howeird | Not So Weak End (Reply)

As planned Saturday was mostly about going through all the photos I had taken since the last Worldcon, and choosing 20 for the upcoming one. It took almost all day. There were patio breaks (lovely weather, not much of a view) with Domino, who has started to camp out there if I leave the door open. Now that it's cat-proofed I'm fine with that. In the mornings she finds a spot in the sun and splays out on the concrete, other times she either sits on her chair (it's a standard patio chair with a generic cushion) or on my chair (same kind of chair but the cushions are Chinese silk and there are 2 of them).

First pass was about 30 pix. I cut some good ones which I'd used before, and then a few which had no sci-fi appeal. That got me down to 20, but I remembered I wanted to have one of my Unwoman photos in the set, so I picked one and she gave me permission to use it, so it took the place of a not quite as good macabre make-up photo of one of my roller girl friends. Great make-up, less than great lighting job. And there was another tough decision to oust one of my model rocket favorites for a still life from Kanchanaburi. Thirteen of my best Thailand shots did not make the cut. They may not all make the 2013 calendar either.

That's one difference between hand-made art and photography. I can produce hundreds of gallery-worthy images a day.

Now I need to fill in the bid sheets and labels. Well, not now, but soon.

Next chore was to sign each photo using a macro I'd created in Photoshop last month. It's pretty nifty - I have a signature scan in cobalt blue which was sized to be like an artist's signature on my standard Nikon 12.3 megapixel JPGs, and the macro takes that, finds the right-hand margin and then the bottom margin and slaps the signature in the lower right, then merges it with the photo and saves the picture. It only takes about 15 minutes for 20 photos.

I had tried logging into Costco.com, but got a 500-level error which said the site was down for maintenance. It stayed that way all day and night, so uploading and printing would have to wait.

Part of the plan was to drink soda water with fresh-squeezed lime while I was doing this, but my soda siphon leaked all over the fridge, twice - the second time with a replacement tube - so that didn't happen.

After the photo project was as done as it could be without costco.com, I drove to Bevmo to buy a replacement siphon. They don't have any, they only have the cartridges. Boo. Hiss. There's a massage place next door which I had never tried, so I tried it. Very poor massage. She didn't know what she was doing. It didn't hurt so I didn't complain.

Home, ordered a siphon online (two, actually), watched some Olympics on Tivo. The only way to watch, because the commercials are repetitive and mostly stupid, and so are the announcers. Way too much intro crap, and they bundle events in the most bizarre way. They may show several hours of cycling in the same segment as a short burst of gymnastics. Swimming gets decent coverage, and there was some boxing which was contiguous, but last night one chunk was 11 hours, and Tivo can't FF that fast.

Slept well, almost slept in this morning. I tried Costco on the cell phone, and Google showed it was working. It needed the www. They really need to change the system down message on the costco.com site to a redirect. Anyhow, that let me upload and order prints. They should be done tomorrow afternoon.

Also printed out the music & script for Anything Goes and put that in a folder.

Noon-ish, put the baritone in the car and drove to the park for the monthly YOTB concert. The new guy showed up, and so did our student, so we had a record 6 baritones. Also 4 tubas, and two more trumpets than ever before. It was an easy concert for us, he chose music which was not lip-splitting.

From there to Fedex/Kinko's, where I bought a 3-ring binder and dividers and used their hole punch on the script & music. Then home for some Domino time and more Olympics.

6-ish, off to rehearsals. I was only half an hour early, but no one else showed up for 15 minutes. My friend David, another bass, who had performed in a matinee at Foothill that afternoon. People mostly arrived right on time or a few minutes late. It was not very hard music, though some of the bass line is WTF. I hate it when it jumps all over the place, bass lines ought to stay toward the bottom of the staff. The final note in the show is kind of a WTF, almost everyone is singing the same note. Ought to end in thrilling mind-blowing 12-part harmony.

It was good to spend the day being musical.

Home, dinner, watched some Muay Thai instead of Olympics.

Voted for the Hugos. The only one I felt strongly about is the short story, and I'm 90% certain my choice will not win, due to the overwhelming popularity of one of the other entrants, whose entry IMHO was either the worst short story ever, or a brilliant "best related work" which probably would not have fared well against Jar Jar Binks Must Die.

As a fan of irony and recursive humor, I sincerely hope

johnnyeponymous wins for the video of his 2011 Hugo acceptance ~~speech~~ melt-down. I also hope Drink Tank wins again because the sample submitted was one in which many of my photos were used as fillers, and I had an article in it too, which would make me something like 11/300th of a Hugo winner.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Costco: P/U prints, get gas, see if they can refill Epson inkjet cartridges. Otherwise buy a set.
Aaron's - leave the prints for mounting.