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Art & Life

Today at the pump

The Sole Prop's Sister?




   


Under here.

March 17, 2010

This Night
Wednesday. Today actually is St. Patrick's Day, St. Paddy's Day, something that can get lost in all the parades, celebrations and Guinness. Pladdohg is playing in Dublin tonight, maybe I'll make the trip. Dublin is not all that far down the highway, bring a camera along, maybe a strobe light. Now that I've had breakfast and the sun is breaking through the “intermittent” fog. I think that's what the weather people call it: “intermittent” fog. I'm familiar with intermittent fog, but more the brain variety than the weather variety as I've noted. No complaints, many things are soothed and made palatable by adding intermittence, here in..., well, you know.

I have no idea what I'm going to do today, other than a walk of some sort. I talked about visiting the storage locker and that's a good project. Pick up a box or two, bring them back, see what's inside. Be prepared to be depressed at the yearly cost of keeping whatever I find inside. Not totally, of course, there are one or two items of interest, of value to someone I suspect, if no longer to me. Deedle-dee-dee.

You do go on with this “deedle-dee-dee” business.

The light heartedness (I'm hoping we hear a light heartedness here) is genuine enough. I complain about this and that, but it's more a reporting of information rather than a litany of distress. It becomes interesting stuff when it's happening to you, when your day to day is unencumbered by such things as earning a living, and you have the time to mull it over and dwell (not obsess) on it. I don't talk about it other than here, as it happens, but then that's the guy code, is it not? Again, the sun is coming up, the day is ahead, they're talking a high of seventy degrees today, what's not to like? I'm up for a seventy degree high, given some of the recently experienced lows we've been seeing.

Later. A decent walk downtown and around town, passing an Irish Folk band setting up in the City Center for a noon concert. I think I will head for Dublin tonight to hear Pladdohg and have a Guinness or two to celebrate St. Patrick's. Not that I know anything about St. Patrick or Ireland, although I believe I have Irish ancestors on my father's side. My father's line came from Denmark, but they seem to have met some interesting ladies after they arrived from the research my sister has done and the information I've gotten from Genebase through dna matches. None of it seems to really tell you enough to know for sure if all those great-great and great-great-great grandparents, aunts and uncles are as they say they are, but it allows for interesting glimpses.

Dublin is a good thirty minute drive from here, albeit an easy thirty minute drive, you sure you're going? You'd have to skip out on your Korean soap, you know.

They don't start the gig for another six hours. Anything can happen in six hours (including an earthquake). No need for long term decisions when you haven't even decided on lunch yet. My Korean soap? Hmm. My Korean soap.

I did take pictures, a photograph I've taken before in the café across from Sears, nothing too adventuresome, testing something called Active D-Lighting on the camera, but the mood was good even if Active D-Setting didn't seem to make much of a difference when I got it in PhotoShop. Some were so-so, some were attempts at something a little different, more than one today a duplication of prior efforts.

I did notice Pacific Coast Brewery had a neon Guinness sign up in their window. Something other than a neon sign might indicate they were serving Guinness just for the day or the week, Erin Go Braugh and all that, but a neon sign seems more permanent. Two or three years ago they were de-emphasizing Guinness, not having it on tap and then no longer stocking Guinness in the can for a while. Can't support a brewery pub that doesn't serve Guinness was our collective thought. Maybe others came to the same conclusion and they've now seen the light. Many people see the light when it comes to losing business. Then again, it's been two or three years, maybe what I discovered, what I noted this morning, is not a new event.

I do believe it will hit seventy degrees this afternoon after working up a sweat walking back to the apartment. No need for any more walking. There are tasks and chores enough to do here with any ambition. Then again I could watch a movie, take it easy. Easier. Or make a run to the storage locker in Alameda. I've said I was going to do that now for two days running. Three is a charm? Sometimes it is around here, although exactly where around here escapes me, applying some of that “intermittent” for the moment.

Later still. Discussed Dublin with Mr. E, he reminding me this was St. Patrick's Day and driving after dark on St. Patrick's Day was not something one did without a very good reason. Besides, we're heading some one hundred and forty miles east to Murphy on Saturday to hear the band. Right. We'll do the band Saturday, no reason to drive anywhere tonight.

Ye of little courage.

We of the well and wise, holed up snug and tight, staying inside this night.


 
The photograph was taken at the San Francisco 2010 Chinese Lunar New Year with a Nikon D3s mounted with a 70 - 200mm f 2.8 Nikkor VRII lens at f 2.8 at 1/400th second, ISO 640.

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