(no subject)

I went to bed at 8:30 last night. Today, I feel like I have enough sleep for the first time in quite a while.

It's not very bright of me, I know. Every day at work, I make plans to not fall into my usual routine of staying up too late surfing the internet and editing pictures. Once I get home, I go right on doing it. It's really unhelpful for photography too; I really ought to be getting up early enough regularly that an occasional five AM wake-up call for photos in the golden dawn aren't so laughably divergent from my typical pattern. As it is, the last time I was up for sunrise photos, it's because I never went to bed that night.

This weekend it wasn't entirely my fault though. It was on Friday, when I drove out to Wheeling for dinner with posicat and then spent a while trying to find a way on the grounds of the Bahai temple, and then stayed up mucking with Photoshop.

But it wasn't on Saturday, really. I was up 'till 12:30 watching akreaveter play Recettear (a fun game that's basically an item shop simulator in a typical JRPG high fantasy setting). But then I got up again around one-thirty or two when I found out that my other brother, No-LJ-James was in the hospital. He is fine, and the story behind that isn't mine to tell in this venue. But I was out there with my parents 'till about 4:30, feeling very grateful that I happened to be in town that evening so I could be there with him.

The bulk of Saturday, though, was spent with serinthia and todd_riverden, watching TV and anime. I forget how many years I've known Serinthia now. She's one of the sweetest and nicest people I know. Getting to see more of she and Todd is on my list of pluses for if and when I end up moving back to Kenosha.

Sunday was great! moiracoon came down to visit my family and we talked a bit about what's going on with her job. We'd been planning to go down to the Renegade Crafts Fair, but I also spent a couple hours cleaning a virus up on her computer while we visited, and with the time spent on that and us both feeling kind of tired anyway, we decided not to go into the city. Instead, we drove out to an antique store just west of the I. She and I had a great time poking around the relics.

After that, she went home to Racine. I connected with Super-Mechanic Juan who was visiting James and, along with a few other people, all walked over to Shirl's for ice cream. It was nice to see Juan again; I'm looking forward to seeing more of him, too, once I'm in town. I feel like half of what I'm paying for when he fixes my car is an education! And he's going to fix my wheel bearing in October, before my New Orleans trip, so that's one worry dealt with. Now I just have to get on Couchsurfing and find a place to stay.

I again stayed up too late watching Akreaveter play games and chatting with him. I finally got back to Rogers Park around 11:30 and climbed into bed. I would have gone over to jimcyl's apartment after work on Monday to see folks there, but I was wiped out. I'm feeling much better today though, after nine hours of sleep. I also had yummy, spicy rice and beans this morning, thanks to a huge pan of leftovers from my roommates's catered lunch that he brought back to the apartment. He does technical work for TV and film, and they get catered food all the time. I'm going to fill up my little ziplock containers I bought last week and probably have rice and beans for three or four days!

I hope you're all having a good week so far.

(no subject)

What the hell? All of a sudden, Facebook is requiring a mobile phone number to let me log in. There's a link at the bottom that says 'Or use a different verification method'. When I click it, it brings me to the same page.

I really don't want to give Facebook my cell phone number. What if I didn't have one? What would I do then?

(no subject)

I just sent this message in Facebook:

This may be a silly message, but that's probably ok.

There was a discussion happening on a community I'm in about whether or not the time of the online username has come and gone, and whether people should be using their real names in more places rather than pseudonyms. One branch of the discussion made me think of some of those wonderful pythonesque names like Raymond Luxury-Yacht and Simon Zinc-Trumpet-Harris. I thought about how great it would be if I created an account with that name.

Fantastically, someone already had Simon Zinc Trumpet-Harris. I just wanted to send you a note to say the fact that this account exists really made my morning. Thanks.

(no subject)

I edited a handful of pictures of Detroit's Eastern Market, a historic public market that dates to the 1850s. It's a very special place that Moira Coon introduced me to when we were living in Warren. I'll post more tomorrow.

For now, I think I'm going back to bed. I'm coming down with something, but the cold medicine I walked over to Walgreens to buy is helping.


Loading a Truck at Eastern Market

© Stormdog 2010

Detroit's Eastern Market is the largest historic public market in the country, with a history that goes back to the 1850s.

It's a very special place, and one that has a certain feeling of age and authenticity. I'd like to try playing more with black and white conversion, and this is a place that I think is well suited to that sort of treatment.