what's up?

fellas

been a busy weekend and have't had much time to even turn my ipad on. solo road trip up the coast and back with my son's wedding in the middle.

i have a beautiful new daughter-in-law, and a wonderful family--her parents, sisters and brother--can't get better than that. to make it perfect, my daughter and her boyfriend were able to be there...a rare treat to have both of my kids in the same place.

also lucked out and had perfect weather, between storms.

also, a long story short, i did not take any of my own pics of the wedding. last minute rushing around plus teetering on high high heels after marching to hell and back the day before, made me a bit wobbly, and i decided to be safe and leave the gear in the room. there was a photographer and videographer there anyway.

and when i tried to take a shot with my phone, it seized up and died on me. i guess i was meant to just enjoy the day.

san luis obispo for a night, then a few in san fran. currently in monterey, then on the road again tomorrow. i'll be home wednesday, i think. missing my better half. at least work is keeping him busy with a crap ton of overtime.

saw these guys' cars before out in riverside, and here, again, at huffarama. actually spoke with one of the guys from fellas car club...can't remember just now if he owned that purple truck, or another that i've shot from a previous show.

he was quite nice, and i think, really, the only person that did say anything to me at that show. i was probably wearing a scary face as usual. sorry...

running with scissors

finally broke down and went to costco to buy a new backup drive. membership had expired too, so a few hundred dollars later, i'm home trying to open the thing.

if you're not familiar with these things from costco, the packaging is practically non-destructable. i suppose it's to prevent theft, but sheesh. i'm over at my mother-in-law's, and the best i could find to open the thing are scissors that seem built for a kindergartener to use. they're actually full-size kitchen scissors, but cheap as hell.

tried a steak knife, but then thought better of it, and went back to the crapscissors.

found two of those pieces of crap, so between stabbing and cutting motions, followed by a two-scissor maneuver, i somehow managed to free the box from the bullet-proof plastic.

currently have the thing plugged in, and i guess i need to try moving some files on to it, in case i need to take it back.

would they take it back, when the packaging is all shredded and thrashed?? hopefully, it will work, and i won't have to find out.

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this master deluxe was beautiful. burnished golden in the sun, i was quite envious of the owners, as i left, heading back to my stupid, generic honda.

fingerprint

i feel icky. officially my two week vacation has begun, and i expect to be catching a cold any moment now. i work my butt off, day in and day out, and almost every time i take a break, i catch a cold. must be the release of tension and adrenaline. the stress of driving is a big factor too. took me two and a half hours to get home yesterday.

didn't feel up to going to mooneyes this morning. figured i could go later in the day, but i basically only left the house to go get some lunch, and really didn't want to do that either.

whittier had their xmas parade today. goes right past the house. usually they gather outside the bedroom window, and wake us up, but this year, they staged it further down the street and around the corner.

still, crowds of little kids squealing, yelling, singing, and playing music aren't conducive to sleep anyway. we got up, turned on the tree, and peeked out the curtains once in a while. neighbors were outside heckling the marching bands and beauty queens, but that's to be expected from forty year old wanna be frat boys.

so, hoping if i take a few days, taking it easy, i'll be up to my road trip mid-week.

for now, going to play with my pictures, watch the old cars passing by, on their way to the cigar bar or other bars uptown...the show must be over.

i love hood ornaments. pontiacs are always a target. even the ones with newly installed amber faces, but i prefer them in plain metal, painted metal, and plastic. the older the plastic resin is, the more likely they are subject to crackage (not the butt kind).

i suppose like skin, they dry out, become brittle and get this really interesting texture. and each is unique in the patterns, so i suppose i would be able to compare similar shots i've taken, to see if i've shot the car before, without ever seeing the rest of the car.

walkabout

my better half has gotten it in his head to make a concerted effort to do ten thousand steps a day. for the last couple of weeks, he has hit that goal or exceeded it every day.

i started it, i think i even wrote about wanting to do it, but i just don't have the time. except on weekends. i did the three mile round trip out to jersey mike's on beverly blvd one day. the thing about beverly, is there isn't enough sidewalk, and at some point, you have to walk on people's yards or on the street. stupid, really. so walking back, i decided to walk through a neighborhood i was unfamiliar with, and stumbled upon the bike path that cuts through whittier.

pretty lonely on some parts, but bike riders were frequent enough not to get too paranoid.

anyway, told my better half about it, and the next weekend, we were both walking over to jersey mike's. on the way back, we talked about how far the trail went. he said it's the same one that snakes down lambert, down past the two felons skate shop, one of his favorite stores to shop for boards at.

the next day he wanted to go try out some stuff with his camera over at the bridge above five points. instead of walking back on the path, we cut back up the street toward uptown, on greenleaf.

he was slightly ahead of me, when i hear him say, "i'll just wait over there." not knowing what he meant, until i passed a building, and saw this chevy, sitting in front of a repair shop.

i had taken my camera and little gorillapod to shoot pictures of the wind sculptures on the trail, but i was too shy to go over to the car, and just shot with my phone from the sidewalk. knowing i would do that, my better half, walked right on over to the owner and asked if he minded if i took a few shots. no problem.

he chatted the guy up, while i had to change all the settings on the camera, and then shoot. turned out, the car shop guys called the owner over to bring his car in for his smog or whatever, so i only had time for this one picture.

better than nuthin. always like shooting the random car i come across out and about. they just usually aren't this nice.

chopped

dear specific whoever is reading this blog and hitting the refresh button repeatedly, you get to the other pages by scrolling down, and using the numbers at the bottom to navigate through these pages, or go to the search tab.

there are two hundred and nine pages, at this point, so it might take you a while. if you're looking for a particular car, send me an email, i'll see if i've done anything with it, and maybe i'll put it up. i'm just afraid you're going to wear out that f5 button on your keyboard...i don't get any brownie points for page views, and neither do you...you'll just get frustrated.

i've got things to do, and will be away again tomorrow, so i'll just put this chopped bel air up for now. don't think i've seen anything like this one before. wonder how far they are going to take it.

in the burbs

i should say, burb.

saw this one back at the whittier uptown show last summer. shiny, isn't it?

waiting by the hotel, in the staging area. they always seem to open the show for entries late, so people get out of their cars in staging, leaving the cars alone, and i take advantage of the opportunity.

slept in, instead of going to pomona, my bad. apparently, my better half was really looking forward to going; but then i said i wasn't, he didn't want to go by himself.

he then felt inspired to go climb that big hill that i stare at from the window, while here playing with my pictures. i've been here eight years, and it was the first time up there. nice view.

then, my younger brother is town for a couple of weeks, so we went to take my parents and him out for lunch. fun time.

my better half really enjoys when my brother and i are in the same room, says we both are cut from the same cloth. our sense of humor is twisted, and once we get going, everyone will be laughing. we enjoy making mother shake her head, and ask herself where she went wrong...

one more busy week, then i'm off work for two. so yay, and prepare to spike the football...

damn pop ups

i really hate pop up tent things. i know they are used for shade, but couldn't they just move them off to the edges of a show? they do kind of ruin a decent shot. as an added bonus, the people go to the sidelines with the tent.

maybe i should just make peace with them, and start just incorporating owners into the shots.

i think the other side would have been the better one of this bike, the way it was sitting, but i couldn't get back there without invading pop up space, and the sun was hitting this side. shoot them as i find them...

been a little busy lately, with my son's upcoming wedding. out of town a lot, so my posts have been a bit inconsistent. if i haven't got something to say when i have a picture ready, i have at least been posting them over on instagram...most people don't want to read about the trivialities of my life and my warped sense of humor that unwinds from my mind to this digital diarrhea anyway. maybe it's time to stop paying for a blog and just post pictures for free there, or just on flickr.

i know my better half reads this, and sometimes it's easier to write about things than to just tell him. i get tougue twisted and i'm often hard to understand when i do talk. fun game for him to repeat back what he thought he heard me say. must be because i didn't have many girl friends growing up or being the type of girl that was a non-stop chatterbox. whatever. i'm perfectly happy with my own company...

an aside, to said better half..."i am lobo marunga. i hunt alone..." i'll be home later, gotta go to this party first.

“love you so”

saw this beauty drive in to the lot, and followed it here. didn't even wait for the dude to get out before i started shooting it from the other side, fearing he'd jump out and open the hood.

he didn't, do i came around to the sunny side.

says "love you so" on the back fenders on both sides.

anyone else bothered by the overly done light display at dunkel brothers, on the south side of the five freeway? the garish blinking stops traffic on my drive both ways each day; really surprised that it doesn't cause epilectic seizures from passerbys.

can say i don't mind the old car they have put out for the past several years.

a negative times a negative is a positive

so i didn't get back to my post yesterday...got busy...(mind in the gutter)...working on a few more pictures before bed.

negative: neither of us slept well the night before huffarama, so when the alarm went off at four a.m., my better half decided he was too tired to go. also, he had started taking his camera equipment apart late in the evening, so he could experiment with his setup; it got too late, and just left everything spread out all over his desk.

since he wasn't going, i was going to sleep in, and go later. of course, i couldn't get back to sleep, so around five, i was up, and by five-thirty, on the road. ontario is out in east jesus nowhere, right next door to fontucky. just kidding. i like roadtrips, especially when there's no traffic.

we had originally planned to stay out in a hotel near the mall, and make a weekend of it. better half's sister didn't come down for the holiday weekend, so we didn't want to leave his mom alone for a couple of days either.

negative: was shooting away at the show, zipping from car to car, was just about done, focusing on a mercury, when the camera made a weird noise and gave the dreaded "camera error." fuck. did a few things to it, off, on. off. on. fiddle with settings. switch out the lens. nope, it was giving me the finger, wouldn't focus, and just saying, in other words, "bite me."

had to find a curb to do a bit of camera surgery, to change it out with the spare. the spare has a big vertcal grip attachment, that is too heavy and unnecessay for the tripod. to remove it also required detaching the camera strap, which is a bitch, as it's meant to stay on there.

would have just used the newer, smaller, better camera, but i couldn't find the cable release in my bag, and it was probably sitting at home in a drawer.

not too surprised, as it has been acting up the last few times out. better half says i've probably maxed out shutter activations. all i know, is that when i got home, several hours later, the body of the camera was hot to the touch, in spite of being in the trunk, in a camera bag, then sitting in the house for a bit.

nuff blather...

positive:

-- i got there early, in spite of leaving later than originally planned.

-- the guys let me in the gate, so i was able to get a lot of shots while the sun was still rising and there weren't too many people in the way.

-- i had expected more hot rods and mercs to go with the rockabilly theme, but was pleasantly surprised with the variety of cars and clubs, that showed up to show their support

-- took a quick tour of the vendors, and food booths, but didn't see anything i just had to have, but stuff was there, especially if anyone was looking for xmas gifts

overall, it was a good show. the music was good. i left by eleven, but i assume the live band was good too. i'd go again.

i grabbed lunch, before heading home. i was toast by the time i got there, and was finally able to catch up on the sleep that eluded me the night before.

the end.

huffarama

quick post. better half needed me to rip my computer apart to make room for xmas decorations and rearranging furniture. had this pic ready to go when he asked. probably be down for a couple of hours.

i'll write more when i get the puter running again...made it out to the bo huff show yesterday...it was a good show...dead sled guys--thanks for letting me in early!