such a nice car

quick post because i went to the broiler tonight and stayed longer than i intended, though i wished i could have stayed later...there were lots of cars showing up. i still have stuff to do before bed.

spent a lot of time up at the front of the lot. several cars caught my eye. noticed this one pull in and drive directly out to the back of the lot. thought that was a shame, but figured there just weren't any spots open at the time to park closer.

so when i was mostly done, i wandered to the back to see if they were still there. yep. they've turned the back lot lights on again, and it was parked like this under one of them. a guy was there with his two kids, so i went over to them. the teenage girl was shooting pictures of the car, and i was waiting for her to finish so i could slip in and get some shots. 

turns out its the guy's car, and his daughter was trying to shoot it for a school assignment. only thing was, i think they said it kept coming out wrong. blurry or too dark. she had the settings wrong. and was standing way too far back for the little flash to really illuminate anything—almost like people using their flash at a baseball stadium—pretty useless.

i managed to grab this one view of the car while she was trying to figure out her camera. she/they were kind enough to wait while the long exposures were cranking through.

they were still there when i left. hope she got something to satisfy the teacher anyway.

been busy

finally got a couple of hard drives and spent the weekend backing up stuff, getting ready to make room on my hard drive. plus it rained, so i skipped a couple of shows, assuming no one would go.

so, i'm still finishing up some back ups, but if its not raining tomorrow, i intend to check out a new show in el toro. i'm not quite sure why its starting, since there's still the one at fuddruckers at the same time. i've been away from it for a while, so maybe there's some drama going on with the organizers or the restaurant. maybe they intend to move it all over to the new one. i don't' know, but i'll check it out.

meanwhile, my better half's van has been having engine and/or electrical issues, and i have to drive him over to pick it up again in few minutes, so here's a quick post. it's a viejitos car. it's red. red's a bitch.

sweaty palms

well, if it wasn't taken in december, you wouldn't know that it wasn't a hot day. out at point fermin park, on a cliff, with ocean breezes. truly, i don't remember the temperature. i know it was overcast when i got there, and people are wearing short sleeves and shorts. so maybe it wasn't a schvitz of a day, but it may have been sultry (let's ask owen's mama).

anyway, people not from california insert stereotypical imagery here: palm trees [✓]; vintage car [✓]; blue sky [✓]; reflections [✓]; hot chicks in bikinis [   ]; sunglasses [   ]; frilly drinks with umbrellas [   ]; surf and/or skateboarder [   ]...

shiny happy chevys

had the day off for the holiday. slept in late. started sifting through tax paperwork. went out for lunch. didn't really have an appetite, nor can i smell anything yet, with this stuffy nose.

good news...ordered a couple of hard drives, so i will be able to get back out and shooting pretty quick. going to riverside in a couple of weeks...hey gary, anything going on out there?

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last night i couldn't decide which car to post next, so asked my better half for his opinion. out of the handful of cars i showed him, he said post them all. right up there with asking he and my mom to help pick out a wedding dress...still left it up to me.

so flipped a coin and this is what you get. i like it anyways.

well, bummer

so i'm trolling my more recent photos for something different, and thought this would be interesting. then my week got busy, and didn't have time to get back to it and post it.

since i'd already started it, i figured i'd finish it tonight. but as i was trying to nuke the color funkiness from the sun glare—which i couldn't quite cancel out—i realized i'd already posted it recently. strange that i hadn't seen it in forever, and here it was a few weeks ago.

seems they added those big ass headlights, but the pattern i hadn't noticed initially on the roof is the same. pretty sure its the same car. pfft.

so someone tell me, is it a '39 or a '40?

tired now, so i'll go kick myself and get over it. i'll find another picture tomorrow.

so fine

california is great. great weather, even if it is being blown by a cold breath from the arctic this week. still beats where i grew up on the east coast, though i do miss snow just a smidge. but then, i can always drive up to the mountains for that.

the one thing i don't like, the last few years, i've been working in tall buildings. they're built for earthquakes. the buildings "roll." maybe it's just me. maybe my ears are extra sensitive to the movement of the buildings. but i feel it more often than not. usually just the wind blowing against the building, but it makes me queasy just the same. on some days, i have to check the usgs website to see if there really was an earthquake or how far away it may have been.

when i leave the building, i always take my purse, my keys and my phone. just in case. if the building falls down, i tell myself, i could at least maybe get my car and drive home. but then i think, if the office fell down, it would probably fall on the parking garage. if i have my stuff,  i could at least walk and get in the house.

the last couple of weeks, if i wasn't driving out for lunch because of rain, i was out for a walk. took some cash, in case i got hungry or thirsty, but otherwise, i only took my phone. i still feel strange without the keys in my hand, but i tell myself, that's mostly because i have nothing to fidget with while i walk. my inner introvert needs something to help ignore all the people driving by. so instead, i'm out getting some fresh air without my things, and hoping the idiots stop for me at red lights.

anyway, i have a cubicle not quite on the top floor of the building now. it was windy today. i got a headache. and i went for a walk. and the building was still there when i got back.

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another car from an old viejitos show. swirly pinstripes all the way down the sides and across the trunk.

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.