Recluse

There are two folks at work who have been bitten by spiders recently. These are stay-out-of-work-go-to-the-doctor type bites.

Everyone is concerned that biter may have been the dreaded Brown Recluse.

If you want to gross yourself out, Google the results of a Brown Recluse bite. The venom is acidic and gives you this flesh-eating creepout effect. Bleagh. Even without that drama, a regular bite can get you all swollen and troubled.

One of the kids on my team was talking about all the black widows she sees on her horse farm. She was talking about the marks like it was something you hadn't seen in comic books and horror films a billion times. Black freaking widows! Acid-biting spiders! Poison snakes! Dead armadillos! Go Texas!

So I was thinking about the vile critters as I rolled home. I was taking out the trash and a lizard took off like a shot. He was in the garage somehow and was now cruising across the pavement. He was a round little thing and his short legs gave his body a comedic swaying motion as he ran. I'd seen him around before, so in the hopes that he decides to come over again I decided to nickname him Fatty.

This of course is a nod to the hilarious Fatty the Groundhog that lived in my parent's yard for some time.

But what was Fatty doing in the garage? Just visiting? Cooling off? It was nearly 100° that day. But methinks there was a more culinary reason in his choice of hangout. So today I scoped out the garage to see what was up. Sure enough: weird beetles here and there in the corners. Gross. Not a lot of them, mind you, but enough to bring Fatty over for some nom nom nom.

They were all dead so I broomed them up and knocked down the spider web. But on the base of the stairs I found these two little creeps. Nothing crazy but I thought I would take a snap. So I flip them onto a handy piece of paper and it's click click click. While, imagine my surprise when after fifteen minutes the little one starts twitching and flips himself over. I'm a guy and have no problem killing bugs. Still there was a tiny part of my brain thinking: you had never heard of the Brown Recluse until two days ago. Who knows what other nasty crap they have down here?

I squished him in a tissue and continued my day.

Artless

I gotta find a new corner store. You may remember that I previously posted a karmic encounter at the store here.

So, it;s Friday evening, I'm done with work and headed home. At the last minute, I decide to stop in at my corner gas station place to pick up a six pack. A lot of other people have the same idea, so there is a general wait around the checkouts.

Now, there are two check out counters going, but they are unusually far apart. So you have to choose one or the other and cannot easily slide to the next available one.

You know where this is going. I started in one lane because there seemed to be some sort of gas-buying holdup on the other one. But that clears up and my lane isn't moving, so I change over. THere's only one guy in front of me, so this should be a breeze.

Wrong. Some guy comes in and starts asking the cashier about what was going on on gas pump 5. At first he's calm and she explains the situation. He's so calm that I get the impression he's a manager or something. Wrong. Turns out it's the former gas-buying-patron's husband that raised the commotion before and now he wants the story.

Well, here it is: the wife started pumping gas. She selected the cash option and pumped $2.14 worth of gas. Or she tried to pay for the $2.14 worth of gas with a credit card after saying that she had cash. Or something like that. It's hard to tell because the conversation became very heated. What it boiled down to was: pay the lady $2.14 in cash, and then you can pump the rest of your gas and pay with a credit card. Seems easy enough.

Wrong. THe dude is flipping out, saying that he is being penalized for the cashier's mistake and he is going to sue the place and call the police. The cashier is saying that calling the police is fine with her because they still owe her for the gas and please pay because I have your plates and will call the cops if you don't. This goes on and on and is now a shouting match with the guy becoming deeply wounded that he has somehow been wronged by the store.

Meanwhile I just want to buy a six pack of Tecate.

THis is like walking down the street and seeing a nickel sticking out of a bee's nest. Hmm. might be dangerous to reach in and grab it, and there's not much reward for the risk, but what the hell?.

Plus, I'm an idiot, so, I slap three bucks on the counter and say "Here! Here's your $2.14! Now go pump your damn gas!"

There is dead silence for a minute as nobody knows what to do. Then the guy looks at me square in the face and says "FUCK! YOU!" He punctuates each word with a finger point so I know it's me who should be fucked and then he turns on his heel and runs out the store in the manner of a crying teen girl.

That guy must have had a bad day. But anyway! It's beer-buying time and I'm the hero of the store, right? I bet they give me a discount, or at least a grateful grin. Wrong. I put my purchase on the counter and the cluster of cashiers just stare balefully at me and ring me up in silence. Somehow in a shouting match over two bucks I became the rude one for trying to move things along. I gotta find a new corner store.

Chocolate & Futons

The company that moved me here did a lame who-did-it-and-ran style job of moving me in. I learned this again today as I was working in the guest room. My moms is coming to visit next week so I thought I would hang some photos and spruce the place up a bit.

So I go to move the futon and it flops open wrong. I examine it and discover that they put it together backwards. Argh. Well, better to find this out now than when she needed to sleep on it.

So I get tools and begin the repair. With the futon disassembled, I can see parts that normally are hidden and I shake my head at the lame staining job someone did. Turns out that that someone was me.

Realizing this, I flash back on when we bought the futon all those years ago in Portland. It was a bitch to put together then, and it was a bitch to re-assemble alone today. Futons are built on tension so its easier of you can have one person hold something in one spot while another does the other bits. Nothing for it today but to do it.

Smashes toes, a jammed thumbnail and general frustration later it was done.

Until I moved it and it fell apart again.

Some parts had fallen out unseen that held the screws in correctly. So I fixed it again right this time and finished hanging the photos.

Anyway, as I worked it got me thinking about those starting-out days in Portland. I remember what a big purchase the futon was then. I was working part-time at a radio station and spending that much on an extra bed gave me a lot of stress.

The auld lang syn made me think of another recent purchase so after I was done with the futon I took some snaps of my old pal Pocky chocolate.

I haven't bought a Pocky in about 15 years but I definitely have a lot of affection for the stuff. I picked it up on impulse last weekend for no real reason. I like saying its name and thinking about more than actually eating it. I'm not much of a candy guy. It will probably stay in my cupboard for a long time.

I first found Pocky in the little Asian mart on Congress street in Portland, Maine. I remember the moment well. It was a fun afternoon; buying foreign candy blind to see what was inside. There was one package we bought because it had exploding Pac Man ghosts on the package. I opened it and it had cotton candy inside. Oh, ok. I get this. But as the candy dissolved in your mouth there were pop rocks inside. The explosion was unexpected and exciting. A double treat from an unknown package. That's what Pocky is to me: a link to unexpected pleasure from nothing. A time when we were starting and it was all good: Pocky is good.

I'm really looking forward to going back to Portland this summer. It will be the first time in 6 years I've spent any real time there. I wonder what it would be like to go to Amigos or the old places now. I bet it will be like the memories: the same but separated.

It is what it is

Storms hit in the middle of the night. One of the thunderbolts shook the house and knocked me bolt upright in bed around 2am.

This is earlier than that- around 10pm. I was just curling into bed with an episode of classic Star Trek. The one with the Trelaine: the all-powerful space brat with the magic mirror and the penchant for 1800's dress up. You know, not to get off on a tangent, but I could watch classic trek just for the lighting setups. They don't have any continuity shot to shot, but they are dramatic as hell. Compare with the bland, even mall light of Next Generation. Bleagh.

Anyhoo. Stam stam went the lightning, so I pulled on a hoodie and pants and tried to catch some snaps. This was about it.

After the blue sky comment in the other post, I figured I better read up. Basically, what it gets down to is the sky is blue for the same reason everything else is the color it is: because thats the color light it reflects. I did learn that the reason clouds are often darker on the bottom because that's the shadow from the top of the cloud.

But my comment meant more to the idea that even when things seem kind of black it doesn't mean that's how they are. I'm not always having the greatest time with this move and sometimes it gets to me. If you leave the shutter open long enough, things change up. The sky is still back there.

The Sky is Still Blue

So, before I would bore you with sunset after sunset from my deck.

Now it looks to be storm shot after storm shot from the patio.

Rained off and on, so I tried my luck again.

Now, the trick here is that there is a lot of light around. It's an apartment complex and there's a giant airport a couple miles south of me, so there's local light plus lots in the atmosphere.

How do you expose these then?

My first thought was to go for long exposures, the lightning would fill itself in sharply. Well, with the heaty, bulby lightning here I had plenty of shots overexposed. Just too much light from the lightning. So you dial down the speed, but then it's harder to catch.

In the end I tried a bunch of different things.
The part that was weird was how blue the sky still was. Like there would be flashes way off, I'd shoot and you'd get these painty blue swaths through the sky.

You forget that when the sun isn't out, it's there just covered by clouds.

You forget that when it's night the sky is still blue, you just can't see it.

Under the sky

The other day I was driving home and the sky got all dark and ominous.

I wasn't too concerned though, so off I went. Idling at the first stop sign someone threw a rock at my car. I looked around to see who had done it, but there was no one around. Thwing! Whap! Two more and I realize that they didn't come off the car in from of me or prankish kids: this is hail.

At first I'm amused as hail is fairly rare where I'm from and I dont pay it much mind. Then at the next stop the sloppy rain drops start. Calling them "drops" seems inapt and miserly. These were the size of sausage patties. Each intermittent drop glopping a large area of the windshield like batter for pancakes.

I keep going and then the rain hits hard. Now, I was here for the big snow storm week they had and that was nothing, but I got a little wigged out driving in this. Wipers on high, hail and rain battering the car, it was intense and very loud with the hail strikes. But let's be realistic: it was still just a rain storm.

On the long straight-away of my drive I was about 4-6 feet behind the car in front of me. I was in the middle lane, he in the right. His car was throwing up a solid wall of water on the far side- away from me. Apparently the water was just pooling on the side of the road and not draining and now it was throwing up a rooster tail wall for the last quarter mile.

This is all fine and good until we pass a cross street.

As we go through the intersection, the car in front of me hits a dip in the road and sends a gigantic amount of water directly onto my windshield.

This completely blinds me. For the first second I'm amazed, because the color of the water on the windshield is bright green- like pool water. Like I was dunked in the deep end. But as the pounding wipers struggle and fail to clear it I'm aware that I am sliding through a busy intersection completely blind. What if the guy to my right finally decided to get out of the puddle lane and changed over? This is a big road and I'm going 35 or 40. I slow down a tick and the wipers finally clear them out.

It reminded me of a time when I was surfing and the waves held me under. You're in this beautiful green space, and it only really lasts a couple seconds but time stands still as you wonder if you're getting out of this ok.

So anyway. The point is, it's crazy weather season. We had another banger last night so I set up my rig and spent some time watching it come in. I set up long exposures figuring the lightning was bright and fast enough that it would just illuminate itself. Drank a beer with my thumb on the bulb release thing and actually got one.

Too pooped to party

I've had a headache off and on for three days.

I'm just tired, too. I suppose working the hours I do takes it's toll, but it's distressing that I spend my time off recovering from work. And that taking a day off means that you're just going to have to work harder next week to make up for it.

Oh, well. Enough complaining. I am very grateful for what I have, and that's no lie.

Here's a shot mixing longer exposure with lighting. It's a three second exposure