solo contendere

11.2.98

Beginning tomorrow, I get to be the Big Boss Daddio, to steal a moniker from Scoop, as Viv will be off in Utah on business for a few days. This means I'll be invoking the Lone Parent Clause, which gives me full authority over scheduling, meal method determination (pizza off a paper towel, cereal from the box, etc.), and dress discretion (yes, Amy, red socks do go with a blue shirt). I take being a benevolent monarch seriously, so I enjoy these stints as the sole parent. It's the only time I can stand on the front porch and do that little backhand parade wave and have it really mean something. The neighborhood likes it too, judging from all the honks.

My plan during this period is to develop those rolls of film I've been neglecting, and to print the best shots. I've got at least a dozen rolls, mostly T-Max 400's, with a few 3200's pushed to 6400, and some 100's as well. Though I do like to keep my developing concurrent with my shooting, there's a delight to discovering film shot in places I'd forgotten. This makes inhabiting the darkroom after a lag all the more enjoyable.

For about a week now I've been fighting a cold, at least I think it's a cold, but it never really settled in. It started as it usually does, with a sore throat, but it didn't advance, the malady just lingered on instead to neutralize all enthusiasm and planning. In the past I've been so completely floored by viruses that now when they creep in I'm prepared to drop everything and implode into a sore gurgling lump. But I haven't sorely gurgled for many months now, and the few viral attempts to bore through my well-being have been thwarted, proof positive that clean living, strong moral fiber, and a lack of humility can render a man impervious to microbes.

So for the next few days I'll be spending less time here in my underground lair, trading wordplay for lightplay in the darkroom. Viv says someday I'm going to emerge from one of my little chambers having lost all pigment, a little mole-man, blind and moist.

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Today's Music:

"To Itch His Own" -- Carl Stalling -- THE CARL STALLING PROJECT: MUSIC FROM THE WB CARTOONS 1936-1958

Wisdom of the Day:

"Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable."

- John Kenneth Galbraith, Ambassador's Journal