what's up?

pomony

digging in archives on this here ipad, whilst i am sat at a random bar, in front of a large screen tv playing some little fifa game of the us vs bosnia, waiting for my burger and fries to arrive. us winning so far, as i understand from the occasional enthusiastic screams from the other tables.

hadn’t drank a coke in over a year and a half; now i’ve had almost one a day in the last two weeks. slippery slope. and i’m paying for it, with being unable to sleep and a pain in my side.

this merc was out early at pomona swap meet back in twenty-nineteen. warm, early morning sun kissing the bumper. and me and a camera, enjoying some alone time.

burger was acceptable, double cheeseburger, but the fries were better.

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.

a weekend

better half and i got off our butts this weekend, and hit up a couple of events, heavily attended by cars to our liking.

not difficult for him, since he wakes up at three in the morning every day for no reason at all, but lately, i prefer to sleep in on my weekends. i was the one that mentioned wanting to go to said events, so i managed.

my older brother and his wife were in town visiting my mother. being from the east coast, we invited them to join us at the pomona swap meet this past sunday. apparently, they also like to sleep in, but rallied, and were up and going when we stopped to pick them up at four a.m.

we were in the unusually short line to the gate before five. apparently, the threat of rain kept people away, at least until they woke up and noticed it was hardly a sprinkle. while not as impressive in the quantity of cars in the show area, as there are in the summer, my bro was still quite impressed. they went off to wander the aisles of things for sale, whilst better half and i headed off to do our thing.

was wonderfully cool…i do so hate the heat of summer. the off and on sprinkles of rain before sunrise did not deter us. better half had brought several camera lenses to play with. i stuck with what i know, and tried to refamiliarize myself with my camera.

better half seemed to ambush cars as they arrived, with the owners barely parked, before he was asking for headlights to be left on. i caught a shot of this red truck, after he had his pics, and still chatting with the owner.

i could have happily kept shooting until the swap meet closed, but my bro and his wife had already wandered through the booth area, the cars for sale, and were getting hungry for brunch, so we stopped.

they also wanted to leave. things that caught their eye wouldn’t fit on the carry on luggage, and my brother was in danger of buying a car, but couldn’t decide between two, and knowing he had no other spaces to park one back at home.

brunch in uptown whittier, before going home, where my better half took a long nap, while i downloaded my pics from a busy weekend, followed by a hard time choosing which to start first...

woulda

i wanted to go to pomona yesterday.

my morning on saturday had been good, until a little back and forth texting with my daughter turned my day dark. really pissed me off. started innocent enough, but as it seems i never say the right thing to her, her mood switches gears. i can almost hear the click of the attitude shift, and there’s no reeling it back.

so now i’m blocked from her phone and social media.*

i spent an hour aggressively cleaning things that i’d easily managed to ignore for some time. burnt out some of the fury with cleaning, and expletives under my breath that i needed to get out.

better half stayed downstairs, with headphones on, watching some movie on the tv screen.

then, i’d decided i’d like to try going to shoot some cars. test out my arm, and see how dizzy i might get walking around with my camera bag. i haven’t kept up with what shows were happening in a while, but i knew that pomona would be open on sunday. not a small show, and a long walk to the show area.

at least it wouldn’t be hot.

saturday night, i got my batteries charged up. set my alarm for some ridiculous time, like three-thirty a.m., so we’d have plenty of time to be at the gates when they opened at five. no way my better half was going to let me go there by myself.

i really haven’t used my cameras much since october, when i fell. i figured the cameras would be totally dead, and would need the time and date stamps updated, at the very least.

had one hinky battery that was not charging. the knock-off batteries don’t seem to last as long as the genuine sonys do. so chucked that one, and borrowed one from my better half.

put a battery in my newer camera, and it wouldn’t turn on. weird. maybe the camera got too cold in the closet? my older cameras would be a little dodgy when i’d be out shooting in colder weather.

if i put some pressure on the lens, and changed the setting to program mode, it would start up for a second, then, black screen. popped the battery out and tried another.

same. and i don’t use program mode, so would have been terribly upset if it was the only one that had worked.

better half took a look. the spring in the battery compartment had come loose, and so the camera wouldn’t stay on. couldn’t see how to fix it, but thought maybe it could slip back into the slot. didn’t seem to be broken off. didn’t have the tools, and i thought it might still be under warranty anyway.

great. wanted to cry—fuck that, i didn’t—and went upstairs to look for the receipt, and check online to see what i’d need to do to get it repaired. what a stupid and confusing website they have, i must say.

online, the estimate was a ridiculous three-figure amount, just for them to look at it. doesn’t mean final cost, and there were no live humans to chat with, because, weekend, and holiday weekend at that.

so we didn’t go.

thought about using my old camera, but better half thought maybe i should not push my luck for the time being.

so flipping through old pics, from old cameras, on old external drives, and found this studebaker i’d seen at pomona back in 2017.

no idea why it caught my eye, then, or today. it just looked like it was saying “cheese,” for the camera.

*she did send another message later in the evening, sort of apologizing, but still not wanting to talk to me for a while. better than not at all.

sunday

made it out to the swap meet last week. not being in the area anymore makes it harder to rock out of bed even earlier to get to shows anymore. better half solved that problem and put us up in a hotel the night before, just a few blocks away. we followed a couple of classic cars around the backside of the fairgrounds, and then around the side to the public entrance.

i guess he figured i needed to get out and do something fun. well, he also wanted to see if there were parts available for his car, not that he’d know what he’s looking for. he makes fun of me, as for as many times as we’ve been to the swap meet in the past, i’ve never really made it over the parts side of the show…just always in with the cars, shooting pics. it’s what i do.

anyway, we got there a bit after the gates opened. bundled up, as the temp was in the upper thirties, i think. i always ponder whether to wear a jacket, much less a coat, as i overheat, then would have to carry the thing around or take back to the car, which is just a waste of time and perfectly good light.

with the sun still a glimmer on the horizon, i was just warm enough after hiking over to the show area, that i briefly considered taking the coat off. i guess it’s just as well i didn’t. standing there taking longer exposures, i did sort of feel the chill.

as the sun started to rise, this beauty started to glow.

i have a bunch of new pictures, and not a lot of time to play with them. usual story.

why the hell not?

pomona swap meet, last year.

wondering if indians used to live on these grounds. swear to big guy there’s a ghostly face of an indian in that driver’s seat on the full size image. i suppose i should add that here too, but i’ve already shut down my computer. otherwise, there were no other people hanging around this time of a cold morning.

don’t care much for hot rods, but i took a shot of this one for some reason. might as well post one once in a while.

have not done a whole lot today. i’m losing track of time working from home. apparently i thought thursday was wednesday all day. no idea where i lost a day. and have the work computer sitting here makes it too easy to just try and get projects done that are always pushed aside for the immediate rush jobs.

today, i power washed bits of the carpeting that the dog beast barfed on a week ago, when he ate some bad food.

one more week of work, then i have a week off. no where to go. previously scheduled vacation i never bothered to cancel the work time off. i’m tired. why not?

inconvenience

so there’s this virus going around…

torn between staying here in whittier or in oc with my mother. better half is giving me the stink eye, since i am out and about in the world, and he’s at home 24/7, and in “protect his mother” mode. will probably start packing my shit, and go stay at my mom’s for the duration. he disagrees with my laissez-faire attitude on the whole situation. he’s exhausted, and i don’t want to say anything else stupid here. dark clouds are moving in, and it will be raining again soon.

would be a good time to hide in my condo, but it’s currently being renovated and is in no condition for anything to live in it.

my office hasn’t shut down yet, and as of now, i wouldn’t be able to connect into the network and keep working from home.

was supposed to go on a cruise with my mom and brother, but that finally got cancelled—mom didn’t want to go anyway. they may reschedule to later in the year, since the cruise line doesn’t want to refund the money. see if they are still in business next month.

my current problem is that i took a week off for that cruise; was looking forward to time off from work, but by then, we will all probably be quarantined and not going anywhere anyway. i guess i’ll just cancel the time off and work if i can.

seeing more car shows being postponed or cancelled, so i’ve postponed making my annual reservations for chicano park day and others. so take my listing of car shows with a grain of salt, as i’m not out and about at shows, and not totally sure if some of them are cancelling or hoping for the best. i’m adding notes or deleting as i see info online. maybe i should just take the page down for now. i dunno.

here’s an old pic. pomona swap meet, from a couple of years ago. i guess no new shows, means i can dive into all the files from past shows i never have time to revisit. and i have a quite a bit to choose from over the last ten years.

two years ago, this was just primer. no idea if they’ve painted it or not. still a pretty cool car as is.

just makes me kick myself for not getting out of bed a couple of weeks ago and heading to pomona…

tut tut

looks like rain.

two hour drive home and out for a quick dinner so my better half can go shopping.

bro flew home today. hope he made his connection. hope he can figure out uber since no one in his fam wants to drive to the airport at midnight. if i could, i would have gone with, just to be sure he’s ok.

kid called wanting to do dinner , i.e., have me buy, but not down there tonight, so she’ll hit up gramma.

snagged a bottle of vino someone brought back to work from a meeting. i don’t drink, but my daughter-in-law does. she said she’ll take it.

pretty paint combo on this thirty-nine out at pomona a couple of months ago. so late in the morning, and a relatively empty parking lot, still surprises me.

skipped it

ya, ya, i was lazy this morning. didn’t rain as i had hoped, but was misty and sprinkly off and on today. still looks like more is coming tonight.

so i stayed huddled under the covers instead of cruising through the miles of cars at pomona.

here’s a shot from last month to compensate. penance. whatever.

i suspect there were just as few cars there this month as last, because of the cold and the possible rain. have only seen a couple of pics from other photographers so far today.

maybe next month…