I figured out a good project for the 25 packs of Fuji F-100 I have stockpiled in the fridge. I'm gonna document the restoration of the Baby-Victorian. This will make a cool boxed set, and I think a very cool raw material for one of my crazy art books.
I also think I will do some B&W silkscreened T-shirts using some of my street shots and urban landscape. To keep it small I'll do them as limited editions. Kinda promotional, but at least I won't have some gallery taking a 50% commission or people stealing my images off the Internet.
Today the keypad came for my IPAD. It originally was expected to be delivered the first week in January. Now I'm waiting on the IPAD which is expected the first or second week of February.
In the first week of January, I'm expecting over $500.00 worth of bicycle tires to be delivered. In January I will try to order a custom wheel, but I expect delays even though I will be supplying the rim because the bottleneck likely will be getting a White Industry hub. We live in an age of shortages...
Know that airline flights are being canceled because of short staffing. Now would speculate car rentals will be hard to get. I know because sadly "Maggies" mom died Christmas Day, and her brother had to drive from Colorado because flying was not going to happen. Then my niece booked a flight to Disney for winter break and already the flight got canned due to short staffing.
There has been a lot of death lately. Two of Maggie's classmates from her PhD that remain close friends lost their mothers. Maggie's cousin Kevin died from Covid. Been sidetracked going to wakes and funerals.
I feel a divine message, and I learned a lot about my own mortality. After Maggie's mom's funeral, I talked with a man who very recently I had attended his wife's wake and funeral. He is/was a man's man, but now is suffering a bit from dementia. As his friend, he walked over to talk to me, and since he was a vet we talked about the military, he enlisted into the Navy to learn electronics.
So it was like in the film "Groundhog Day" with Bill Murry because somehow I heard the same stories of how he met his wife, how he signed up for the Navy, and how he qualified over and over again. Of course, there were other stories, but overall I heard each story 3-4 times as if it were for the first time. I kinda knew he wanted to talk with me, and actually since the loss of his wife I figured he really needed to talk to me. "Maggie" later told me that since his wife died he never spoke of her, but somehow he felt comfortable to open up to me. I feel honored that he did.
At the funeral, I saw many people my age who looked really old, but I met a remarkable man who was a bit of a fitness freak, and when I inquired why he said, "I was almost killed in a car accident and was told I would never walk again." After about 6 months of recovery, he started to work out. He told me that he at one time did 900 push-ups in a day doing a set every 5 minutes for 2 1/2 hours. Then he told me about "Burpees" a combination squat thrust followed by a set of pushups.
So with the pandemic I know I have lost a lot of strength and fitness, but all the deaths I am experiencing has a deeper meaning to me. Maggie's mom had vascular dementia which is a result from a series of small strokes that kill off parts of the brain. The death process actually is a long decay that is about a three-month process. After about 6 weeks no solid food was eaten, then eventually not even water, but there was this "Terminal Lucidity" that lasted for about a day and a half.
Most days when we visited Maggie's mom slept, and if she woke it was as if a blink of an eye. It was as if she were in a coma. There would be all this twitching of arms and legs due to electrolite imbalances, but one day we walk in and she is watching a Christmas show and she turns to me and says, "Cal you look good," flirting with me.
So I get the message: I need to start seriously pumping ox-A-gen to my brain daily. BTW both my parents died of heart failure.
Anyways Covid is kinda the blame for Maggie's mom's demise. Because of short staffing a patch of skin Cancer was not detected by staff, by Maggie discovered it on one of our vists. The procedure proved to be difficult for Maggie's mom, and even though she was a fighter, it was the beginning of the end.
Covid is killing people in other ways.
Also my ultra-fit man was 51, but he had recovered from Covid, but he reported it took a long time for him to recover all the strength he lost.
A lot of sad stuff was happening before Christmas, but I didn't want to ruin the holidays. Meanwhile, I'm getting those bikes ready, and I'm going to buy Maggie a bike.
Cal
