bird feeder

1936 chevy master deluxe

i’m sitting here waiting on a delivery my kid ordered to the wrong address. the people on the hotline were too lazy to do their jobs, and didn’t want to bother changing the delivery location, so there we are.

out the front window, i have a hummingbird feeder. initially, it was very popular with the birds.

then i bought a new mix of food. not so many birds. then another brand, same.

there’s a cat, that likes to sit on the edge of the porch and watch the feeder intently. the dog barks at the cat everyday,

they went away for a while. my work day was a little more dull.

then i started mixing my own bird food with recipes from the internet. and i’ve found one they like. basically sugar water. so what i’m figuring, hummingbirds are just tiny little diabetics. or sugar addicts.

was confirmed this week that we’ll be required to be back in the office next month. i’ll miss the little flying spastics, the barking dog, and the cat that likes to pee in the neighbor’s planter early each morning. that neighbor is an asshole, so my hero, the cat.

i need to go shopping. i hate my old work clothes. i need shoes. i hate shopping. this will not be fun. i’ll miss working in my jammies with messy hair.

i had cut my hair the last time they said we’d go back to the office, then everything shutdown before we did. maybe i should cut my hair again…

i work late, because the work can’t wait, and my better half is still living in whittier.

they gave us a second computer, so i could still do work from home if needed.

better half gets to work from home permanently. he’s moving here next month, so the timing is great. i go back, and he stays home. sort of jealous.

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watched this beauty drive up and drop down. waited for people to move along to get a decent shot. it’s all right, i guess.

new camera. color is a little off, so i guess the color balance is a bit out of whack.

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these delivery boys are almost out of their delivery window. i guess i’ll hurry up and keep waiting.

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update: they just called. almost didn’t answer because of another situation. their truck broke down and had to reschedule. [shocker] did it really, now, or did you just not want to deliver at five o’clock? day wasted, sort of.

right. i’m off to whittier then. ttfn.

pizza

1941 plymouth

uptown whittier, just ordered pizza. so i have a few minutes to spare.

went out to the fundraiser for brother richard this past weekend. i’m sure i’d seen him around, but probably never spoke to him. he had a lot of friends, judging by the number of cars and groups of people attending.

weather was perfect for mid-morning. should have gone earlier, but things had need of doing first. still wrestling with the new camera and lens settings.

shot this car as i was heading back around to my car. better half was waiting at home—had to make a storage unit run—did i mention we are moving? his mother is gone and i get my condo back soon, so nothing holding us here. going to be closer to my mom now, where i am living ninety-nine percent of the time now anyway.

on-screen, full-size, this car glows. seems pretty sharp where i wanted it focused, but the lens does start fuzzing out towards the edges. need to find it’s sweet spot.

pizza ready. walking back.

new beginning

1938 buick

i’m in a mood. things on my mind. gloomy outside. change is in the air.

starting with a new camera and lens. the brownie points program at work has informed us that we were going to have to use it or lose it, as it’s being revamped. they use this instead of just handing out cash when you get commended for working hard.

well, i’d saved up quite a large number of points, and wasn’t about to get screwed over that way, so finally was forced to get something. most of the stuff up for offer is crap, but they do have some slightly out of date camera gear. so i picked up a sony a7r iii body. really not my fave, but sony seems to be moving to this smaller size thing.

then, my birthday was a week ago, so my better half got me a new wide angle lens.

took this set up out for a test drive this past friday, out to ruby’s, since the season has started.

the main feature i hate is the screen doesn’t flip and twist like my old cameras. so when i set it up high on my tripod, i really need to stand on tip toes or a curb to see the screen somewhat. or just shoot blind.

still not too sure about the lens. going to have to shoot some more, and get a bit more pissed at it. at least, my better half says that’s what happens every time i get new equipment.

i think i need to tweak the settings as well. some images came out fairly in focus, and others just missed it. makes me want to bust out the other camera i have in the bag, but i need to break this thing in, while i can still return it.

and the files are so big, i’m going to need a bigger boat, err, hard drive/more back up drives.

i dunno. it didn’t seem to like being pointed into the sunset, as you can see. the lens distorts a bit, so will have to go find a lens profile for it.

next up, in the summer of fun, will be finishing packing, and moving soon. not too far.

one thing at a time. one thing at a time.

good riddance 2020

harley davidson

been so long since i wrote anything here, or even turned on my computer, that my computer is basically dead. at a minimum, it needs a new power button. better half will fix it when he has time, and/or will have to build me a new one at some point.

i know i took this pic of a very blue on blue cycle in west covina, at manny’s el loco. (i think they closed down not too long ago). i really can’t remember if this was a fundraiser for something, or a memorial show. i’d have to look through pics from that day, which i can’t, since as i said, my computer isn’t working. I vaguely think someone had died, and the show was in his honor.

pretty bike. there’s some good airbrushing going on all over the fenders and tank, as well as some elaborate chromework etching.

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this past year sucked massively.

• do i need to state the most obvious reason? pesky virus.

• car shows cancelled.

• office closed. job got really stressful.

• restaurants closed.

• mother-in-law died in june.

• better half allows me to visit him in whittier as long as i wear a mask.

• my computer is not working.

• ex mother-in-law died new year’s eve.

let me explain a few of those bullets, since a few sound pretty sketch when typed.

the virus did a trickle down to several of those points:

my ex mother-in-law topped off the year, by checking out new year’s eve. in spite of living in a house with people that did have the virus, and being in direct contact, she did not get it, and died age ninety-six.

we’ll miss you, guadalupe

• my office closed, as did most every office. i have worked from home—the front room at my mom’s house—since march. mom loves it; the dog beast loves it; better half doesn’t love it so much, but believes it’s best i stay with her.

• with the work computer sitting here 24/7, i sometimes find myself easily working into the evening sometimes, just to meet deadlines, or when there’s nothing better to do. they’re hiring more people, so it’s getting more manageable. i do miss seeing my coworkers everyday, but dammit, i do love rolling out of bed five minutes before start time, and working in my jammies all day. i can probably count on one hand the number of times i’ve bothered wearing a bra, dressing in “work” clothes, and wearing real shoes. flip flops are my daily footwear anymore.

• i’d taken several months off from going to car shows before this mess sent everyone into hiding. just when i got out of my doldrums and wanted to head out, they evaporated. sure there are cruises now, but they aren’t really conducive to my photography. i did manage to make it out to one show at xmas time, in between shut downs, so there’s that.

• my computer not working, makes it a wee bit difficult to put up new pics. i wanted to work on one this past weekend, but it refuses to power on. even if i kick it, or whisper sweet cuss words in it’s fan vent, not entirely under my breath.

• sort of miss being able to go dine in at restaurants. as it is, i bring the food home, and the stupid dog sits nearby, staring at my meal and drooling, waiting for any scraps. he’s as tall as the table, so you can’t really hide anything from his view. he’s getting better, and laying down until invited over, but he still has his moments when he’s all up in your food, at your elbow. drooling on the table. really gross.

• with my kid that lives here, out and about, hanging with her friends, my better half thinks it’s safer for him if i mostly stay here with my mom. it’s good for her, as she is never alone in the house. good for him, as he can get things done at home. i do visit him once a week if i can manage it, just to keep him sane.

• better half’s mother died. not from the virus; she was just old. almost made it to ninety-four. it was during an ease in visitor restrictions at the hospital, so she was not alone, he and his niece were there with her. now he fills his days with work, and evenings following her directions in getting rid of her things and shredding paperwork.

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the year wasn’t all bad.

• got my first grandkid on valentines day. they changed her middle name to valentina.

• took an amtrak trip across the country with my better half, picked up and drove home with my younger brother, along route sixty-six.

• son and his family are buying their first home, so yay, i’ll finally get my condo back.

• better half and i will be moving to said condo. i don’t think he’s ever lived behind the orange curtain. it’s going to be too small for both of us, so no doubt, we’ll have to look for something else eventually. that, or we won’t be able to climb stairs as we get older and fatter, and probably not wiser.

so, looking forward to this new year, and being able to get back to whatever normal will be now.

half gone

1938 chevy master deluxe

my company office was closed for the week. so, half-way through a pseudo vacation.

had to take better half’s car back to the repair shop. after everything they did to the car on monday, some type of liquid puddled out from under the car yesterday. and now it’s stuck there until friday, while they wait for the right parts.

hoping to see my grandkid tomorrow, supposedly stopping by my mom’s house. who knows where i’ll end up tomorrow for dinner, not that it’s any big deal. i doubt better half will go to my mom’s with me, as my daughter’s doberman doesn’t seem to like him. at least last time, the first time they met, the dog wanted to make a meal out of his crotch.

anyway, happy early thanksgiving, in case i’m away from my puter tomorrow.

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saw this car on the outskirts of the toy drive. i want to say it said tovars on it somewhere, but probably from the back, and i didn’t shoot that.

plenty of scratches on that paint; i wonder what story it would tell.

change of plan

1954 chevy

saw this chevy at the latin gents toy drive the other day. I think it belongs to the vintage ladies car club, if i remember correctly. the lady’s husband caught me on the way back to my car, to ask if i’d shot it, so yes, i guess i did.

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better half has been doing so many extra hours lately. he’d expected to work all weekend, and had gone out and done his shopping super early in the morning on saturday. found himself five cans of lysol or some type of cleaning thing, which somehow makes him feel like the king of the world. he got his car washed. he called about cars without permits on our block and watched the tickets get put on the windshields.

when he logged on to start work and checked his mail about six a.m., he saw that the sob had been cancelled; stop all work. almost immediately, his body was telling him to sleep. he called me first, at my mother’s, where i’d spent the night.

he was telling me the thing had been cancelled, he was getting paid for half a day anyway, his weekend was free, he planned to relax. i half jokingly asked where should we go? then he was all about it. he started looking for hotel deals while i wrapped up whatever it was i was doing at my mom’s.

he calls back and says there are great deals in san diego, but covid is rampant there. same goes for san fran, and really he only has one night to get out of town. we finally settled on solvang, since i’d gone there the weekend his mother passed, looking for a getaway that wouldn’t be crowded with people like a big city. he hadn’t been there in years.

our favorite hotel was sold out. other hotels were too run down or had bad ratings. he finally found one that was recently renovated.

i got home an hour later, threw a change of clothes in a bag, and we were on our way. for the two and a half hour drive from whittier, we never turned the radio on. we talked the whole way there. anything and everything. we haven’t had a lot of time just us, no work, no distractions. it was nice.

solvang was busier than i’d expected, but you can still avoid the people if you want to. after checking into our hotel, the sun starting to go down, we headed over to tower pizza. we hadn’t had it since the last time we’d been there together, as it was already closed when i passed through town months ago.

we took it back to the room, as we didn’t want to sit outside. i was wearing a long sleeve jacket, but also the shorts i’d been wearing that morning, and the temp was dropping quickly down to the lower forties pretty quickly. the pizza was so good. better than i remembered it.

we thought about going out for a walk around town, but decided it would be too cold.

he fell asleep, i sat in the big bath tub of hot water for an hour and watched tv until i got tired.

in the morning, we took that walk around the town. he wanted to shop for xmas gifts for the little kids in our life. my sister wanted some handmade chocolate stuff, and after waiting for the store to open, to be told it was already sold out, was kind of a bummer. guess i need to go back. that and he has a cuckoo clock that needs repairing from the store where he bought it. if you have to, you have to… ; )

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we stopped at in-n-out on whittier boulevard before we got home. spied a group of classic cars at a rite aid parking lot. better half wanted to turn around. no cameras, what’s the point. looked like a meeting anyway.

sitting in my car in the ino parking lot twenty minutes later, enjoying our food and watching the traffic on the boulevard, we see lots of classic cars driving by. those same group of cars too. at least one was from the bomb club. i guess that there is something going on at montebello park, which is not far away. better half says we might as well go look, but i say no, i don’t have my cameras.

i joked about going back after we got home, but as it was almost four in the afternoon, and i was tired from driving, i didn’t. but i saw you guys, so i was happy.

toy test

so i bought a couple of external hard drives the other day. better half said they were on sale at the lowest price he’d seen in a while. perhaps he was hinting that i should buy my own, instead of taking his.

i haven’t shot much in the last eight months or so, and had recently spent a lot on our trip across the country, and then getting an oil leak fixed on my car, so wasn’t too interested in spending more. but i did finally, which shocked my better half immensely.

as usual for cracking open a new drive, he said i should test them, meaning copying files on and off them, shutting them down and starting them up. i didn’t want yet another copy of files i already had, so finally got my butt up out of the lazy boy chair, and out to a car show.

i’d seen flyers online lately, but finally decided to go see what would turn up at the gents’ show. didn’t know if it would just be a drive thru thing, and therefore, nothing for me to shoot, or as the flyer noted, cars were welcome to stay and hang out.

i needed to get lunch and put gas in my car anyway, so figured i’d drive over and see what was up.

a lot of cars was what i found. hadn’t seen their show this busy for over a year, so was pleasantly surprised.

promised my better half i’d keep the mask on, but wow, it was difficult. the past week had been so cold, then today, in the eighties. so, i had to move quickly, because i can’t take the heat much, and i was wearing jeans.

was greeted warmly by a member of the latin gents. saw several guys i hadn’t seen in a while. everyone was in a good mood.

did i mention i’d chopped off my hair again? was half-way down my back, and just getting thrashed by seat belts, and hair-ties, so i had it cut to just below my shoulders. went back to red too. i started to imagine that i was sweating so much that the red was dripping down my face. it wasn’t, but it should have. haven’t decided if i should go shorter, but didn’t want to look too much like a karen, so i’ll just leave it for a while.

saw this green truck in the corner. i don’t remember if i’d shot it before, so waited for some guys to move out of the way so i could take some pics. it belonged to one of the guys, and he hurried to move a towel and some junk to the back of the truck, out of my shot. thank you. nice truck, nice guys.

after that, i really started to skip cars i would have otherwise have shot. hadn’t had lunch yet, and the heat was making my head swimmy. and the damn mask didn’t help.

woulda shoulda stayed longer, but headed out instead. blasting the air conditioner, and hoping tomorrow will be cold again.

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hard drives are working so far…

road tripped out

quick post, as we’re just back from a two-week, five-thousand+ mile trip to there and back: up the coast, across the country and back on route 66. i may get into more details on the trip later, but keeping in mind that i only post cars on this here bloggy, here’s a quick story.

we were driving about three-hundred miles a day sometimes, and i was typically booking a hotel randomly about an hour or two before sunset, depending on how tired we were.

this was last saturday, and as we pull into springfield, missouri, on the main drag, the sun had already set, i thought i heard engines revving. turning onto the road leading up to the hotel, i spy a yellow thirty-four ford hot rod going the other direction. hmm. random, i thought.

passing a few hotel parking lots, i see several classic cars sitting in the dark. wth. then, as we turn into our hotel’s portico, i saw this beauty sitting off to the right of the hotel entrance.

we unloaded the rental car quickly, got checked in. better half settled in to look at pictures on his ipad, that he’d taken earlier in the day. told him i’d walk down the hill with my brother, to pick up some food from the steak ‘n shake i’d seen there. seeing that i’d grabbed my tripod and big camera, i’m sure he didn’t expect to get food any time soon. i was excited to see a bunch of classic cars here at a randomly selected hotel was a total surprise. i haven’t taken any pictures of old cars in months, and i didn’t realize how much i missed it.

i didn’t shoot everything i saw, but also thought they all might just drive away before i got them. a lot of what i initially saw on the way up the street did leave, but many remained. i was in a hurry to get to the food, so didn’t shoot as many as i would have liked.

we did finally get down the hill to the food place, only to find they’d closed the dining room ten minutes earlier. had to head back to the room, to get my better half to drive us down the hill and through the drive-thru for dinner.

after a look around on the internet, i found out it was the aftermath of the mid-america street rod nationals at ozark empire fairgrounds. the two-day show was over, and these were just people too tired to drive home, and had booked up hotels, and were doing some cruising on the main street.

i guess my better half is right, that i can stumble across a car show anywhere. sorry, d.

for those of you interested in a more thoughtful daily post of our random trip, please check out my better half’s blog. i was mostly just along for the ride anyway.

not much happening

1948 chevy fleetline

missing a few shows coming up. think i will be needing a new camera soon. don’t really like the sony e-mount cameras, but my big a-mounts are supposed to be discontinued. really hate the 6300 i have in my bag. mostly the user, but the glass i generally have on it is average.

taking a short vacation from the job. better half’s first get away in five years. thirteenth anniversary for us. bosses hope we come back.

not a lot of signal here in the middle of nowhere, so currently probably just chatting with myself. better half has earphones plugged in and actually posting on his blog again. been so long since we’ve traveled together, combined with he can’t understand what i say half the time, makes for some awkward misunderstandings. whatever. still having fun.

hoping to post some new pics from the road, but for now, here’s an old one from my archives. fleetline from the oc viejitos show last year. fewer cars showed up, which didn’t matter this early anyway. miss the morning light. i should really get my ass outta bed before the sun on weekends and go shooting again.