This morning at 7:45, on our way out to the gym, Jen mentioned that someone had parked their car in front of the house, and that there was nobody inside. We packed up the Jeep and sat at the head of our driveway for a minute, contemplating the idiocy: this person had stopped their Subaru on the road half in front of our driveway at a point where making a left turn would have been impossible. All manner of scenarios crossed my mind, but the top on the list was an empty gas tank and a dead motor. OK, fine; park on the side of the road and hike to the gas station. But to leave a car obviously blocking a driveway is a big what the fuck?

Really, what I wanted to do was go bumper-to-bumper with the Jeep in 4lo and push the fucker back ten feet, but Jen’s cooler head prevailed. “Why don’t you wait, and if it’s here when we get back, you can move it,” she suggested. Of course, it was gone when we returned, ruining any chance I had at automotive payback. The whole thing makes me wish I’d had one of these to stick under his windshield wiper.

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Yesterday I rose at 7 to feed the cats and noticed a spectacular sunrise out the window as I checked my email. I put the G3 on my mini tripod and set the intervalometer to 1 minute, and left it for a 100-shot sequence (there’s no way to increase the number of shots past 100, unfortunately; otherwise I’d leave it there all day and burn through a memory card). The sky was overcast and wound up killing most of the colors as the morning wore on, so the results are pretty dull.

This got me thinking, though, and I thought I’d revisit a project I did last year, where I shot one picture each day at roughly the same time for a month to see what the changes brought. (I have a particular fascination with time-lapse photography.) I’ve got an old Kodak DC-3400 that’s been gathering dust for years now, and I decided to put it to use for a new project: one shot each day for the rest of the year (and maybe beyond) to compare the changes. We’ll see what happens.

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I sent an email to a new contact the other day, highlighting my illustration work, and I got a very favorable response back which made the brain start thinking of new assignments. I have one series that I’m going to start as soon as I get a little downtime (it’s very busy around here right now) and I think I’m going to continue the Alphabet Project with some substitutions and a new A-Z series, as well as a focus on editorial work to build out my portfolio. I’m lucky enough to have a benefactor who made a sizable contribution to the Get-The-Idiot’s-Promotional-Work-Out-There fund, and I aim to make that work as soon as I’ve got my book where I want it (I estimate another couple of months.)

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I got a long-awaited check in the mail Saturday which should ease a little of the financial pinching I’ve been feeling lately; after some bills get paid and I sock a bunch away for taxes, I have a bunch of things I need to look at purchasing, in not so particular order:

• A Powerbook Sleeve – This machine is too valuable to get dinged up.
• A new iPod holder – for the gym. Mine disappeared the week I got my iPod. It’s most likely still in the center console of the rental car I was driving at the time.
• New headphones – Again, for the gym. This pair is one hair away from falling apart.
• An LLC for my design business (as yet unnamed.) – Time to get serious.
• A camera bag – I was lucky enough to receive a HUGE zoom lens for X-mas this year, and I’d like to be able to protect it if at all possible.
• A smaller lens – The zoom is FANTASTIC but not for short to medium-length shots, something I wasn’t counting on (at normal range, without zoom, it’s still strong enough to view other planets.)
• Lens filters – To protect the investment.