Taco Taste Testing

It only took sixty years but I've become a lover of tacos. I always thought that a typical taco was the taco bell variety offering. (What a naïve fool I was!) Then one day I was turned onto the fact that real tacos don't include cheese. (Which.... brace yourself .... I dislike intensely.) I've discovered that minus the cheese and made by real actual Mexican folks, I love all the varying takes on the taco. (Well I'm not really gaga about the green salsa.) Now I'm on a sacred maniacal mission to find and experience the ultimate taco. And Salem/Keizer has no shortage of places for experimental excursions. So I've been attempting to make up for all that lost time. I may even try making my own!!

Late For The Sky

So typical of me. A rare early morning, out-and-about with a definite mission in mind. Driving country roads seeking a prime viewing and photo shooting location. A spot free of roof tops, phone and electric wires and hopefully with mountains in the background. In search of a sunrise featuring a ball of flames enhanced and rendered naked eye view-able by lingering smoke from forest fires east of me. A half hour after the scheduled sunrise time, in total frustration I give up, convinced that the sun is not going to appear until the heavy morning haze burns off. I'm one left turn away from home when I take a final glance in the rear view mirror .... AND THERE IT IS!! A beautiful awe-inspiring bright red-orange. By the time I can turn around and find a clear unobstructed view, it's too damn late. It's risen too high in the sky and lost much of its red-orange majestic brilliance and is too bright to gaze at or to point an expensive camera lens at.

Like the title of the classic Jackson Browne song .... I'm once again "Late For The Sky." It seems to be my specialty with the camera, being tardy. It's one of those things where you're granted five minutes or less of pure beauty, then it fades away!

A modest person would have been embarrassed and blushed by the words coming out of my sudden foul mouth.

Mission not accomplished! But with bottomless hope and anticipation I'll reset my alarm clock and attempt to catch the next one.

Late Evening Thoughts

It seems that I've lost most of my social skills since my last attempt at a relationship failed. Something difficult to admit.

Sometimes it's just easier to stay away from any possibility of one more heartbreak. One never develops an immunity to that.

But even that is not without consequences. Apparently you need some interaction with others to keep those social skills alive and well. It may be cliché but .... don't use them, you lose them.

Sometimes it seems like it's all in a free-fall decline that you're helpless to reverse or slow down.

How much all of this has to do with turning sixty, I don't know. Sixty has been the identifiable point for multiple changes in my life outlook and attitudes.

Advanced Problem Solving

There's gotta be a better way to do this???

A production process that once in full motion, takes over an hour to see any change if things go wrong. The only thing you can do is hope to catch the early downward trends and warning signs. Because if you go to sleep on the negative indicators, you're really royally screwed.

You don't want to be overly cautious and overreact too early but you don't want to wait too long either.

There ought to be some sort of master override that just stops everything where it's at until the issue can be addressed. But even then, sometimes the fix can't be effected (affected?) until everything contributing to the problem is cleared out of the way. So there's a wasted hour or more of production.

Eclipse!!!

So a ordinary minor occurrence known as a total solar eclipse happened yesterday. The second one that I’ve been fortunate enough to witness in my lifetime. If you’ve never seen one, you really should.

If you measured an events status by the level of awesomeness per each second of its length, it’s probably number one ranking-wise, on the charts of possible events that you might observe in a lifetime. At least in my humble opinion. Awesomeness!!! ..... That's not just the feelings solely of scientific nerds and geeks but just about everyone I've talked to.

Thirty minutes before “totality” I put on my eclipse glasses. They didn’t fit too well over my bi-focals but I hadn’t seen anyone selling clip-ons so they had to suffice. Struggling to keep them in place, I glanced at the sky. There was an brilliant orange ball surrounded by the blackest shade of blackness with an increasingly encroaching slice of moonshadow moving in its path. More glances, then suddenly “totality.” I took a naked eye gaze or two before getting busy with my camera. I had read somewhere that a person shouldn’t waste the experience away taking photos. That they should just relax and take it all in its “totality” but damnit, I wanted pictures!! That’s what I live for these days.

In the brief moments of dusk prior to “totality,” the sun and moon produced a semi-eerie color in the atmospheric surroundings that I’ve never seen before. A mix of blue, gray and charcoal that initially had me wondering if I had stared at the sun for too long with faulty spectacles.

Leading up to it all, I was getting a little annoyed by the number of times I heard the word “totality” used but then it happened and suddenly there I was, standing there, at totality loss to utter or write a better word.

Hours earlier, the local shopping center sprawl was packed with cars at 7:00am. Mostly out-of-state eclipse gawkers securing a spot to put down temporary roots and gaze skyward. Almost like a massive visiting team, beer and Bar-B-Q tailgating event. A ton of Washington plates and a fair share of California plates. Had you not been paying attention to the news for the past few weeks, you might have thought that the U of Washington Huskies and USC Trojans were playing a football game at the adjacent minor league baseball stadium. Very few natives there. I wanted to scream at the foreigners to clear way for me to pass by! That this is my sacred home turf!!! And to enjoy our lack of sales tax.

I couldn’t help but think at one point before the actual visual was all so obviously set in motion …. What if they got the slide rule calculations wrong and it was really happening next month? My pessimistic side I suppose.

Outside the main gate of my place of employment is a designated “park and share” carpooling gathering location. While not huge in acreage, it was packed with four or five times the usual amount of cars (and lawn chairs), with more people flocking across the I-5 overpass on foot, like pilgrims making a once-in-a-lifetime visit to a sacred shrine  … but just more tourists securing a prime viewing spot.

….. And I guess for many a total solar eclipse is a once-in-a-lifetime event which is why I feel so lucky to have lived through two of them  …. and to be armed with my eclipse glasses and camera this time around …. Which I didn’t have in 1979.

At the risk of making it a less unique and awesome event, I’d vote to have another one tomorrow.

Solar Eclipse Eve Walk In the Park

It's total solar eclipse eve here in the path of totality. About twelve hours away as I type. Been looking for signs of the forcasted public insanity but have seen very little save for possibly a few extra souls walking in the park for a Sunday evening.

Spoke with a guy for a bit who appeared to be a professional photographer .... or at least a well educated photographer. He was telling me about his frustrations at attempts to capture a certain image that he wants. A pretty one sided conversation as I was mostly listening, hoping to pick up a few tips and wisdom and he was speaking a language I don't remotely comprehend at this point .... camera talk.