• a variety of fine pickles •

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.

if you live in NYC!

for my friends, bloggers & readers in the big apple - this is for you!

my friend sara at lightbulb oven & bawk! is having a culinary salon... tres swanky!

if you're in NYC in any of the 5 boroughs, you have plenty of advance notice and NO EXCUSE not to go! but hurry - the clock's a'tickin'!

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It's light-bulb oven!

Please join me on Saturday, February 17 for an historical event: the first-ever light-bulb oven dinner!

It's a culinary salon, a cooperative dinner party, an underground restaurant... what our friends in Cuba call a paladar: one person cooks and everyone else chips in to cover groceries.

It's 35 bucks (a deal!). You'll meet new people and eat four courses of fantastic food.

It's in prospect heights, Brooklyn (3 blocks from the 2 and 3 trains; also near the N/Q/R/4/5 trains; address divulged upon purchase of ticket)

Visit the website for more information, past menus, fun facts about yours truly, and because it's pretty:

http://lightbulboven.com/home.html 

Go here to see the menu and buy your ticket!

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gracie & the sunbeam

i went to my mom & dad's house today and got to see my neice gracie. she had a bad cold, and her sweet little cheeks were flushed bright red, but she hadn't lost her urge to laugh and play and run around, and pose in a sunbeam for her aunt lissa's camera. she even got the hang of putting the lens cap on my camera. maybe she was trying to tell me something.

   

i can't get enough of her. she makes my heart smile. 

       

okay. i kept my promise.

i promised i would shut my fat yapper about my new holga until it arrived.

it's here!!!

i can't stand it. i want it to be daylight so i can go outside and take a whole roll of pictures.

i've got it loaded with a roll of HP5+ 120 film and a modified 6x6 mask. it's got velcro holding the back on (thank you SO much randy - you're a freakin' genius, i swear to god.), randy smith's custom cable release, randy's custom bulb modification, custom tripod mount, interior flocking so it won't reflect light, and the lens cap is IN MY JUNK DRAWER, just as randy prescribes. not throwing it away, just putting it away to avoid shooting a whole roll of film with the lens cap on. this ain't digital.

i am giddy like a school girl and i can't quit grinning.

i said it before, but i'll say it again because it certainly bears repeating, again and again...

if you're going to buy a holga, please do yourself a favor and spend your hard-earned money as wisely as you can, with randy smith at www.holgamods.com

i have never in my nearly 36 years experienced the level of customer service that randy has given me within the last several days. i'll be purchasing more holgas in the future, and i'll be buying them from randy, and no one else. nobody else. ever.

i've spent the time since i got home from work this evening loading film, attaching velcro, running around like a 4 year old, taping up the back of my camera to avoid light leaks, laughing uncontrollably, and taking 2 pictures in the brightest light possible. i took the obligatory "picture of myself holding my new camera reflected in the mirror" in the brightest of my 2 bathrooms, and then i went into my studio and lit it with studio lights and took a photo of those terribly cute, terribly terrible necco valentine's sweethearts (the ones with the messages on them) that nobody ever actually eats because they taste like flavored chalk.

i took a picture of them last valentine's day as well, in color, in digital:

but this one was black & white, and it was with a HOLGA!!! no telling how it's going to turn out, or even if it's going to turn out... but i don't care.

i may not sleep at all tonight!

the love of my life

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

 

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

i feel pretty!

turn up the sound - and click here !

when dogs get cabin fever

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.

there's a fetish for that???

on new year's day morning, i was on the phone with my best friend corey. we were having one of our marathon phone calls. he's in atlanta and i'm in texas, so we don't see each other much. in fact, new year's day this year was exactly one year since we've seen each other.

i told corey i needed to blow my nose and asked hi if i should tape it on the webcam and send it to him. not surprisingly, he said "sure!". he knows i blow my nose like a rhino. always have.

i quickly got set up with the tissues and the webcam and turned on my phone's speaker, then i hit "record".

i posted it to youtube so he could view it, and he loved it.

then the strangest thing happened...

the freaks started coming out of the woodwork.

the video recieved daily honors for 5 days straight, today being the first day it hasn't been "honored" in one way or another. the comments are relatively mild, but the messages i have been recieving are mind bogglingly disturbing.

here's a sampling of some of the messages i've recieved:

"i love how you blow your nose like that! it always turns me on to see a female honking her nose."

"are you blowing yellow snot out of your nose?"

"None of my ex-girlfriends could blow their nose like this!!!!! I try and explain how I like it, but they don't get it, and I'm always let down. I'm going to start showing girls this vid from now on!!!!! This is the way a woman should blow her nose! This is SEXXXXXY!"

"omg that is the sexiest thing ever. i know maybe it's wierd [sic] but it totally turns me on."

"I really wish you had showed us what was on the kleenix [sic]. That nose blow was so hot!"

"A good nose blowing... there is nothing more sexier [sic] than that. AWESOME VID!"

what? are you people kidding with this? NOSE BLOWING turns people on? WHAT PEOPLE? why?

why? why? why? eww!

the video? well, sure i'll show you. if it turns you on, please just do me a favor and don't tell me about it...

Video 1 - the original

Video 2 - the "big budget hollywood studio" version

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!

merry christmas with only minor injuries

merry christmas to all! i hope today found you surrounded by family, friends and other loved ones, warm and toasty and filled with joy.

i was at work all day today. boo.

i did however enjoy an exhausting, fun-filled weekend full of all of the afore-mentioned things like family, friends and loved ones, and warmth and toastiness and joy. and a slightly sprained ankle.

i spent saturday with my entire family in dallas celebrating my grandparent's 56th wedding anniversary in high style. it was a lovely cocktail event, hosted and catered by my aunt rosie & uncle peter who flew in from hollywood for this event and for christmas. we had prawns as big as your head and lovely cocktail-sized focaccia with prosciutto, shaved parmagiano reggiano & arugala in a beautiful viniagrette. champagne (not the cheap stuff!) was served in ribbon-wrapped flutes with dried cherries bobbing up and down and floating in the tiny bubbles. and of course, my mother and i drank our champagne with a little sugar (no sugar cubes were to be found) because we're hookers and enjoy a nice champagne cocktail.

each member of the family was tasked with performing something for my grandparents, whether a poetry reading or a song, and it proved to be a very moving evening filled with tears and laughter. it was a wonderful evening and one that none of us - 29 of us in all - will ever forget.

christmas eve day was spent chatting, drinking coffee, catching up, and exchanging christmas gifts. it rained all day long, a slow, steady rain. 

at about 3pm, sara came to my grandparent's house and we drove back to her brother jon and sister-in-law laurie's house about twenty minutes away. i was so excited to see sara; it's been more than 10 years since we've seen each other! it was great!

we pulled up in front of jon & laurie's house and i opened my driver's side rear car door to get her little giftie-bag and somehow stepped directly into a hole in the yard by the curb with a sprinkler head sticking out of it. i stepped in it backwards, so that's the way i fell: right on my kiester. i busted my ass in the front yard in the rain and the mud and made quite an impressive landing.

some things never change.

i probably busted my ass the last time sara saw me, too. i don't remember, but anybody that has known me for more than 10 minutes would not find that surprising.

i had a GREAT time with sara & jon & laurie and their two (nearly grown) children, both in their teens. still one of the coolest families around. i dried my ass off by the fireplace, and we all laughed and caught up and noshed on pizza and fudge and took stupid pictures of ourselves with sara's macbook and watched something on television about clam penises or something... that part is sort of fuzzy. i got lots of pictures of the family. this one is by far my favorite.

i'm pretty sure i sprained my ankle and my left wrist when i busted my ass in the yard. i'm fine, but somewhat tender, and have some swelling and black & blue-ness on my ankle and wrist. i'll live. i've done worse. i've done worse in the last 3 or 4 weeks, as a matter of fact.

i got home late-ish last night and crawled in bed after unpacking bags and slept as hard as i could for what seemed like 20 minutes, then got up and went to my parent's house for christmas breakfast, then "worked" from noon - 9pm. i use the term "worked" in its loosest form.

i had a great holiday, and i hope all of my friends and family did too.

merry christmas to all, and to all a good night.

a thisishowboredigot production

training this week. 8-5 monday through friday. schedule shock (i usually work 11a - 8p). insomnia.

i made a video a week ago to send to my friend corey. i hated it, so i didn't send it. instead, i entertained myself with windows movie creator until about 4am night before last when i couldn't sleep. this is the evil fruit of my labor. this is what happens when i can't sleep.

so, i'm issuing a challenge: i want to see *your movie! i took video of myself doing something boring and mundane - putting on makeup. i do it nearly every day, and i've done it since i was about 14 years old. i'm sick of it, but i'll do it till the day i die. i added some clips from some of my favorite songs (which incidently coincide with the video clips), threw in some cheesy-ass effects (all i'm working with here is windows movie maker, folks. i got nuthin.) and titles and credits... and SPLURK! a movie. iand t's only 6 1/2 minutes in length.

lemme see yours.

so with no further ado, here's my own indie... "freaking gorgeous".

make sure the sound is on. that's my favorite part.

* if you want to post your movie as a video reply to mine, click here for the location of my movie on youtube.