mike

or...   Mikey through the looking glass?   Anyway...   I've had an interestingly boring couple of days.   It began Wednesday night with a trip to the emergency room. While I was at work, I began experiencing what could only be described as violent dizziness. It panicked me. I wasn't sure what the hell was going on. I could barely stand up. I began wondering if some one had spiked my Fanta Grape. I called my supervisor on the radio to ask him if he was in his office. He said he was. I told him that I was having a problem and that I would be up.

  The walk up there was this Carnival of Souls experience that I won't soon forget. My sense of depth was totally skewed and I could barely keep myself level. It was like being shit drunk without the fogged brain thing I'd normally associate with that condition. Nancy (who works in the warehouse) saw me as she was going on break, and helped me the rest of the way.

  After some discussion, it was determined that I should seek medical treatment. I called my mom (she lives within walking distance of the plant), and she picked me up and took me to the emergency room.

  The car ride up was an adventure. My eyes wouldn't focus on anything and the road in front of me kept shifting and spinning. The motion of the car seemed to make it all worse.

  After a long wait, a saline solution plugged into my right arm, a CAT scan, some blood work, and some valium to help with my equalibrium, the doctor told me what I long suspected:

  I have rocks in my head.

  He explained that he felt a small pebble (or other contaminant) lodged itself in my ear and worked its way into my inner ear, causing me to experience my severe disruption of balance. He said that he felt as though the contaminant would work its way out in a couple of days and I needed to stay home from work. He prescribed some antivert and sent me home at around three o'clock in the morning.

  So I've been sitting here since then, bored out of my skull. My eyes straightened up back to normal today - normal enough so that I could sit here long enough to write this anyway. The antivert has been keeping the dizziness to a minimum - actually, I feel pretty much normal today.

  I had today off as a vacation day, but it's been a total waste. The weather is pretty miserable out there, so getting anything done is pretty well lost. I'd rather not drive if I don't have to.

  The sky was pretty clear last night, and I managed to get some shots with the new camera:


Orion: wide angle using the Kodak P880 w/telephoto lens

  The other shots I got weren't what I'd wanted. I'm still figuring out f-stop, ISO, and whatnot with the new camera. The aperatures work differently than they do with the Z650, and there's also more flexibility than what I'm used to. I would've liked to have spent more time with it last night, but it was too damned cold out.

  Oh yeah...

  by the way...

  The newest member of the family:


My Kodak P880: it offers an amateur photographer both flexibility and visual cunning to acheive results

  I've had some unsure moments with the camera since I won it on eBay. The FedEx guy who was supposed to deliver it to me was quitting the company, and kept avoiding Mountain Top - so it wasn't getting delivered. I got impatient last Saturday and went down to their Pittston, PA place to retrieve it.

  I managed to dump a little Coca-Cola into the camera's power button during the ride home, and the thing would power off intermittently. Part of what I was doing for my last couple of days off was cleaning the power button out with alcohol to break up the syrup and sugar. It seems to have worked. I didn't have any problems with it at all last night. Given what my eyesight's been for the last couple of days, I really didn't want to take the thing apart to clean it, but I think I've broken up most of the contamination without disassembling it.

  I'm feeling pretty much back to normal now. My dizziness has stopped and my eyesight's returned to what it was before. I'll probably be out at Charley's tomorrow night.

  It was unplanned, but at least I got a rest from the daily grind. I just hope that the co-pay from the insurance isn't too extreme...

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  Wow...

  After what had to be the most miserable night I've ever had at work tonight...

the waning eclipse

While I was walking out to my car and looking up at the sky to see if I could salvage some sanity after tonight's chaos, I noticed that the moon was waxing full - but there was something distinctly wrong with it...   I couldn't think of what it was...   Then it dawned on me...   A total lunar eclipse!   The sky was somewhat cloudy, but I thought if I could rush home, I could capture it...   ummm...

  I dunno...

  I guess I couldn't be that lucky, huh?


the clouds rolled in...

  It clouded back up.

  Undaunted (and pro'ly a bit looney), I stayed out on the porch to wait for another opportunity. I got some. Frickin' seventeen degrees out, my hands got a bit numb, but I got some good shots of the waning eclipse:


waxing/waning - it was a moon that couldn't make up its mind...

  I tried different apertures and shutter speeds, but the full moon can be a tough thing to focus in on. A lot of the shots were wasted, but I got quite a few good ones.

  One more for the blog, an' I'm gonna crash...


Almost Over: Saros Cycle Eclipses only happen once every eighteen years (and eleven days)

  Oh well...

  Time for bed. After the night I had tonight, I'm beat...

  I hope you enjoyed the pictures of the eclipse. I only wish I got to photograph it from the beginning.

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  Okay...

  I figured out what to do with all of the overtime money I made...

  Camera equipment. Lots of it.

the moon

I got a couple of wicked Kodak lenses to augment my Z650, a wide angle, panoramic deal and a telephoto. Some of the results of which can be viewed further down in this blog.   I also purchased a "gently used" Kodak P880 on eBay for a couple hundred bucks. I've heard nothing but good things about the camera, and once I have it, I'll be able to share accessories from the Z650 with it - like the Kodak Schneider-Kreuznach Xenar 1.4x 55mm Telephoto Lens I just received.   Bummer though...

  The Kodak Schneider-Kreuznach Xenar 0.7x Wide Angle Lens (55mm) will be lost on the P880. From what I've read, the camera won't function well with it. Another downside will be having to purchase 52mm filters. I don't mess with filters much, at least not yet. All I ever really use is a UV filter and a circular polarizer.

  Anyway...

  Here's a smattering of photographic exploits from the weekend and tonight:


Orion's Sword - captured using the Z650 with the telephoto lens attached


Orion's Belt - again, captured using the Z650 with the telephoto lens attached

  These next three are somewhat interesting to me. I took these tonight after I got home from work. I wanted to get some wide-angle stuff, and I saw that the sky cleared out during my nine o'clock break tonight.

  but...

  By the time I got home at around eleven-thirty, the sky clouded back up again. I was kind o' pissed off at the let-down, and I think these photos represent it. I shot these in high color, using the 55mm wide-angle lens, utilizing a long exposure (the clouds were moving very quickly), at ISO 400 and the f-stop all the way down. The effect is eirily out-worldly:







  Oh well...

  I knew a woman once who said she always wanted to see the forest shot from/through my eyes. Ask and ya get? *LOL* I don't think I can actually shoot anything not tinged with malstrom and decay.

  My mom gave me a book on photography a while back called Introduction to Photography: A Self-Directing Approach by Marvin J. Rosen. It's the second edition, from the eighties, but I'm getting incredible ideas from it...

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  Grab the bull by the horns, the old adage goes...

  Nobody tells you where to go from there.

  Wow...

  The Kodak Gear tripod I picked up from Amazon.Com is like totally cool!

  After the sky cleared out a bit, I went out back tonight for a little while to snap some pictures of old friends, namely Canis Major and Taurus the Bull.


"Dog Star" (or Sirius, the most prominant star in Canis Major)

  and...


"Bull's Eye" (or Aldebaran, the eye of Taurus, surrounded by the Hyades Cluster)

  Bummer though...

  I only had a window of about a half an hour before the sky clouded back up. These two pictures were about the best I could do. I live in a highly light-polluted area - which is another reason why tonight was a good night for this: new moon. New moon essentially means no moon. No big white blob in the sky throwing stray light all over the place. I mainly intended this to be an exercise in exposure times and magnification limits for photographing stars with my Kodak Z650.

  I dunno...

  I think I was more jazzed about looking up at Orion and his friends above me with the tripod controls in my hands. I felt like a teenager again (yes, my adolescent years were very depressing) with my first telescope.

  I guess I'll go back to watching The Odd Couple. I got the first three seasons on DVD recently...

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  Just the fading fucking reminder of who I used to be.

  Got a free moment to catch my breath and reflect a little bit...

  I came to a bit of a revelation tonight. Karmically speaking, I think I've moved into a good place emotionally. I feel as though I don't owe anyone anything. No apologies, no explanations, nothing.

  ...and by the same token...

  I feel as though no one really owes me anything, and if they do, I'm willing to forget and forgive any karmic-type debts and move forward with my life.


blackbird in a tangled forest

  I'm working more with my new-ish camera, experimenting with PASM, especially shutter speeds, ISO settings, and exposure times. My goal is to get better acquainted with astrophotography. I spend most of my awake time at night, so I'm attempting to adjust my photographic pursuits to accomodate it.

  I picked up on a new tripod to replace one that broke on me a little while back. I got a good deal on a Kodak from Amazon.Com. Ten bucks, believe me, I'm not complaining. With delaying shutter speeds, it's crucial to have a steady base to work from.

  I can finally afford a Canon Digital Rebel XTi, but I'm gonna hold off on buying it for a little bit. I'm gonna wait on my income tax return, so I can get some wicked accessories to go with it. Photography is becoming more of a passion for me, and I want to mess around with some more serious equipment.


the moon can be a semi-tricky subject to take an acceptable picture of

  I dunno...

  I'm kind o' tired. As I've written in previous posts, I've been working some extreme hours. It's beginning to pay off, as I've also mentioned, but it's really taking a physical and emotional toll on me.

  A little over a week ago...

  I was shaving before work. I have a battery-powered razor. I finished touching up my beard and threw the razor in a drawer in my bathroom - without turning it off, and spent the next half hour trying to figure out what the constant drilling noise coming from the bathroom was. I thought the fan in the ceiling shorted out, or something. I was cutting power to the bathroom from the electrical box and everything trying to get it to stop. I had to leave for work. When I got back home later that same evening, I went to shave again to get ready to go out, the battery was dead, and I realized what happened.

  Funny? I dunno, maybe...

  To me, it's just a sign of how burned out I'm getting working all these hours. I'm not as young as I used to be, and I'm feeling much older than I am.

  I feel as though I work every day (technically, I sometimes do), and every day is beginning to feel like the same day happening over and over...

  By the way, I've put my myspace profile back up. If we were friends before, and you'd like to be friends again, just send me an add request.

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