Here I Am, Stuck In The Middle

A few months back I was given a box of random "camera stuff." In that box were a couple of point and shoots and the most random, weird digital camera I think I've ever seen.

As much fun as that weird digital camera is, one of the point and shoots came with a roll of film inside.

Today I took a battery out of my Nikon N70 and stuck it into that camera. It is a Minolta Freedom Zoom 160 Date (a mouthful is what it is). I turned it on, and it went right back off.  After I turned it on again, I saw that the battery was about dead. Which doesn't surprise me. It's been in that N70 for close to a year and a half now.

The other battery from the N70 was strong enough to tell me that 7 exposures had been used on that roll.  It was also strong enough to set the date and let me finish the roll that was in there.  Fortunately it was a roll of 24. If it was 36, I would have probably had problems.

I'm both curious and terrified about what is on the first 7 shots of that roll. I'll be interested to see if the date is printed on the picture or not. If so, I will be learning how long that roll sat in the camera. If the film is any good. 

Crawfish Pie

Went to a local skate park today with the old D40x and a 50mm lens that is apparently of the brand "Underground."  I came across the lens in a rando box last year and started using it with some filters.

 

Decided to throw it on a camera and see what I got.  Weirdly, it wasn't working at first, but after I messed with it a bit, the iris loosened up and it was able to produce some pretty fantastic images:

 

 

Honestly, this lens really nails the color of the sky and really gets the vibes of the Yashica "Red Special" FX-3 pics I took last year at a different park.

But You Can Never Leave

Man, eff the news.

Seriously.

What fresh Hell did we get into here? I have grown to despise social media these days, because it's mostly a never-ending doom scroll supermarket tabloid. It was bad enough with the rando crap on facebook, but now it is full of AI generated crap and so much nonsense it's not even funny.

I'll admit that I'm probably doing it wrong, what with only having one friend anymore, but you know. 

Twenty-Two

Someone I would like to consider a good friend said something to me about a mutual friend not understanding her struggles in life.

It actually hit pretty hard for me. I kind of answered her comment on a very practical level, but it occurred to me shortly after I hit send, that on a more personal level, I didn't really answer part of it.  Admittedly, that is a conversation to be had in person, but in short, it is hard to understand what someone is going through if they don't tell you about it.

This particular friend has told me a little bit of her story that she hasn't shared with this other friend, and it seems there was some contention between the two, and it was pertaining to one not knowing a part of the other person's story.

I had an experience the other day where I commented upon a recipe that was frequently made in my house as a child. Someone asked if my parents were paying for my therapy for preparing that for us to eat, but I couldn't bring myself to be annoyed because she didn't know about the time in my life in which we were so poor it wasn't even a joke. Like so poor that there were times where things like running water weren't a thing. Or the trips to the grocery store where I was handed a calculator and told that $25 was all the money we had for food for four people that week, and to say stop when we got to that number.

Why? Because I've never really shared that part of my life with too many people.  I am, in fact, pretty sure this is the first time I've recounted anything like that here. I suspect that my sister dying is the hardest thing I've written about in this space to date.

That was almost twenty-two years ago. Reading through that hit me really hard today. I'm pretty sure most of my current friends don't even know about that one. 

In The End It's Right

I had plans. I had the vague outline of an post laid out in my head, but I've since forgotten what it was to be about.

Possibly digital fish or a pink unicorn.

Could have been shoes or ships or sealing wax.

Might have been a General.

Or cabbages and kings.

Kings...I think it had something to do with the State of the Union, but i don't remember. Something about wishing someone would admit to breaking it so we can go about fixing it.

But I really cannot remember. 

Break On Through To The Other Side

Several months ago I developed 4 rolls of film and hung them up in the office to dry.

In the intervening time, a great deal of things happened resulting in that room being a dangerous place to walk for several months.  I had some time over the weekend. I did some work in that room and got to the point where I could safely move about in there.  I cleared off the desk and started cutting and scanning film.

These rolls cover 4th of July both 2024 and 2025, my trip to Lake Michigan in 2024, Yellowwood State Forest in 2024 and a bit from 2025 and the Rushville Steam Engine show from 2025.

Here are a few of the scans.  They won't be labeled as to what is what, but I'll fill in the holes once the scanning is done.

 

There are a handful of pictures from at least 6 different days on 4 rolls.

Feel Like I Do

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I do what I want.

And She's Okay

I played a short game of TTR: New York with someone this evening.  It was her first time playing that one.  Honestly, she did fairly well.

 It was fun.  We'll probably do it again fairly soon.

Baby Since I've Been Loving You

Since I'm not used to skipping my early morning post at this point, I am doing this on my phone. From my bed. With a pink unicorn next to me. Because that is my life these days.

If You Decide You Should Go

So this is being grown up?

Lists.
Alarms.
Appointments.

Seriously. Being an adult kind of stinks. Or is it being an adult who lives with others? Living by myself I could just do whatever whenever. I could stay up all night reading whatever nonsense on the internet or playing video games without judgement. I could sleep wherever I want whenever I want.

These days it is all about alarms and lists and food prep.

Seriously.

is there an alarm? yes? no? will i wake up? will i sleep through it? feed the people. will they make their own junk food in the microwave? did i make decent food for them to microwave? do i need to make them decent food? do we need to go through the lists in the books and get the things done? did i feed myself? coffee? always. do i need to prepare lunches for the other people in my house? do i need to prepare dinners for the other people in my house? will the other people in my house do it on their own? ideally they don't want to. so i guess yes. do i have help? probably not. do i feed myself? chicken nuggets? pretty much every day. blah. where am i going today? store? work? both? work then store or store then work? do i want to go home? do i want to deal with whatever im walking home to? do i want to listen to everything and everyone? do i want to stay at work staring at the wall until i can no longer justify being there? come home and sleep? come home and write? come home and read? come home and play animal crossing? come home and stare at the wall? eat? shower? sleep? lather? rinse? repeat. what day is it? am i doing the same thing tomorrow?

That is basically a summary of what goes through my mind every day when I'm not working.

While I don't feel like that is a great way to live, I am at least existing. Whether people like it or not, I'm existing.

• Current Mood:   listless
• Current Music: Seven Bridges Road ~ Eagles

No One Told You When To Run, You Missed The Starting Gun

It's been a long time. A very long time since I've written anything of substance in this space. Today I'm going to try.

I wrote a post earlier about how I've been moving blog entries from place to place, site to site for years now. I've settled, for the time being, on Blogger. Mostly due to photos. But I digress.

As I was going through the posts from 2003, I got very involved with reading them. But more than that, I was trying to recapture my feelings from the time.

How it felt sitting at the family PC from 1whatever am when I got home from work until about 4:45am when I heard people starting to get up. That was usually my time to go to bed.  I haven't come across anything yet talking about the inordinate amounts of time I spent messing around in an IRC chat room created by fans of a webcomic that I was enjoying at the time. Because none of that happened yet.

A couple of days ago I put up a post about a camera in this space. Partly becasue I wanted the mood/music/location stuff for the blogger post, partly because, well, you know. Nostalgia.

Well nostalgia came and hit me pretty hard. I keep forgetting that LJ now has achievements? Because why not! A notification hit me really hard:

I'm not going to lie, I was shaken. More so when I clicked on it and discovered that this particular blog is going to be twenty-two on Wednesday. Come November, it will be twenty-two years since the last update.

I was googling myself earlier, wondering whether or not any of my blogs showed up (not if my name is properly formatted!), and I discovered one of the places that I do still show up. Which led me to here.

I read through the comments. I cried. It took me a while to get my head back to gether, and I decided that I needed to at least visit my old stomping grounds. I stopped by and visited an old friend, even if she doesn't know I'm still checking in on her. Sometimes that is the part that hurts the most.

Here I Go Again

I just finished posting my missing entries from February of 2003.

As I'm going through them, I was originally tempted to modify them.  Nothing major, correct the occasional spelling error, update the tags to reflect my current way of tagging entries. Little things like that.

I ended up posting them as-is with the exception of the titles. I re-titled the entries, as I've been doing for all of the years that I have been shuffling these things around from one place to another, but that was it.

The reasoning behind it is fairly simple and straightforward, at least to me.  As I was reading them, I was trying to get back into the mindset that I was in twenty-three years ago.  I realize that I'm not eighteen anymore. I am living in a completely different world than I was then. But I can remember.  I can still write in the same silly, vaguely nonsensical way that I did at that time, but my current situation doesn't exactly lend itself to care free, silly prose anymore. And it was care free and silly, there are no two ways about it.  Even the stuff where I was not being exactly positive about whatever.

The things that I viewed as soul-crushing or depressing at eighteen are, at forty-two, just another day. Part of that is growing up and realizing that there is more to the world than working at a fast food restaurant (referred to in those days primarily as either Arby's or the beef repository) and what my friends thought about life, the universe and everything.

I spent a few of the intervening years living with someone that I realized I couldn't stand.  We had some interesting times together, but I really wasn't a fan of her. It took a long time to get out of that one, and I had to get really creative.  Which I regret. Not ending it, but ending it the way I did. I see now that the situation I got myself into in 2014 (and am still in), is even worse. It is also much harder to get out of.

I also left Arby's and ended up working for some people who were pretty toxic. That was, again, a snap decision based on a couple of bad days at work. While making that decision did, eventually, get me where I am today, I regret the middle part. The part where I worked there for fourteen years and most of the time I was not allowed to do the job I was hired to do was frustrating.

After I left there, I ended up where I am now. Which is both good and bad, I guess. I have met some interesting and wonderful people that I would have never intersected with, but at the same time, It's kind of dramatic.  

Granted, there are days in 2026 that I feel like the only outlet I have available is to, as they say, bitch about it in my LiveJournal.

Except I'm not. Largely in part because I feel like I need to keep this hidden from some of the people in my life. Which, in and of itself is weird. I feel like I need to hide this from people in my life, but I'm legit putting it on the internet for the entire world to see.

Why Can't We Be Friends

It appears that Gen. Y. Carville and I are friends again?

I don't know what changed, but okay. 

I Won't Give You No Money

Today I went to the park.  I took the Nikon N70 with the intent of finishing the roll that I started yesterday, and I took the Nikon N2020 with the intention of using an entire roll today.  I didn't quite accomplish that, which is fine.

I took the 2020 with one of the weirder crap lenses that I've purchased.

It is a Benoison 85mm F/1.8.

The f-stops are weird as can be. I realize that it is a "portrait" lens, and I'm probably using it wrong, but seriously?

 

There ain't no thing between f/10 and f/22. My light meter app was appalled. It also didn't give me an option to program an f/6 and one other that I don't remember in there, so I had to wing it. I was something like 2/10 of a stop off for those two.

Anyway, I think this lens makes the camera look even more like it came straight from 1986 than it already did.

I look forward to posting the highlights of the roll of film when I finally develop both this and the N70. But I'm going to have to finish this roll, and I suspect it won't happen this week.

 

• Current Location: The Land Of The Wooded Greens
• Current Mood: creative
• Current Music: The Fan

 

I Want To Be A Part Of It

This is getting a little crazy. I have several drafts of previous posts written up and ready for the media elements to be put into them.

Posts discussing cameras usually need to have the cameras themselves photographed for part of it. It is, honestly, kind of invigorating to finally be putting some of this stuff out for the world to see. Sure, most of it is buried in archives and if you don't know what you're looking for, you aren't going to find it. Which I'm weirdly okay with. 

Runnin' With The Devil

Last year I decided to focus on reading.  I set a goal of 75 books to be read in the year, and managed to get something like 82 completed.

This year, instead of spending my extra time reading, I guess I'm going to focus on my writing. More specifically not neglecting my spaces on the Blog-o-Sphere. Even more specifically, this one.

I sent myself a list last night of some things to write about this year, and have been doing some work catching up on my various photo posts from the last several years. This (yesterday at this point, I guess) morning I even went out with a camera from my eBay box of "as is" cameras, which is a post I need to find and get over here, but I digress.

Went out with my Nikon N70 and the universal Vivitar 135mm lens that I picked up a couple of years ago.  I'm pretty sure I overexposed about half the roll, but not by much. Hopefully I can correct them while scanning.

It always amuses me how it is so hard for me to use a full roll (36 exposures) of film over a 15 minute walk, but if I have a digital camera, I will end up with hundreds of pictures.

Anyway, I did get some of my photo stuff sorted out, I need to get the posts into the correct places and find the post about the camera box and get that in the right place as well.

I'm entertained by this project, and I hope to keep up the momentum I have had going this week so far. 

• Current Location: I Took It To The House
• Current Mood: lethargic
• Current Music: Silence

 

Wake Me Up When September Ends

 Okay, so I have about half of February of 2003 migrated to this space now.  All I can say is what was I thinking?

 Also, reading through my life in those days, I cannot help but wonder whatever happened to my friend who I tend to refer to in this space as "kcandthesunshineband". Wherever you are, KC, I hope you're doing well! 

I Think It's Time To Go Now

While scrolling through the very distant past of this blog, I discovered that years I previously thought were complete are actually incomplete.

It looks like everything between January 28 30 and May 16 April 26 are missing. Sorry, I just posted a couple of entries from 2003 so as to make it something like an even 20 entries that are missing.

This makes me wonder if I actually managed to snag everything from my old Diaryland site or if I missed something somewhere.

Actually, I know that I missed something. I have a link on one of the old entries that is supposed to go to a post there, but doesn't and I added a note in 2017 that I have no idea what it was supposed to say.  I guess I should probably work toward getting that restored so I can verify that I didn't miss anything.

Now for a LiveJournal throwback:

• Current Location: That place I call Home
• Current Mood: contemplative
• Current Music: Hotel California ~ The Eagles

 

Who Ya Gonna Call?

I guess I'll be a little more motivated to keep up with this one way dialogue.

I am pretty sure I have everything from 2023 through now from WordPress on here now.  I have other things from other places that still need to go up here, and I have rough outlines of things living either on paper or in my head that I need to expand upon (2025 goodreads year in review, I'm looking at you) that I need to still get up here as well.

It would be a little easier if I felt like I had more time to do any work though. 

If There's Something Strange In Your Neighborhood

Yesterday was kind of a weird day, I'm not going to lie.

I was adding something that I wrote elsewhere to this in it's proper place, and discovered that people somewhere are actually reading this thing for some reason?  

I don't know how I feel about that. Obviously, I'm putting it out there into the wild world of the internet so I'm not allowed to be annoyed or disappointed or anything, I'm just slightly curious about how people stumble across my little corner of the virtual world.

Word of mouth isn't the answer.  I said something to one person about it in the last, what? Ten years? That was something like two weeks ago (If you are one of the people reading this, feel free to let me know next time I talk to you!), and I wasn't exactly specific on how to find it.  All I said was that the title has been Every Which Way But Lucid for at least the last ten years.

This is an extremely roundabout way of saying HELLO WHOEVER YOU ARE! Feel free to drop an email or comment or something, I'd love to know something about my (presumed) audience. 

It's Like You're Always Stuck In Second Gear

Apparently, the fans of the sitcom of my life want to see the next season story arc go something along the lines of "This Inevitable Ruin" > "Damage Control" > "Rooting for Team Mexico (in, I presume, the World Cup?)"

Go figure.

I should probably actually turn my life into a sitcom.