I'm ready to go back to the world, please. No more fuzzy headed than usual, all my functions seem in place and I'd like to set out and shoot some pictures somewhere not in this apartment. Somewhere not in the back yard. Somewhere not out front on the sidewalk. After I take a nap in the closet.

I went into the office this morning around 7:30 to back up two of the company internal web sites and transfer them to a CD ROM so I can work on them here at home. Backed up apersonalsite.com as well in case a meteor should strike my ISP at the exact same moment that my hard drive should fail, a mathematical certainty if I'm careless and take no action over the next ten thousand millenium millenniums. There are signs that I am returning to a more normal existence, signs, maybe, I'm ready for solid food and an alcoholic beverage. One of the signs being "what in the fuck am I doing at work on a Sunday morning?"

A brief aside: Amazon.com sent me the used copy of Eve Babitz' L. A. Woman that I've been waiting for and reading the first few paragraphs have reminded me why I love the woman. OK, the writing, the writing, but Babitz is a favorite and this is a book I've been looking forward to reading.

I say that I'm ready to go back to work, but these next four days here at the house before they cut the wire holding my teeth together on Thursday will be appreciated. I made a list of things to accomplish over the next three months to see if the time I've had to think while lying in bed staring at the ceiling has had any benefit.

Thursday (after teeth) I start cooking a proper dinner in the evening. Three months. See if I can do it. Nothing elaborate, but I have the equipment and the minimum skill to prepare some simple meals that shouldn't be too complicated to make, get me involved in my evenings again, something other than the microwave and a frozen lump of lasagne. Sleep apnea, the thing this jaw operation should cure, will make you forever tired, even when you think you're sleeping enough hours, so you lose whole parts of your life to sloth and television. I'll be curious to see how that changes over these next three months or if, sleep apnea or not, I've lost my evenings. I have two new books on the preparation of chicken. Fortuitous. Nutritious. I'll make notes.

Another (what, resolution?) is to go out and buy two pair of pants, two decent shirts and another pair of shoes. If this seems a modest, um, set of barriers to jump, well, maybe that means I'll do them. I had a friend who said any day he was able to get out of bed and tie his own shoes was a good day. He said that seriously and I heard him seriously and I've always remembered it. If you tie your shoes you're allowed to smile. For some things the lower the barrier the better.

I've run some of the pictures I took at the Easter party in the Castro. For some reason I used Fuji Velvia (a professional color slide film) to shoot most of the color. Velvia is a very high saturation film (very bright, very deep color) that doesn't work all that well in high contrast situations. Thomas upstairs said they used it almost exclusively in the studio where they could control the overall contrast needed to shoot a picture. It's very good in fashion photography, but not that great out in the bright sun (on Castro on Easter). Better to use it when its overcast and use the Kodak Ektachrome in the sun. So the photographs I got weren't what they should have been.

I've decided for the rest of this year I am going to use a total of five films for all my shooting. For color, Ektachrome 100s and E200 for color slide, Kodak TMAX 400 and 100 for black and white shooting. I'll try the Fuji NPS for color negatives when I need prints, since everyone says its much better than the professional Vericolor III I've had success with and fill in with the Velvia when its cloudy.