what's up?

granny watch

i’m seeing more shows happening at this location in covina. not terrific, especially when a lot of cars show up, but there is space if they need it, due to the closed supermarket next door. close enough that i can get back home quickly if needed, and i haven’t noticed certain a-holes attending this one. apparently, i do hold certain grudges when earned, and it has ruined my enjoyment of car shows more than i think.

should have kicked the guy in the nuts at the time, but i didn’t, and bitching about it here doesn’t fix it. he’s an ass, probably was a bit drunk, and probably doesn’t even remember. i do. asshole.

anyway, the veteranos show was quite full of cars, so i was in a happy place. better half kept saying things were fine, so i didn’t need to head home as early as i thought. i shot maybe ninety percent of the cars that were there before i left. i did skip a few. people in the way, hood up, not my type, the usual reasons.

a lot of them are just ok shots. need to get out more, to keep my eyes open to seeing a good shot.

i liked this one. usually shoot fifty-eights from the back end, since that’s the interesting part for me. i did shoot that, but i just like the crop and reflection on this angle.

better half just left to search for a couple of new internal hard drives for me to fill up. hoping to get a price match at frys, but they mostly never have what he’s looking for in stock. otherwise, he’s getting time out of the house to do whatever he wants, a break from watching his mom. i could recommend a few toy drives he could visit…

she seems to need a break from him as well. wish they were a board or card game playing people…i’d hit her up, give her something else to do besides sleeping or watching tv.

maybe tomorrow we will begin hauling xmas crap in the house. my annual crabby, gloomy mood is starting to descend already.

post thanksgiving

here’s a majestics’ car from this past summer. a latin gents show out in cypress. don’t see too many yellow impalas. maybe i just don’t notice them.

thinking about this latin gents show, makes me wonder how ernie is doing…he had some news that day. been too busy to get out to any of their shows since then, so haven’t heard from him since.

i did not go into a turkey coma yesterday. my sister bought a full dinner from gelson’s or some such whoop-di-doo market. mom has had enough to deal with lately, so giving her a break from cooking the traditional dinner. pretty sure her time for cooking the big family meal is done, and future holidays will either be bought or i will have to volunteer to do it.

i sort of half assed said i’d do it, but was happy my sister just picked one up.

i’ve cooked a turkey before, but i’m not all about the bird, so i guess it turned out ok. i want to say that was decades ago, for my ex and his parents. gosh, my daughter was probably only a year old…time flies. i get no joy from cooking, and avoid it when i can. anyway, they always dumped hot sauce on anything i cooked, so, i just didn’t bother the next holiday. they are happier with tamales anyway.

this year, as usual, better half stayed home with his mom; he sent me to my parents house…”never know how many more holidays you’ll have with them.” my bro showed up; wife and daughter stayed up in los angeles with their friends. dad initially wasn’t feeling well and wasn’t going to join us, but he did come down the stairs just as we were sitting down to eat.

the company was good, but the food was unremarkable. only a few bites of turkey, and the pathetic mashed potatoes. i’d brought a cherry pie, but it sort of tasted like they’d given me a sugar free version, so disappointed.

bro is in town without a return ticket home. they’re looking for a house, and he is spending time with mom and dad. wife and kid going home sunday. they wanted to go to disneyland today, but pretty sure they bailed on that black friday hell.

i drove home this morning, expecting to see store parking lots full, but noticed them to be only part full. did people go shopping at midnight? was happy to find no one at in-n-out, and no one in the drive thru, so went there and grabbed some burgers for my better half and myself.

have otherwise, not done anything or left the house today. hoping to sift through the nine-thousand plus photos from my trip this weekend.

i’m blathering, so i’ll just stop.

jaded

veteran’s show last spring over at rose hills. the “mayor’s” car, again. he always wonders why i take pictures of his car every time i see it. if i didn’t shoot cars that i’ve seen before, repeatedly, there would be far fewer cars for me to shoot around here. same guys go to the same shows, driving the same cars. but there’s always some variable that has changed, most obviously, the light and/or the location.

i’d never been to a car show in a cemetery before, so come on, that’s way different. no idea what those buildings/sculptures in the background are, but it was kind of cool, no?

my dad got out of the hospital yesterday. after three months of bland, diabetic diet food, he had my mom take him out for everything he had been craving: pho soup of some sort, ice cream shake, and diet pepsi, for starters.

this morning he was whining that the food in the fridge tasted funny and/or was out of date. reminded him that mom had spent most of the last few months driving back and forth to sit with him every day, so she really hadn’t done much shopping. pointed out the egg nog he was complaining about, was in fact, still good until the end of the month. it just tastes nasty, because…egg nog. ick.

this evening, i asked my mother-in-law if she would like me to get her something uptown. usually mentioning where i was going, leads her to remember something she used to order. tonight, instead of just california grill spaghetti, she wanted spaghetti with marinara, so i was going to have to drive out to a different restaurant.

went out to lascari’s. figured i’d just get lasagna. got mine for there; hers to go. most restaurants will hold off on the to go order, but no, the waiter brought it out with my dish.

the food there was always pretty good. is pretty good. it’s just that, after going to italy, it’s not the same. told my better half that the lasagna at the sit-down restaurant here, is on par with a fast food lasagna over there. just not very flavorful. my homemade stuff is better.

mother-in-law is happy as a clam. her spaghetti is exactly how she remembered and was craving. meanwhile, as my co-worker said the other day, i’ll continue to dream of gelatto…

aaa again

another strange week starting. i’ll blame it on the santa ana winds...

quick post, since i’m pretty tired from this day’s issues.

second night of few hours of sleep, got up and off to start work after five am, as i had a doctor’s appointment later in the morning. better half also warning he may still need to take his mom in to doctor later as well.

worked a couple of hours, then off to my appointment. nothing special, just annual physical. but that also requires fasting for the blood tests, so i’m also pretty hungry, but not quite hangry. no surprises, just getting older and fatter, of which only the latter i can do anything about.

needed to pee in the given cup, and i really needed to pee by that point. of course, as they send me around the corner to the designated collection point, some random patient is locking the door to the designated bathroom, and seems to be settling in for some thoughtful time for reflection. they should have used the public restroom down the hall.

instead, i wait impatiently just outside the door, so i could glare at them when they eventually made their exit. took a while, and was dreading what i might be walking into. ended up being an ancient asian lady with a cane. she just smiled as she slowly moved towards the lab waiting area. so i had to stifle my hangry outburst, cuz she was just old and needed to go.

anyway, done did that, and also felt like a keg getting tapped for vials of blood. not a fainter, love horror movies, but don’t want to see the needle stuck into my own arm. “that hurts, you bitch.” thanks for the flourescent pink bandage; i would have preferred the blue.

quick breakfast/lunch, and back to the office. wasn’t really busy, and no one noticed anyway.

mom calls around four. she’d just arrived home. something wasn’t right with her car. felt wrong at freeway offramp. neighbor checked it out...discovered a bolt in her tire. she wasn’t sure what to do, as dad always takes care of these things.

told her to call triple a, that’s what you pay them to help you with, when you’re a damsel in distress.

cancel the drive to meet up with my kid for a chat, and head over to the house. she’d tried calling for help, but the number didn’t ring through or something.

i call from the house phone, forgetting to dial a one first, and get someone named rachel, not sure if it was a business or personal number. she must get these calls all day and night. hang up dial again. truck will be there in ten minutes.

driver gets there, says it can probably be patched, and pulls the spare from the back of the car. like new, never used, completely flat. he fills it with air, and is ready to change tires, only to realize there’s a wheel lock to remove. tear the car apart looking for the key thingy. stupid lugnut. look in the garage., nope.

dad couldn’t find it a few months ago, and had just had them cut and replaced. driver’s boss is telling him to hurry up, this is taking too long. tried calling dad at hospital on his cell phone, no answer. tried the front desk to nursing station to room phone, no answer. nurses station said he was just sitting on side of his bed, but didn’t bother to go hand him the phone. no doubt he didn’t have his hearing aid in, and heard nothing at all.

even tried calling my ex, as he probably helped him at the time and might have an educated guess on the location. no, and sorry to bother you.

i’m sure we’ll find out tomorrow, the key is just sitting in a drawer somewhere, useless in case of emergency.

mom is stressing out, her heart is doing flip flops or some other syncopated rhythm. so i just tell her to stay home and i hop in the truck and go with the driver to a tire store that stays open later than the two i have already called.

long story short, they were just able to patch it, as it was sort of close to the edge, but treads are low on both front tires, so we’ll have to go back soon and fix that. thanks dad, yet another reason to get the car serviced and rotate the tires once in a while. but he’s old, and can’t do it himself anymore, and it costs money, he’d say. ya, but mom drives it, and it needs to be safe.

and better half said his throat is kinda scratchy and he’s starting to cough...

———-

getting late, and not hungry, just angry now. going to contemplate this fleetmaster from the veterano’s show. pretty, isn’t it? wishing the green machine behind it, while equally lovely, wasn’t there messing up the shot, with the sparsely leaved trees nicely framing it up. always something i can pick apart in my pictures if i really want to.

really felt good to get out again. been too long, and they definitely did not have these kind of cars in italy.

also stopped at this one

since it was sort of on the way home from the veteranos’ show yesterday, and also on the way to in-n-out, i thought i’d just drive by the pico rivera veterans day show. had i not driven up the street, and found a nice, big space to parallel park in, i would have just kept going toward my lunch. but there it was, right on queue. guess it was meant to be.

i did stop, pretty much for about half an hour. saw a lot of my favs, and also a lot of cars i could care less about. i was starting to feel a bit wavy, so just did a quick run around half of the cars. didn’t go anywhere near the stage. didn’t even stop and chat with the usual people i would have spent more than a few minutes shooting the breeze with.

in spite of the live performance going on there, plenty of people were still milling around the cars, and i wasn’t high on patience to out-wait them. skipped cars i would have normally happily shot.

anyway, there were several bomb club cars there, and those guys are pretty nice, and so are their cars, so i shot a few.

trying to think, but i’m tired; probably shot this one before. just figured i should put up something from this show.

sure there were a few other ‘obvious’ cars that may be ‘better’ cars, but they are too polished, probably got an award from that crowd. maybe another time.

freedom of speech

made it out to the veteranos car club show in covina today. thank you to @rosiecheeks8 for the invites/reminder about the show. was nice to see you and your husband again.

thanks for the water @porfs41.

saw the owner of this car again as well. he’s looking forward to seeing it on here again, so here it is, since you were so enthusiastic about it.

actually, he sort of stopped me from taking the shot before this—he really wanted his hat to be in the picture. asked if it was ok; it’s your car, man. if that’s what you want on your car, sure, i’ll shoot it.

i try to keep this space a politics-free zone, at least on my part. freedom of speech, freedom of expression, though. he has his hat, i have mine.

jet lag

so, i’m back at home. three weeks is a long time to be away. twelve hour flight back, followed by an hour in customs, and an hour and a half drive home. hint: after a twelve hour flight, don’t pick up people and make them sit some more in a space even smaller than what they had on the plane. almost wept cuz my legs hurt so much. almost told them to just pull over, and drop me anywhere…i’d call an uber, just so i could stretch my legs.

got dropped off at my mom’s, where i’d left my car parked. said my goodbyes to everyone i’d travelled with. mom had just returned from hanging out with my dad at the hospital, and she really hasn’t done a lot of cooking lately, so offered to go get me food.

on the flight, they’d fed us just after take off, and just before landing. food was crap. they ran out of the chicken option just as they got to me, so i was stuck with rice and zucchini, some weird cube of something that was neither vegetable or dessert, and something that wanted to be a cream puff, but wasn’t good. they doled out exactly one plastic cup of pepsi.

the latter meal was a cold sandwich, with italian ham, which is mostly fat, with some really crap apple juice, and another forgettable dessert.

so basically, i was starving, even though i’d also purchased oreos and a can of coke in between meals.

i was literally reeling from exhaustion, as i just can’t sleep on planes, so i’d been up for about twenty hours by then. told my mom, if she could just drive me to a fast food place, i’d be good. so the closest, quickest food was weinerschnitzel. quite a step down from all the pasta we’d been eating for the last couple of weeks.

anyway, felt somewhat better after that. chatted a bit, then went to bed.

next morning and today, have mostly been tired, but not crazy crazy jet lagged. i should keep the walking going, but just didn’t feel like climbing the nearest mountain/hill here in whittier. and it was almost completely fogged in around the house this morning anyway.

currently copying over about two-hundred and twenty-five plus gigs of pics from the trip, which will probably never be looked at more than once, but i’ll keep them anyway. better half, mom, and my sister all want to see them anyway.

still haven’t had time to go visit my dad in the hospital. better half needs to go the market, except he has overtime he is currently working on at home, and will still need to go to the office later, so i’ll be here watching his mom tonight.

i satisfied my in-n-out craving yesterday, and today od’d on guacamole. just not looking forward to work tomorrow, am a little sleepy, but resisting the urge to take a nap.

it’s good to be home.

back to a back end of a deluxe from the viejitos’ show last summer. in the shade, the details get a little hard to see, but there are some subtle pinstripes going on.

been a long time since i’ve seen a classic car that isn’t a fiat, bmw, or a vespa. not going to count the red fifty-six bel air that i saw uptown today, since that dude is always cruising uptown, and i’m over that car.

go dodgers

almost midnight in florence, and my kid has found one way or another to get online and watch the dodger game. lol. would have thought the wine they drank at dinner would have knocked him out, but he’s all keyed up to watch the game.

no real plan for the morning, so sleeping in anyway. we ended the evening early with gelatos, but trying to upload pics for family to see just seems to make the time scream by, and now it’s later than i’d expected.

going to climb four-hundred-sixty-three steps tomorrow, to the top of the duomo—top of the cupola of this famous church—which is about double what we did today, so i need the rest.

posting this bad-ass truck, cuz it’s a beautiful color, and oh so shiny.

where the naked ladies dance

spent a few days in france. i like the feel of it, can almost imagine living there, but then i don’t think i would. they do have large, beautiful open space parks, where you can really relax, listen to music, eat a croissant, and drink an expresso, if you are so inclined. i am not a coffee drinker, so coke works for me. and when they do not screw up and give me diet or zero, it is the same stuff we drink. they do not seem too big on using ice here though...have only had it in my drink once or twice in restaurants. really strange.

finding i do not have enough time or energy at the end of the day to get to writing here, but i am trying to post vacay pics on instagram, if you have any interest. not that person to foist them on unwilling viewers, and this space is just for my car shots anyway. i suppose i should be taking pics of their cars, but they just seem a little odd and nothing special, aside from their size.

have already been to venice, italy, and stayed in a very nice home, with far too many stairs. we’re airbnbing everywhere, btw. perhaps i should write about just the homes. common so far is the size. spacious, but economical in the use of the space. they have modernized the centuries-old buildings they are in, and have all moden conveniences, including wifi everywhere, hence i can post my pics.

we seem to me walking about ten miles a day, so i’ve gone from about a thousand a day to twenty-five thousand pretty quick. i’ve adjusted, with a lot expletives. the backpack doesn’t get any lighter, and though it really isn’t very heavy, i’m getting too old to be hauling stuff around on my back. i am using almost everthing i did pack, so i didn’t overpack.

sounds like others are waking up and/or back from a morning jog. i should have gone out for morning pics, but i hadn’t set an alarm.

hopefully i’ll find a moment to write about venice and florence before we move on...two more stops before going home.

stopped at a weekly monday evening show at sonic in anaheim a few months ago. surprisingly crowded, but i managed to find pockets of cars with no people milling about, even if it is next to a clothing bin. still a nice car.

paris

here in france for a few days, for the first part of this vacation. never been here, and finding it charming in an historic city way. not too difficult finding our way around, mostly because my kid and his wifey have been here before, and he is refering to maps on his phone to find routes to wherever. i did not take french in school, but seem to understand a lot of words, and can pick my way through the menu well enough.

lots of walking, and discovering neither of my broken in shoes ar very good to my feet for these miles long marches across the city and back. one pair is attacking my big toe, as it slides forward a bit, and the other pair jammed my little toe into the next, as well as having got some sand in it from crossing a park.

but ignoring that, have seen a lot in two days, and contemplating whether i want to watch sunset from the observation deck of some tall skyscraper. i may just skip that tonight. seems more tough to get four people to agree on what to eat and when to eat it. our time zones are scrambled, but i am ok, but the others snack often then do not seem interested in a meal.

taking lots of pictures, most will probably never be seen, but there are a few up in my instagram, for my mom and daughter to see.

not seeing any classic cars here so far, unless we’re talking citroen and puegot. three wheel motorcycles (two in front) and vespas abound.

so, i’ll put up this good old chevy to tide me over for a while. from pomona a while back. since i’m gonna miss it tomorrow. and dia de los muertos in uptown. and huffarama at san manuel. le sigh...

also, i have someone whose father was an original member of 13 gents car club, who recently passed away, looking for other original members that would talk with them. if you have any contacts, i would be happy to pass along info to them.