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Here In Oakland

Art & Life


   



July 26, 2015

Day Ahead

Sunday. And indeed to bed early last night to turn on the tablet, but then turn off the tablet and then the lights to get to sleep early. Tired, even after all the sleep we managed the night before and later yesterday with its two hour nap.

OK. Life has its own schedule, we don't tell it, it tells us, and best we keep our little mouth shut. We're talking sleep here, after all, and not the other less pleasant stuff life can dish out.

Awakening before the alarm to get up and drive to breakfast. No meters on a Sunday. No exercise, even the little exercise we get walking the half mile to breakfast, but it only comes up every seven days. Something to look forward to, if only on a Saturday night.

This is drifting.

An overcast Sunday morning. Have no idea what the day may bring.

Later. Out the door meeting an arriving bus when I reached the stop and so a ride to 20th Street and then a walk along 20th to the bus stop at Telegraph, the automated sign saying a bus was due in fourteen minutes. Hmm. Did I want to wait fourteen minutes to catch a bus to the Telegraph Street Fair at Dwight? Did I? Six minutes later I evidently decided I didn't and walked back to Grand to catch another bus home.

Odd set of conflicting motivations or an altogether of motivation. Took the return bus to the apartment house construction site to have a poppy seed bagel and coffee at an outside table at the café at Grand and Bellevue, thinking I'm feeling much better. The sinuses were still acting up even though I'd taken another dose of the pain meds before setting out. Who knows what effect these meds actually have? I've always assumed they to some degree work, but how well really? Don't know, but feeling good.

Anyway, home to spend too much time on the computer surfing the web, checking out the usual news sites (why such attention to the daily news?) and thinking any sort of a task seems possible right now. Maybe take that self portrait I've been putting off? Possible? Do you think?

More pertinently: do you yourself think?

Maybe. You never know.

Later still. It's evidently been either quite a while since I used this setup of mine to take a self portrait (or anyone's portrait, for that matter) or I've forgotten most of the things I've learned about taking a portrait (with a strobe light) in these last however many months. Finally just gave up on using the strobes, sat down and snapped a picture.

OK. At least this resulted in putting the living room back together and suggesting to me that I should get the white background, if not properly lighted, then ironed, and to take any additional photographs with the shirt pocket buttoned. Nothing, I'm afraid, to be done with the subject. Still, first one done, more (and better) ones to follow (tomorrow).

Well, one additional thing. I've been using the same electric shaver now for over a decade, although I did recently (in the last weeks) replace the cutting head when I learned such things could be done. There was stubble and individual strands of unpleasantly placed hair in the first pictures that sent me to the mirror with razor and scissors.

Replace the electric razor? Don't see how that would make it any sharper than replacing the head with a new one has done. Go back to a blade? Shave with my glasses on so I can see what's happening in the mirror? One of the disadvantages of being a bachelor: no one to mention you still look/smell/act like a trash heap when you've finished shaving.

How does one “act like a trash heap”?

It takes practice and not wearing your reading glasses when you peer in the mirror.

Evening. Actually scrubbed out the tub. Maybe I should take my temperature, check the blood pressure and then go to bed. An odd but good day behind, maybe a good day ahead.

The photo up top was taken at the Anime and Cosplay Festival Saturday in Japantown with a Nikon D4s mounted with a 70-200mm f 2.8 VR II Nikkor lens.


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