So retro

Here we are in early 2022, with the first month nearly over. Time is still zooming by. And I don't mean that in reference to Zoom calls. 

In my spare moments I'm chewing through a thick book about aging and delaying the consequences thereof.  There's good bits, but it isn't (so far) quite what I thought it would be. The next couple books after that are not so thick. I'll probably blog about them all, stay tuned.

We like putting things on hold at the library, and it's like a birthday when they actually come in. Some of them take a really long time. We waited nearly a year each for Good Omens and American Gods. I was sure I'd watched a bit of Veronica Mars from 2004 on one of the streaming services, but then I couldn't find it later when both of us wanted to try it out. This was mainly on the strength of The Good Place. So we put it on hold and it actually came in pretty quickly. We're halfway through the first season. All I can say is her character is one talented 'kid'. Normally I have no interest in shows involving high school, and a few times with this I'm rolling my eyes, but there's some good lines.

What was I doing in 2004 when it was on air? I was still new at Skystone.  It was my first salaried permanent job (or as  permanent as jobs get in oil and gas) and was hustling hard to make a good impression. I'd spent much of the 90's as a long term temp for Nova, then Amoco, then BP Amoco (pronounced BP, the Amoco is silent), then BP. At the time we didn't have cable TV and still don't. I don't think we'd even bought our plasma TV and first DVD player.  Certainly keeping track of current TV shows was not on my radar.

One of the fun things about watching older shows is the technology on display. How quickly things change! VM is all about the flip phones, and how quaint they seem now. VM's camera gear looks surprisingly good for early digital, though the one scene was mirror imaged so it looked like she was shooting the camera left handed. Yes, I've been known to pause and rewind to see what camera or lens is being used in a scene. Nobody complaining about guys being in the girls bathroom she seems to use like an office makes me wonder a bit, considering how wound up they are about other stuff.

We have to binge the series because Mad Men is in transit to our library. I've had that one on hold since forever. No idea if I'll like it, but lots of people say it's really good. We're looking forward to seeing one of the actors from Good Omens, and another from Elementary, show up. I like playing the game of seeing someone in a show, and trying to remember where I've seen them before. Which sometimes leads to a bit of a mind snap, if they're spaced out, and we saw the later one first. Like Kristen Bell first in The Good Place, then Veronica Mars.

In more recent viewing (see Of the Day below), the film camera was in Empress, SK, during the trip to Oyen. We were there for a bathroom break, and to see what was there. There isn't much to see. Standing in the middle of main street for a while to take the two photos was not a problem, even taking the time to play with the settings and focuss.

As I look at the two Empress photos, I could believe the community hall is still in use. However the hardware store across the road is not and has not been for some time. Someone owned it. Do they still have to pay business taxes? Or did the owner die and not leave it to anyone and the town owns it now? Presumably there's a story there.

I was out yesterday along Fish Creek and found some nice reflections and river scenes, one of which I hope made it's way onto film. I'm going to be trying to get out with the film camera more regularly. From an earlier walk I found this bit of fungus and spent some time figuring out how to get this shot. I had the film camera with me, but seeing how many digital shots it took and still not being sure it worked, I didn't even try. 

Of the Day

Driftwood

Peony

Lily

Film, both lightly edited. I've decided that since back in the day, people making prints from negatives edited their work through burning and dodging and other tricks, I think it's fair to tweak my film photos. However, I'm not going all out on this.