this page intentionally left blank

I feel like I'm getting sick. EL is feeling sick. I'd rather us be sick together than sequentially. When I was in nuclear prototype in New York, my boss had like 4 or 5 kids and between his wife, him, and the children, someone was always sick... always. Some strain of virus or whatnot would just cycle through the family continually. They could probably get bankrolled by a pharmaceutical company to be a test bed for new medicines. Of course, have an immune system that could keep you alive in that family would probably also make you a shoe-in for a job with the CDC... you could handle ebola without protective gear while eating a sandwich without harm. There has been a hint of winter in the morning hours over the last few days. It's nothing more than a whispered promise on autumn's breath that cooler times are ahead if we can just stick out the heat a bit longer. The single thing that I miss the most of living upstate New York is the air. It is also the defining factor in my love of Colorado and more recently Minnesota. Almost all my lung's life, they've been pumping the thick, heavy, often polluted, moisture laden air of coastal towns and oceanic atmosphere. The crisp, clean air that wraps the Adirondacks in a cool blanket this time of year lives strong in my memory. I miss it. In Houston, for those who haven't had the pleasure of living here or Los Angeles, we have air that you can almost taste. It tastes kinda like dirty dishwater looks like it would taste. It's discolored and thick. It sticks to you like a film. Everyone's necessity to drive doesn't help our air quality much. This morning, like most mornings, the interstate was a parking lot... even the HOV lane was start and stop. I try to ride the bus as much as possible, but they are miserable polluters as well. I guess a little something is better than nothing. I long for Friday. I cling to each day like a rung on a ladder... pulling myself one day at a time toward that little resting point between flights of stairs. It's sick. I go through each day at work just hoping that I don't have to interact with my boss on any level whatsoever. I go to work each day hoping today might be the day things change for the better. Today could be the day, couldn't it? It's sick. I've decided to start shooting in RAW all the time no matter what... I've said that before and then switched back to JPEG due to flash file system constraints. I need more flash. That has to be the answer. At any rate, if I'm ever to be serious about printing my photography someday, I should shoot RAW and work only in lossless, drive-space-hungry format. We'll see if I can stick to it or not. Coffee time.