100 word minimum

No more clouds

Of smoke!

As of tomorrow, O'Toole's is smoke free. That's something I'd never thought I'd see, what with cigarette smoke being integral to the structure of the building. Did the world end when we weren't looking?

We had no idea they were considering any change in the smoking policy till we saw the sign on the door this evening. I asked the hostess if she was pleased. She did a little dance step and said, "Oh yes! I'm tickled pink. This is the last night I'll ever have to say 'Smoking or Non?'" I asked if she thought they could ever get the smoke smell out. "No, it's going to have to be painted over with, like, twelve coats of primer. Or something special."

The non-smoking section, where we always sit and which was pretty much just a polite fiction, was full of smiles. People were pointing to the little "Smoke free as of March 1" signs on the tables and asking the waitresses, "Is this for real?" The couple at the next table was saying, "Woo! Smoke-free St. Patrick's Day!" Me? I'm looking forward to enjoying a Guinness and not having to change out of smoke-reeking clothes after.

Meanwhile, the smoking section was full of frowns. The smokers were all smoking extra.

As we left, we saw a TV news team outside getting ready to cover the story. Yeah, the nation's at war and we're looking at a banana republic-style currency crisis if the Chinese get financially itchier* and cash in their US bonds.** But, hey, local bar goes smoke-free! Film at eleven!

*Yes, the week after I make my 2006 retirement contribution, we get a stock market crashlet. Shanghai sneezes and I catch a cold. Hey, it's a buying opportunity … at least if you didn't buy last week.

**Through their purchase of US Treasury bonds, the Chinese are financing our mushrooming government expenditures (courtesy of the far right wing radicals who say they want to shrink government and drown it in a bathtub. A bathtub full of what? Credit card statements? Also, it would have to be a damn big bathtub.) and the war (courtesy of the same far right wing radicals who happen to own a lot of stock in munitions companies, oil companies, and Halliburton).

And speaking of catching a cold, a little Norwegian bird told me that Norway is the place to go if you want to get a job. With 100% employment, they are short of all kinds of technicians, skilled workers, and engineers, so they're importing people from all over on their generous guest worker program. It sounds strangely appealing.

Snooze

After all that talk about the speedlight, I figured I should show it off. What it can do, anyway. The speedlight was on the camera, aimed up and to the back, and covered with a white Styrofoam cup as a diffuser. Ta da! We have an evenly lit, undisturbed kitty.

This does not mean that I'm going all cat blog.

Another benefit of the speedlight is that Oz likes to play with it. He loathes having his picture taken, but not if he can play. Suddenly he's bringing home white Styrofoam "diffusers" and sticking grape tomatoes behind his eyeglass lenses.

Finally!

Operation Non-sucky Passport Photo is a success. After countless test shots and technical fiddling, I got one that will do, though the backdrop is a little dark. In the photo, I look like myself and like a human both, with a little Mona Lisa smile.

Getting a good passport photo is hard if you don't have studio equipment. You need a lot of light. A lot of white light.

My setup was a little bit ghetto. I had a white sheet on the floor to help with the bounce. I put the camera on a tripod with the lens at eye level. I had the speedlight on the camera with the light aimed at the ceiling. (If I'd had a second speedlight, I would have used it to light the backdrop and solved the problem of the dark background that way.) I stood a foot in front of the white poster board backdrop and the camera was three or four feet in front of me. I would have stood further away from the backdrop, but the room was too small. The ambient light in the room was as follows: halogen torchière in one corner behind and to the side of the camera, one window with the blind pulled all the way up (outside the sky was bright, but cloudy), and one incandescent light on the floor under the camera (aimed up at me to lighten the shadow under my chin). I tried both aperture priority and program auto modes on the camera, but this didn't make a difference, except that with a larger aperture I got a lighter image (duh). For some shots, I set the white balance to "flash" and for others I manually set the white balance against the white backdrop.

Even with all that light, the photo still came out dark. I used the "adjust color for skin tone" option in Photoshop Elements to correct for the multiple light colors. Images with the manually set white balance needed less color correction. Regardless of the white balance setting, the images were all too dark, so I lightened them and upped the contrast a bit.

(A better way to lighten the pictures would have been to use centerweighted metering so the camera would meter to my face, not my face plus the white backdrop. I should maybe try that out and see if it makes a difference. I guess this project isn't done yet.) (I just did a little test with Oz as my subject. The different metering makes a slight difference in the backdrop brightness, but is no substitute for more light.)

The State Department guidelines (pdf) say you shouldn't retouch your picture. They don't say anything about retouching yourself. When I was proofing my pictures, I noticed that, wow, my forehead was pretty shiny from the flash bouncing off the ceiling. And then I thought, hmm, maybe some lipstick? I never wear makeup, but I found an old lipstick and put on a light coating to give my mouth some definition. I also powdered my shiny spots with some translucent powder which came in the pretty, sparkly compact the Princess gave me as a bridesmaid's gift. I even remembered to brush my hair. Clearly I belong on the other side of the camera. I am not cut out to be a model.

If all this seems excessive, that's because it is. I could have shot a lousy, but perfectly acceptable passport photo in about as much time as it takes to set up the tripod.

What I had for breakfast

Harvey's Progressive Barber Shop, North 1st and East Broad Streets

This sign was repainted a few weeks ago. Oz and I drove past one evening, during the blue hour, and saw them working. We stopped at the light at 1st and Broad and I would have had a great drive-by photo-op, except that I hadn't brought my camera because it was getting dark and how likely was I to see anything I wanted to shoot?

This morning we were questing for brunch and there were too many people ahead of us at Perly's. When we walked back to the car (to continue the quest), I saw how bright the colors looked in the morning sunshine and we walked up to the corner to shoot the sign because it looked so great and we would never have that light again. I wouldn't have this picture if we'd been seated right away, so I guess I shouldn't mind.

But I think this increasingly upscale repopulation of the city has gone about far enough if I can't get my brunch when and where I want it. Is the expanding tax base worth it? I think not!

Operation Non-sucky Passport Photo is becoming increasingly involved. Yesterday I took some available light shots with the very light olive wall of my sitting room in the background. It was a great hair day too, because I got a haircut and my stylist ("Hair Engineer", it used to say on her card) always sends me out the door looking great. I even got some good pictures of myself, but the wall behind me came up too dark gray. If I use the wall to set the color balance, then my face will end up some weird color. A better backdrop is in order.

This morning we went to Office Max and picked up a sheet of white poster board and some sticky poster clay. Over brunch, which we finally ended up at dim sum because the wait was also too long at Millie's (Saturdays are as zooey as Sundays anymore), Oz started talking speedlights again. "Mm. Okay." And once we were in the camera shop, the willpower to delay gratification and buy it online just went kaplooey, so Oz presented me with a lovely SB-600 and some batteries.

Back home, I set up my studio and tried some more. The poster board I attached to the closet door. The rug in the sitting room is a mostly bright pink oriental, so I covered it with a white sheet to keep the bouncing light from getting all colored. I angled the flash up at the ceiling (conveniently already white) and started shooting. Now I have a bunch of well lit, rather sucky photographs of myself. Since "suck" is basically one of the State Department's requirements, I could be done now. I'm getting closer though. Non-suck is within reach.

The flash, by the way, is great. Instead of blasting the subject right in the eyes with bright light, you can blast something else so that the subject is merely washed with light. You get a happy subject and a nicely lit picture.

Work it, baby!

Work it like you might be going on vacation sometime in the next ten years!

It's that time of decade again, when I have to renew my passport. I didn't get it done in time to avoid the dumb RFID tag which generally broadcasts all your personal data (encrypted, but still). Thank you, State Department, for your well thought out foray into gadgetry. A smarter chip would simply key the chip to the passport contents, but we can't have that.

Oh well, nothing I can do about it now, except wrap it in tinfoil. I should probably get a hat to match.

The main thing, at this point, is to keep my passport current, in case I have to flee the country. Not likely I'll need to, but if we do go on vacation abroad, at least passport renewal won't be an issue.

All concerns about identity theft aside, the real problem with getting a passport is the photo.

In my first passport photo, shot in one of those booths, I looked like a toad. A toad with a pretty blue scarf, but a toad nonetheless. In my second and present passport photo, shot by a person at a photo developer, I look like someone else. Someone with a double chin. I don't have one, so I'm not sure how it got into the picture! The photos in both passports are so washed out that you can barely make out my face.

This time, I decided, will be different. If I do it myself, I should be able to get a good passport photo. I looked at the State Department guidelines and decided, based on their explanation of digital photography, that I was more than capable of providing a proper picture. Actually, their long list of what they won't accept has me wondering what people have tried to submit. Magazine clippings? Pictures of themselves in Halloween costumes?

Today I started Operation Non-sucky Passport Photo. I was having a really good hair day. Really, why couldn't my hair have been this cute for the Princess's wedding? Instead, it lay down flat and said, "Wah! Wake me up when the humidity breaks 30%."

Anyway, good hair, free time, camera, tripod, plain white drape. I'm set. I shot a bunch. I got one I thought was okay, but Oz wasn't thrilled with it.

I said, "Why? I have a nice neutral expression on my face."

He said, "If that's neutral, I don't want to see you looking mean."

"I don't look mean!" Although I probably do look mean when I go through passport control, so a mean picture might work better. Besides, Oz looks like a convict (like, you give him cigarettes so he won't beat you up) in the photo on his work ID.

He looked again. "Well, okay, I guess there is a hint of a smile there."

The more I looked at the photograph as a photograph, I began to think that I could do better. The cloth I used as a drape for the plain white background was kind of wrinkled. I've got a wall I could use instead if I took a bulletin board down. The lighting was nothing much. I got to thinking about the article on chiaroscuro (via) this morning. I could rearrange the lights a little …

Oz suggested we go shopping for speedlights. "And those silver umbrellas."

"No!" I'll see what I can do with the lighting I have.

I hope tomorrow is a good hair day.

Let's hear it for …

Minimal nursemaid duties! My mom is doing fine after her foot surgery, plus she is one of the happy few who has minimal pain after this operation. She's still been downing her pain meds, but, well, enough about that. I only have to go over to her place for a couple hours every day and help with errands or chores, like taking out the trash. She's got one of those hi-tech walkers, with wheels, hand-brakes, and a basket, and she's zipping around with much independence. We're going to start calling her "Scooter."

I told Oz that if he has foot surgery again, he should get one of those walkers instead of suffering with crutches. He said, "No! Walkers are for old people." Yeah, and crutches are for people who like to fall over.

All that scooting means more time for me. I haven't had any more work come in, except for some of the deadline-free articles, so I've been a slacker or catching-up-on-stuffer. Today I paid a stack of bills and did some accounting. Before I can file my W-3 and W-2 which are due at the end of February, I have to make my 2006 retirement contribution and adjust all my 2006 paycheck entries to reflect the contributions (In case you're wondering, this isn't illegal, according to my accountant). That was my task for the day, that and write the check to the mutual fund company that handles my SIMPLE. It was sort of refreshing to get it all over with, but now I am rather less liquid. Not so refreshing. I can't wait to find out what my 2006 taxes will be (one of the joys of self-employment: wondering what April will bring) and see how much money I'll have left for a new roof.

This sounds awfully constructive for slack time. I'll be sure to goof off more tomorrow.

Go for a walk

Flamingos decked out with Valentine's finery

My walking route carries me down 28th Street and past these flamingos. Most days a fluffy, friendly cat runs down the steps and demands to have her head rubbed. Most days I rub the kitty's head. Today was cold, so she must have been indoors. She's the most adorable cat; she's like a pocket version of Sparky, only friendlier.

I settled for shooting the flamingos. So pink, so saucy! The flamingos are part of a neighborhood movement to resist obnoxiousness. A few years back, some anonymous people calling themselves something like the "Church Hill Beautification Society" (Only it wasn't that. It was something more obnoxious.) started dropping nasty notes into people's mail slots. They called people's houses, color choices, and gardens … tacky. That, from people who were too tacky to identify themselves. The flamingos were set out in response. "Hah! You think that's tacky? How about this?" I'd have put out flamingos myself, except that I don't have a front yard to put them in.

The poison pen notes stopped soon after, but we still have quite a lot of flamingos around the 'hood.

Despite the cold, it was great to get out today. I don't know when's the next time I'll get to go for a walk. My mom is having foot surgery tomorrow morning, the same operation that Oz had the summer before last, so I'm going to be walking for two for a while. Indoors. Fetching and carrying. I may even have to stay at her house for a few days. Ugh! No Internet! And Oz will be left to his own devices. He's all "Woo! I can watch bad movies and eat chips!" I'm glad somebody has something to look forward to.

Hey there, Valentines!

My Valentine's roses and household clutter

Now that I look at this picture more carefully, I'm thinking I should re-shoot it. All that clutter around the edges. And the big gap in the middle of the bouquet is from where Monte Alban yanked out a spray of baby's breath to eat. I caught him at it this morning. He was under the dining table, hunched over his victim, looking furtively over his shoulder while he bit the flowers off their stems. His technique has improved over the years. When he was a mere youth, one of my funniest help desk calls was "Oh my god! My cat dumped a whole vase of water into my keyboard! The touchpad isn't working! What shall I do?" The help desk guy was amused. I must have made his day. I dried out the keyboard as instructed and I'm still using it. I haven't put a vase of flowers on my desk since.

I had a brownie for breakfast. The brownie I ate last night was a total sugar bomb and I couldn't get to sleep till some ungodly hour. Naturally I needed a brownie jump-start this morning. Brownie plus coffee. What was I thinking? I could feel my heart thumping around in my chest, but I did wake up while I waited to see just how high my blood pressure could go. Be warned! These brownies are awesome, but approach them as you would a controlled substance.

I had a very awake, very productive Valentine's Day. I will put the finishing touches on the big job tomorrow, and then be a big slacker for a while. I will also be shipping brownies off to people who won't know what's hit them. Hah.

Happy Valentine's Day!

V-V Day!

Today was Valentine's Day at our house. Pretty much by accident.

I finished up the first part of the huge job. Early! The client was happy. I was happy. I took the afternoon off and went to the bank and grocery store. Since there's more of this job lurking in the pipeline, I figured I'd make my Valentine's purchases today, because who knows when I'll get to the store again?

I picked up a pot of red tulips, because Oz likes tulips, and a package of strawberries, because Oz likes strawberries.

It was cold and nasty out, so instead of taking my constitutional I baked these "Man-Catcher Brownies." Note how most of the ingredients go two by two? Two cups of cocoa, two cups of sugar, two cups brown sugar … I added a cup of chopped pecans and had to add fifteen minutes to the baking time, but other than that I followed the recipe.

I don't know, though, I think I would call these "Woman-Catcher Brownies." If I was planning to catch a man, I'd use beer and onion rings. A heterosexual man, I should say. The gay men I know would totally go for the brownies, if not for my fabulous self.

The house got smelling all good and chocolaty by the time Oz rolled home, bearing bunches of red and pink roses. The bouquets even had some baby's breath for the cats to snack on. Aw! He had needed to run by the store for bananas and decided to do his Valentine's shopping early too.

We had our dinner (spinach tortellini with basil pesto, sprinkled with grape tomatoes and pistachios) surrounded by flowers.

And the brownies? They taste as good as they smelled while baking. Super rich with a nice chewy crumb. I lined the pan with parchment as instructed and the brownies just popped right out. We ate the brownies standing up in the kitchen, hovering over the pan. Oz agreed with me about "man-catcher" food. Deep frying is a must. But considering how his manliness didn't stop him from munching down a bunch of brownies, I think we could call these "man-keeper" brownies.

Crunch time

You could eat off this floor!

Sparky does. For some reason he hates to eat out of the dish. He flings the food onto the floor and eats from there. Except for the little bits. Little bits != food.

He even does this with juicy food if we don't mash it down in the bowl.

Also, thanks to the nifty fisheye view, I discovered that the previous owner of my house neglected to paint the bottom of one pantry door. Seeing as how I acquired the house nearly twelve years ago and haven't hardly picked up a paintbrush since, the responsibility for the sloppy paint job may have transferred to me.

I took a little break to play with my camera, but I've mostly been working on the huge translation job. The end is in sight! I hope I can finish this job before it finishes me.

Running up that road, running up that hill

I started my day by picking dry cat barf out of the rug in my office. No! Actually, my day began a few hours before that when I shut Monte Alban out of my bedroom so I could catch a little more sleep. At 5:30 a.m. he decided it was time for me to get up (maybe to clean the rug?) and proceeded to pick at the blankets and walk all over me. I decided it was too early and tossed him gently out of the room.

My poor, formerly fractured hip has been killing me this week. There is no pain-free position when I'm lying in bed and I haven't been sleeping well. Between that and the cats, I can only (day)dream of having four hours uninterrupted sleep. On the bright side, my caffeine consumption is up and I'm feeling really creative. Plotting and worldbuilding something completely different.

Languishing manuscripts? Not thinking about them, oddly enough. Those stories are written.

If only I didn't have to do this "earning money" nonsense, I could maybe do something worthwhile.

That was my plan for this week, not the writing, but non-monetary pursuits. I was going to turn in a mindbending computer science article and then in the slack week before the next packet of such arrived, I was going to do my taxes, renew my passport, call roofers, goof off, take pictures, work on my resume, cook food … all that good stuff. True to form, I end up with a 19,000 word patent for some semiconductor tool which the client needs, like, now, but, by the way, they're still revising the claims. I'm working like a drone and looking at a weekend of full-on dronehood. I did negotiate an extra high rate. New roof, here I come!

With any luck, today will have been the worst of it. I worked a lot. This working will kill you, that's what I say. It's no good for the photographer's eye either. I went for a Thursday walk and the only thing I saw to shoot was a roofer's truck so I could get the phone number. I had cold feet and a sore hip from sitting still for hours on end. The cats stayed in the warm and cozy upstairs till it was about suppertime, when they came down to stare at me and nibble on my monitor. While they were waiting, Sparky went into the litter box, scratched around for a while, then came out and hissed in my general direction before going back in and scratching around some more. Hmm. Guess it's time for fresh litter?

The chores, they keep me grounded.

We are looking forward to something tomorrow evening. A neighborhood photographer is having the opening of her very first show.

Objects in mirror are closer than they appear

Oz says I need to re-title this blog to "100 words whenever I feel like it."

Well. Nothing much is going on. Why write a daily boring entry when I can write an occasional less boring entry? A daily dose of boredom is more likely to drive people away than intermittence. What I really need is to get out more. Other people are the best material and I never see any. The human contact alone would almost make it worth going to grad school, except for the hell, nervous breakdown, and financial ruin.

I did find a little material on my own this weekend.

I recently joined Utata and started participating in their photography projects. It's fun and I tried a little light painting and it was good. Then this weekend's project was to get a shot of a creature, human or non, jumping. This requires people who don't mind having their picture on the internet, or cats who have no opinion on the matter. Another requirement for the cat is the ability to launch his fat butt into the air on demand. My sleek and mysterious gray cat jumps all the time, but he's hard to catch. That leaves me with El Gordo, who used to do some fabulous leaping back in the long gone days of his svelte and bouncy youth. Now when offered the dangle toy, he lies on the floor and bats at it. With the laser pointer, we used to make him leap five feet in the air, chasing the red dot up the wall. Now? The one shot I got where he looks like he might be jumping, his hind feet are firmly on the ground.

I had to admit defeat. I need to put this cat on a fitness program.

Also, the side mirror fell off my car today. And broke. And then I ran over it.

Not the housing, just the mirror bit. The adhesive that holds the mirror on the back plate must have given out from the cold, which makes you wonder, because you'd think a Volvo would be able to take these 20 °F temperatures. It's not like we're in Sweden.

This happened right as I was pulling away from the curb in front of my house. I heard the thunk, clink! My first reaction to seeing the smashed mirror on the road was to grab my camera out of the car and take pictures of it. Oz got a sheet of paper and a brush to sweep up the glass.

"Wait, no! This is art," I said, crouching over the broken mirror.

"It's not art! It's the middle of the road!" he said.

We were both wrong. None of the pictures is worth looking at (next time I'll do better) and it was only halfway out to the middle of the road.

Back to the beginning

Libby Hill Park

In order to justify taking a translation-free day, I spent the morning cleaning the kitchen so it would be less disgusting. It's sparkly clean now. While I worked, I listened to the school closings on the radio and glanced outside periodically at the totally snow-free street. Okay. Maybe snow actually was falling in Fluvanna County and other points south and west of Richmond. Oz said there was a light dusting on the parking lot at his work when he got in this morning. Some of his co-workers totally bailed on account of the "blizzard" and didn't even come in to work.

Finally, around one o'clock, a few desultory flakes wormed their way down to the ground. By two we had a full blown flurry. When I went for my afternoon walk, the grassy bits of Libby Hill Park were lightly frosted. Pretty! The scene put me in mind of another winter day, just a few years almost to the day ago, when I took a picture of Libby Hill Park in the snow with my one megapixel pocket camera and posted it on my spanking new blog.

I also saw a goose.

Goose on a Grace Street porch

There's a lady in the neighborhood with these pet geese. I hear the geese much more than I see them. Finding this one hanging out on the porch and honking his head off was kind of a treat. Loud, though. I might feel differently if I lived closer and was exposed to constant, high volume goosage. Tasty roast goose might start looking like an option.