the hotel unfortunately does not have free wi-fi but what it does have is a huge, fancy shower that could probably double as a drive-in car wash as well as spectacular floor to ceiling windows for pure, uninterrupted views of the nearby construction site. anyway, i’ve got a wedding to get to.
i’m flying to Kansas City today, a place that, for all intents and purposes, is completely irrelevant to me. usually when i travel, i post a map showing where i’m going but i just can’t be bothered this time.
so why am i willingly going to Kansas City? because Beka’s cousin is getting married. family first. this blog will probably be kind of quiet this weekend because i don’t think the hotel has free wi-fi but my photoblog will still be updated.
mmm, i forgot how good lengua burritos are.
check out my new toy: a Hasselblad 500 C/M that my buddy Tim rescued from a run-down house in the Bay Area that he was gutting with his brother-in-law.
it’s in surprisingly good condition with the only obvious defects being various scratches on the baseplate, missing leatherette on the viewfinder and two enormous dents on the filter ring from an axe murderer. other less apparent flaws include a broken viewfinder latch, slightly malformed viewfinder assembly and misaligned (and therefore immobilized) focus ring. not bad!
all other mechanisms function perfectly; the lense is tack sharp and the overall build quality is superb but no one would expect anything less from a Hasselblad. these babies went with Apollo 11 and other subsequent missions to the moon, after all.
they’re still up there, actually.
i finally took the time today to fix my car’s side skirt which had come off during last Friday’s storm. it ended up being much simpler than i had expected but still every big as annoying as i had to zip tie the skirt down to prevent it from coming off again.
some idiot had his car alarm go off about a thousand times last night. you know how car alarms are typically relatively smooth, rhythmic affairs? well, this particular one sounded like there was a man trapped inside the car with mustard gas seeping slowly in through the vents, spitting cobras coiling around his legs and jungle cockroaches dropping from the ceiling.
however, after a few minutes of frantic honking, i would hear who i assumed to be the owner go downstairs to blip his key fob and stop the alarm. things would be quiet for about 20 minutes before the alarm started up again. it went on like this for about six hours.
and then again this morning.
spent the day hammering out strategies, staring at flowcharts and eating pickled herring. but not at the same time. in other news, i need more sleep.
i was supposed to pick up some of my friends at O’Hare last night but the entire airport decided to shut down because of a little rain. okay, it wasn’t just a little rain. rather, it was a real “sinners in the hands of an angry god” kind of thunderstorm complete with rampant flooding and extremely limited visibility.
Beka and i actually made it to the airport on time. on time for my friend to call me and say that their flight had been rerouted to Milwaukee but that they would catch a bus to ORD. seeing as how it would be at least a couple of hours before they would arrive, Beka and i decided to head back home.
on the unanticipated hour and a half drive back, we were turned around several times after having encountered flooded roads before one of the side skirts on my car came off and began dragging on the pavement, forcing me to go out into the pouring rain to secure it with bungee cord. by the time we got back, my clothes and hair were soaked, my elbow was bruised from working on the car and my bad hip was throbbing like crazy from the extreme changes in air pressure.
they had to take a cab in the end. ugh.
another shockingly disgusting day today. had a heat advisory during the day and severe thunderstorm warning plus flood watch at night.
the weather today was absolutely disgusting.
