Sleep impossible

Two cats (well, mainly bad little Fleur!) managed to make sleep impossible for me past 4:30 this morning, so I got up and made coffee and ate some of Mrs. R’s granola with half & half. Then I activated Studio A (after a hiatus of several weeks) upstairs and initiated what turned out to be a 5+ hour transmission. You can listen to the recording and view the track list here. I can't think of anything else to say, but I'm using a different font ("Pacifico") for variety. If I come up with more bloggable material today, I’ll be back later. If not, we’ll see what tomorrow brings. Happy weekend!

A spare in my pocket

Yesterday: teasels in the sun at Suzanne Arlie Park (shot with Canon S120)

Took my Lumix G95 (+100-300mm lens) to Arlie Park yesterday. After only 45 shots the battery died, but no problem. I had a spare in my pocket. Changed batts. Um… No camera power. What?? Argggh. I hadn’t charged the spare. Doh! “Luckily” I had my little Canon S120 along, too, so I was still able to get photos, just not superzoomed birds, etc.

Yes, I always have my phone along on hikes, too—and it can take photos, of course. It’s just not as fun as a “real” camera. Using a traditional camera form factor makes me feel like a photographer. And that’s the important thing. Just like using a typewriter makes me feel like a writer. Subjective experience rules!

While I was changing batteries I thought of a Garry Winogrand anecdote: “When asked how he felt about missing photographs while he reloaded his camera with film, he replied ‘There are no photographs while I'm reloading.’” There are no photographs while I’m changing batteries. And there were no photographs for that camera yesterday after I changed batteries. Har har.

Time displace the cat on my lap and make oatmeal. Thanks for reading. Have a nice day.

Oh, wait! Sparks released the first single from their upcoming album today!

Panic or euphoria

Frosty leaves on Trail 4, Howard Buford Recreation Area (Jan. 27)

Eight per cent. That’s how much of the year will have gone by as of late tonight. But measuring time by percentage points seems largely inappropriate. Sometimes time is very dense, and other times time is very porous—and differently for different people, and possibly differently simultaneously for individuals. There’s a brain-bending concept! Quantification goes only so far in the temporal realms.

I’ve got two separate appointments to get tutored in Medicare 101—one is a Zoom webinar offered by a local credit union, and the other is an in-person meeting with our agent. It turns out I already have a Medicare card with my official number—found it because I just opened a big DHHS envelope that’s been sitting on the dining room table for a few days. What can I say—I’m an avoider. Now reorienting to action mode to deal with the impending deadline coming up in May.

In other news, I am practicing emotional distancing from the news. It’s easy to give in to instant reactions—negative or positive, panic or euphoria—when big and loud headlines break. But that doesn’t feel healthy. It’s giving in to manipulation and allows entities who don’t care about me to jiggle and jerk me like a puppet on strings. The strings are in my head. I can cut them—make them disappear—by withholding my emotional attention. Thanks for reading.

It will behoove me

Trail 4, north end of Mount Pisgah, Howard Buford Recreation Area (Jan. 27)

Mrs. Random has a surgery date now, coming up in a couple weeks. “Shit’s getting real,” as they say. We’re still taking things one day at a time, but one of these days soon will carry more disruption than encountered previously during the entire chemo slog.

We’ve been enjoying the current spate of sunny weather, cold though it is. Yesterday we accomplished what we call our “figure eight” hike, on the north end of Buford Park/Mount Pisgah, logging around 8500 steps and tackling more elevation than we’ve done in weeks. That felt good!

I turn 65 in May, and am looking forward to obtaining Honored Rider status with Lane Transit District, our local city bus system—I’ll be able to ride FREE anytime and anywhere on LTD buses! Another thing that comes along with that magic number 65 is Medicare. Every other day, it seems, I receive another piece of mail from some insurance provider offering to help me through the application process and, of course, pitching its own brand of Medicare Advantage, Medigap, etc. The Medicare mail is stacking up! Not since my senior year in high school, receiving recruitment pitches from colleges around the country, have I felt this targeted by institutional mail. As is typical, I’ve been in avoidance mode, but it will behoove me to get on the stick soon and figure out what plan(s) would make sense for me, and make some big decisions.

Jump and run like kittens

Random photo from a random street hike last October

    Luckily I don’t need the internet to write a blog entry. I’m using Scrivener, which is like a kind of pumped up word processor slash content management system for writers. But I will need the internet to post. Our 5G home internet is experiencing a rare “down” episode. If you’re reading this, it came back up—or I turned on my phone hotspot.

Before the net outage this morning I saw two stupid headlines. Well, maybe one stupid headline and one stupid story. The relative stupidity levels probably depend on your own attitude and perspective, but here you go: 1) THE BEST PHOTOS OF TAYLOR SWIFT AT AFC CHAMPIONSHIP, and 2) ASTRONOMERS RED-FACED AFTER MISTAKING MUSK’S TESLA ROADSTER FOR AN ASTEROID. I probably just haven’t had enough coffee. I also read a Forbes story that totally sounds like it was written by an AI. I wasted one of my four free articles on that dumb fluff, damn it. Well, fuck Forbes lol.

It’s Solensia week for the Tinycats. Fleur’s appointment is today, and Griffin’s is Thursday. That stuff gives them superpowers, overcoming their old-age arthritis and letting them jump and run like kittens. Well, that’s probably exaggerating a bit, but the effects are dramatic. Through December they had been getting monthly shots, but this year I’m going to stretch it out to five-week intervals. I spell it $olensia.

Yesterday we hiked at South Eugene Meadows. We’ve been avoiding that park for a few months because last time we went there we encountered No Parking - Maintenance Vehicle Only signs, three of ‘em, in the tiny parking lot. From a couple phone calls I made last fall, I learned that the reason for the parking lot closure was hazy, something to do with the city cancelling their permit with the county (the lot is on a county road), but the “why” of that being rather confusing. Anyway, those signs are gone and the parking lot was full after we pulled in. Excellent! We can add that hike back to our our recreational menu.

Internet is back! Have a nice day. Thanks for reading.

Clean images

Fleur and Griffin watching big screen TV (front window)

We have a lot of jazz CDs. Maybe a hundred? Maybe more? I haven’t counted. Over the last couple weeks, we’ve been playing them on our main hi-fi stereo system, at least one a day, sometimes three or four or more. Lots of great music! Most of our collection is from the bebop and hard bop eras, I reckon. But there’s also some big band and some west coast smooth and some free/out/improv and a few other subgenres (e.g. “gypsy”). Also I’d count our ragtime albums, since that genre was an immediate precursor to jazz. After we get through the jazz CDs, maybe we’ll go through the jazz vinyl albums, of which there are also quite a few. Also: jazz cassettes. But many of those are dubs of what we have on CDs and records. Not all, though.

Sunny cold weather is on hand for the next few days. Good opportunity to get out and hike without worrying about rain and mud. Photography should be good, too! I need to clean the sensor on my G95. Looking at images from last Thursday’s Fern Ridge Reservoir hike, with “Dehaze” dialed up on open sky shots, I noted many little blurry blobs, which result from dust specks on the surface of the digital sensor. Ugh. I thought I’d got them blown off with the air puffer. Nope. Need to use the cleaning solution and one of the little wiper blades that came with the sensor cleaning kit I bought a few months ago. I always get nervous doing that. The sensor is a very crucial and sensitive part of a digital camera. But I’ve done it with success before. It’ll be fine, and I’ll have clean images again.

Instant quote

January book of the month

A “kit lens” is a camera lens that is included with a camera when you buy it. Generally not top-of-the-line glass, kit lenses usually come in standard focal lengths and are intended to get you started with a camera quickly. My (micro four thirds format) Panasonic Lumix GX85 came with two kit lenses: a Lumix 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6 and a Lumix 45-150mm f/4-5.6. While the former has come in quite handy as an all-around daily carry zoom lens (24-64mm full-frame equivalent angle of view), the latter just hasn’t proved very useful at all, especially after I purchased the Lumix 14-140mm f/3.5-5.6. In fact, I haven’t used the 45-150mm in over two years. So yesterday I finally got off my butt and asked for an instant quote from MPB.com, the used photo gear buy/sell site based in the UK, with a branch in Brooklyn, NY. I self-rated the lens as “like new” because it really is, and got a quote of $48. For a mediocre piece of gear I’m not using, that’s not bad. I went ahead and boxed it up, printed and taped on the required shipping labels, and drove it down to our favorite shipper, Pak Mail on High St. near 13th Ave. It will go out with FedEx on Monday. Boom! Now I wait. But it’s out of the house, and that’s the main thing.

Finally got around to ordering my January “book of the month”—Mrs. R and I both allow ourselves one book per month “on the house” that doesn’t come out of our gadget funds. Ramit Sethi would call gadget funds “guilt-free spending”—an essential part of any conscious spending plan. Anyway, my January book is The Unseen Saul Leiter, edited by Margit Erb and Michael Parillo (D.A.P., 2022). Blurb quote (from the Amazon page):

Now firmly established as one of the world’s greatest photographers, Saul Leiter (1923–2013) was relatively little known until the 2006 publication of Saul Leiter: Early Color, when he was already in his eighties. Choosing to shoot in color when black and white was the norm, Leiter portrayed midcentury New York’s street life with a gorgeous painterliness that evoked the sensuality of his Abstract Expressionist contemporaries Rothko and Newman. His studio in the East Village, where he lived from 1952 until his death in 2013, is now the home of the Saul Leiter Foundation, which has commenced a full-scale survey of his more than 80,000 works. This volume contains works discovered through this project—specifically, color photography from slides never before published or seen by the public. It is edited by Margit Erb and Michael Parillo of the Saul Leiter Foundation, and is embellished with texts that describe how Leiter assembled his slide archive and how it is being catalogued and restored.

Read my friend Blake Andrews’ review of The Unseen Saul Leiter at the photo-eye blog here.

Be the flow

Yesterday, Fern Ridge Wildlife Area

I just read dangerousmeta!’s post musing on 25 years of blogging. I started my first blog in the same month—December 1999. Garret is an interesting and passionate writer. And he’s a serious guy. He gives a bit of advice in that post: “[N]ever write because you feel you have to. Never use AI to compose posts.” Hah! Guilty on both counts! ($RANDOM coin anyone?) But that’s okay. We’re different people living in different reality tunnels. I personally have no advice to give beyond breathe and be yourself (but only if you want to!).

Random notes, as they arise as thought bubbles….

Radio Free Random is apparently on a slight hiatus. There’s an area where I know I can’t force it. DJ Mr. Random will be back on the air sooner or later. Meanwhile—and I know you know, but there’s a huge archive of transmissions linked here and here and here. Yeah, you can’t chat or make requests while listening to a recording, but you can still get that magic RFR vibe, man!

The Tinycats (Griffin and Fleur) pile onto the bed every night and take up a significant number of square inches, forcing us humans into sometimes rather contorted positions to accomodate their furry little bulks. But Betty stays off the bed and usually sleeps in another room. However, last night she slept most of the night on my “nap blanket,” which is folded and placed on the bottom shelf of the bookcase next to my side of the bed. I thought I heard somebody down there in the middle of the night and reached down and felt fur. Then a loud PURR started up and went for ten minutes. Maybe that’s her overnight place now.

I made a Bluesky account yesterday just to see what the buzz was about. I probably won’t be any more active there than I am on X. Bluesky is really just “blue Twitter,” rather like a self-defined mirror image to X, I suppose—if you see X as “far-right.” Although, truthfully it just depends on who you follow. I refuse to go exclusively with one “side” or the other in the Great Bifurcation. I’m not here to fight! It’s all very interesting and indeed full of potential edutainment. One’s experiences all depend on who/what/where you are—on the role(s) you find yourself playing, on what scene(s) you happen to find yourself in. “All the world’s a stage” and all that, you know. We are going through huge cultural shifts right now, and I don’t think it’s wise to grab on to anything for dear life. I say breathe and be the flow. Thank you for reading.

Options are good

Seasonal creek, a few days ago at Mount Pisgah Arboretum

Mrs. Random has been making granola lately. I think yesterday was her third batch this year. I love it! And it gives us another breakfast option. Options are good because they allow easy avoidance of ruts. I mean, some ruts can be fine, but it’s hard to be random without the possibility of variety!

Today we go in for her pre-Keytruda blood draw and a consultation with the oncologist’s assistant, prior to tomorrow’s infusion. Yes, “chemo” is finished, but this is an “immunotherapy” drug. I mean, since it goes into her port and the infusion happens in the chemo room, it still feels like a chemo visit. But I don’t believe there are any significant side effects, which is great.

We’re still waiting for a call from the surgery scheduler for Mrs. R’s mastectomy. Last word (over a week ago) was that they were waiting to get a pre-authorization from the insurance company. Because insurance companies (and their AI algorithm robots) rule the world, of course. (Grrrr.)

How are you doing? Remember to breathe! And remember that what is inside you and beside you right now is far more real than The Spectacle out there. Thank you for reading.

Pictorial update to this morning's post

Porch Stranger's belongings, triple-bagged against easy rupture. Will she return? Or has she cut and run?

Let that crazy stuff swirl and tumble

Yesterday, I almost felt like I was going to take an extended hiatus from the blog. But then, in the evening, I posted a big bird in a tree. This morning, I still had blog doubts. But here I am. There’s no way I’m going to wade into tempestuous political waters, tempting as that might be. I’m just going to let that crazy stuff swirl and tumble without my published commentary. The only relevant realities are Here and Now, after all. And we are sitting cozily Here doing our mellow morning hangout Now. Coffee is excellently brutal. Fleur sits on her mom’s lap, Griffey’s already napping on the bed, and Betty is cruising around finishing the Tinycats’ breakfasts for them and grabbing an occasional toss of the stringtoy from me.

Monday night I was up late on the computer with earbuds in and suddenly the cats were all looking at the front door. I took out the buds and realized there was somebody on the porch. I opened the door and it was a young women with her stuff, apparently getting ready to camp. I told her she had to leave. She seemed dazed and asked if I had any socks because she didn’t have any—mind you it was close to freezing out there. I told her to wait and got a pair of my socks for her. Then she asked if I had any food. I got her a couple pieces of the leftover Track Town pizza we’d ordered for dinner. Then I told her I’d changed my mind because it was so cold—she could stay there overnight but had to leave in the morning.

Next morning she was there (I heard a cough), sleeping under a big tarp that covered both her and all her stuff. We did our morning things. Mrs. Random went shopping. I changed the cat litter boxes (“mog bogs”). Our stranger slept though until noon. Then I observed her through the window, getting up, arranging her things on the porch, in neat stacks on our porch furniture. Then after a bit she took off, backpack on, toward the east. I opened the door and called after her, “Aren’t you going to take your stuff?!” She either didn’t hear me or ignored me, and kept on walking. That was yesterday around 12:30. This morning her stuff is still out there, and she hasn’t returned. Nice people though we are, we really don’t want a stranger camping on our porch. And we don’t want somebody’s belongings abandoned there. I think I might go buy a box of big heavy duty trash bags and bag up her things—keeping them for a while in case she returns. But part of me feels like she’s moved on. Impossible to know at this point!

Great blue heron

Jan. 20, Howard Buford Recreation Area

    I've never seen one perched in a tree before. What a great hike, all sunny and bright. This was down by the river, south of the Arboretum.

Rich variety of hikes

Cottage Grove Lake, drawn down to winter level (Coast Fork Willamette River winding through)

Excuse me while I navigate around all of today’s elephants in the room. “Excuse me, pardon me, sorry”—ouch! I should have worn harder shoes.

We had a glorious sunny hike around the Cottage Grove Lake bed yesterday with our friends P & G. Wow! Nice big sky, and it’s got a much more interesting and varied topology and terrain than Fern Ridge Reservoir’s wintertime exposed bed, probably partly because a larger river curves its way through CGL—the Coast Fork Willamette. The little Long Tom runs through Fern Ridge, in a mostly straight line.

Driving to Cottage Grove was our longest trip out of town since we visited the Oregon coast (Yachats) last August. Our third longest drive in recent memory was in early November to Horse Rock Ridge out past Marcola on Shotgun Creek Road. Yeah, we don’t get out much—it’s true. But luckily for us homebodies there is a rich variety of hikes in and very close to town: Buford/Mount Pisgah, Arlie, Wild Iris Ridge, Thurston Hills, Dorris Ranch, the aforementioned Fern Ridge Wildlife Area, various Ridgeline Trail hikes, and more.

Looks like after many days of being socked in under low overcast and foggy conditions, we’ll have lots of sun for the next week or two! It’s going to be cold, but hey it’s winter!

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Visceral, physical

Fleur, in feline muse pose (Smith-Corona Galaxie Twelve in foreground)

Why typewriters? What do I use them for? Writing journal pages and writing letters—those are the two main things. My handwriting sucks, and I love to type on those mechanical beasts. It just feels good. I’m fast, too—no hunt-and-pecking for me. I can touch-type nearly as fast on a good manual typewriter as I can on a computer keyboard.

I was one of two boys among twenty-eight girls in my high school typing class. We learned on IBM Selectric II machines. I took typing rather than an advanced shop class (woodworking, welding, automotive, etc.) because I knew I’d need to type if I wanted to be a writer, which was one thing I’d entertained as a future fantasy life. Computers weren’t part of regular life in 1978, and boys weren’t encouraged to learn to type. It was almost entirely girls eyeing secretarial jobs.

When I moved here to Eugene at age 21, I brought along my mom’s electric Smith-Corona and made rent money typing term papers for University of Oregon students. Back then there were dozens of typing ads in the student newspaper (Oregon Daily Emerald). I started out advertising my services at 80 cents per page, undercutting all the other typists in the classifieds. In 1981 it was highly unlikely that a student would own a computer and printer capable of emulating typewriter print output. You either typed your own papers on a typewriter, or you hired someone. There was lots of business, especially around midterms and finals. Around 1985 I bought a Commodore-64 and letter-quality printer, and transitioned to word processing, keeping my business going through the rest of the ‘80s.

I’d owned a couple manual typewriters since the ‘90s, and used them occasionally. But it was 2017 when I really caught the bug. Richard Polt’s The Typewriter Revolution book sucked me in, and I started collecting. My collection peaked at around 40 machines within a year and a half. Then I started culling, but slowly. I think I have 27 at most recent count. This blog’s readers will be aware that I recently started a new culling phase. But I’m still an avid typewriter enthusiast, and I love typing on my typers!

Typewriters in 2025 are long free of the industrial and menial drudgery associated with office machinery. They were ousted from the workplace decades ago, starting in the early 1980s, by word processors and computers. Today they are creative tools, personal exploration devices, and just plain fun. But they do have a feature that is still not readily duplicated in modern writing devices (save pen and pencil): instant printing. Every character you type appears in print on a sheet of paper, instantly. Typewriters have another distinct advantage over computers: distraction-free writing—no internet, no apps, no required software updates, and—for manual machines—no electricity needed.

There are bloggers who use typewriters to write their entries, posting scanned typed pages to their blogs. These people make up a subset of the blogosphere called the typosphere. One of my favorites in this genre is Seldom Speedy. Kent types, scans, and posts a page every day. Another favorite typospherian is Joe Van Cleave, whose blog and YouTube channel are packed with good information and inspiration. But blogging with a typewriter isn’t my bag. I actually enjoy typing on a computer and using all the editing and formatting tools available in that realm. But for visceral, physical writing enjoyment, nothing beats a manual typewriter for me!

I don't presume to know

Twisted tree on a recent ramble

Paranoid or prudent? Whichever, I’ve decided not to be a part of the guaranteed-to-be-packed Sam Bonds’ crowd tonight for Trouble Cuts, Dan Jones & The Squids, and The Visible Men. It’s going to be fun and rockin’ I’m sure, but I don’t want to risk bringing home a bug. And to be honest, I just don’t feel like socializing in a big bunch of people packed into a small venue tonight. So there you have it.

No real bites on the typewriter yet, which I’ve now listed on Craigslist in addition to Facebook Marketplace. But I think it’s good to be patient. I’m not in any particular hurry. It’s just good to have gotten the selling process started. I can always list more typers before this one sells, if I feel like it.

I know lots of my friends are feeling like civilization as we know it is about to end in three days. I think there will definitely be changes, but collectively that’s what the country voted for, no matter how we feel individually about it. I personally have some tingly anticipation going. For sure, I’m probably not going to like or be in favor of certain things about to happen on the national and world stages, but I’m super curious (and might actually be pleasantly surprised) about the near future. I don’t think it’s good to be in fear. I want to be open to the moments as they unfold. I don’t presume to know what’s best for reality!

We here chez Random have our own rather intense set of events on the horizon to deal with, to be mentally and emotionally oriented toward. So the big picture is just going to have to take care of itself in the meantime!

Waiting to be impressed

View from inside waiting room, Summit Surgical Specialists, Jan. 15.

Typewriter up for sale! I listed my Corsair Deluxe on Facebook Marketplace last night. So far the messages are just “Is it still available?,” “I’m thinking about this beauty,” and “I get paid in five days and I want to get it then.” Selling things online is a bit fraught. Scammers, unserious people, and ghosting are definite pitfalls. I’ll do my best to avoid and shake off the baddies and wait for somebody who’s serious and wants to take a look at the machine. Local meetup in a public location, cash only. Boom, let’s do it. Once this one sells, I’ll list another one. Might do Craigslist as well. I’ve had good luck in the past selling typers on CL. I just wanted to see how FB was as a sales platform. I’m waiting to be impressed.

Today Starship 7 test launch is scheduled for 2 p.m. Pacific time. I’m excited! Hoping for a chopsticks catch of the booster. That was called off at the last minute for Starship 6—a bit disappointing. This is the first use of a Block 2 Starship, the new design, and the first test of payload deployment in orbit: 10 dummy Starlink satellites will be used for that. If SpaceX gets approval, there might be as many as 25 Starship launches this year; lots of development and testing!

Yesterday we met with Mrs. R’s surgeon and got the rundown on what to expect for her bilateral mastectomy, which will likely happen by the middle of February. It’s not going to be fun, that’s for sure. But he said main recovery should be complete within a month. The first two weeks will be the most critical (and painful). She’ll have drains installed and will need to be very careful in terms of lifting. But she can’t just lie around either: blood-clot prevention means getting out of the recliner and moving around several times a day. We are looking forward to being on the other side of this impending ordeal!

Ommmmm

The midpoint of the first month is reached. Time keeps on slippin’ slippin’ slippin’. Into the future? Well, it doesn’t exist, wherever it goes. The only real is now—even if most of the time-words refer to anything but the zero-point-moment. The instant is necessarily wordless. Ommmmm.

I enjoy the aesthetics of the big power sculptures that BPA and other transmission entities put up, many on public parklands. Or it’s the reverse actually. The powerline easements beget public lands in many cases. Much of our local Ridgeline Trail land has its existence because electricity transport originally necessitated the takeover of long strips of land. Few people want to live or farm under or near sizzling and crackling cables suspended high overhead, so lots of adjacent properties are ceded to the public for wildlands. I’m speculating. I have no referenced facts. It’s a good story in my head. It might be true. No fact-checkers were harmed (or indeed used) during the making of this blog entry.

We visit the surgeon today to consult about and set up Mrs. Random’s mastectomy. Hashtags #terrifying and #gitRdone.

Machines that no longer bring me joy

I left Smith Family Bookstore this morning with $30 in cash! They didn’t buy all the books in the box, but only a few were left. I was pleasantly surprised! My gadget fund is so happy with me that now it wants me to go through my typewriter collection and cull out machines that no longer bring me joy. In fact, I started doing just that this evening.

So far I’ve got 4 typewriters sitting in “The Empty Space” (which only remained empty for a few days after Mrs. R took down the Christmas tree)—awaiting a photo shoot and production of typing samples—to post on either Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace, or both. I haven’t decided yet. They are all ultra portables, and all of them work. Each one has an issue or two, but most typewriters do—being by definition vintage or antique items. The last decent manual typewriters were made in the early 1980s. So the youngest ones are well over 40 years old. And the best ones for typing on—the most sought after mid-century portables—are in their 60s or 70s.

What’s going on the block—as soon as I can type up print samples, take pictures, write descriptions, and decide on prices—are: an Olympia Splendid 66, a Brother Webster, and two Smith-Corona Corsairs (one pica typeface, the other elite).

By a quick mental count (they’re spread throughout the house), I’ve got 27 typewriters in my collection now (down from nearly 40 just a few years ago). Off the top of my head, there at least another half-dozen typers I could part with, but 4 is a good number for starters. I think probably 15 is the realistic minimum number of keepers to aim for at this point in my life. That’s still plenty, obviously, and will give me a variety of features and strengths for my typewriting arsenal.

Box of books

"The Greenies package says 18 per day is OK but my dad will only give me 5!"

    Later this morning I’m taking a box of books down to Smith Family Bookstore. I’ve got an appointment with one of their buyers. Normally when downsizing my book collection (a rare occurrence, to be sure), I’d just donate them to a thrift store, but this time I thought “what the heck?” and decided to see if I can get a little cash for ‘em. If the yield is good, it might encourage me to downsize more! I’ve got a fair number of cool and interesting books that I’ll likely never open again. Swedish Death Cleaning suggests getting rid of them now so that nobody has to deal with them “later.” My gadget fund would gladly accept the proceeds.

Yesterday we hiked a path on the southwestern slopes of the Thurston Hills Natural Area. I took a camera-lens combo I don’t normally use for nature and wildlife outings, but I was just wanting to use it. It had been pestering my brain for a couple days—the Lumix GX85 range-finder-style camera plus Lumix 20mm f/1.7 lens. Since that’s a micro four thirds (2X crop sensor) setup, 20mm equals about a 40 mm angle-of-view in full frame (old school 35mm film) terms, so it sits between the “nifty fifty” and standard 35mm focal lengths. I used it successfully for street photography last summer and fall. Not a birding lens, for sure, but I enjoyed getting landscapes and closeups with it yesterday. It’s very light on my neck (the 20mm is tiny), hanging from a climbing-rope style strap. And now I’m kind of chomping at the bit to get out and do some urban snapping with it, hiking the streets of nearby neighborhoods, downtown, and the university district. And maybe Glenwood and Springfield. Just four months until I qualify for “Honored Rider” status and a free LTD city bus pass! “Have camera, will ride.”

On a sign on a post

Jan. 13, Thurston Hills Natural Area

I may have run out of things to say. But hey, for inspiration, I think of my friend Peter. He has a writing practice; he writes something on Facebook every day—often after stating he’s run out of things to say—or if he doesn’t write he posts a video of himself playing guitar (the music of his people). If he can do it, so can I. Write, not play the guitar. And not on Facebook. My last post there was January 1st. A picture of a little bird, a robin. It was good as a final post. It was a robin on a signpost, in fact. Or a robin on a sign on a post.

I’m not “leaving” Facebook—just not posting. And it might not actually be final. But for now it is. I was ahead of the pack. In the last week, lots of people, upset about Zuck and the whole un-fact-checking thing, are pulling out of FB or at least SAYING that they’re pulling out. Although, there is a counter movement I just saw, something to the effect of “they are doing this shit because they want us to leave, they want to break up our communities—-so we should stay!”—something like that. So I don’t really know what the heck is happening. A Clash song comes to mind, unbidden. It’s not “I’m all lost in the supermarket…” but maybe it should be.

Remember when we didn’t have Facebook, when we didn’t even have Myspace? Hey, remember when we didn’t even have texting or email? Wait, I guess we might want to keep email (even though I know some people who never check theirs!), and maybe even texting. But fuck, don’t you think we all know too much about each other now? Just by passively consuming feeds? There are some people I used to like a lot more before I was exposed to their social media posts. Seriously.

Okay, I’ll stop those thoughts before I snowball this negativity train any further.

But I’m kind of old, I’m 64. Many young people haven’t ever even had a Facebook account (I’m told). They are somewhere else. I’m not sure where, and it doesn’t even matter. TikTok? I don’t want to know. I am happy plying my blog. Thanks for reading. :) 

We punted

Early evening here chez Random. I’m on the couch, bluetooth buds in my ears, reviewing possible near-future radio show tracks. Mrs. Random is playing a word game on her phone over in the recliner. Cats are strewn about in close vicinity to the fireplace. We punted our assumed-to-happen hike this afternoon. No reason except loss of turgor I guess. We agreed to shelve the idea until tomorrow. Mrs. R had a productive backup plan: scrubbing lower cabinet surfaces in the kitchen. Bright and shiny now! I spent the afternoon alternately napping and listening to music.

This morning was a long Radio Free Random broadcast, and I was happy to see DJ Hammy (Southampton’s own) in chat, just weeks after suffering a stroke! The part of his brain affected is what controls balance, so he’s been doing retraining and rehab and seems to be making great progress. The DJs of the (mainly UK) Mixcloud Massive group have been filling in for his Friday night and Sunday morning shows, but everybody wants him back in the saddle again soon, of course!

Another RFR-related point: I created a Google Sheet to keep track of the new subscription year’s shows, with dates, times, durations, titles, links and notes. I was motivated mainly by the desire to keep a running total of how much time I’m racking up on the air. A spreadsheet seemed the most logical. I made it shareable: click here.

Other hobbies are in the background, except for reading. I’m about 60% through the massive Against The Day by Thomas Pynchon, and it’s getting better, more interesting, as I go along. Other books have faded into the background, as sometimes happens when I get pulled immersively into the world of a particular volume. That’s where I’m at with this one right now, consuming it on various Kindles around the house, depending on where I find myself in a reading mood.

I’m hoping to be suitably energetic on Friday night: Ed Cole and his Trouble Cuts band, Dan Jones and The Squids, and The Visible Men are all playing at Sam Bond’s Garage! Only five bucks, with a reasonable start time of 9 p.m. Old school Eugene rockers from my own rockin’ heyday of the early 2000s. It’ll be a party!

Blog-talking

Rainy stroll yesterday on newly paved old Weyerhaeuser road in Thurston Hills Natural Area

Waiting for coffee to finish dripping.

I mentioned earlier in the week that TR Kelley had started a Medium account. (I actually started my own Medium account so I could “clap” for her latest post there.) Yesterday I noticed that she had made a fresh post on her Blogspot blog! Welcome back to the blogosphere, TR!

Ahhh, coffee. My morning drug. Cafeto French Roast from Bruns' Apple Market, espresso grind (in their grinder), #6 cone-dripped here at home.

While I’m blog-talking, hat-tips for regular and meaty blogging are in order for My Garden, My Life, SW Oregon Architect Emeritus, Seldom Speedy, and Mrs. Random. My new year’s wish is to see more words (and more often) from the other denizens of my sidebar! If you’re reading on a phone, I think you’ll have to change to “web view” or something like that to see said sidebar. Best blog-reading experience is on a computer browser, of course. But I know lots of people are on the go and do their online lives exclusively on mobile, for better or worse.

My Christmas gadget was an OM Systems Tough TG-7 camera, which I got mainly for its waterproofness. Having used it a few times and shot quite a lot of images now, my verdict is “meh” on picture quality. Not a good low light performer, which is unfortunate because its main use case scenario for me is (or was going to be) out in rainy weather, which tends to be rather dim, by definition! The camera must be held very steady in order to prevent motion blur. I do like a lot of its features, so it might become a sunny day carry for street photography. It’s small and good looking. Has a variety of flash and illumination modes. Logs GPS, temperature, and elevation. And it’s tough. It being a Christmas gadget, I didn’t spend my own gadget fund money on it, so there’s that. Would I get it again knowing what I know now? Probably not. But I’ll make the best of it and find ways to use it!