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Today at the pump

The Sole Prop's Sister?




   


Under here.

June 23, 2010

Black Birds
Wednesday. Overcast, a bit cool, but the day has started well for all that. I didn't make it to Livermore last night, the thought of driving in commute traffic the excuse I used to flake. They'd posted pictures on Facebook this morning showing the event held outdoors in nice looking surroundings, no commute traffic in sight. Ah, well. We make our decisions: some turn out, some don't. Hard to tell which, sometimes, after the fact.

The list of foods and stuff to avoid to stop this ocular migraine business has me thinking back to some of the episodes. I remember wondering, since most of them occurred late in the afternoons and early evenings, if food might not be involved. No red wine or other forms of alcohol and no cheese, particularly sharp cheddar, brings back memories of late afternoons consuming a block of sharp cheddar with crackers and a beverage or two. Red wine sometimes, sake more often. Did they lead to some of these events? How long before the event does the consumption of this stuff have an effect? They also warn against not eating or uneven eating throughout the day.

I don't eat after about the middle of the afternoon and I've described being somewhat hungry sometimes before going to bed without any desire to go out and find something to eat. I'm pretty much staying at my current weight, having lost maybe a pound or two in the last three months, but I do go through brief periods of hunger during a day, now and again. I suspect there's a lot of fuzzy memory of these past episodes being internally edited at the moment to fit in with this list given to me by the neurologist, but either way it shouldn't be all that hard to adjust my schedule and diet to avoid them in the future. It's been over a month now since the last incident, this without a list. We'll see after these upcoming tests.

Later. Walking back up the hill, coming home from the downtown, I put my hand in my pocket and discovered I didn't have my house keys. How was that possible? Had I lost them somewhere in a store or on the street? Where might I have pulled something out of my front right pocket where I keep the house keys on a ring, the car keys on its own ring, a small pen knife and coins? It wouldn't fall out otherwise, its just not something that would happen.

The apartment manager was in, the apartment manager let me into my apartment and the keys were sitting clearly in view in their place on top of my dresser. How many times have I picked them up? When I come home I empty my pockets: wallet from the left front pocket (there's a long story about why it's in my left front pocket instead of my right back pocket and we won't go there, but there's a good reason for the location); keys, knife and coins from the right. Sometimes I take off my watch and place it on top of the wallet, why I'm not sure. Why should a watch make any difference if I wear it or not, but I seem more comfortable without it. Off with the shoes, on with the slippers and I'm ready to relax.

I did need to get out, for whatever reason, but then I seem to need to get out in the later mornings every morning. Habit? Need? Doesn't matter. Feels good and I often get some decent pictures. Today I sat out with a small cup of coffee in the City Center for maybe twenty minutes at just after ten, not as many people passing, a lone roadie starting to set up the amps and stands for the band that was to play at noon. I wasn't particularly thinking I need to get a photograph of any sort, but was looking none the less, sitting as I was in a place I've photographed so many times before. How do you come up with something new?

One or two attempts, the first of the chairs set up in rows for the noon hour concert, another of a fellow sitting half hidden behind a cloth covered table. I liked the expression, didn't really capture it and had to crop the final photograph severely to get something that caught the eye. Still, two pictures that worked, one or two others that worked less well.

A walk over to the Rite Aid store, remembering I had a prescription waiting, a photograph on the fly seeing the reflection in the ceiling, realizing the lens I was using wouldn't allow both the guy walking and the reflection both to be in the picture, settling for the reflection. Works. Not great, but happy to have it. More than that? Well, let's not be greedy, a snapshot of middling to less interest getting off the bus by the lake, otherwise home now thinking of searching out an old picture taken in 2004 I'd promised myself I'd find to satisfy a minor question. Film? Velvia? Could it be cropped to better effect? Processed more artfully in Photoshop?

Later still. This thing goes on and on. Sitting up here two thousand miles away it can go out of focus, become part of the background like the wars and the economy. When I looked at this thing again this early afternoon it was spewing oil at what looked to be a furious rate and then, reading the story (they'd had to disconnect the pipe siphoning some of it off), you understood it really was spewing it out at a furious rate: day in, day out; one hopes not year in, year out. This side drilling they're doing is not guaranteed to work. Birds on the beach. Black birds.

 
The photograph was taken at the San Francisco 2010 Carnaval Parade with a Nikon D3s mounted with a 70 - 200mm f 2.8 Nikkor VR II lens at f 8 at 1/400th second, ISO 200.

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