn’t really busy, and no one noticed anyway.

mom calls around four. she’d just arrived home. something wasn’t right with her car. felt wrong at freeway offramp. neighbor checked it out...discovered a bolt in her tire. she wasn’t sure what to do, as dad always takes care of these things.

told her to call triple a, that’s what you pay them to help you with, when you’re a damsel in distress.

cancel the drive to meet up with my kid for a chat, and head over to the house. she’d tried calling for help, but the number didn’t ring through or something.

i call from the house phone, forgetting to dial a one first, and get someone named rachel, not sure if it was a business or personal number. she must get these calls all day and night. hang up dial again. truck will be there in ten minutes.

driver gets there, says it can probably be patched, and pulls the spare from the back of the car. like new, never used, completely flat. he fills it with air, and is ready to change tires, only to realize there’s a wheel lock to remove. tear the car apart looking for the key thingy. stupid lugnut. look in the garage., nope.

dad couldn’t find it a few months ago, and had just had them cut and replaced. driver’s boss is telling him to hurry up, this is taking too long. tried calling dad at hospital on his cell phone, no answer. tried the front desk to nursing station to room phone, no answer. nurses station said he was just sitting on side of his bed, but didn’t bother to go hand him the phone. no doubt he didn’t have his hearing aid in, and heard nothing at all.

even tried calling my ex, as he probably helped him at the time and might have an educated guess on the location. no, and sorry to bother you.

i’m sure we’ll find out tomorrow, the key is just sitting in a drawer somewhere, useless in case of emergency.

mom is stressing out, her heart is doing flip flops or some other syncopated rhythm. so i just tell her to stay home and i hop in the truck and go with the driver to a tire store that stays open later than the two i have already called.

long story short, they were just able to patch it, as it was sort of close to the edge, but treads are low on both front tires, so we’ll have to go back soon and fix that. thanks dad, yet another reason to get the car serviced and rotate the tires once in a while. but he’s old, and can’t do it himself anymore, and it costs money, he’d say. ya, but mom drives it, and it needs to be safe.

and better half said his throat is kinda scratchy and he’s starting to cough...

———-

getting late, and not hungry, just angry now. going to contemplate this fleetmaster from the veterano’s show. pretty, isn’t it? wishing the green machine behind it, while equally lovely, wasn’t there messing up the shot, with the sparsely leaved trees nicely framing it up. always something i can pick apart in my pictures if i really want to.

really felt good to get out again. been too long, and they definitely did not have these kind of cars in italy.

also stopped at this one

since it was sort of on the way home from the veteranos’ show yesterday, and also on the way to in-n-out, i thought i’d just drive by the pico rivera veterans day show. had i not driven up the street, and found a nice, big space to parallel park in, i would have just kept going toward my lunch. but there it was, right on queue. guess it was meant to be.

i did stop, pretty much for about half an hour. saw a lot of my favs, and also a lot of cars i could care less about. i was starting to feel a bit wavy, so just did a quick run around half of the cars. didn’t go anywhere near the stage. didn’t even stop and chat with the usual people i would have spent more than a few minutes shooting the breeze with.

in spite of the live performance going on there, plenty of people were still milling around the cars, and i wasn’t high on patience to out-wait them. skipped cars i would have normally happily shot.

anyway, there were several bomb club cars there, and those guys are pretty nice, and so are their cars, so i shot a few.

trying to think, but i’m tired; probably shot this one before. just figured i should put up something from this show.

sure there were a few other ‘obvious’ cars that may be ‘better’ cars, but they are too polished, probably got an award from that crowd. maybe another time.

freedom of speech

made it out to the veteranos car club show in covina today. thank you to @rosiecheeks8 for the invites/reminder about the show. was nice to see you and your husband again.

thanks for the water @porfs41.

saw the owner of this car again as well. he’s looking forward to seeing it on here again, so here it is, since you were so enthusiastic about it.

actually, he sort of stopped me from taking the shot before this—he really wanted his hat to be in the picture. asked if it was ok; it’s your car, man. if that’s what you want on your car, sure, i’ll shoot it.

i try to keep this space a politics-free zone, at least on my part. freedom of speech, freedom of expression, though. he has his hat, i have mine.

strange days

it’s been a strange couple of weeks, since i got back from europe.

sick/not sick—no fever, just a cough that won’t go away. at this point, mostly gone. really miss being able to work from home, and not have my coworkers cringe and call me hacker.

the maintenance light popped on my car, time for an oil change. made an appointment. only two-hundred and thirty-plus thousand miles on it, so gotta keep it going.

finally felt well enough to go see my dad in the hospital. decided to go wednesday after work. three o’clock comes, and i have to get out of a conversation about what fate has befallen a coworker that hasn’t shown up for two days and no notice as far as the boss can remember. my offer was he was unconscious on the floor, and his cat had already eaten half his face. supposedly, they continued on without me, but mine was the most morbid.

anyway, as i was saying, out to my car in the parking garage. it won’t start. lights working, dashboard all lit up with all the warning lights, but engine…pfft. sucks, since i’m missing my best chance at missing a lot of the traffic.

walked to the parking office, to see if they had jumper cables. worker bee hops in his golf cart with a portable charge, and heads up to meet me at my car. of course he assumes i stupidly left the lights on…i didn’t. he clamps the cables to the battery and it starts right up, thank you very much.

off i go to the freeway, half an hour late. only a little stop and go, but still took an hour to get there. mom had already left for the day. after decades of not driving on the freeway, she’s been going daily, between rush hours, to sit in the room with my dad. they had to put him in a hospitial miles from home, since no where closer wanted to deal with him, and he was too sick to just go in a rehab home.

gotta put on gloves and a gown to visit his room. he has cooties or something, picked up from the other hospital. on heavy duty anti-biotics, but almost cured.

spent an hour and a half chatting with dad, telling about my trip, asking when they were going to cut him loose. talked about my kids, my brothers, my sister, whatever popped into his mind to fill the empty spaces. his dinner arrived, so helped set him with that. decided to head out before it got too late, and noting that with traffic, it would still take another hour to get to whittier from there.

called my better half, who suggested i go down the street to pep boys and have them check the battery, just for his peace of mind. shall i say, english was not the technician’s first language, but i understood enough that he said the battery was ok, i should check the alternator. told him i already had an appointment, so would have it check then. said battery would be ok to get home, but car would probably not start in the morning.

let better half know. he suggested i turn around and go back to my mom’s house for the night, as any place i took the car to, i’d be able to get to the office for the day, versus whittier, where i’d have to take the day off unable to connect to work computers.

fine. drove back in heavy traffic. decided to stop for dinner before heading to her house. already close to eight p.m., stopped at togos and ate a sandwich and chips, not realizing they closed at eight.

finished up, only finishing half the sandwich, going to give the other half to my mom. car won’t start. engine won’t even pretend like it wants to twitch.

togos employees are sweeping, but the door is still unlocked. i ask if they have jumper cables, but they both say no. i realize later, when each brings their bike around the building why they wouldn’t be able to help.

i call aaa. tell them about the battery, and that it’s probably the alternator. they advise to not just send a car to jump it, as it might just die while i’m driving it. tow truck will take about forty-five minutes to get there. oh well.

called my mom, told her my predicament, that if she wasn’t busy could she come and get stuff from the car so i could have it towed straight to a garage and leave it overnight. and the sandwich was at risk too.

she showed up in curlers, i loaded my stuff in the trunk, handed her the sandwich, but she insisted on staying until the truck showed. she’d left my kid’s dog alone in the house, thinking it wouldn’t take long. he behaved, for a change.

truck still took over an hour to get there, so i was happy she stayed. it was dark.

by the time we got to the house, it was after ten. climbed into the twin bed, tired. dog-beast jumps up, and promptly takes most of the bed. pretty much get no sleep until the kid shows up close to midnight to fetch her dog.

cough mostly for the next two, only to have to get up for work two hours after that.

and it ended up just being the battery…couldn’t hold a charge. so wtf, pep boys guy?

i see this old dodge quite often. used to be more difficult to get a decent shot of it, not up next to other cars, or a wall or whatever.

still not quite on it’s own, but good enough.

and then...

the hood ornament off of one of my favorite cars...a fifty-six pontiac wagon from the old times car club. sort of futuristic, and vaguely reminds me of the logo my dad had for his business back in the day.

————-

only took a day before the effects of twelve hours in a petri dish, known as an airplane, became apparent. yep, as typical, i caught a cold of sorts. and the bitch of it is that i have no more sick time, and am in negative numbers on that now.

so i’ve gone to work, mostly keeping to myself, tired af, and trying to avoid talking so i don’t go into a coughing fit. my usual colds, don’t give me a fever, so i mostly sound deathly, but otherwise feel ok. i think now that it’s friday, i relaxed a bit, and i’m really feeling it heading into the weekend. i just want to sleep!

had already been evacuated from the house in whittier...suggested, not forced...for better half’s mother’s health.

seems she caught something anyway, and i was called back to help take her to a doctor. stayed for a night and am again staying away, so maybe my better half doesn’t catch it too.

kid is out of town with her dog and the new boy toy, so i’m hiding out in my own house. not much of my stuff here, and not a whole lot of furniture either. never started up cable for her, so really there’s nothing between me and the bed and that sleep time i’ve dreamt of all week, except this here ipad and me flicking my fingers across the screen.

hoping i feel much better tomorrow. still haven’t seen my dad since i got back from vacation. i want to get back to doing a car show once a week at least. and i still haven’t been home long enough to sift through vacation pics, that invariably will never get seen. well, better half wants to see...his vicarious means of going on a vacation by imagining what i saw via photos, video clips and tv documentaries to fill in details that i won’t tell him. no doubt when he asks about the trip, i’ll just say it was “ok.”

jet lag

so, i’m back at home. three weeks is a long time to be away. twelve hour flight back, followed by an hour in customs, and an hour and a half drive home. hint: after a twelve hour flight, don’t pick up people and make them sit some more in a space even smaller than what they had on the plane. almost wept cuz my legs hurt so much. almost told them to just pull over, and drop me anywhere…i’d call an uber, just so i could stretch my legs.

got dropped off at my mom’s, where i’d left my car parked. said my goodbyes to everyone i’d travelled with. mom had just returned from hanging out with my dad at the hospital, and she really hasn’t done a lot of cooking lately, so offered to go get me food.

on the flight, they’d fed us just after take off, and just before landing. food was crap. they ran out of the chicken option just as they got to me, so i was stuck with rice and zucchini, some weird cube of something that was neither vegetable or dessert, and something that wanted to be a cream puff, but wasn’t good. they doled out exactly one plastic cup of pepsi.

the latter meal was a cold sandwich, with italian ham, which is mostly fat, with some really crap apple juice, and another forgettable dessert.

so basically, i was starving, even though i’d also purchased oreos and a can of coke in between meals.

i was literally reeling from exhaustion, as i just can’t sleep on planes, so i’d been up for about twenty hours by then. told my mom, if she could just drive me to a fast food place, i’d be good. so the closest, quickest food was weinerschnitzel. quite a step down from all the pasta we’d been eating for the last couple of weeks.

anyway, felt somewhat better after that. chatted a bit, then went to bed.

next morning and today, have mostly been tired, but not crazy crazy jet lagged. i should keep the walking going, but just didn’t feel like climbing the nearest mountain/hill here in whittier. and it was almost completely fogged in around the house this morning anyway.

currently copying over about two-hundred and twenty-five plus gigs of pics from the trip, which will probably never be looked at more than once, but i’ll keep them anyway. better half, mom, and my sister all want to see them anyway.

still haven’t had time to go visit my dad in the hospital. better half needs to go the market, except he has overtime he is currently working on at home, and will still need to go to the office later, so i’ll be here watching his mom tonight.

i satisfied my in-n-out craving yesterday, and today od’d on guacamole. just not looking forward to work tomorrow, am a little sleepy, but resisting the urge to take a nap.

it’s good to be home.

back to a back end of a deluxe from the viejitos’ show last summer. in the shade, the details get a little hard to see, but there are some subtle pinstripes going on.

been a long time since i’ve seen a classic car that isn’t a fiat, bmw, or a vespa. not going to count the red fifty-six bel air that i saw uptown today, since that dude is always cruising uptown, and i’m over that car.

observations

a few things on my mind from the places i’ve visited on this trip, no particular order, and applies to pretty much each place:

airbnb owners do not provide enough toilet paper
especially when there seems to be no kleenex anywhere available
i hate the smell and feel of wicker furniture
mosquitos will find and dine on you while you sleep
i think i managed every mode of transportation except space travel all in one day, at least twice
cities here are like cities at home, just with older stuff and smaller streets and cars
most people are friendly, even if we don’t speak the same language
why the clothes washing machine, but not dryers?
detergent makes clothes stink...or maybe the lack of fragerance and softeners uncovered how they should smell
and everything enviro friendly...to an obsession
people are healthier/skinnier because of all the walking. some of the diet is just as bad.
i do not like wine, and never have. and have reconfirmed it. smells like easter eggs coloring.
they like coke zero. i do not. coke “normal” seems to be mostly available
food is good in general, and i have tried some meals i would otherwise never have. doesn’t mean i’d ever have or cook them at home
lots of cheese and pasta. sauces are different.
the light is different
dogs seem to allowed everywhere, except maybe church. restaurants, clothing stores, etc., ok. but no evident pet shops...where do they come from? and also, not really seeing them as being neutered.
beggars all seem to have the same outfit and age. basket out, bandana on head, face to floor, butt in air as they kneel, scraggly skirts. kinda scary when they follow you right up to a building entrance if they think money is getting away.
airbnb homes are neat alternatives to hotels. most have been old buildings, with modern european remodeling and conveniences inside.
i’m a big fan of air-conditioning
bidets are an interesting concept
a lot of things just seem to be done more logically
guacamole withdrwals...avocados suck here
traveling with a family group is a joy and a hassle, at times
churches everywhere, and they do love ringing their bells. a lot. sometimes late at night.
my back hurts
americans are just slobs and terrible at pulling together outfits, comparatively
parking is almost impossible to find, and mopeds and vespas are popular, though they typically have really torn up seats
hard to find a car without a ding or scratch
no tipping, as it is already built in to the bill, but also an extra charge if you sit versus to go
eat where the locals eat for the best food. don’t be obsessed by yelp or trip advisor for recommendations
my feet hurt, i’m exhausted, but i’ve lost some of my jiggle. just need a few more weeks of vacay, i guess
didn’t win the mega millions, so i guess i will have to come home anyway...

time to find dinner, or i’d go on and on…

old buick from the last pomona swapmeet i went to. gotta get back one of these months.

wind down

this vacation has been fun, and it has been hell. fun, because we’ve seen so many things and places i’d only ever seen in art history books and documentaries. wonder if my old professors are still kicking...now i’d understand more of what they blathered on about.

hell, because this has basically been a french/italian boot camp—going from zero miles a day to ten or more, when moving to a new location also with suitcase strapped to my back like a backpack, and bag of cameras in my hand.

all of it is winding down. two more nights. one more time to pack the bag. my inner clock is confused, as i still find myself waking at two a.m. here, which is about dinnertime back home. work will suck on monday, if i can stay awake.

will be nice to see my better half. and my dad, who has been in hospital/medical facilities since before i left, and has provided my mother a few scares that i know of.

old pontiac from a bbq meetup at legg lake. the other side of the park, which i’d never been to, or i’d have planned better for parking and arrival time.

wonder if they will go for a full restoration and paint job or call it a day in this primal glory.

your phaet in my hands

sticking to cars this time. boring everyone with tales from vacation the last few posts.

i shot this car previously at the uptown whittier carshow, on one of the side streets, on a corner. pretty sure there’s a blog post about it, i just have’t looked it up to link it...i’m sure it’d show up on the search page.

here it was at ruby’s friday evening cruise. had a nice chat with the owner, who hadn’t been around at the uptown show, but had seen my pic on instagram or wherever. very nice guy. my memory is short nowadays, but i want to say he’d put new wheels or hubcaps on it, since the previous pic.

one more week

is it a good vacation when you can’t remember what day it is? good thing cell phones keep track of the day and time shift or we’d be screwed.

it’s saturday here in positano, italy, and i’m taking a day off to do laundry and rest. sooooo tired, and i have an earache. everyone else went back down the hill, which is really all this place is, to the beach to rent a boat for a couple of hours. kid never drove a boat before, but doesn’t plan on going out very far, just far enough to jump in the ocean, and knowing him, he’ll probably pee in it.

if you’ve seen my pics on instagram, we’re in an airbnb halfway up this mountain. great view. hell of a walk and too many stairs. couple of days ago, we climbed both the duomo and the bell tower of an old church. four-hundred plus stairs in each, i really was only psyched up for the dome, and just couldn’t quite make the top level in the bell tower. better view in the duomo anyway. tight stairs to climb in both, as they were never meant to be open to the public.

so, my legs are not really wanting to climb up or down this hill very far today. fortunately, there is a breakfast place just down around a bend, and pizza not far up for later. a few shops if i want to venture out, but i’ll probably just take a nap.

not posting a lot from here, since we are limited to one gig of wifi data a day between the four of us. not sure what we are doing tomorrow. i think the kid mentioned capri and a grotto. hopefully i’m up for that...we’ll see.

another pontiac ornament. i don’t post enough hoodies, and pontiacs are a fav.