Heat

Florida is giving us a last hurrah (or giant middle finger; take your pick) with 90 degree heat and matching humidity. Everything from Isaac has blown out and now we don't even get the couple hours of relief we were getting from the afternoon thunderstorms. I try to get outside every day and do a little puttering around the outside of the trailer, but there is only about a two-hour window between sunrise and when being outside is just too brutal to think about. So I sit inside scanning old photos.

That process has changed somewhat. I was originally scanning the negatives, mainly because 3x5 or 4x6 prints have a different aspect ratio than the 35mm negative, so something has to get cut off. Prints also seem to have more issues with color balance, and even though a print is many times larger than a negative, the scans didn't seem any better in terms of graininess. But the scanner software seems to want to fight me every step of the way. Yesterday, I had just finished up 500 or so photos that we had no negatives for (or they were something other than 35mm), and started back in on the 35mm stuff. The very first strip of negatives I grabbed came up in the software as color positive film. I was done with that. So now I scan the prints and screw the negatives. It involves more trips to the scanner as I can only do two or three photos at a time instead of an entire strip of negatives in one go, but the process is actually faster overall.

Yesterday, we had our first block party since we moved here. Our neighbors at the end of the street hosted an ol' fashioned potluck, so we showed up with our signature baked beans, which got a lot of comments. I'm hoping that we're not stuck bringing the things to every potluck forever; we have a lot of other things we like to make besides baked beans. In any case, we all ate too much and sat around for several hours acting like hooligans. We had fun and finally had a chance to meet a few of our neighbors. Nice change of pace from... well... pretty much every other place we've ever lived.

The Republican National Convention has finally ended. We avoided even looking in the direction of Tampa while the circus was in town, and of course there was no way we would waste our time watching any of it on TV. Personally, I'd rather scratch my eyes out with rusty nails. I heard a lot of yapping about this or that speech and something about Clint Eastwood playing the part of a stroke victim while talking to an empty chair. Why anyone pays the least bit of attention is beyond me. Whatever is said or done at the convention has absolutely nothing to do with what the Liar in Chief actually does while in office. The worst of it is that as soon as the holiday weekend is over, we get to start the circus all over again for the Democrats. At least that one is far enough away that we don't have to be concerned with road closures, blockades, protesters, riot cops, etc.

And I should get back to scanning.