Posts in Category: Day in the life
Bike Party!
Ever since starting this new job, I have been meaning to start biking to work. But, not having been on my bike for months, I was wary of just jumping on, riding the six miles or so to work, and then being in any condition to start working upon arrival. Some kind of warm seemed to be in order.
As it happened, I heard for the first time yesterday about the East Bay Bike Party, their ride through my end of the East Bay. But since I couldn’t find start details, I wasn’t sure whether I could even participate. I had sort of written it off. By the time Theo and returned from his Cub Scout pack meeting, it was after 8 pm. In fact it was just as we arrived home that we heard loud music and a gawd-awful racket outside. We went outside to look, and there it was: the bike party.
One of the organizers stopped to chat me up and give me flyer with the route on it. Hmmm… I decided to go for it. I went in and quickly through camera in bag, put on a hoodie, pumped up the tires and rode off into the night to catch up.
I caught up with the party at Cedar Rose Park and stayed with it until the final destination at Albany Bowl. I hate to be such a johnny-come-lately evangelist, but damn that was fun! Riding through the night, taking back the street, or at least the right lane, whooping and hollering is a great return to simple pleasures.
The Beautiful Gate
The Beautiful Gate Church, Oakland CA. (Click the photo to see it bigger.)
I rushed into work this morning, my second day on the job, hoping not to be late. And yet, just as I turned to go through the gate, I looked over my shoulder at the blinding morning light coming off the church across the street. I had no choice, but I took care of business as quickly as possible and hurried in. A study of changing light over time could be an interesting distraction.
Childhood Relived, part 2
Still from It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
Having purchased the DVD in a bargain bin a few months ago, I managed to pass on to Theo another small part of my own childhood experience just last night: It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I first saw it on TV when I was about 8yo. Unfortunately I never saw it in the theater, since this is shot in some crazy-wide Ultra Panavision.
I had not seen it since I was a child, which is to say, a long, long, long, long time. Consequently, this film held an exalted place in my idealized memory of childhood and of comedic film. In that sense, seeing it again after 40 years was ever-so-slightly disappointing, though I still enjoyed it a lot. (I would have enjoyed it more if we had a decent size flat screen. What we have is a small 30″ diagonal, and every once in a while, the size matters.)Â But more importantly, Theo enjoyed and managed to get through it despite it’s 2-and-half-hour-plus length. He even awoke this morning talking about it.
I’m still not sure who among this ridiculously huge and incredible cast steals the movie: Phil Silvers or Dick Shawn. Ok, or maybe Jonathan Winters. Or maybe it’s the automobiles! I was in awe of the array of vintage vehicles, from modest Dodge Darts to Chrysler Imperials, and most of them destroyed during the course of the film!
Still from It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
Still from It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
Childhood Relived
I think most parents have a tendency to want their children to have the same kind of childhood they themselves had, believing, from the perspective of idealized memory and nostalgia, that it was great. Perhaps, in some sense, they even try to relive their own childhood through their child. So, for example, they return like salmon to the suburbs to breed and raise their young.
But some of us fail. I myself have felt a little sad thinking about how different my son’s life has been from what mine was like. He didn’t have a big back yard to play in, or long hot summer days to run through the sprinkler or play on the slip’n’slide, or ice-covered puddles to stomp on all the way to school in the morning.
While the weather is beyond my control–well, so far, I have not insisted we all move back to Fresno–there have been some other things I have tried to give him. But, he hasn’t been much interested in them. For example, he simply doesn’t like potatoes. I confess can’t understand this. At all. To the point that it makes me a little frustrated and angry when he won’t eat french fries. I mean, what kind of kid doesn’t like french fries? I loved potatoes cooked any which way from as early as I can remember. He doesn’t much like buttered toast and jam. This was a staple for me from the moment I got my first tooth, I’m sure. And yet, Theo won’t go there.
And it doesn’t stop with food. Try as I might, I couldn’t get Theo obsessed with the Second World War and spending all day playing with army men. Instead, he’ll spend all day with his Lego Clone Wars figures battling droids. How he can prefer this, this General Grievous to General Patton is a mystery to me. Or a Clone Turbo Tank, which will never, ever exist, to a Panzer V “Panther”, Â probably the awesomest fighting vehicle of the entire Second World War. Kids these days…
I will admit, there have been some small victories in the area of cartoons. While not obsessed, he does quite like Pink Panther and Warner Bros. cartoons. Of course he doesn’t have the regular Saturday morning cartoon routine that I had. But it’s a start. Maybe some Saturday morning I’ll get out the vintage TV trays, put on the Looney Tunes, and see if I can trick him into hashbrowns and toast for breakfast, if I can just sell it as a Gungan delicacy.
Good-bye Faithful Cubicle
My former cubicle. Two screens for my company laptop, and one for my CG workstation.
Today was my last day with current employer, Truestone, which contracts with the Feds, primarily the Coast Guard. They provide many different kinds of IT and electronics services, as well as document preparation and process development. I spent the last year and a few months working for the C4ITSC FSD (that’s “Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Information Technology Service Center, Field Services Division.” Whew! No wonder they like acronyms over there.) doing technical writing and editing of IT business process guides. Each guide was also published online on our intranet site which I helped design, build and maintain. All in all, I have to say, it was an interesting gig and I learned a bunch. I also met some great people.
But the uncertainty of contract work, particularly when the client is undergoing substantial reorganization, was hard to shake off. It seemed to me that there was a reasonable chance this project would not continue in the same way, if at all, after the task order expires this summer. So, when another opportunity suddenly appeared, with new challenges and new things to learn, and new interesting people to learn from, it just seemed like I had to go for it.
Writing can be solitary work. While there was interaction with the subject matter experts on the Coast Guard side, and some collaboration within our company team, there was plenty of time spent alone at the computer. And for most of this 15 months, we had a very quiet, mostly empty office near Jack London Square. It has only been in the last three and a half months that we moved in with the Coast Guard in the Federal Building in Oakland.
So, the weird part is how it already feels kind of sad to be leaving. People were pretty darn nice up there on the 7th floor. It really kind of feels like I’m leaving people I have known for much longer. I’ll just have to try and stay in touch and head down there for lunch every once in a while.
It was also really nice being a regular BART commuter, too. I hardly drove the ol’ Subaru at all for the last few months, and never to work. I almost felt grown up, wearing a button up shirt, carrying bag, and riding the commuter train. That’s pretty much over now. I plan on biking to the new job as religiously as I rode the BART to the last one.
So that’s that, the end of a chapter. Coming up is the beginning of the next.
Oh nothing, just some flowers
I know, the gallery display is still screwy. Just click the little images to see the big ones. I know, flowers. Very pedestrian. But damn, it was a beautiful morning. I loved that sun today. Even us goth industrialists like a flower every now and again.
Poppies in downtown Oakland
Poppy
Poppy
Three Days
Downtown Oakland
I suppose it is time for a countdown. I have but three days left of working in downtown. I have to say, I’m going to miss it. There is so much interesting stuff to photograph and I really did not take advantage of the situation. Coming across stuff like the face above the doorway is just a nice little serendipitous treat. I may have to get off a stop early at 19th St the rest of the week, just so I have some morning walking to do, and a chance to get in a few more shots.
Of course, there will be new things to see in my new neighborhood. If I can re-establish the habit of biking to work, then it will simply be whole new chapter of commute photography. The weather is finally looking up, so perhaps I’ll be able to start that soon.
Retrograde Commute part 2
Part 2 of Retrograde Commute has some of the different square approaches I’ve been exploring.
Macarthur Station, Oakland CA Retrograde Square #1
Macarthur Station, Oakland CA Retrograde Square #2
Macarthur Station, Oakland CA Retrograde Square #3
Macarthur Station, Oakland CA Retrograde Square #4
Retrograde Commute part 1
El Cerrito Plaza Station, El Cerrito CA.
I catch the BART in El Cerrito. Often, but completely accidentally, I find myself on the Fremont train to downtown Oakland. I say accidentally because it could just as easily be the San Francisco/Milbrae train. When it is the Fremont train, it waits at Macarthur Station for the SF train on the other line, so that people can transfer. And it waits to allow that train to pull out first. That leaves me with the views pictured below, which I am intrigued by. I’ve playing around with some different processing approaches. These are the full frame versions. The next post will present the square crop versions.
El Cerrito Plaza Station, El Cerrito CA.
Macarthur Station, Oakland CA.
Macarthur Station, Oakland CA.
World Events Undermine Recreational Productivity
On the topic of why I have not been keeping up with my commitment to a blog post a day, I have already expounded on Vegas and computer problems. I did in fact write another post detailing the 24 hours of delirium wherein “someone” went to the ER a couple times. But that entry has been rejected by the censors, and so nothing more shall be mentioned regarding said event, other than to say it’s impact on my blogging momentum was not insignificant. And, of course, one can’t lean on the crutch of a past excuse forever, so let me move on to another one.
As some may already have guessed, I tend to be obsessive and compulsive at times, and I’m also very sensitive. And paranoid. And sometimes pessimistic. And defeatist. So when the news of the earthquake in Japan first arrived, I felt tremendous sympathy and began following the news intently. Then, as the enormity of the tsunami became clear, empathy and profound sadness welled up within me. Finally, when the nuclear reactor catastrophe started to unfold, I was simply stunned and transfixed. Close proximity to any sort of information device and I was glued to it trying to stay informed about latest developments, palpably hoping for the best, and fearing the worst. And as it got worse, I envisioned it swirling around me, borne on winds from Japan, or simply from our own Diablo Canyon nuclear reactor after the next shake of the ring of fire. I was sure this was the beginning of something very bad for a much wider area.
So, there went another couple of days of without a post. But I eventually came to my senses, and sympathetic though I am, I started worrying about more real and proximate things, like the storm patterns on the west coast of the US–that is, like my flooded basement, which I’ve had to pump out every couple days when the water level overtakes the burner on the water heater. Or maybe the news switched to other topics, like dealing with the situation in Libya. Whatever it was, it didn’t help with getting back to the daily practice of writing. But today is a new day, and though we’ve lost Elizabeth Taylor, I’m finding the strength to renew my commitment. I might even try to catch up and crank out an extra couple posts over the next few days. In this wacky world, anything is possible.
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