new bike. i’ve been slowly working up to riding regularly. last week i went on a couple short rides. this week, another more strenuous ride. today i biked up the pennsylvania ave hill, zig-zag down to 17th over to the UPS building (where they were cooking dinner on a large BBQ outside their warehouse), back down 16th to 3rd street then home.

i ended up finding an bianchi eros at a discount, since it was an ’05 model, from the good folks at pacific bicycle.

i think i’ve found something more creepy than finding obscure references to yourself on the web. automatically generated meta-pages about you. these are websites i’ve never seen before but are generating syndicated information i write and associate with into summary pages.

• http://30boxes.com/user/104126/JasonSchlachet
• http://www.naymz.com/search/jason/schlachet/543676
• http://grouprdev.200ok.net/groups/Jason%20Schlachet

every time i listen to joni mitchell, i want to leave what i’m doing and go sit in a coffee shop all day with my laptop and ipod. melancholy..

telephone, even the sound of your voice is still new
all alone in california and talking to you
and feeling too foolish and strange to say the words that i had planned
i guess its too early, cause i dont know where i stand..

tonight we cooked greek. fresh baked pita break, a greek salad, home made tzaziki, and souvlaki. this was a great dinner for a monday night, since most of the preparation was done the night before. everything came out amazing.

we used recipes from the food network website since they were relatively simple compared to others we found — salad, souvlaki, tzaziki, pita.

(483×650, 595×800)

another item from the surplus sale. it was very clean, despite having a stamp stating 1956 on it. i took the face plate off to dust the inside off. there was a big piece of lint on the inside.

i took shot this photo with my carl-meyer 12″ lens on my 8×10 camera. 1/100 at f/32. i shot the same image onto hp5+ at f/64. used both my speedotron and novatron sets. i’m finding it convenient to have two separately controlled lights synched together.

i have another tube and a mercury switch i want to photograph still. i’m getting low on polaroid film. also need to catch up on film development and printing.. been too busy lately.

(483×650, 595×800)

this is the back of a wire-wrap board i picked up at a surplus sale. it’s got a hand-written label that reads, “tactical control and status”. i thought it would be an interesting object to photograph. it turns out it is more difficult than i thought.

what do you focus on when you want nothing really in focus?

i shot a couple polaroids. one using selective focus. another was head on with with the board-level parts in focus. the third, you see above – the lens is wide open and focused on the wires that are furthest from the board. i chose the 4.5/210 heliar i have for its bokeh.

i’m still not sure how exactly i want to shoot this on film. i will try one more combination, a well lit board with long depth of field. it should look completely different than this.

i’ve already got a small backlog of film to develop and prints to make in this series. but so far it is really fun.

so i have this credit card.. the APR is stuck at an insane percentage but their website is decent and the limit is high. i’ve used it for large purchases i pay off quickly and keep the card around for emergencies. though now i’m wanting to change it out for something slightly less insane.

i made one recent purchase on the card for $1136.11. i called yesterday to see if they could lower the APR but was told they “proactively” monitor accounts for offers and changes and couldn’t do anything for me over the phone. i was surprised, since my credit is at its highest score ever (according to their own website) and i’ve paid the card off in full for quite a while now. fine, i wanted to cancel my account. only my last transaction hadn’t posted yet…..

today it’s posted, so i called back. i was told there would be an “estimated close out” of $1170 and that paying the balance over the phone would cost $14.95. what?! first, it’s great to not even ask why i’m closing the account. second, not being able to realize my current balance is silly. and trying to squeeze a few more dollars out of me.. nasty. what a great way to say, “well screw you for leaving us!”

so i’m paying this card off in full right now online and will have to wait for that to clear. then i can call them a third time to close the account. i am really looking forward to it.

finally saw the movie sidways. sigh.