• a variety of fine pickles •

your run-of-the-mill tuesday

so a couple of weeks ago, i found this mole... it's, ahem, *not important* where it's located... but it was suspicious. i had a suspicious mole, which, incidentally is what i'm going to call my punk band. whenever i form my punk band...

so i made an appointment with a dermatologist to have this mole (who's location is still unimportant and will not be named) looked at. the appointment was in cedar park, just outside of austin. 

"the" mole turned out to be nothing at all, but there were 4 other places the doctor was concerned about. she biopsied two of the places and depending on the diagnosis, she will remove the other 2 places as well. i had a little divot taken out of the top of my ear, and another on my "flank", as she called it. ribcage is what i call it. 

that's my ear. it's a tiny little place, but apparently somewhat "worrisome", as she called it. it didn't hurt a bit to have it removed, but now that the lidocaine has worn off, SHIT. seriously. throbbing. wow. 

the place on my side is a bit sore as well, but really just feels irritated. ironic, seeing as the place on my side wasn't as numb as it should have been when she cauterized the wound. MOTHER HEN, but that hurt. and who doesn't love the smell of burning flesh? i sure do. 

seeing as this was my first trip to a dermatologist, i really didn't know what to expect... and let me tell you now that i'm a pro, there is absolutely no way to remain dignified when the dermatologist is on mole patrol. every inch of my skin was scanned with her fingers and her eyes... and not in a good way. nothing was sacred, and i mean *nothing*. all for good cause, but for real? THERE? and THERE, TOO? wow. and OH MY GOD, THERE?!?! 

the upside to having a dermatology appointment in cedar park was that i got to see my friend sarah barnes, whom i hadn't seen in twenty years. we had a great time catching up over quad venti lattes at starbucks, laughing and reminiscing about being in the 4th grade. it was truly delightful and i'm so glad to be back in touch with her. 

the other reason today was memorable is this: a year ago today, i survived a ruptured aneurysm in my brain. it didn't occur to me that it was a year ago today until the drive home from austin. i'm grateful to say the very least.  happy new year to me. 

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?

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.

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

i needed to have a good time something awful. mary and i had some kind of fun today, that's fo sho!

it was rainy and gray today, but we managed to have a great time. as evidence of a great time had by all, here's proof. mary had gas.

we gassed up and went to mary's cardiology appointment where she was fitted with a 24 hour holter monitor, and then had an echo cardiogram. i got to see mary's heart... it was really something to see someone's heart beating; the valves opening and closing, the rushing sound of blood and the visual to go along with it. that was pretty amazing.

after the doctor's appointment we headed off to the orchid for thai food.  mary had never had thai food, so i introduced her to my favorite thai dish, shrimp padd thai. she liked it, and i just can't get enough of it. i wanted to take a photo of the padd thai when it first came out, but i was so excited that i just started chowing down and forgot to take a picture until we were nearly done.

mary's shrimp padd thai



the 3-ring binder menus at the orchid. pictures! w00t!



then we headed off to the tattoo shop where cameras and camera phones are strictly verboten, so no pictures of the actual tattoo process, but both of my tattoos only took about 10 minutes, and mary's only took about 5. that's right kids, mary got a tattoo as well! we got the same tattoo.

that's mary on the left and me on the right. i know i said i was gonna get my heart covered with a star, but i decided at the zero hour this morning at mary's house that i would get the heart fixed after all, just filled in solid black. mary called me day before yesterday and said she wanted to get the same star tattoo as me, so voila! as seen above. mary's is a smidge smaller than mine, but it's the same star. we're like sisters, mary & i.

and peek-a-boo: all those wires are from the holter monitor.

so now the grand total of tattoos: 6.



 

i kept saying "5 is enough. i'm done." 

sure.

tattoos. people either love them or hate them. people either have them, or they don't.

i have them. i have 5 of them. no, my parents aren't thrilled about it.

of all 5 tattoos, all are in places out of the view of the general public save for one. I have a small tattoo of a heart on the inside of my left wrist that i had inked 2 years ago on valentine's day. the heart had nothing to do with it being valentine's day; it was for other reasons, to remind me that my heart belonged to me and no one else. it was supposed to have been a solid red heart, but something went terribly awry when the artist went too deeply with the needles on the inside of the heart. if you know anything about tattoos, you know that the outline is always done first, and it's usually done twice with a very fine grouping of tattoo needles, usually between 2 and 5. the shading can be done with a larger group of needles, anywhere from 7 to somewhere around 15-20ish or so. i'm not really sure how large they can go.

about 2 days after i got the tattoo, a perfectly heart-shaped red scab came off of my tattoo. yeah, it was pretty grody but also it left only the outline of a heart. 

the outline, also done with too heavy a hand, is a little blown out, or blurred. you can see it a little closer-up here.

as you can see, there is residual ink in the middle, but only a small bit. the result has turned into what my mom calls my "heart-shaped ringworm", and what my friends have begun referring to as my "prison tat". i fully intended to go back and have it fixed as soon as it healed, but clearly i never followed through with that plan. i joked that although i got the tattoo to remind me that my heart belonged to me, my heart was telling me it was empty.

come on, it was only a joke!

i'm not going to have it fixed. i don't take color all that well. black is my best ink. this friday i'm having it covered with a small, solid black 5 pointed star, just big enough to cover all of the red. fortunately the scar tissue is minimal, and has left no raised scarring.

my friend mary is coming with me, and i'll make sure we have a camera to have the cover process fully photo-documented! i'll post photos of the new tattoo as soon as i get it!

 
yay for stars!

the harsh truth about 35

i found my first wrinkles at 35.

not recently, either. many, many months ago.

crow's feet around my eyes. sigh.

i really really don't dwell on those crow's feet. really. but they're starting to bother me. i'm one of those people who has smiling eyes... you know, when your mouth smiles, so do your eyes. that's me. they're starting to show it.

i don't have dark circles - despite my lack of a regular good night's sleep. but the thin, delicate flesh underneath my eyes is starting to show signs of, er, uh... age as well. man, i hate saying that.

i spent the day yesterday doing my normal sunday things: bleaching all of my whites, washing mountains of laundry, a dishwasher load, sweeping, etc., and the majority of the rest of the time was spent whitening my teeth and giving myself a chemical peel and heavy-duty moisturizer treatment.

it didn't work. the tooth whitening did, but the chemical peel didn't. sure, it was of the "do it yourself at home" variety, but in the past when i've done a chemical peel i seem to remember having seen some difference - even if slight - afterwards. this time though, nothing.

nothing.

i'm really into instant gratification, but no joy this go 'round.

and the BEST news: here comes 36, just around the corner.

shit.

why i love photoshop CS2

it makes me look like this. for a larger version, click here.