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one of those weeks

1954 chevy bel air

1954 chevy bel air

rubys 1-3254And9morehdr.jpg

ever feel like you've just gotten through a week, and get shook up and dumped out onto the weekend? but you made it?

ya, that's the one.

getting spread a bit thin, pulled here and there. getting worn, but no where as tired as my better half.

dad was in the hospital again, to start the week off. busy at work. kid had a perfectly timed meltdown when i had the least inclination to deal that hot ball of fun.

my other kid has plans to go to europe, with the wifey, his dad, and her mom. sounds like his dad is going to drop out. he's asking if i want to take a free trip. i dunno. a vacation would be nice, but can i be gone that long? i just don't know. offered up my brother, but they kinda aren't into taking him. 

so i'll keep thinking about it, until his dad makes a decision.

at least i've got a wall back up in the kitchen. just no cabinets. or sink. 

labor day weekend. maybe i can sneak off to a show or two, get my ya yas out.

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talked to the owner of this car for a bit. nice convo. he was heading south to la vuelta in san diego the next day. sounded like fun, i'd have gone if i was able.

liked the  airbrushing of the gas can, which he was particularly proud of, as it had just been done.

drywall

1938 buick

1938 buick

drywall going up in my kitchen. the guys were an hour late. one step closer to getting a kitchen back. still have to chip out this crap tile the original owner put in, and pick out cabinets. no kitchen sink makes cooking a bit difficult for my kid.

i owe six hours of work this afternoon at the office, whenever these guys finish up.  if i want to be honest. not sure, but i think the building is shutting down at three, so i may just have to use some vacation hours against it.

thinking about ordering pizza. share with these two workers, or wait till they are gone? no doubt they’d refuse. company policy is usual excuse.

sort of craving baja fish though. guess i’ll wait. 

——— 

pretty sure this buick shot is from the veteranos’ show at the whittier elks club. hot day. friendly people. second time i’d been there—good show both times. 

where is everybody?

1957 chevy bel air nomad

1957 chevy bel air nomad

decided to break up the monotony that is going on for the time being, flitting back and forth between my parents' and whittier, then a few days at my house moving boxes around, and cleaning carpets.

i'd taken my camera with me on friday morning, so that i could hit a show on the way home in the evening. of the three i could pass by on the way, i decided to go to ruby's in whittier. hadn't been there since last summer.

i do realize it would be lightly attended, compared to the first and last show of the season, but i'd never ever seen it so sparse, though i arrived around five pm. of the two aisles that they had blocked off, there were only a few cars parked within. at least for about an hour. it never really did get full like previous years, but that did allow me some ability to get shots i wouldn't have had there been cars crammed together, and a zillion people in the way.

more of the type of cars that i liked did show up eventually, but at the beginning, i wandered around up near the ruby's building.

saw this chevy over by the raffle table. didn't quite get low enough to hide the car next to it, but it is still ok. decided not to just shoot a typical angle, as these bel airs get a little boring after a while.

ponderings

1948 chevy fleetmaster

1948 chevy fleetmaster

as i was walking uptown to get a quick dinner, i had a thought bounce around my head. i haven't been to many car shows lately because i haven't been feeling good. should i really be thinking, i'm not feeling good because i haven't been to many car shows lately?

also, i've had to go to the market and drugstores a few times this past week. i don't feel the need to park as close as possible to the store doors.

i am finding it somewhat thrilling to walk the parking lot slalom: the midday heat has people sitting in their cars, motors running, air conditioning on. the exciting part is guessing which cars are actually going to back up on you, and which are just lazy a-holes waiting on significant others to walk the short distance from the store entrance.

the store would be far more cool, and your engine wouldn't have to work so hard, if you just get out of your dang car.

sold one of my fair pictures. i don't make money off of them when they do sell at the fair. i prefer to let them go at cost and enjoyed, than to have them piling up in storage. or only enter pictures i wouldn't mind having on my wall. but then, i do...i just don't have enough wall.


someone asked if i'd taken a picture of this convertible, after they'd seen it in the distance of another shot. yes i did, so i dug it up for them. pretty sure i've posted from other shows in the past.

dankness

1948 chevy fleetline

1948 chevy fleetline

nice fleetline from a few months back. car show at salinas tires. too many cars for the little parking lot, so this was further on down by the no-tell motel. don’t care that there are imperfections; they just make it more interesting.

—————

been here and there, no time or energy left to write much. but i do observe, and if my mental notes don’t disappear from my head, i can usually pull some random topic out of my a$$. 

currently at my condo, where there is no kitchen and no water, but at least there is no more mold in the wall from a pipe leak months ago. goobers said they were done for now and that the house key was under the mat. thanks captain obvious. would have preferred they toss it in the back yard. so had to drive out here for that. time to change the locks anyway.

they say there is another slow leak that needs a plumber’s attention, before they put things back together again. just don’t know if the hoa will pay for that or if i have to. which means more time out of the office because the lock box is gone.

at least the plastic breaking bad “meth lab” drapes are gone from where the kitchen was, and instead, i have plastic covered framework where a wall used to be. and a bucket for the slow leak.

this would be a second weekend with my kid unable to stay here with the beast. she tried, but unfortunately discovered that without running water, the toilet would not flush, after an unfortunate situation, if you know what i mean. her friend was there, so she had used the bathroom in my room, to top it off.

her dad told her to fill the tank with water, but i guess she only put a gallon, so was unable to flush the evidence. and left it there. she called to let me know, and apologized, as she was late for work. 

fine. i go over the next day to see if it would actually flush, which it did when enough water is in there. i was worried that she put water in the bowl vs the tank, which i still suspect she did, since the tank was pretty dry.

i noticed a smell coming from her room. a stench that wrankles the nasal passages. 

now, her shit didn’t stink, so what was it? was one of her other critters dead in their cage, a desiccating carcass?

first thought was that the dog had pinched one in there. he’d done it the week before. maybe he’d done it again. too stupid to let you know he needs to go outside if you don’t see him gazing longingly at the door.

but no. it’s worse.

hiding in that bathroom is a bowl of the foulest of the foul, even andy dufresne would not swim out of shawshank in it. really permeating, like it had stewed for days.

the snakes were not loving it. the tarantulas could care less, being that they don’t really move all slithery and such.

i make some calls. 

kid swears she didn’t do it. friends swears they didn’t do it. which leads me to believe one of the kitchen worker bees took a dump knowing the water is off, and forgot about it. wtf. wtf is he doing upstairs? there’s a toilet downstairs. 

holding my breath as i fill the tank. standing by with a plunger, as that toilet likes to back up if you use too much paper, and i don’t know what might be under all that.

on the other hand, what am i to do if it does start pouring over the lip of the bowl? towels, i’d build a dam with towels before it got to the carpet. 

luckily, i didn’t have to shift to plan b. down it went, but the smell lingered. i hate lysol, but i had to spray that stuff in the room, past the sink, into the main bedroom. the snakes were going crazy for the lemon scent. 

opened the window, air conditioning be damned. 

really hoping they do a follow up survey on the quality of their work. “a” for effort. 

so today, hot and humid, with smoke from the fire drenching the sky and surroundings in an eerie tan color, i had to go shower at the pool in a bathing suit. took a swim first, which was lovely, as i haven’t used the pool in a year or two.

guess i’ll brush my teeth with bottled water, and hope the burrito i ate earlier stays put. 

transitory

1938 dodge

1938 dodge

i never seem to stay put in one house more than a couple of days anymore. i rotate between whittier, my parents' house in oc, and my own place, where i'm dealing with a mold issue from the leaky pipe in the wall in may and the kid moving in before she really should have.

i feel unsettled and tired. in whittier for the weekend, i also feel overheated. the back bedroom, with it's little window air conditioning unit, is a little sanctuary when i need it, but my computer is up in the front room, where i am sandwiched between two fans.

i do little bursts of energy, washing dishes, running laundry, helped my better half make guacamole; made enchiladas the other day, and my mother-in-law wants me to make more...so i guess they were ok. she wants hotter sauce this time.


on another subject, i got another honorable mention ribbon for my collection, at the orange county fair for this one. the other two pictures i entered are nearby it on the wall.


old dodge from the bomb club show at santa anita. i've seen this car many times before. probably have it posted up here somewhere at least one other time that i can think of off the top of my head..

missing the overcast; love clouds and how they keep it cool. i really hate summer heat.

it’s getting hot in here

front st 1-8949And9morehdr.jpg

fuck, it’s hot outside.

i’m uptown waiting on dinner. usually i’d just walk here, but it’s after five, and still ninety outside. if i could take my shirt off, and go topless, like the two fat guys across the street, i just might consider it.

this restaurant has no air conditioning. so i've bogarted their coldest standalone blower by sitting at a table next to it. no one else in here yet, so why not?

hell week is winding down at work, and my body is feeling the last of the stress. i am tired.

here's a picture from last year's front street show. it's coming up soon. if it's this weekend, i probably can't make it, since i have to meet up with my kid about moving the rest of his stuff out of my place.

nice car, wasn't really sure what it was, until i posed the question on the internet. someone said a lincoln, so i'm going with it.

 

sonic

1950 chevy deluxe

1950 chevy deluxe

it has been a hell of a week at work. sometimes being salaried sucks. 

on the plus side, working late on monday, afforded me the opportunity to stop by an evening car show for a change. i'd been forwarded a flyer for it a few weeks ago, but usually, my schedule just makes it impossible to get to weekday shows anymore.

out at the sonic in anaheim, i initially pulled up and only saw a few cars under the drive-in lights. that's disappointing, i thought, but figured i'm here, i'll shoot what there is.

one old chevy, i'd seen before, and initially skipped it. i went to the other side, to shoot a nice mauve colored thirty-eight olds. of course, as i set up, the owner decided that was the time he wanted to leave. he did wait for me, so that was nice of him. as he drove away, i noticed another parking lot behind some bushes. that's where the action was, so i headed over.

there were about twenty cars over there, and a lot of people. the flyer mentioned all photographers and models were invited. needless to say, there were at least two crews of full up lighting and camera gigs trudging through the cars. big friggin octabanks of lights, and additional light peons, serving the man behind the lens.

only a few models sitting on the vehicles, though i heard the week before there had been more. i really don't care, as i'm more interested in the cars, but there are definitely a few photographers more interested in the models. hope they got lucky, for what it's worth.

the overflow from the lights and activity surrounding them, messes with my shots, so i mostly went to cars opposite side of the lot from them. and the darker it got, the more the people walked through my long exposures.

all that is to be expected. i haven't been out shooting at sunset in a while, so i'm rusty on my settings, and determinely persevered with my typical setup, whereas i should have turned the dial a bit. i really hate the noise bumping the iso up though.

anyway, i waited out the people, and managed to get a few decent shots that night. here's danny's car. pretty sure he and his friends took off not long after i got it.

waiting/stressing

1951 mercury

1951 mercury

why is it repairmen and plumbers always give you a two-hour window for their visit, knowing they will always be there in the last five minutes of said window? i know they are padding their time from the previous appointment, or are they expecting you to be the one running late?

i’m punctual. i’m on time. hell of a day going at work, and i had to get home to facilitate their schedule. dude has another forty-five minutes, then i’m just going to wait some more. 

i will have to go back to the office to make up time, then probably stay later working on some hard deadlines.

the only bright spot in the day is that i knew about the staying late part.  i brought my cameras, so i could possibly, actually make it out to the orange county cruise night at sonic in anaheim. i may be on my way back to whittier during show hours. hoping there may be a few cars to shoot anyway.

——— 

here’s a merc i saw at pomona a few months’ ago. i liked the color. the fisheye distortion is a little much, but it just makes it look like it’s smiling.  

the only one

1947 chevy fleetline

1947 chevy fleetline

yesterday there were several car shows to consider. i can only pick one, since my better half has things he has to do, and i need to stay with his mom while he's out.

the big shows were mooneyes and the viejitos annual show. mooneyes is closer, but i've been several times, and find it hard to shoot what i do, and the cars are so spread out along the main street, with intermittent parking lots jammed with cars. there's a wide assortment of cars, to be sure, and if you're looking for the noisy cruise-bys, that's the place to be.

i chose the viejitos show. i wanted the bombs, the low lows, the big curvy-bodied cars. and a lot of them before any crowds showed up.

i arrived there in the dark. i always expect there will be cars from the host club very early, for the set up. there were two cars at the far end of the lot, but i didn't see any people, except the random homeless guy picking at trash at my end of the lot. i'm by myself, and i just wasn't going to walk over there in the dark with my camera bag, until i saw faces i recognized, or more cars anyway.

so i sat in my car, watching the sky start to turn orange, instead of watching it color up behind a car, as i'd wanted. pretty, but not a very dramatically intense sunrise.

about sixish, more cars started to show, and vendors started setting up, so i headed over. several of the club guys were there, and the president, raynbow, who shook my hand and welcomed me. 

started shooting the club cars as they arrived. then there was a lull in new cars. pretty sure i leaned up against the chain-link fence in the shade for at least fifteen minutes. consoled myself that if everyone was over at mooneyes, i still had shot enough pictures of the cars i liked to keep me happy for a while, right here.

the pity party didn't last long. the closer to the real drive-in time it got, the more cars and groups of cars began to show up.

watched this cherry fleetline show up on the back of a truck. after it was unloaded, they parked it in the corner by itself.

it's a show stopper to be sure, but obviously not a daily driver.

the owner seemed to not want me to shoot it, as he said it was still all covered with dust from the freeway. i argued that if i waited, the light hitting it would be gone. i told him i'd come back around when it was as pristine as he imagined it could be and shoot it again. 

i don't know if he understood, and i went ahead and shot it then anyway. he went ahead and started setting up a pop up tent right next to it, so i'm glad i got my shot before he moved the monstrosity up next to it.

i did go back later. he had moved it over a bit, another car parked in next to it. monstrosity of a pop up right up next to it. shows up in the reflection of the perfect cherry red paint. light was no longer specifically hitting it, just busy getting more generically applied to all of the cars.

as always, i liked this show. as always, i was up against a time limit, the heat, and the need to pee. i needed breakfast and to get back home, so i was on my way about start time.

all the other photographers must have been over at mooneyes. sort of missed those familiar faces; can't wait to see pictures from whatever event they were at. always good to see different points of view, how different people see the same subject. i have seen some other pictures from this show, so they did eventually turn up, but i was already gone.