The other day on the drive home from visiting our new home that is currently under construction, I stopped on the roadside to take a few snapshots of this scene of Mt. Baker. Dave had showed me a quick way to blend two exposures together which I knew I needed to do to capture all of the detail of this scene. The result of blending the exposures was disappointing but I was determined to re-create the mood that my eyes had seen which my camera clearly could not. I ended up with a painterly effect which works perfectly for me. I did not use any Artistic or Brush Stroke filters to achieve this effect. What you see is a result of five some odd hours of experimentation and tweaking of Curves, Levels, Saturation and Hues as well as Noise Reduction and a final Diffuse layer to mute the white halos or glowing edges. Hope you like it (you may want to go fullscreen [F11] to view the large images as the gallery doesn’t have scrollbars).

So last night Jul and I, & Bruno and Patti drove down to meet Steve & Alicia at The Melting Pot for dinner. A good time was had by all, but that’s not what this story is about.

After B and I dropped off our wives in front of the restaurant, we drove around back to park. The Melting Pot is in a large shopping center called Legacy Village, a new, upscale “outdoor mall” of the type that is cropping up all over the place these days. The clientele there tends to be different than you’d find down the street at Richmond Towne Square.

Anyway, we were cruising slowly down the row. Two people were backing out of their spots, so we sat and waited for maybe ten seconds, at which point I started rolling forward. I noticed another pair of backing lights come on, so I put my hand on the horn. I was about one car behind this person, so it didn’t make any sense to stop - there was no room for them to pull out. The car began to back up. I didn’t wail on the horn, which would have said something like “HEY ASSHOLE, DON’T HIT ME,” I gave her the customary short toot on the horn: “hey, I’m back here, let’s not dent each other’s cars.”As I crawled past and started to turn into one of the recently vacated spots, I glanced at the car that was waiting. It was apparent the woman waiting was really pissed off either because I hadn’t waited for her, or because I honked at her. Well, whatever.

B and I got out of the car and walked to the back of it, heading towards the entrance. The woman driving had her window halfway down, glared at me and screamed “FUCK YOU” as she accelerated past. I yelled back “AND NOW I KNOW YOUR INTELLIGENCE LEVEL, TOO.” She seemed to take offense, as she let loose with a string of profanities (all the while continuing to drive away), ending with “WHITE BITCH.” Oh yeah, she was black. Apparently that was her ultimate insult.

Anyway, I’ve been trying very hard lately to be more laid back and I have to say I’m glad I didn’t let loose with my own string of profanities. Now I have to work on not saying anything at all.

Apparently, Joe looks like Ahmet Zappa, one of Frank Zappa’s oddly named children.

You be the judge.

Dave says…
Rt. 2, Lost Nation Rd. to Vine St.: 50 mph in a 60. Vine St. from Skiff to Clark: 20 mph in a 25 (everyone else is doing 40). At the light, turning from Spaulding to Euclid: crawl forward at idle speed. I tell ya, they’re out to get me. (and now I remove my tinfoil hat…)