went for a great drive today. before i left town, i picked up some new music. one of the discs is a compilation of ryuichi sakamoto, one of my favourite artists. i have to go back and check, but i think i own eight of his albums now. i own more of his than any other artist. this compilation came with a dvd of videos.

today was all about being mellow.

i woke up and took care of my errand at the credit union. turns out the indian woman who works there lived in indianapolis. we chatted about our moves to california.

i had lunch at lucy’s tea house, one of my favourite places. followed up with a scoop of jasmine ice cream. so good.

i went home and fell asleep on the couch.

for dinner i went to clark’s. burger with canadian bacon, fries, rootbeer.

i took my laptop to dana street, where a string quartet was playing. i chatted onine with edicus, who i’ve been chatting with off and on for a year and a half. he was at his parents’ house.

came home and watched waking life.

now i’m listening to this number called peace piece, this very mellow piece by bill evans. it was listed on jeff bridge’s playlist on the itms. he’s right, it forces me right down. mellow.

i wonder what it would be like living in a loft. not a ratty warehouse, but a modern loft. i wonder if i could rent space for a day for a shoot.

today i sneered at a little girl.

i was on the tail end of a shitty day.

work has been full of backed up projects, an off-track project with no coordination, and continued quirks of a new data center.

i left early today to do computer support at my dad’s house. by early i mean i left my usual time, since i finished up early and then got caught up with crap as i was trying to leave.

i had spent some time doing research so i knew what components i needed to upgrade my stepbrother’s computer. i picked up two sticks of pc2100 ram, and a 8mb buffer 7200rpm disk.

i wanted to upgrade his disk without reinstalling windows. i was dumb for thinking this is even possible with modern utility software. not seeing into the future, i picked up a copy of disk image. $65 down the shitter.

the ram upgrade was a no brainer. i installed drive image and copied the disk from the old drive to the new drive. it took 15 minutes. the computer came up with the xp boot-up screen off the new disk but crashed. i could just not get it booting off the new disk. so freaking close.

to make things worse, my dad was asking me what the problem was. i wanted to tell him the thousands of software engineers at microsoft had better things to do than make their software easier to manage.

while i was doing this computer work, two more tasks queued up: first, see about upgrading the ram in my dad’s computer. second, see what was constantly running in the background. he was already receiving my subtle hints that i wanted to leave, so those got postponed.

the two queued tasks perpetuate my reason to visit the house — to work on computers. as if my unsually stressful job dealing with computers all day and on weekends isn’t enough for me.

for me, 2004 is the year of hating windows. i even got rid of it at work. linux there. my new laptop is a mac.

my desktop at home is still windows, for the time being. my desktop at home is very stable and reliable. i spent some time setting it up and i don’t mess with it. i just use it. and i can’t remember the last time i had to reboot it. it’s on twenty four hours a day for who knows how long. many months on end, at least.

so after doing everything i could to leave my dad’s house early, i felt my anger rise. it’s dangerous, feeling angry when you’re driving on the freeway. i could feel it in my face. i decided on my way home that i was to pick up some medicine.

on my way into the grocery store, i yielded to a woman driving a corvette. her license plate read VETTEGRL.

on the checkstand one of the tabloids read, HALF OF U.S. HOOKERS ARE ALIENS, and showed a woman with very large alien style eyes talking to a guy sitting in a car. still my demeanor was poor.

on the way home i remembered what my manager said about our last move weekend when i got so mad i spend some time sitting on the floor in the corner cooling off. he said he wished he had a picture of me then because he’d never seen me so angry.

so i’m going to dish up some medicine and cool myself off.

tonight i kept thinking about images. on my shopping list: white paper, time, film, and nerve to ask someone to stand and model.

once again the secret tea society meets. as of today we are all card carrying members.

jeff bridges‘ book, pictures is great. it really makes me want to pick up a pano camera. i have been lusting after swing lens panos. bridges uses the widelux.. very sexy..

this past weekend jon and i went shooting around san francisco. we ended in chinatown then later north beach, where i shot this one. the lighting seemed just right and the atmosphere was perfect. i was drawn to this scooter in this alleyway. i shot several frames of it across two rolls. it’s the kind of shot that makes the weekend worth it.