Huh -- just saw a gay tourism ad for Key West. I would say, wouldn't anyone who would want to go there already know about it, but I guess that's the same thing with Disney, and they advertise a ton.

Burrell, would you like me to take a look at it? In my newspaper days, I wrote many obits.

Cue the Mary Tyler Moore Show ep of Mary and Rhoda drunkenly updating the station obit file.

My work has been dealing since yesterday afternoon with various members of a group of 10 people who are going to China on 11/22 (yes, folks, in less than 2 weeks) and need passports and visas. We accept passport applications at work - with the time frame these people have, we require 1-hour appointments to do a special hand-carry application that goes via a 3rd party expediter. We are largely booked up for tomorrow already (we make appointments from 3pm on and take walk-ins 9-2:30) and I am so dreading working with these people when they actually start turning up all day tomorrow. All of the people I have talked to have uptalking very young woman voices. I should start an office pool about how many of them will be missing vital parts of the application and/or forget their checkbooks. When our Head Passport Guy talked to them yesterday, apparently they don't even have plane tickets yet (which are required to do a hand-carry passport; you have to have a valid travel itinerary showing you leave in less than 2 weeks.) I also feel like calling the nearest Chinese consulate to warn them now.

I started as a newspaper reporter back when newspapers wrote obits of everyone. As soon as I got in at 8 a.m., I had the thrill of calling people whose loved ones had just died. It was excellent training, but sometimes wrenching.

Is it healthy to fall in love with a lens? I don't know if I've shot with anything else since I got my 50mm lens. It just...it drinks up the light. I've been shooting with it wide open and wrestling with focus (I think I won that time, but it's close, damned close) and loving the hell out of it. I think it's the only thing making my self portrait project bearable, even though it fucks framing all to hell with the framing inflexibility you get with a fixed focal length lens.

I guess my next lens should be something nice and wide, like 28mm--wait, what's the 28mm of the digital SLR world again? I keep messing up the conversions.

I'm watching "Jeeves & Wooster" as I work, and curiosity about Bertie's family tree took me to Wikipedia. Perusing the article, I stumbled upon a reference to "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier" and a story called What Ho, Gods of the Abyss.

Must find this.

All the windows in my house have now been cleaned, inside and out. Well, except for the basement ones. And the front door and door on the second floor. Fine. 70%. Was a shitton of work and no idea what possessed me.

I stumbled upon a reference to "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier" and a story called What Ho, Gods of the Abyss.

Alan Moore! When we first got our copy, Pete read that story to me and did all the voices. It was delightful.

sara, that sounds like a lot of cleaning.

I processed 5 pumpkins, creating 9 lbs of pumpkin puree! I froze 8 lbs and tomorrow I will make pumpkin bread. But you cannot believe the mess it made -- I ended up having to do all the dishes and then mop the floor. Blargh.

My swim this afternoon sucked. I love going back to my regular schedule at 5:30 in the AM.