My brain is being difficult again (plus a shopping cart)

I am having trouble motivating myself to write about whatever on this blog. I’m not sure exactly what causes this occasional ennui. Ironically, “ennui” is kind of fun to say out loud.

The weird part is years ago I gave myself permission to post anything here, so it’s not like I’m waiting until I have something important to say. The dozens of cat pics are testament to that.

I’ve looked through some recent photos I’ve taken and here’s one I haven’t posted from my shopping cart oeuvre1this is a word I can never spell correctly without looking it up first:

I like the juxtaposition of all the various objects, plus the blurry vehicle whizzing by.

There, ennui defeated by shopping cart. I take my victories where I can.

All the clothing we leave behind (not a U2 album)

I am mildly fascinated1Can one be mildly fascinated by something? I say yes. by how often when I go out birding or for a walk along a trail, I will find a random piece of clothing–a cap, or a glove (almost always just a single glove), a shoe (yes, usually a single shoe, too), sometimes a jacket and occasionally, a pair of pants, any of these, stuck to a branch, or laying on the ground. And I wonder, how did these things get left behind?

With some clothing, I can imagine various scenarios. For example, you might take off a glove to do something a glove interferes with, like using a smartphone, so you take it off, set it down, then wander off while still using the phone. By the time you remember the glove, you’ve travelled far enough to ask yourself, “Is it worth going back for?” and decide no, it isn’t. And so the glove stays in its new home, until it gets absconded by a crow or returns to the earth (in 500 years or something).

I am less certain about how pants get abandoned.

But here is a photo of a glove left on the railing of the 1001 Steps staircase in south Surrey, taken on February 10th. I converted it to black and white to artsy it up.

A glowing skull from Disneyland

…is a title I never thought I would use for a blog post. But here we are! It was a busy day and I didn’t take any photos outdoors, but I always take a photo of something, so today it was the glow-in-the-dark skull I bought at Disneyland over 40 years ago. It still glows in the dark, too.

I’m not sure why I bought it. I think it was $8 or $9, which was actually decent money back in the early 80s. And it was heavy. If I remember correctly, I bought it at the end of the evening, so only had to carry it to the parking lot. I was no dumb kid. At least not when it came to transporting heavy, glow-in-the-dark skulls.

Abstract photography or what you do when you run out of time

I have an arbitrary rule that I must take at least one photo a day. It’s just a silly little challenge and most days I usually get a scenery shot or sometimes, if I’m feeling fancy, a bird.

But some days, like today, I either don’t go out, or just plain forget, and that’s when I have to get creative, because I’ll never just take a selfie (ugh) or a shot of whatever is in front of me, I need to at least make something out of it.

An extreme close-up of my Blue Yeti microphone:

And a top-down view of the same microphone:

The other objects seen: USB backup drive, USB connector for a wireless mouse, a yellow model of an AMC Pacer, a toothpick, some keys, and a coaster.