Getting back into photography, film photography, that is

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May 30, Memorial Day, 2022

I started the day by making our lunch. I made a savory sauce, roasted sweet potato cubes, smokey collard greens, and barbecued tempeh. All plants. Not a single animal product. Nobody died for my lunch.

In the afternoon my beloved partner and I walked Nacho in the hills above our house. She brought her Polaroid SX-70 camera and took a few pix using 5-year old film. Surprisingly, some of the pictures demonstrate the dreamy Polaroid glow. When you shoot Polaroid, you are sometimes blessed with happy accidents. That’s life with a 50-year old camera.

In one of the pictures, I’m wearing a new pair of glasses that I bought online, from Zenni. I’m using a temporary prescription for the next few months until my cataract surgeries heal up.

I’m going to get back into photography, in a small way this time. I’ll be putting some photos here from time to time.

Brand names I mentioned in this post just because I like the products. Relax — there’s no kickback coming my way.

Tuca as a teenager

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Today I had cataract surgery. The ophthalmologist removed the cloudy lens in my right lens and replaced it with an acrylic lens. I had been dreading this surgery for years. The thought of someone cutting my eye with a razor-sharp diamond scalpel was more than I could deal with.

Afraid as I was of surgery, I was also afraid of not being able to drive at night. Night driving had become a frightening ordeal .When you have a full blown cataract, the glare of oncoming headlines turns the darkness into a wall of white light, which is not fun when you’re driving on a two-lane highway.. I scoured youtube for cataract surgery videos. As my ignorance of cataracts diminished, I was able to schedule surgery for my eye.

May 15, Also a chore day

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The diners, Willy and Nacho, admiring the chef’s Michelin star technique

Lots of chores this week. Because I’m having eye surgery tomorrow (Monday), I have to get a head start on the workflow of my part-time job. I spent most of this morning loading two days of work into the system so that it can be released automatically Monday evening and Tuesday evening. I should be able to work by Wednesday, if all goes well.

Besides preparing stuff for my job, I did some cooking for next week’s fine dining. The main dish was a vegan “loaf”, what some vegans would call a “no-meat loaf”. I prefer to simply call it a loaf. My loaf is actually a kind of moist bread made with oatmeal, walnuts, quinoa, and kidney beans. Beside the loaf, I made a tomato sauce and a cheese-y sauce. There I go — breaking my own rule. I use cheese-y because it’s a lot easier than saying onion, red bell pepper, and nutritional yeast based sauce.

A taxing day

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Besides baking some peanut butter cookies and tempeh coated with cornmeal and spicy buffalo sauce, I attempted, once again, to get the Intuos tablet working on macOS … and failed again. To solve the problem I bought Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo for Windows. Problem solved, I hope.

Speaking of the unexpected, there’s always taxes. When I filed my taxes this year, I forgot to include some income. When I filed the amended tax form, I had to return all of the refund we got. That’s life.

Success getting my old school Wacom Intuos 4 working with macOS Monterey

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After spending the day baking a potato and cauliflower casserole, baking two dozen peanut butter cookies, and cooking a lunch of portobello mushroom tacos, I took a long walk with my Pug. Walking helps me calm down, and having Nacho with me gave me something to think about besides myself. When I got home I was drained. Cooking and baking for 6 hours is grueling work and walking up and down the mountain trails gave me the feeling that gravity had doubled.

When we arrived back at the house, I had and apple and a cup of tea, and collapsed into my chair. I thought, “what the hell. I’ll try again. If it doesn’t work, it may not be in the cards and I’ll call it quits.” I did one more online search and found a solution at machow2.com. WIth having any hope that this solution would work, I tried it and it worked. Fucking awesome! Now I can relax.

UPDATE: Mar 22

Nope. The Intuos tablet stopped working on my Mac. I plugged in my new mini Intuos Pro and it worked perfectly. I plugged in my 2-year old Cintiq and it worked perfectly. I'm going to give up on the 6-year-old Intuos 4, at least with my Mac. It still works great with Windows.

Every time there's a macOS update, something breaks...permanently.

Double chore days this week

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Besides the doing the vacuuming, laundry, and yard work this week, I also did the cooking. Today I cooked up a cauldron of ragu, made some gigantic millet meatballs (yes, there are reminiscent of meat meatballs), and baked a tray of apricot-fig pastries that were supposed to be classy fig newtons. The recipe called for a quarter of a cup of date sugar and a quarter of a cup of maple syrup. Unfortunately, they turned out a bit sweeter than I expected. Next time — if here is a next time — I would leave out the sugars altogether and let the apricots and figs have the stage all to themselves.

I tried to draw a little today, but my mind kept telling me to take the day off. So I did.

Chore day, March 12, and my new gadget -- the Sketchboard Pro for iPad

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Sketchboard Pro for iMac

The Sketchboard Pro makes the iPad easier to use. One of the design flaws for the iPad, where drawing and painting are concerned, is the lack of a wide bezel like what you see with Wacom Cintiqs. The Sketchboard Pro supplies the wide bezel I need for drawing to edges and corners of the screen. Now the the iPad has the feel of using a Cintiq, I’m thinking of doing my next children’s picture book using the iPad and Artrage Vitae or Procreate.

Oh! There were chores today: doing laundry, vacuuming the house, and doing some yard work. Tomorrow I’ll be cooking a ragu with lentil sauce, some millet meatballs (let’s hope they’re good!), some whole wheat biscotti, and apricot/fig cookies. Sound yummy to me.

Chore Day, Feb 12, 2022 -- the usual chores and a trip to the big city

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Today was a typical Saturday — vacuuming, laundry, walking the dogs, and more. The “more” was a trip to Medford to buy a pair of pants at the Carhartt store, some socks at REI, and a vegan-friendly burrito at Chipotle. You know you’re in a civilized town when there’s a Chipotle. The burrito was bigger than my head, so I ate only half of it.