1.11.15

Age is a strange thing. One day you're the kid and the next thing you know you're getting that senior discount and instructed by the universe, in no uncertain terms, that you are hereby past your due date and any viewpoints, life experience or general conceit that you might have harbored and/or cultivated are officially no longer valid, and furthermore, no one is interested.

Leslie asked me if I wanted a little color in my hair the other day and I shrieked (believe me, in a most masculine shriek) snarled,"Never" most forcefully. Not doing the grecian thing. Hippie kid, I'm going out like an old navajo, wrinkles and all.

My computer is acting up. I hate technology, always have. My Macpro, the one with the intel processor 2 x 2.66 GHZ Dual Core Intel Xeon with all that extra memory is getting long in the tooth, or so I am instructed by my computer gal, Heidi.

Seven years old is like dog years to a mac. It is starting to send me little communiques, gasps for memory and notices of speed malfunctions, tired groans that are getting hard to ignore.

We hooked up two new G drives and they have to be rebuilt every time I reboot the computer because of some pissing match between G and Apple. Finger pointing. So my photo and backup drives ain't working so good.

Things are starting to lag but I like to use things until they are officially dead and past tense, get every last ounce of use of them like the good old provincial farmer that I am. Waste not, want not. It's just starting to sputter and wheeze a bit, just like me.

Anyway, Heidi gently broke the word to me when I called to bitch about the drive situation, Robert, your computer's old, like a veterinarian telling you it's finally time to put down the horse.

I'll, sniff, miss the old gal. Not going to buy one of those expensive donut cylinder macpros, will buy a humble 27" retina 5k imac, that is when I can scratch up the dough.

I have a new significant attraction. I was walking across the street, minding my own business, when I espied out of the corner of my eye an object of singular virtue and beauty. One of the very nice merchants on the block had an old twin lens reflex rollie sitting there in the window, an old flame of mine. The first camera I ever shot, actually, in 1962 or 3, stepfather Don taught us to use it. Think he lost it later, got rolled in Juarez but that is another story. Damn Oso Negro.

Anyway I approached the shop owner and she said it was a prop in the closet when she bought the place and I was welcome to use it if I wanted to. I have been yearning for film and medium format and I think she will do the trick for a while. Bought some 100 Velvia and Ilford at OPT. Have my new scanner in place.

This one is a K4A from around 1951 or 1952. She has the Tessar Opton 3.5 77mm. The MX automat. Ken helped me load it and reorient myself. Seems to be in fine shape, not abused. Might need a little lubrication, nothing major. Aches and pains of getting up there. This is going to be fun. Light meter on the way from Hong Kong as we speak.

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Soon I will tell you about Prometheus.

first night back for fois gras - Vincent's, Escondido