The Time Sink

Blog the weather or blog my health? Neither topic particularly appeals to me, but people ask about both so I'll oblige: that shiver/shake thing I had last week transitioned into a pretty nasty sore throat sometime Friday. That lasted throught the weekend (Shelley took a look Sunday night and said I had some great red streaks down the back of my throat. TMI, -no? <g>). ...but Monday I went into work figuring to just get a handle on thing and make a basic supply run.

....and I got a partial grip on the priority items, and I took my assistant along (thank you!) to help me with the loading, but the sore throat that had gone away by that morning seemed to be turning into a head cold kind of thing as the day progressed. I finally pulled the pin and went home. ...and by evening I was coughing up plenty of crud and thought maybe it had progressed to bronchitis. WT?

Tuesday both Shelley and I had 'new doctor' appointments so we used mine to deal with things like the 101.2 fever I woke up with. Yeah... This thing had finally decided to try to take over and had become bronchitis. The doc wrote me a script for an antibiotic and I've started in on that. I don't know whether it's working yet, but I'm betting WWIII is going on in my body tonight. ...and the Advil seems to help a bit.

Oh, and the weather? Well, the rains came in Monday evening and the forecasts are all for rain all week long and into the weekend! Yeah, maybe we are having an El Niño year! ...and so far it hasn't been the driving rains of the Fall; this stuff has been very steady and is falling almost straight down.

At one point when I went outside last night I wasn't sure if I was seeing rain or fog. ...but the streets running as full as they were toward the storm drains spoke of plenty of rain. ...and it's not like we don't need it here; this is a true desert and we rely on the snowfall to provide irrigation for the crops. Maybe this will turn out to be one of those good years.

So maybe we'll do a little crossover from time to time from the PhotoBlog to here and back. How does that sound? I mean, this is where the daily and family and tech stuff hangs out. ...and photo details are techy, -no? So yeah. ...and I do get enough requests from time to time wondering "How did you do that?" or "What was that all about?" to warrant a response.

So let's start off with the daffodil shot from today: The daffodils have been blooming slowly this year what with the temperature swings and the rains coming and going, and I've been taking my usual series as each variety shows its faces. One area that I've planted is by the side of the 'steps' that lead to the raised area behind the pool. I have lamps lighting each 'step' and I noticed one of the daffs had been bent over by the rains and was under one of the lamps.

That shot was taken in deep twilight with just the bloom lit up by the lamp. With the camera's white balance set for 'incandescent' the bloom shows its natural colors while the background areas show the lack of red in the sky from the sun being effectively 'set'. For those into the details, the shot was taken with a Minolta A-2 at ISO 100, f/3.2, at 0.40 seconds...

Let me know if you like this sort of information on selected shots. It's not something I would do on every photo, but hey, I still owe you the story behind the "snail tree", don't I?

Short and sweet: I managed to pull a full day at work yesterday, but it has to qualify as one of the longest days ever. Yeah, when I just cannot think, it's hard to get anything done at all. ...but I did manage some catchup and some orders and some reports (finally). ...and I have great hopes for today!

Wheeee! We made it to the weekend! Yeah!!! ...and thank goodness! Shelley is exhausted from running me and Daniel to the doctors' offices (and Brad to all his school commitments); Daniel has been out of school three days now (different thing than I have); I'm just flat too tired to think from being sick (yes, still; but better) trying to think and be productive at work; and Brad just wants to boogie on down and party <g>!

...but I think the fact that it's a three day weekend will help us out. ...and that it will be raining most of it. We have Daniel's homework and a test to review for; Brad has a major project to turn in on Tuesday that will take both Shelley and me to get it done; and she and I just need to pace ourselves and rest a little bit.

Short and sweet: we're cooking along on the "State Report" for Brad, but he's now looking like he has a cold. Shelley is fighting a sore throat, but is hanging in there and plugging away. Daniel is feeling better, actually much better: we scrapped the Win2k install (round six or so in the attempt to get that blasted game working) and threw XP on the box. Yeah, everything worked and the game is just flying along. ...and I'm still going crazy as to why it woudn't run under Win2k...

...and me? Hanging in too. I'm feeling a bit better at times and certainly well enough to try to finish the school project today so we can all kick back tomorrow. Wish us luck!

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"Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke, "Technology and the Future"

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