Nothing much going on
We did have a couple of nice days. The break in the winter was appreciated. I managed to get out on the greenway trail along the New River for a walk Monday, but got tied up in things yesterday including a trip to the doctors office.
We are now looking to see if part of my physical problems are not an over reactive immune system. I knew about immune deficiencies, auto-immune problems where your bodies defences attack your own body, but I had never even thought of the immune system just over reacting. What that means is your your body treating a minor cold like it was the flu, for instance. Anyway my doctor sent me in for a bunch of blood tests, and depending on the results may send me out of town to an immunologist.
Other than that there is nothing much going on the combination of being broke and bad weather makes a walk in the tiny town shopping mall, or reading a book about as exciting as life gets for the time being.
I can’t imagine that anyone out there is interested in this kind of crap, so why do I bother writing it?
Global Warming?
This so far is the coldest, snowiest, iciest winter since I moved here to Boone North Carolina USA.
The other night it got down to 3F, and the wind chill was -11F. I do not know where all this cold is coming from, it seems to be warmer up along the Canadian boarder. It is about 18F out there right now. When I checked the forecast earilier this morning it was supposed to get warm (35F) tomorrow and drop right down again. However, I just checked and it is not predicting mid-40’s later in the week. It is real confusing. At least the sun is out today.
I had to send the radio slave back to China. It died between one shot and the next. Lasted a whole two days. The unit was a Yongnuo RF-602, they have been getting pretty good reviews. It would not work with my studio strobe. A belated email to Yongnuo got the response they were not compatable. But if it would it will give me the ability to use the Olympus FL-40 flash off camera in the field it would be worth having. What I was trying when it died was using the FL-40 to fire the Norman P-808M optically, as it syncs with the old Wein photocell slave OK.
I printed this self-portrait on 11×14 just to see how that worked.
Chairman of the Bored
The print came out a bit dark, I will have to so something about that in future prints.
Wow, it’s twenty ten!
We have jumped into the new year. The end of the old one had some negatives.
Christmas morning I woke to the results of an ice storm. The power was out, the cable was out. The cel-phone could not get a lock. I was broke. There was only a couple of liters of water in the apartment (we are on a well). It was still drizzling freezing rain and I got soaked trying to open the iced up doors on the car.
So I spread some salt about the area, one of my services to management, made as sandwich and a cup of coffee (I have a propane camping stove) for breakfast and then read a bit. It was so gloomy that reading was not easy.
By early afternoon the rain had stopped and I got the car opened up. It started OK, and the roads were reasonably clear due to tons and tons of salt. Turned out the teller machine was working, so I got $20 from it, and after hitting 4 or 5 gas stations (nothing else open on Christmas Day), I finally found one with gallons of water. So, home and no more worries about water (I had bought an extra gallon in case the lady down the row needed it, she said she didn’t), I went back to my reading. The light was better and I read until it was getting dark, then made another sandwich and had another cup of instant coffee. I went to bed about 7pm as it was getting cold in the apartment (electric heat). The power came on about 11pm. However, I just got internet today (9th day), so I have been going stir crazy.
However things are starting to work better. As I mentioned, I once again am connected to the world. I drove down to Hickory (50 miles) yesterday to look for a pair of high top shoes. All I could find were: 1. expensive, or 2. uncomfortable, or 3. ugly. I finally bought the cheapest things I could find that were reasonably comfortable although they looked like clodhoppers. On the way back I stopped at the Walmart where I had bought the tires back in March, I think, as there has been slow leaks in two of them (about 5#/mo). The tire guy fixed them for free. He said that the wheel bead grooves were corroded and he had to sand them smooth, but the tires were now holding pressure. That is a worry off my mind.
My New Years resolution, made a bit early, was to have faith that things would usually work out OK. It was tested a bit over the past week but, I am hanging in there.
Before the holidays I volunteered to shoot portraits down at the local Senior Center for free. That went well. I had 14 sittings, and they seemed pleased with the results. I am low on funds as you know, so what I gave them was a CD with 5-6 images on it and permission to have prints made. Most of them when to Walmart, that keep my costs low. Total time was about 12 hours of work.
I figured that most older folks never had portraits done and thus their families usually never had photos of them late in life. My idea was to help remedy that without it costing them too much money. I had a coupe of more sittings scheduled for the next week but woke up ill that morning, I told the Director of the SC to tell them I would give them a rain check on the sittings, so will have to arrange to do them soon.
Well, I am close to 600 words, so I guess I will post this and go read a bit before bed.