• a variety of fine pickles •

on becoming a productive member of society. again.

i start back to work today**. it's been seven weeks since i've been at work and have become somewhat spoiled being at home all this time, recovering from surgery. i've worked out quite a rigorous schedule since i've been out; a schedule that i've stuck to and very rarely deviated from:

wake up at 7:30 am
feed pearl
make and consume coffee
shower and dress (t-shirt and pajama bottoms) by 8:00 am
watch golden girls from 8:00 am- 9:00 am
watch frazier from 9:00 am - 10:00 am
watch will & grace from 10:00 am - 11:00 am
try to find something on tv other than cold case files at 11:00 am
channel surf from 11:00 am until around 11:30 am
settle on cold case files until 12:00 pm
*watch roseanne on oxygen network from 12:00 pm - ?
check email, surf internet, edit photos for clients
lumber to kitchen, make something for lunch
get sleepy and take delicious nap around 2:30 pm
wake up with pearl attacking my feet or face around 3:30 pm - 4:00 pm
wish i hadn't slept so long
watch charmed (out of boredom, of course) until 5:00 pm
watch seinfeld from 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
try to find something on tv other than everybody loves raymond at 6:00 pm
lumber to kitchen, make something for dinner
eat dinner while watching a movie, usually a documentary -
or you know, everybody loves raymond.

the list goes on. i've been busy, people. i've been a bit limited in what i've been able to do just because of my surgery. and then there's all the falling down, re-injuring myself. there's that. so i've been takin' it easy, or trying to. i've hardly even left the house in 7 weeks with just an occasional trip to the grocery store here and there to break the monotony. the beautiful monotony.

going back to work this morning is sort of freaking me out.
who's going to be here to greet the mailman every day? we've gotten chummy of late.

"HAVE YOU GOT MY NETFLIX? NO? CRAP!"
and
"WHAT'S THIS? BILLS? YER MOM! DON'T COME BACK TIL YOU'VE GOT MY DAMN NETFLIX!"

i've also gotten used to wearing a t-shirt and pajama bottoms every day. that attire isn't going to fly at work, i can already tell. the t-shirt, maybe, but i'm pretty sure they'll draw the line at the jammies. and the slippers. and i'm sure they'll want me to do something with my hair.

this bizarre world of scheduled hours and actually working... it seems like so long ago.

on the upside, i re-inlist as a starbucks junkie again today. i have a fresh $25 gift card that's got quad lattes in it's very near future. and today, since i'll need it, i might just get two.

**update 8:30 am: i called my doctor's office at 8:00 am to make sure that my release paperwork was ready for me to pick up this morning - as promised that it would be. seeing as it was supposed to have been finished by thursday last week, and my original return-to-work date was supposed to have been last friday the 6th, i thought for certain that when they said "monday morning", they meant it.

lying liars. it is NOT ready, and the best estimate i was able to get over the phone was "today, maybe." when i said "but it will be today, right?" i was told "we'll do the best we can." when i explained to her that i was supposed to go back to work on friday, she said "this coming friday?" and i answered probably a little more condescendingly than necessary,"noooo, LAST friday." i was told that "that sometimes happens" when you drop off the paperwork at the 2C desk instead of your doctor's reception desk. I replied to her that i had indeed dropped the paperwork at my doctor's reception desk and not the 2C desk, so that shouldn't be the issue. i was then told by this brain trust that "well, sometimes the girls at the desk are new, or they're just covering for someone taking a break." so apparently, once again and as per usual, scott & white takes no responsibility for anything. i should have known not to leave my paperwork at the correct desk because there could be some rogue receptionist who would take it and shred it or doodle on it... anything but get it to the correct doctor to sign. that's right - all he has to do is sign it and date it, and it's done. i fail to understand how this is such a daunting, difficult task that should take more than a week to complete. but i guess when you staff your office with "girls" who clearly have no idea what they're doing that's what happens. and in which case, thank god my medical provider affords it's new employees such a comprehensive training program
step one: take the paperwork from the patient's hand.
step two: find the tallest stack of paper on the desk and insert the patient's important paperwork on the bottom; write your shopping list on the back and tuck it away safely in your hand bag; use it as a drip sheet while painting your nails; ignore it completely or just misplace it. make great strides to ensure the paperwork will not end up in the wrong hands (e.g. the doctor) in anything resembling a timely manner.
step three: collect paycheck.

so i'm not quite back to work yet...and will & grace is on in an hour so, what're ya gonna do?

well, i WAS getting better...

my surgery was three weeks ago tomorrow, and my healing has been progressing nicely. the outside is far better than the inside, but the inside will catch up with time and through the physical therapy i've been doing every day.

my incision was looking great; pink, but all closed up. since my dressings came off, it has never looked angry or irritated, which is always a very good thing.

today however, my arm is a horse of a different color.


brand new bruises on an arm that was doing pretty well...

all that bruising wasn't there this morning...

i needed to run to the grocery store, so i attempted to sit down at my desk and jot down a few items on a short shopping list. by "attempted", i mean "almost didn't make it." the chair had rolled just enough so that when i actually sat, there was nothing beneath me. i didn't hit the deck though; i stumbled backwards and my ass did indeed land in the chair, but not before my arms reflexively flailed wildly to keep my balance. i ended up smashing my bad arm into the very hard, very pointy protruding corner of the bathroom door frame. i think i just took five steps backwards where healing is concerned.


the inside of my arm showing the swelling at the inner elbow. gross! 

my arm is stiffer now than it has been in about 2 weeks, and i have very little range of motion. and it's all because i'm a huge klutz.

i'm staying in bed tomorrow. 

what i've been doing.

it's officially been 2 weeks since my surgery, and i'm finally going home tomorrow. i only planned to stay with my parents for about 3-4 days, but that turned into a few more days, and a couple more days... but my mom kept telling me she didn't want me to leave unless the doctor cleared me to drive. so, tomorrow morning i have my 2nd follow up visit with the doctor and he is going to clear me to drive if i have to threaten to jump off of the building. kidding. seriously, i'm sure he will, and i'm sure i won't be doing much driving at all.

i've been doing a whole lotta nothing at my parent's house, but that's what i've needed. i've surfed flickr for hours on end, napped like a toddler, loved on little pearl, loved on gracie, and spent a few bucks online... yeah, i got bored and went shopping.

nothing drastic, really.

i got me some more bare minerals

i renewed my membership and my first shipment has already come to my house.

oh, and some really cool bare minerals eyeliner.

i also got some polaroid 664 peel apart film



for my polaroid 250 land camera. apparently the UPS driver has tried to deliver it twice, and will be delivering again tomorrow after 2pm. i'll be home for that one. wheee!

and some ilford HP-5 plus 400 fast b&w 120 film for my holgas...

or perhaps...

for my MAMIYA C220 TWIN LENS REFLEX MEDIUM FORMAT CAMERA!



it'll be arriving probably on friday afternoon. i bought it used, so it's new to me but it's not new. and i got it for a total steal. like really - i might feel a little guilty about how little i actually paid for it if i hadn't purchased it from a retailer. woohoo!

so i have a few weeks to learn how to use this puppy... and it's gonna take a while. it's completely manual. and by "completely manual" i mean "it doesn't even use a battery." there is no part of this camera that is electric... it's all knobs and cranks and stuff... definitely nothing i'm used to. i am SO EXCITED i could just pee.

that's what i've been doing.

my good friend shannon is coming to visit me on friday afternoon from houston as well - so we might have to have an impromptu photo shoot with one hand! :)

ew! and ouch! with photo goodness

i went to the doctor this morning for my post-op appointment and to GET MY SOFT CAST REMOVED!

YAY!

i am currently only wrapped with a smaller ace bandage, but no more of the huge cotton batting and gauze bandages that made me look like popeye. it took them about 10 minutes to get it all off, but as soon as it was off, the scratching was ON. i got to scratch my arm for the first time in 8 days! it was delicious.

not so delicious, however, was the incision. in fact, it was pretty gruesome. here are several redundant photos of said gruesome incision just for their grody value. and a black & white one thrown in just to be all artsy and crap.

enjoy!

 



by the way, the stretchmark looking disgustingness on my arm isn't actually stretchmarks at all; its the impressions from the bandages being smashed into my flesh for 8 days. it's all gone now. but the bruises? oh yeah, i get to keep those babies for weeks. the incision is about 7 inches long, and from the looks of the steri-strips, it's gonna be hideous. i hope not...

reward

i spent more than 5 hours having mammograms and ultrasounds today. i am worn smooth out.

maybe i'll write more about it later, or maybe tomorrow.
right now i can barely keep my arms in an upright position...

ouch.

best commercial during the s.b.

i don't want to use the trademarked name for the big football event that was on network television on sunday, february 4th because i don't want to be sued.

but here's the best thing that came out of the whole shabang (besides prince):

goooooo-layyyyyyyyyyyyy.

the love of my life

my neice, mckayla grace. to me, she's gracie. i love her so much it makes my heart ache.

 

new haircut!

i LOVE having short hair!

one last thing about the holga...

then, i PROMISE i'll shut up about it. until it arrives, that is.

i mentioned before that i purchased a custom modified holga from randy at www.holgamods.com and i just have to take a moment to scream it as loud as i can that i have never, as long as i can remember, had such a wonderful customer service experience than i have had with randy.

to the best of my knowledge, holgamods.com isn't a huge corporate machine. as far as i know, it's randy, modifying holga cameras by himself, and that may be all.

after several years of making online purchases with a machine, recieving a reciept from a robot, and a few days later getting a box or envelope in the mail, that's what i've become used to: no interaction whatsoever. randy changed all that. he's a real person. he's a real nice person.

i not only bought a holga, i made a friend. i have honestly never had customer service like he has provided before. maybe not even in person. he's just a decent, nice guy. there's a very short list of that type of person left, especialy when you're talking about the online marketplace.

here's another little "something" - randy emailed me this morning with the head's up that his interview in JPG magazine was published. you can see it here. it's on page 40, and although you can "flip through" the pages of the magazine from the website, i suggest you download the PDF of the magazine - MUCH easier to read... you can actually make out the words that way. besides that, there are some great photos and articles and they're worth the read. but especially the article on randy.

my friend, randy.

thanks again randy. i wish i knew more words to say how appreciative i am.

about a cheap, plastic girl: part II

i bought it.

it'll be in the mail in a few days thanks to the fantastic randy at www.holgamods.com who is custom-modifying my spankin' new cheap plastic chinese camera.

yay!

there are many different types of shoppers out there. impulse shoppers, cautious underspenders, shopaholics... the list goes on. i'm a little harder to pidgeon hole than that. there's not one specific category that i fit neatly into when shopping is concerned. i'm as guilty as anyone else could be when impulse buys are concerned. sometimes i do a little research before i make a purchase, usually with bigger ticket items - nothing out of the ordinary there. then there are other times that i research something to death before i buy it; also not out of the ordinary. until recently.

if bigger ticket items require a little research on my part, that's understandable. take a camera, for instance. if i'm gonna drop a grand or more on a camera, i want to know something about it. hell, i want to know everything about it. so it would stand to reason that something that i have researched to death would probably cost an arm and a leg, right? nope. how about twenty-two bucks?

i'm talking about a holga.

the glorious holga, right out of the box.

a holga is a cheap, plastic, shoddily made toy "camera". i use the quotations because the word "camera" hardly seems to fit. it's appearance is less that of a camera and more that of something you might find in the 3 + under section of a discount store with "fisher price" stamped on it.

however, turning the phrase "making a silk purse out of a sow's ear" never seemed so appropriate.

the photographs that are possible with a holga aren't just good, they have the potential for turning out surprisingly gorgeous. artistic. edgy. all those buzz words that mean pretty.

it was manufactured in china back in the early 80's when the most popular, plentiful film type was 120 medium format (which TOTALLY excites me) although it can be fitted to house and utilize 35mm film, which i have quite a bit of experience with, albeit experience that i gained years ago and haven't used in... well, years. in fact, it's been... well, years since i shot anything other than digital. which is where the over-doing it with the research comes in.

how bad could it be? it's not like i'm gonna have to brush up on my manual film camera settings; the holga only has 2 apertures; f/8 and f/11, and even those are something of a joke. you don't choose an aperture by it's size - you choose it by what holga-veterans lovingly refer to as the "mystery button" - a sliding mechanism labled "cloudy / sunny". pick your aperture. however, reading all that i have about the holga, as it turns out neither of them really work, so you just sort of get what you get. could be cloudy, could be sunny. YOU NEVER KNOW.

there's one shutter speed: 1/100. that's all. there are modifications available that will allow you to keep the shutter open for the length of time you depress the shutter button, but i don't think i'm going to go that modification route right off of the bat. a longer exposure time would be nice, but i think i want to get to know it before i start modifying it. maybe. i'm still researching that part.

one of the great things about a holga is that by virtue of the plastic lens - that's right, i said plastic lens - you get this incredible, unpredictable vignetting on some of your shots. (visit this link if you didn't click on it a few paragraphs up) sometimes you get it on all of them. sometimes you get it on none of them. that's part of the beauty of the holga; YOU NEVER KNOW.

the camera body has to be held together with black gaffer's tape (not included!) because the housing is made of plastic so cheap that it doesn't fit together like it's supposed to, and when there's a roll of film loaded the back tends to pooch enough so that the back has to be taped to the front.

holga, in all of her gaffer's-taped glory.

BUT - one of the coolest modifications possible with the holga is the "holgaroid" modification; outfitting the holga camera with a polaroid back. not the new generation of polaroid where the film comes shooting out at you, but the old kind of polaroid, with the peel apart film.


my polaroid 250 land camera - currently not in use!

i happen to have one of those - a polaroid land camera that isn't getting a whole lot of use at the moment... possible modification? YOU NEVER KNOW.

as of this writing, i have reached 100% certainty that i'm going back to film, at least part-time. one of the hardest parts of converting, at least part-time, back to film is the loss of instant gratification. that's one of the best parts of digital. instant gratification and 0% waste. with digital if you take a crappy shot, you know it right then and right there, and you can simply click & delete it right off of the camera. you didn't just screw yourself out of an exposure. but something about that makes me want to go back to film again too... it's sort of like a test for my eye. it's a creative stretch to not just shoot anything, but subject matter that, well, for lack of a better term, matters. at least to me. that's an exciting prospect. i think digital makes me lazy and i'm looking forward to shakin' it up a bit.

since i'm done researching the holga ad nauseum, i'm going to start looking into places to develop my negatives and prints. i'd like to do it myself if it's at all possible, but i can't afford the investment of all of the equipment (though nothing in the world would make me happier than to OWN my own darkroom equipment - and i know exactly where i'd put it.) but i would like to develop my own photos. nothing turns me on like the scent of darkroom chemicals... developer, stop bath... mmmmm. so i'm going to research (that's right, more research, but quicker this go 'round) the local college and see if they allow for outside darkroom usage for set fees, or if i have to take a photography course to be able to use it and rub elbows and suck up to the professor in charge... which i would totally do. the sucking up part for sure but also taking a refresher course in film photography. i could use it, that's for certain. they'd be teaching 35mm photography, not medium format, but that's alright - i can MODIFY for that!

so i'm set. i'll be recieving two holga cameras (they're cheap $-wise and, well, CHEAP production wise, so i'll be needing a backup) soon. i'm looking into places to develop my prints or at the very least making sure there's somebody local who can develop 120 medium format. i'm certainly not selling or otherwise giving up my DLSR. i've gotten way too spoiled to go COMPLETELY back to film and abandon my digital... after all, this ain't swiss family robinson. i'm not laura ingalls wilder. a girl has to have some mod-cons. but i'm giving it a go, and i am ecstatic about it.

my question is this: anybody out there own/use a holga? any insight? tips & tricks? any caveats?

holga photos - www.holgamods.com

when dogs get cabin fever

ICE STORM 2007 : landlocked

i officially have cabin fever. so does willie, and he is none too quiet about it.

we've all been working from home since yesterday which is fun, but MAN i want to get out of the house. much easier said than done, if you knew the predicament i have with my car. ever since someone at work hit my car and drove off, my floorboards in the back seat fill with water whenever it rains. they only hit and broke out the taillight on the passenger side, but they bent something just enough so that water is getting in. it ain't gettin' in through the trunk, either. it's been poked, prodded, looked at ad nauseum, and nobody can figure out where the water is getting in. i just need to get a new car. that's not happening today though.

at the moment, my car sits in my driveway, glazed over with a half-inch coating of ice, and two huge chunks of solid ice in the floorboards of the back seat. it rained before it sleeted or snowed here, and the night that all of this started, it really poured.

it sure is fun going to the carwash after it rains so i can vaccuum all of the water out of the back of my car! and that's just a bonus; normally, i get to spend about twenty minutes dredging the water out of my car before i schlep myself to the carwash. yes, sure is a hoot. good times. not to mention how cool it is that my car sweats from the inside. condensation on the inside of my car? you bet!

speaking of fun, willie and i are just about sick of each other. he wants to be outside in the cold, but i don't want him out there very long because i don't want him getting a cold. whatever. he is mad at me because i'm rationing his time outdoors. so needless to say, with working at home, he's vying for my time while i'm on the phone with clients. so far, thankfully, he's been doing so quietly, nudging me and nibbling at me.

i've been bored, people. i haven't left my house since SUNDAY. did i already say that? maybe it bears repeating. here are some of the fruits of my cabin fever.

now here's where i really got bored...

my first "tea for one" teapot, a gift from my downstairs neighbors when i lived in dallas.

my glassware in my glass cabinet. exciting.

my big gay tea-for-one teapot collection. yeah, i collect 'em.

and here's some rocks.

and a lady that hangs on my dining room wall.

i need out of the house.            

thank you dr. king

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

snow day!

we're having a snow day in texas!

well, a snow day for texas, anyway.

it's 27° and we had sleet and freezing rain overnight. snow? not so much, really. just a nice, shiny, slippery, deadly coating of ice all over everything. it sure does make crap look pretty.

   

i barely ventured outside for these pictures, just onto my side porch. it is C-O-L-D.

what's ironic is that today is martin luther king jr. day, which texas observes as a holiday. all those kids who pray for ice and bad weather so they get to stay home from school are probably piiiiiisssssssed. suckers!

it's looking like it'll be this way tomorrow too though, so those kids may catch a break after all.

willie *loves* this weather, and keeps clamoring to get outside. he frolicks and plays and jumps and barks at the icicles... it's great. he's a flash of white, otherwise i'd venture outside to take his picture. no sale. hank always hated this weather. i spent last winter's "snow days" cleaning up hank poop from the dining room floor because he refused to do his business outdoors.

maybe more pictures later. i'm still trying to defrost from having been outside for the four minutes i spent on the porch.

my first gallery show

my first gallery show opened last night at the gorgeous musèe d'chartreuse in austin, and it was a huge success!

more than 300 guests perused the gallery last night. champagne flowed freely. the h'ors doeuvres were fabulous. the austin american statesman and the austin chronicle both raved about the opening, and both were very gracious with their praises using descriptors like "edgy", "minimalist", "clean" and "graceful".

the show, "eyecandy superlux: photographic imagery by melissa mcgee" will be open until february 4, 2007.  if you're in austin and would like to come to the gallery to view my work, the gallery is located at the corner of guadalupe & nowhere st.

...just kidding! it's a nice idea, though maybe a tad lofty. the images above were created using a really cool application found here. now anybody can have a big opening night!

have fun! 

so i have this friend...

we'll call her janie. janie got married, then a short while later gave up a really good job and the home she owned to move to the god-forsaken-middle-of-nowhere, oklahoma with her husband for a job that he took. before i proceed, 

back story:

one day about 4 months ago, janie's husband's phone rang. it was family in oklahoma (the god-forsaken-middle-of-nowhere) telling him his grandfather was on his deathbed and he needed to get "home" to oklahoma as quickly as he could. they didn't know how long his grandfather had, but it couldn't be too long. he left immediately for oklahoma for a bedside vigil over his dying grandfather.
his grieving process included drinking lots of beer and going fishing with his brothers, cousins, etc. apparently that's the way they mourn their dying in that neck of the woods.

long story short (yet still convoluted): grandpa miraculously got better and shacked up with his girlfriend-on-the-side, and janie's husband decided to listen to his brother and take a job in oklahoma. no "hey honey, here's an idea..." or "janie, what do you think about..."
he just took the job. so...

janie, being the good, dutiful wife that she was, wanting to do whatever she could to make her marriage work, put in her 30 days notice at work and made arrangements to rent out her house here in texas. this included packing all of their belongings herself and making the necessary renovations to her home so it could be rented. she hauled all of their worldly posessions to oklahoma - by herself and attempted to settle into her "new" life in oklahoma. in the god forsaken middle of nowhere.

long story short getting, longer by the minute: things didn't quite work out no matter how hard janie tried - and she did definitely try - and one day a couple of weeks ago while janie was visiting her mother-in-law, her husband called her on the phone to tell her he wanted a divorce.

then, on christmas day, he gave her the gift of a phone call telling her he was screwing somebody else. merry christmas. she returned all of the christmas gifts she'd bought him. she was crushed.

not content to be defeated, janie decided to exact her revenge upon her husband, who works a 7-on 7-off job at an oil refinery. while he was "on", janie decided to pack up her toys and leave for texas, but not before she took care of a few money-related issues.

as soon as his paycheck posted to their joint checking account (remember, he was away at an oil refinery with no access to their money) janie paid off a credit card, made significant payments on 2 other credit cards, bought a new car insurance policy in her name only, made the payment on her vehicle, paid her cell phone bill, opened up a savings account in her name, opened a checking account in her name (with ample padding thanks to his ample paycheck), had his cell phone cut off, had their joint-checking account check cards permantly frozen, bought christmas presents for anyone and everyone she could think of, and got herself a new piercing and a new tattoo, and a matching tattoo for her best friend. thousands of dollars in a matter of just a few hours.

she didn't leave her husband completely high and dry; she left him $4 in the joint checking account. he'll have to access that $4 in some way other than the check card however, because it's permantly frozen. read: reported lost.

in her last gesture before she left oklahoma forever for her home in texas, she put her husband's only christmas present in his truck so he'll find it when he gets home from his 7 days on. sitting on the front seat of his truck, wrapped in christmas paper and tied with a festive bow is a lump of coal.

welcome home, janie.   

new year, new face

january 1 was my one year blogging anniversary. blogiversary. anniblogiversary. whatever.

it was one year! yay, me.

as i am prone to changing the name plaque on my blog from time to time, i thought there was no better time than the present: the new year. and this time i not only changed the plaque, i went back to the clean, minimalist white that i loved so much when my blog was hosted by that other blog program so many months ago before i came to typepad.

just a little something cosmetic. every girl needs a makeover every now and again.

here's a random photo of my back yard, apropos of nothing.

melissa's happy holiday hair-do!

happy new year, everybody! click here for a special holiday message from me & my special morning hair.

i thought it was some bad clams

i've been "down" with some sort of stomach bug since 4am friday morning.

i thought it was food poisoning, because it seemed to have hit me exactly 8 hours after i'd last eaten. however, here it is saturday night at nearly 10pm and i'm still in a very, um, delicate state. it's been pretty unpleasant to say the very least. i've graduated from the school of thought that it might be food poisoning and have gone on to believe it's some sort of flu or bug or something else, something far more nefarious than just food poisoning. the cramping is enough to drive a person mad.

my stomach has been making this horrible noise for more than 24 hours now; a sort of rumbling, gurgling noise that i have begun hearing as "hellllllllp meeeeee!"

i have left the house once, only to go to the store for more OTC remedies, and that trip was ill-advised and nearly culminated in a dire circumstance. thank goodness for nasty, disgusting grocery store bathrooms. if only the floor hadn't been wet when i sprinted through the door, i would not have become so intimately aquainted with the nasty, disgusting grocery store bathroom floor. that was not the high point of my weekend.

i've developed a sort of thick skin in my adult life where falling on my ass is concerned. it happens with such regularity that it's no longer the sort of thing that completely humiliates me. i rather expect it to happen from time to time. when it does, my regular reaction (after a few choice expletives and checking to make sure there are no broken bones or teeth) is usually one of dismissal. oh well. i fell on my ass. again. big deal. show's over, folks. nothing here to see. move it along.

i'm really enjoying the dry toast. the club crackers are delicious. i treated myself to some cream of wheat earlier today. it was like dining at a four star french restaurant. so far i've had zero fun this weekend, but i'm supposed to go to my mother's house tomorrow afternoon.

as long as i'm feeling well enough to eat some black eyed peas on monday!

the dimming of the day

the end of the autumn is here in texas.  a few brightly colored leaves cling steadfast to the gnarled old oak in my back yard, the rest of the leaves litter the ground; rusted reminders. the remnants of autumn.

there are scarce few leaves left on the trees, and the grackles and squirrels seem to be the only residents that remain.