This Old Fart
Tuesday. A good night's sleep, no coughing, no serious coughing anyway while drifting off to sleep; no waking up in middle of the night or this morning at seven in a coughing fit. Still there, still just under the radar, still erupting once or twice as coughs will, but definitely better. I'll still call the doctor this morning as it's been here for too long and the overall feeling is, well, timid, tentative, less than get out the door and do something, anything of interest. What's out there of interest?
We've heard this before.
“We” hope to hear less of it as the day and week progress.
The massive bridge project missed its deadline by some number of hours and today's commute must have been - must be, as it's currently underway - interesting. The newspapers were all headlining the delay of a day, although the radio stations were saying the bridge had opened sometime after seven this morning, two hours later than they'd originally been projecting.
The movement of a temporary span into place wasn't the problem. The discovery of a crack in a supporting member not associated with the replacement span caused the delay, an inspection required by the feds every two years turning this up in the middle of the weekend. I'd have thought they might have done all inspections of this kind prior to the shut down so any problems found could be fixed during the required segment replacement to get a “two-fer”. Hard to know. All that effort on the major project derailed by an error, perhaps, in the thinking behind their inspection schedule.
On a more relevant note: I'm out of pictures. I have one done for the top tomorrow, not a very good one, and then nada. Is OK. Causes me to scramble. Makes me take things in hand and do something. I like the one above, by the way, a snapshot taken walking home this week, not sure where I'd gone or what I'd done to put me in the little park where they set up the farmer's market on Saturdays across from the Grand Lake theater. But still, stopping to sit in one of the park chairs, looking (seeing?), was that a picture? Why yes, it turned out it was. Bingo!
There are people who won't see that.
And there are people who will quite rightly wonder why I didn't explore it further. Try a lower angle. See to the overly contrasty dark areas. Maybe they're good, maybe they're bad. More effort, in other words, to bring out what may have really been possible.
Later. I'm not sure why I had to do it kicking and screaming, but I did just now leave a message for the doctor describing the symptoms and he or his nurse will get back to me, I'm sure, by the end of the day. And here you thought I wouldn't.
A bus ride downtown just after noon carrying the D2H, an older digital designed in its time for professional shooters who needed to take pictures quickly so it produces a fast four megapixel image rather than the twelve megapixel and larger images of the newer Nikons. There isn't really much difference with my photography - four versus twelve - the image quality is as high in most circumstances (but not all) and the size of the image for me has never been much of a factor. Anyway, off with the D2H and a 35mm lens, which makes it the equivalent of say a standard film camera or a D3 with a 50mm lens. A small package that takes a bog standard picture, no zoom, nothing special.
The idea, of course, is to make me think a little differently and not get hung up on this camera or that. I have four digitals counting this one and I like to think I can use them interchangeably except when I have a particular project in mind and know, say, the D3 would be better.
So I walked around and about, took a picture here, took a picture there, ended up having a cup of coffee at what is called the Rotunda building beside the Oakland City Hall on Broadway, and then returned home on the bus feeling pretty good without much in the way of coughing. And then I downloaded them to the computer and discovered most of them were significantly overexposed, not because my settings were incorrect, but something was wrong with the camera. Or maybe the lens (I'm checking that out later, a quick test with a different lens seems to have produced a proper picture). And they're kind of interesting. More interesting as images than if they'd been exposed correctly. Success in other words. Maybe worth having the camera repaired if it doesn't cost too much rather than putting it up on a shelf and forgetting about it.
And that's your excitement for the day?
Hey. That's a trip around the track in a race car for this old fart.
(Doctor called, we went over the symptoms, I'm to pick up an inhaler later at the pharmacy.)
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