buckets o’ fun

i was looking for a picture to play with last night. found this older one. started tweaking the pixels. was about half an hour from posting, when one of our visiting college kids decided to warm up something in the microwave, which is pretty standard for a college kid, right?

well, i am currently living in an older place. not a nice victorian. not even a craftsman. just some old thing from the thirties, that happens to not have enough juice running through it to power all of this century's technology. at least not all at once.

so, when my mother-in-law has got her space heater on, and i'm running my computer, and there's a tv or two on, as well as my better half running his puter back in the back room, well, the house kind of squeaks by. but the key seems to be, add the microwave or the little toaster oven, and the place throws it's hands up and blows a fuse. which just does wonders for my attitude.

my computer is on the same circuit as the kitchen and the front room. so it all goes dark up front, and my computer and whatever i'm working on, just goes poof. and my vocabulary gets very loud and colorful. really makes me a joy to be around.

oh, and it has no effect on my better half's room. but when he hears me dropping loud f-bombs, he knows what happened. doesn't save my file, but does get the place lit up, and i'm welcome to start all over again.

so, as i was saying, while i had saved my file not long before the fuse blew, it was late, and i dreaded seeing if my file was ruined, so i didn't even start my computer back up last night. and don't step on all the f-bombs i dropped all the way down the hall to the back room, and back. took a hot shower instead, and went to bed.

took two tries to get my computer back up and running this evening. my file was ok this time, but other times they've corrupted. had to rework some stuff, but here it is. i've got things to do, so i'll just post it before someone gets hungry again...

pretty, shiny things

another from the latin gents. i wanna say this belonged to the same guy that closed a bunch of car hoods last time i was at the show. and this time he was busily buffing the dust off this car before i got to it. i could totally be imagining it, but i like to humor myself sometimes. wish he would have moved the not so interesting sign further away, just for a few, but there you go. shot it as i found it.

fast food

this was a pretty nice convertible, again at the latin gents show. it looks black, but if you looked close in the right light, it's a deep, dark, blue. and so shiny, it really soaked up the refections.

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fast food implies crap food. well they try their best, at least you hope. you hope the food is real and not biomechanical by-products. would rather eat play-doh sometimes. i was given a handful of gift cards to crap food places i frequent on my weird work hours.

the habit has recently been popping up all over. first time i had it was at their original establishment in santa barbara last year. wow, it was good; ate there twice in one weekend. then had it somewhere else, still good. then a few months ago, stopped by one in san luis obispo. uh. college town, college students...i gave them a little slack on the quality.

a new one opened up in whittier not too long ago. first burger there was pretty good, but its been spotty since. tonight, i had a salad. it was awesome in santa barbara. it was average in san luis obispo. this one was soggy. instead of slices of avocados, a scoop of "fresh" guac. i had thousand island dressing, which definitely wasn't a name brand, if not just ketchup mixed with stuff already in the store. i ate the chicken and the bacon bits, and an occaisonal bite of wet lettuce and blue cheese bits. am i just catching a bad batch? or have the bean counters caught up with the success, and started cutting back on quality?

will they go the route of other food chains, eventually adding the brass bell to ring for (dis)satisfaction, with the employees like trained pavlovian seals to respond "thank you!" i always substitute "eff you!"

fortunately, i still have a full card for in-n-out, and they mostly are pretty good, about 95% of the time.

that time of year again

baby, it's cold outside. skies are spectacular. it's time for rain. and it's time for the tree carcasses. randomly discarded, used up christmas trees. arbitrarily dumped anywhere and everywhere. sure, this week, people are dutifully putting them, untrimmed, out with the trash.

then there are the people who make that extra effort, who actually take the time to put them in their car to find some lonely deathbed to toss them out on. usually just sitting by the roadside, but i did see one jauntily propped up in a bus shelter corner, still attached to the stand. wonder where it was going...

spent the morning at the honda dealer, for an oil change. of course, they found something else...back brakes almost gone, so replace them and resurface the rotors. never get out of there for less than $300. i suppose when it starts being more than $500 a pop, i'll think about getting a new car.

anyway, i managed to make it to the latin gents show yesterday. arrived a little late, stayed a couple of hours. probably left right when the light was getting good, but i thought i was meeting up with people for an evening at disneyland. i got there, but they didn't, but that's another story.

parking lot was full of chevys, mostly bombs. i was happy. lots of clubs too. i took a bunch of pictures, and just hoped my hard drive would fit them. it did, so i have a few good ones i'll post over the next few days. i can probably do about thirty more pics, then i'm done until i save up for a new drive. blah blah. whine whine.

not much going on

i stopped by the broiler this evening. albeit, it was early, there was not much more than the die hards there. could be the cold, or maybe people are still out of town. anyway, i didn't take my bag out of the car, and only walked around the lot to see if there was anything interesting, or a car in a different spot. no luck. being more picky until i get new hard drives.

i did chat for a bit with an acquaintance about hard drives, cameras and printing, until his other club buddies called him inside for dinner. decided not to bother staying to see what else might show up. i had to have dinner myself, and my better half was waiting for me at home. he worries sometimes. well, most of the time, when i'm out on my own.

found this car in the archives from 2010, a duke's show and shine car show. from the broiler, so i can pretend it was there tonight. parking lot was overflowing with awesome cars. only time i've seen this one and for all i know, it's been sold and repainted by now, but it did have a really interesting roof job. one of the first cars that i wished i had a ladder to shoot.

back to work

my week as a slacker is over tomorrow; back to work for half a day, then a day off, then the rest of the week like normal. i've enjoyed sleeping in late. got a few things that needed done, done. i'll be glad when the holidays are over. not my bag.

this week, it's my better half's turn being a slacker. he's got family coming to town. sometimes, that's more work than going to work.

he did take me to the brian setzer concert last night, sort of an annual thing. but i think it will be the last time. the gibson amphitheatre has reconfigured the seating just enough that he cannot fit into the seating comfortably—he's six foot five—and it's pretty uncomfortable even for me. and he felt ripped off after a great wall of enebirated backsides wouldn't sit down. if we wanted to stand up the whole show, we'd have bought pit passes, not the ass passes we apparently were stuck with. 

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another of the legend's cars. i think that's enough for this year. time to share the love with some other clubs.

chillin’

so i had some vacation time saved up, and i've got the week off. end of the world coming, so why not chillax? end of the world is my mom's birthday. is there some significance in that? lol.

its been raining off and on, and i love that. been sleeping in late. went to a movie today. saw the chevy at the havana house yet again. totally going to get my camera next time and shoot it. though i know i already shot it at the whittier uptown show. but different season, different light, could be pretty awesome. i'd ask your permission, but it stinks in there, and hey, you're out in a public parking lot.

thinking about driving out to pasadena tomorrow. maybe go shoot some flowers for a change. still a little bit of space on the hard drive. deleted some stuff from 2010, so some miniscule bit freed up.

also will probably end up in downey tomorrow evening. try to be there before sunset, maybe stay a little later, since hey, i don't have to get up at freaking 4:30 in the morning. all depends on what shows up. and how much my better half whines about me being out. he worries sometimes.

anyway, not going up to see my daughter, flights are too expensive...she'll have to wait until april. thought about driving to san fran for a couple of days, but i'd have to go alone, which i've done several times before, but i just don't feel like it this time. and it's raining up there all week so whatever.

here's a detail of the airbrushing on the shade thing from this awesome pontiac.

legend in his own mind

i really liked this truck, but i didn't like the location when i got there. sun was rising, and it was next to a light pole, with a big, strong shadow across the hood. and a group of guys that were standing around in front of it.

so i walked away from it, and started shooting the other cars, the ones in better locations.

still frustrating was that from the good side of a car, there was the tent, or people, or the public bathroom, and from the other side, my shadow would fall across the cars, unless i got down low enough.

sometimes patience will solve a problem. i went back to this one before i left, the sun had moved, the guys had moved a little farther away. i didn't like what was on the other side of the truck, but i did like the palm trees. so there you go.

michelin man

another from the legends show. my memory is already getting fuzzy, and i forgot to make notes on my phone, but i think this one belonged to the guy who said he was also from whittier.

i looked through my photos, and i was right, i've seen it before. i took a picture of it at a viejitos show in july. and if i looked further, i bet i'd find a few others, but probably more likely, of the hood ornament.

he did specifically ask me if i'd taken a shot of it. truth be told, i was going to pass it by. but since he asked, i hope he sees it here and thinks it's ok.

one of many legends

i went to a couple of xmas toy drives this weekend.

first up, i'd never been out to point fermin in san pedro. i'd noticed this one on the list, and thought i'd go check it out. was fun going over the bridges and past the craptastic ports and all the stacked boxes. out through the typical beach type town, with some really fun hills. the park was actually sort of nice. not much of a beach, more of a cliff to a rocky shore. habited by shabby homeless dwellers.

this toy drive was sponsored by the legends car club. i guess i got there a little before the official start time. was hoping to get out before the sun got too high, but i didn't quite make it. the fog decided to lift, actually more got blown away. but it was early enough on a sunday, that only the sponsor's cars were there. should have known better from going to the viejitos shows...people are still at church that early.

anyway, i found easy parking, and got going. in pretty quick order, probably half of the group came over to welcome me, ask who i was shooting for, and pretty soon had passed around a couple dozen cards. i'll have to post a few more, for the guys that really pointed out their cars. they all seemed very nice. and the cars were really great too. just what i like.

one of them said more clubs were going to be there, i was welcome to join them for some tacos, but i couldn't stay, as i had other places i had to be, and a tight schedule. and of course, right on queue, as i was putting my car into drive, a string of chevys came driving down the street. and more from the other direction, and more as i drove back through the town. ahhhhhhHH!!!