I don’t have a lot of time this weekend – I have, for one reason and another, been spending a lot of time with Four this weekend and in two hours, she will be arriving again for another overnight. School / work day overnights are a work in progress, sigh. Anyway! Some news!

I entered a couple of photographs into the Astoria Downtown Historical District annual photo show, not expecting much. This photo, however, won for Quirky category (imagine a whole row of hilariously laughing emoji here) and for Best in Show. I am somewhat chuffed. I took this on my old plastic lomo fisheye. Gods I love toy cameras.

It will be on display along with all the other winning photos at Sisu brewery starting at the April artwalk on Saturday, April 11. Come and see it! I will be there drinking! Say hello!

I am trying to remember what I called it. Revenge of the Cat People or something like that. It’s from the 2024 Regatta Parade and the Big Heads people, of whom I was one briefly in like 2020 or something. I made a plague doctor head but didn’t think the whole thing through very well and as a result ended up trying to walk around downtown while 1) blind and 2) wrapped in multiple yards of black fleece that kept trying to trip me. As a result I lagged far behind the rest of the parade and eventually, was just a lone plague doctor stumbling down the sidewalk. As one does.

And now, the photos. I forgot to do this part last week and I might go back and do it because this is, after all, a photo a day project. I swear. Last Sunday was a rainy day and that’s the obligatory dog walk at the sawmill trail in Warrenton.

Monday was one of those days where it was foggy and raining and then suddenly sunny and amazing, so I walked home from work by this hollow tree in hilltop cemetery. On Monday the palliative care nurse came by as she does more or less monthly to check on my brother and chat with all of us, so I woke up early and cleaned like a maniac. I need to have more people over; my house would be cleaner. On Tuesday it was foggy again and that’s the back parking lot at work. It was once a quarry, hence the looming cliff.

Wednesday’s dog walk was on what I call the illegal trail, which is the old road that runs along next to the nice trail by the airport. You know, the one with the No Trespassing signs which I have never, ever seen, officer. We can’t go to the nice trail because it’s lovely and fenced in and sane dogs often run loose there. Harvey is too obsessed by other dogs to run loose anywhere in these days of many many dogs, so we sadly march along the illegal trail. This is one of the things that depresses me. It’s not that he’s aggressive, exactly – it’s that, I kid you not, he is passive aggressive. He becomes completely obsessed and will not leave the other dog alone, just bugging him, bugging him, bugging him – until that dog finally snaps at him at which point he goes ham. It’s incredibly annoying for everyone concerned.

Thursday it poured and poured all day and Mr. Binks got to play with the old iPad. By Thursday Monday’s vacuuming was a just a dream inside an illusion, as you can see. You can also see that one of the rules of photography, foolishly broken here, is to never ever take a picture of your baseboard. My five year old iPad developed a cracked screen so, upon finding the cost of a new screen I ordered a new to me refurbished four year old iPad. My reasoning went something like this: I could get a refurbished same gen iPad for only $50 more! So I should do that! But wouldn’t it make more sense to get a newer one for only $100 more? Why yes! Why no. No it did not and this sort of thing is one of the reasons I’m so damn poor. However, it arrived, my son got it working, and thus I replaced the kitchen iPad, which is about ten to twelve years old, with my old one on the theory that being mounted on the wall would keep the cracked screen from fully disintegrating. And Mr. Binks got the old old one, which even Four does not want because it’s too old to run pokpok. Do you know when I was a kid we . . . didn’t have tablets but TVs lasted, essentially, forever. When I went to college my mom gave me a TV from my childhood and I suspect it’s still working somewhere in the back of a Charleston thrift shop even though we messed up the color turning Ronald Reagan bright green during some state of the union in the 80s. It was too heavy to ever move again anyway. It might still be in that apartment. Grumble, grumble, I am old.

On Friday it was horrible in the morning and lovely in the evening. Harvey came to work with me for the afternoon and after work I took him for a quick jaunt on the riverwalk before buying frozen pizzas for dinner at Safeway. I swear to god I don’t know how much longer I can make dinner every night for a 77 year old with no teeth, a four year old with extremely specific tastes – she likes french fries, pizza and chicken nuggets – a radical anarchist vegan and me, who will eat basically anything except meat. I am so over it. I am so tired, y’all.

Saturday, which was yesterday, I tried yet again to do an image transfer on the gelli plate and I failed yet again, but I did manage this weird little monoprint, so I feel it was a success all in all.

The frozen pizza was amazing although somehow the kitchen still got trashed. See you next Sunday!