goblinbox

In which there was culture! But it was pretty redneck, so not really.

Saturday night, Left Coast Girlie and I went to see a play at Fort Walla Walla, which is an outdoor amphitheater near the local museum. The play was Taming of the Shrew, which I wanted to see because I played Kate in a high school production and I have always rather liked the show.

There was a nice full house.

When we got there, the set had a trailer on it. Oh goody, I thought. Another modernized interpretation. Ugh.

(I played Rosalind in As You Like It in cowboy boots and jeans once, and am of the opinion that dresses are better. I was a little sad to see the set.)

But it worked out! Baptista was a big-haired, mini-skirt wearing woman instead of a man, and they called her “Momma Baptista.” Bianca was a beauty pagent queen. Kate wore jeans and boots and rode a Harley. Petruchio was a cagey, skinny, beer-swilling redneck.

The show was hilarious. We had a really fantastic time!

~+~+~
The Curse^TM arrived Friday, and The Dread has been lessening ever since. I was trying pretty hard to have an attack on Saturday (my nail tech even told me to relax when when she was doing my fill Saturday afternoon) but I managed not to completely freak out. Today I feel normal again for the first time since July 31st. Ten days of relentless panic and anxiety! WTF?

I hate hormones.

The arrhythmia is gone, and so is the panic, but I’m going to make an appointment with a GP this week and get a checkup. (That way if it gets this bad again I’ll have someone to call for drugs.)

~+~+~
Yesterday was Argus Day!

I shot maybe eight frames, but I’m carrying the camera today and hope to finish off the roll so I can get it developed.

I wound the last roll I shot (through my other Argus) off the spool, and now I can’t figure out what to do with it. There’s no easy way to get it back on the roll, so right now it’s just sitting in the camera. If I can’t figure out how to get it developed I might just throw it out.

Ah, the perils of old fully-manual cameras.

In which two packages arrive.

I’ve taken to doing Flickr swaps lately.

What this means is that I send stuff to people I don’t know in real life, and they send me stuff back. In the mail. On purpose.

It’s awesome.

A week or so ago I sent one of my three Argus C3 cameras, a 100mm telephoto lens, and two rolls of film to Florida. Yesterday I got this:

Two Argus lenses… and a Polaroid SX-70 Land camera! With a bright yellow skin! W00t!

And last week Left Coast Girlie and I sent a couple of baby loaves of Tillamook cheese, some smoked cheese, candy, and a couple boxes of crackers to Tokyo. And in response, we got this:

Another explosion of Japanese bento goodness! I got a tamagoyaki pan!

Moral being that, in spite of having to pay for postage, swapping is hella fun. Because who doesn’t love getting presents in the mail?

In which I do some stuff… but don’t really get much accomplished!

Saturday I lounged around, made soup, then in the afternoon went to get film developed and have my nails done. Because I’m white trash like dat.

The developer at Rite-aid was broken and my nail shop was closed for the weekend, so I ended up getting the film developed at Albertsons and having cocktails at The Blue while I waited.

From the 1941 Argus C3 came these nice shots:

I think I’d had the Argus’ telephoto lens installed off true by one tooth (the C3 is a rangefinder, not an SLR) and so nearly the entire roll was slightly out of focus. Sadly I’d already removed the lens by the time I got the film developed, so I couldn’t check to see how it really wants to be installed.

The Yashica Electro 35 GSN took great pictures, as always:

Saturday evening after the guys got of work, there was an impromptu BBQ on my brother’s patio:

Becca brought her kid, and Lannie dropped by too. We had a lot of fun. I at this amazingly delicious ‘burger’:

Sunday, SUMMER ARRIVED! It was hot! Teh BF and I ran errands all morning, stopping at about five places – I bought groceries at Andy’s Market and film at Walmart – and even shopping for luggage. Then we had tacos:

After which I napped all afternoon at his place.

I went home at seven, and accomplished nothing of note after that.

Today I got up, bathed, and walked to work. It’s very, very slow – just like it was last week, and the week before that. My hours have been cut from 40 to 38. My brother’s hours have been cut from 40 to 18.

Suddenly I’m worried about my lack of savings, and I fear that my trip to Dallas next month may be my last travel excursion for quite awhile.

In which Teh BF and I have been together for a whole entire year already. And it’s a good thing, too, because I’m entirely too pudgy to be on the market.

Saturday morning I did laundry and rearranged my bedroom in such a way that I can now watch movies while lying in my bed.

Saturday afternoon I ate a delicious burrito, and then I went and got my nails done. They look like this:

From the Laotian guy who did my nails came a nugget of wisdom just way too awesome not to share. The exchange went like this:

Him: When you get your nails done last? Long time?
Me: Oh, it’s been a few years. Maybe five.
Him: I can tell you got nails done before.
Me: Yeah.
Him: Many times before. Long time.
Me: Yes. The first time I got my nails done, they were still doing them round-tipped instead of square!
Him: No! You not that old!
Me: But now they’re always square.
Him: Yes. Square much stronger. One time, I do nails for a lady, she said she want round. I say, No! Not strong! Lady say, It not look natural, square not look natural. I say, You can look natural in the cemetary!
Me: In the cemetary? …Oh, you mean, when you’re dead?
Him: Yes! You can look natural when you’re dead!

And then we giggled companionably together for the next three minutes while he sanded my new acrylic French nails.

Meanwhile, I was having three rolls of 35mm film developed. Here’s a shot from the Yashica Electro 35 GSN:

And a shot from The Brick, aka the Argus C3:

Saturday night I had Singapore noodles at the P’n'E. I didn’t take a picture of them at the time because what kind of asshole takes pictures of every goddamned thing she eats? (Don’t answer that!) But this morning the leftovers looked like this:

Sunday I had an veggie omelet containing nearly an entire day’s calories for brunch:

Sunday happened to by my one year anniversary with Teh BF! He brought me coffee and flowers in bed that morning.

In the evening, he took me out on a nice dinner date for which he’d made reservations and to which he even wore a proper shirt! I put on proper shoes and had T. Mac’s veggie lasagna (along with an amazing English pea bruchetta appetizer and a couple of lemon drop martinis) for dinner:

In return for the coffee, flowers, and lovely dinner, I bought brunch, wore mascara, and tried not to be a bitch for the whole entire day.

In which I get the hell outta town!

I didn’t take a pre-spring vacation like I did last year, so I’ve been in the office without a pause since Vegas last September. (As soon as Amma’s tour schedule comes out I’ll be trying to book Chicago, and I’m also hoping to get to New York in late autumn.) Sometimes you just can’t have a good attitude if you haven’t gotten out of town lately.

I really, really, really needed to get out of town. I was sleeping too much, feeling irritated with my customers, and in general needing a little break in the old routine. I mean, when your mantra turns into “Fuck! Fuck! Fuckity fuck!” when you’re on the phone at work? You need a break.

Luckily, Teh BF’s birthday was Saturday! I gave him this:

Which is a sweet set of sushi knives with chopsticks in a groovy case, and in return he took me to Idaho with him:

Coeur d’Alane, Idaho! Where there’s a lake! And some leftover Rocky Mountains! And really good cosmopolitans!

We stayed in a resort hotel, ate an amazing meal, spent about an hour in the casino, and then slept in our room’s gigantic bed. In the morning we had the hotel’s VERY EXPENSIVE brunch buffet (apparently a buffet with chocolate fountain, ice sculpture, omelet and crepe bar = $30 a head) and then checked out.

I am the type of person who goes to a sporty resort and does nothing sporty at all. We barely even walked around; there was certainly no boating or fishing or water skiing or hiking or golfing or swimming. But the eating and drinking was stellar!

We took a detour through Medical Lake on the way home ’cause Teh BF was incarcerated there 23 years ago and wanted to have a look at it. He completely spazzed out and told me all kinds of crazy jail stories, like the one about breaking into the commissary and stealing cartons of cigarettes. Yes, when you’re in jail for stealing, you probably should not ought to be doing B&Es! Heh. My baby was a really stupid silly boy.

I took a lot of pictures – I brought three film cameras along for an overnight trip ’cause I’m a dork like that – but none of that is developed yet, of course. You can see the rest of my cell phone pics for now, though; they’re here. (Go look at them and come back. I’ll wait!)

When we got back to town Sunday afternoon, we went straight to KJ’s and passed out for three hours. (Most likely, those three hours were the most gorgeous three hours of 2009, but I needed the nap more than I needed fresh breeze and sunshine.)

When we got up, we ate at the new taco joint in town (it was AMAZING!) and then he took me home. I think I went to bed at ten, and slept until my alarm went off at nine this morning.

~+~+~
This morning I got up and packed my bento for the day:

That’s rajma masala. I made it myself.

Then Bindu and I walked to work. It was gorgeous and warm and I wished for a short-sleeved shirt.

~+~+~
When I got to work, the Yashica had arrived:

Can’t wait to get a battery and a roll of film into it!

In which there are some events of the not-so-stunningly-fantastic sort. It’s not that interesting. You may talk among yourselves.

Saturday I had the first roll of film shot through The Brick developed. Several of them turned out really well, particularly considering that the rangefinder window is filthy and I can’t see through it, and that I totally guess on aperture and exposure times. (The roll is here if you wanna take a look at what a 1962 Argus C3 shoots like.)

I had my hair colored Saturday afternoon. No more roots! (I also had my eyebrows waxed. Best use of seven dollars EVER.)

Saturday night Teh BF and I went to bed – and to sleep – at 8:30. It’s a totally rockstar lifestyle, I’m telling you.

Sunday we went to brunch at The Oasis with family: G’ma, my brother, my aunt and uncle, two of their friends, my aunt’s mom, and KJ’s mom. The food sucked – the Caesar salad was fishy, the eggs were green, and the hash browns were those awful frozen fried potatoes with green and red peppers, and the rest of the buffet was FODA¹ so naturally I couldn’t eat it – but the company was congenial.

Sunday afternoon we spent at my place; KJ watched golf with G’ma while I installed the giant hand-me-down flat monitor he gave me and watched a couple of episodes of Firefly and Torchwood on it upstairs. For dinner, I made black bean soup. He took off around seven; I did laundry and watched Mystic River and went to bed early.

I’m not sure if it’s blogging or aging, but though the agency of one or both I’ve finally relaxed enough to be utterly vacuous. I no longer worry about coming off as deep and self-reflective; I post utterly vapid shit with no greater meaning whatsoever and feel pretty good about it. I talk about getting my eyebrows waxed, for chrissakes. Is this what they mean by ‘mellowing with age’?

—
¹ Flesh of Dead Animal.

In which it totally feels like hump day, but it isn’t.

Weather in the Walla Walla Valley

First there was sun.

Then there was wind. Then there was hail.

Then the power went out. Management decided to send everyone (but me) home, and they all left and had had just enough time to get into their cars… and the power came back on. So they all had to come back.

I didn’t have to help clear the queue, though, because it was my lunch break.

Vintage Photography

I’ve been playing with The Bricks every day because they’re just so cool looking. Finally got the Tele-Sandmar on Brick The Younger today:

Still need to clean and adjust the rangefinder before I can actually shoot anything with it. I ordered cheap film from Adorama and it won’t be here for a few days anyway; hopefully the camera will be ready by then. Last night I learned how to remove (very easy) and replace (total pain in the ass) the exposure counter. This means I’m one step closer to taking the top panel off of the camera so I can clean and adjust the rangefinder!

I don’t think I know anyone with a scanner. I realize it seems weird to take film images simply to put them into electronic format, but I’ll tell you what: all the pictures in my Flickr account? are still there. All the photos and photo albums I once had? are gone. No idea where they are. Maybe I have some in boxes, but I think most of them were rotten and not worth saving from the farm. So I’ll have to pay extra when getting my film developed to have them all scanned.

I wonder how many rolls of film it will take me to really grok this:

Even though you focus your camera lens on a certain distance, the picture will be sharp in front of and behind the point focused on. This “range of sharpness” (depth of field) depends on the lens opening used and the lens focusing distance.

The smaller the lens opening, and the greater the focusing distance, the greater is the the lens’ range of sharpness. The range of sharpness will be least when the lens is used at its largest opening and shortest focusing distance.

Working at an ISP

In other, wholly unrelated news, we had a six-state DSL outage that lasted about two hours. An hour into it, all the rest of the staff’s shifts ended and I ended up in here alone. My brother gave me the saddest little “Sorry to leave you with all this, but my day’s done” shrug on his way out the door. I have about 40 calls to complete.

In other words, I am alone and TOTALLY FUCKING SLAMMED AT WORK TONIGHT.

And now, to close, a little about this bullshit worm scare story in the news:

A pox upon CBS and CNN and every other news agency that picked up this stupid Confiker/Downadup worm story! You are making my job stupider!

I’m not against educating people about Internet security, not at all. I am against hysterical reporting. I am against having customers freaking out on my phone and over LiveChat and through email for two days because some reporter learned about a particular kind of threat that’s been around since last autumn!

Here’s an email reply I sent to a customer:

>From : XXXX xxxxxx@bmi.net
> Phone : (xxx) xxx-xxxx
> O/S : Windows XP
> Comments : Do I need to worry about a virus tonight?

Have a great night!

Actually, the one good thing about all this is hearing people practically say “fuck” in German all day long and knowing they have no idea they’re doing it.

In which there are several visual aides!

With the help of NLW I collected a bunch of stuff from the farm yesterday, but I never did see my beloved Polaroid camera. I looked all over the place several times but it wasn’t there. Bread said he couldn’t remember seeing it anywhere.

Last night in bed I thought about it really hard, and remembered seeing it on the white shelves in my old office a year ago. Those shelves were packed by Bread himself the last time I went out there to get stuff. Therefore, the camera could be… in that box right there!

I jumped out of bed and opened a box. The camera wasn’t there, but it was in the box below! (Now all I have to do is find my Kodak Brownie and I’ll be good.)

The reason I love the Polaroid so much is that it takes pictures like these:

[color] [black & white]

The thing is simply amazing, and that’s all there is to it. If only I didn’t have to hoard the flashbulbs.

I threw away half of the stuff in those two boxes, but in the process I found a couple of old short stories. (The ‘Fixer’ one I wrote the last time I lived in Walla Walla – eleven years ago, as a matter of fact.)

Here they are, for your amusement, two short stories I’d totally forgotten about, found in my stuff, and scanned into PDFs:

[A Real Fixer-Upper] [Landed Aristocracy]

See, I used to be a cool person who took awesome photos with vintage cameras and wrote short stories for fun! And now I’ve proved it.

In other news, Iowa is pretending to be Oregon today. The sky is overcast and has been steely and unchanging all day. It hasn’t rained, but it looks as if it should. From horizon to horizon, the color is the same uniform pearly gray.

I don’t check the mail very often, so it’s probably been sitting there for a few days, but I received my first two rolls of 127 film for the Brownie Reflex today!

I’ll be running around snapping (daylight) pics with my little vintage baby for the next couple of weeks… then I’ll have to find someone to develop the film for me.
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Brownie Reflex Synchro Model

We went to Rutledge on Sunday: Brett & me and Joe.

Joe got way cool retro glassware and some other cool vintage stuff, and I got another old camera, a Kodak Brownie Reflex Synchro Model (mfg. from 1942-1951). I’ve already ordered film for it (custom film, apparently, since Kodak no longer manufactures original 127 film), and am trolling eBay for a flash attachment.

Here’s the manual in PDF format if you really want to be geeked out.

I love the smell of old cameras, and this one smells as groovy as my wonderful old Polaroid (1965-1967). It was so full of gunk that the ‘reflex’ part didn’t work at all until I disassembled the camera completely and washed the mold off of the mirror and lenses with dish soap and warm water. (Not the shuttered photo lense, of course – that I cleaned with a Q-tip.)

The shutter seems to function properly. As it’s basically the only moving part of the camera (besides the latch that opens the film compartment) I think that means the camera will work. (For five bucks, it doesn’t really matter if it doesn’t, but I think it would be fun to take some pictures with it.)
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I love this old Polaroid! I bought it at the Rutledge flea market last month for a dollar.

It’s a Land camera, model 103 (which is basically a bottom-shelf 100 model). The best part is that they still make film for it! (In color and B&W!)

This camera was made from 1965-1967, so it’s older than I am. It came complete with a groovy carrying case, a portrait kit (which consists of a wide aperture lens, a flash filter, and a snap-on viewfinder), a cold-clip (which is something you put your developing exposure in and keep in your armpit on cold days so the picture is warm enough to develop properly), and a flash gun.

There’s nowhere to buy film packs for this camera locally, so I have to order them online. I found a place to buy a battery, too – the camera uses a strange old battery that has 9-volt-style snaps on it, one on the bottom and one on the top. Although flash bulbs are no longer made, they still exist and can also be purchased on the web for a little over a dollar per flash. (I only bought two boxes, and use the camera outside most of the time.) (I also bought these.)

This camera takes amazing pictures; even though the film is new the images come out looking like they’re thirty years old. The portrait kit, used outdoors with ample light and color film, takes amazing photos. I took one of Ella on her 1st birthday sitting in her highchair and it’s easily the best portrait I’ve ever taken.

While these cameras are fairly plentiful, it’s hard to find accessories. I really want a cloud filter. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

Specs

Film: 100/660-Series Land Pack Films (3 1/4″ x 4 1/4″)
Flashbulbs: M3 Clear Bulb
Battery: No. 531 4.5 volt alkaline battery

Links

Land List – an enthusiast’s repository of basic reference information regarding Polaroid Land Cameras and related products. This site is the vintage Polaroid Bible.
photobattery.com – sells new batteries for old cameras. I got the 531-analogue I needed for $14… which is kinda funny, considering I only paid $1 for the camera itself! Snort!
Cress Photo – sells vintage bulbs! Oh yes they do!
adorama.com – cheapest 600-series pack film I could find online.

Pics

Here are the kick-ass photos this thing takes.

3/20/09 Update Polaroid has stopped making 600-series pack films as of the end of 2008, but you can get Fuji instant films that will fit!