Meet-Your-Neighbors Night

If they’re playing loud music in the park, it must be Tuesday. This is meet-your-neighbors evening in my little neighborhood. Come to the park and get goodies to eat and goodies to read. Be invited to attend the church up the street, pick up a Crimestoppers pamphlet, or learn How to Prepare Your Home For … something (hurricane? flood? terrorist attack?). Let your child get her face painted and get a free, green Walgreens frisbee (green seems like the one color a frisbee shouldn’t be) or a Walgreens carry bag (it’s green, too). It’s that kind of deal at the park tonight.

The loud music was provided by a National Guard Humvee equipped with some big speakers. Note the airbrushed pictures on the doors.

The October sun has set (it’s only 7:30 PM but it’s already dark). I step outside my front door, point my camera at the park, and shoot a 5 second exposure with moderate zoom. A car about to enter the frame from the right illuminates the street and a parked car; a generator-powered light tower illuminates a portion of the park:

This is a small rehearsal for Halloween night, when the park will be filled with people in costumes, parked cars will line the streets around the park, and there will be stuff for the kids … a best-costume contest, a haunted house, more free goodies to eat and drink. At least, that’s what usually happens. With this economy, there are no guarantees.

10 Tip-offs That Fall May Be Coming

Before the leaves change color and fall off the trees, here are 10 tip-offs that Fall may be just around the corner.

1. It doesn’t occur to you to turn on the air conditioner.

2. You close the windows at night.

3. You don’t worry that using the oven will heat up the house.

4. You point a small space heater at your legs while watching TV.

5. You let the small space heater run all night.

6. You haven’t mowed your grass in three weeks and it looks OK.

7. You throw a blanket over the sheet you’ve been sleeping under.

8. You take your daily walk before the evening news instead of after, so you can walk in daylight.

9. You find yourself wondering if the furnace needs maintenance.

10. For loungeware, you dig out that warm-up suit you packed away last spring.

Saturday Night, Late

Listening to Naja Rosa. I like this gal’s voice. She’s Danish. I think.

Listen to When The Smoke Clears – switch to 720p, full screen.

Listen to The City.

New Camera

I picked up a new digital camera this morning to replace my old digital camera, which still worked but had become a real battery-eater. The new camera, although inexpensive, is day-and-night different from the old one. It even has a you-better-believe-this-camera-is-smarter-than-you shooting mode.

After leaving Walmart I took a side trip to Roslyn Landing to shoot some test shots. Later I went to the Bee, where Stephanie was bartending. The cell phone photo I posted previously was so low quality that I took a new photo. She was nice enough to pause for a few seconds so I could take her picture. Still shooting into the light without flash, though.

Stephanie

Shounta (pronounced shan-tay) is another bartender/waitress who works very hard and seems to have boundless energy (if I had half her energy I could get this house in shape):

Shounta
Both these ladies claim that cameras don’t like them, an obviously bogus claim. If you want to see someone who’s not photogenic, you only have to look at a picture of me. Why, even when I look at a picture of me, I want to say “They let this guy run around by himself?” In my photos I look demented, and that’s on a good day!

The Forecast Is Sunny

Yesterday morning, only 24 hours ago, the NWS (National Weather Service) predicted today’s weather would look like this:

But now, only 24 hours later, the NWS says today’s weather will look like this:

I have to ask, how useful was yesterday’s prediction? And how many super-computers running how many weather models did it take to fail at this prediction?

I’m going to make my own weather prediction. Here it is: “Tomorrow will be sunny.” You can print it right now and put it in your pocket. Whenever you want to know tomorrow’s forecast, just pull it out of your pocket and read it: “Sunny.”

Of course, there will be days when the forecast is wrong — just like with the NWS forecast — but I’ll bet it will be right more often than not. And there are advantages to doing it this way. I don’t have to buy and maintain high-powered super-computers running fancy models of the weather nor pay a staff of meteorologists and programmers. Another advantage: you don’t have to go to a computer and look up my forecast on the Internet to know what it will be; it’s right there in your pocket: “Sunny.”

And one day when the piece of paper holding my forecast becomes worn and tattered and you throw it away, you can continue on your way with my “virtual forecast” living in your head for quick and easy reference: “Tomorrow will be sunny.”

Try to remember my forecast, especially on gloomy days. Tomorrow will be sunny.

Double Yolk Day

I started the day with a double yolk egg for breakfast; quick, grab the camera, I have to document this for my blog. Two … two … two eggs in one!

In olden days, finding a double-yolk egg was thought to bring good luck. But this is the 21st century. Nowadays we know it’s more likely the egg farm is just too close to a nuclear plant.

Gus

There are two VirtualWaynes: daytime VW and nighttime VW. They are very different. Now it’s 8:30 PM, and nighttime VW thinks this is a good time to repost this blog entry from 1999.

Life is a Journey

As I walked a nearby avenue, I came upon a house with a handicap ramp leading from the street to the front door. At the beginning of the ramp was a little plaque. It was at eye level, if your eyes were in a wheelchair. Inscribed upon it were inspirational messages like “Seize the day” and “Live your dreams”. In the center was the largest message: “Life is a journey.”

Life is a journey: a journey that doesn’t require an airplane, a bus, a train, or an RV; a journey you can make in a jail cell, in a monastic cell, even in a wheelchair. 

Most of us don’t know where we’re going and haven’t thought much about where we’ve come from. We may be vaguely aware that as time goes by we change, or are changed. We become different people than we once were. We know that a “that was then, this is now” kind of evolution is happening to us. But how does knowing that help us?

I hear all of you out there: “Tell us, VirtualWayne, what is our life’s journey? Where are we going? What is our destination? What is our purpose in life?”

Calm down, dear readers. I, VirtualWayne, have an answer for you.

The purpose of your life’s journey is to make you a polished diamond. Right now, you’re a diamond in the rough. Some of us are very rough; you’d never guess there was a diamond inside. Some of us are fortunate to have a few shining facets. But regardless, life’s purpose is to make glittering, polished diamonds of each of us. Let me say that again: Life’s purpose is to make us perfect, transparent, multi-faceted diamonds, filled with fire and shining with brilliance. That’s what life is trying to do for us. Most of us have a long, long way to go.

Have you seen how a rock collector polishes rocks to bring out their inner beauty? He uses a rock tumbler. Plain-looking rocks are placed in it, water and abrasive grit are added, and the rocks are tumbled for days. Then the grit is replaced by finer grit and the rocks are again tumbled for days. The process repeats with progressively finer abrasive. From one day to the next, the rocks hardly change in appearance; it appears nothing much is happening. But after a month or more of tumbling against rocks and grit, the rocks are removed from the tumbler. Now they are smooth. They are polished. Their beauty is revealed. Even diamonds require an abrasive to become polished: the abrasive is diamond dust, the hardest abrasive of all.

Trials and tribulations: grit and diamond dust.

Never beat yourself up for not being perfect. If you were perfect, you wouldn’t need to be here in this rock tumbler with the rest of us. And know that your life’s journey is slowly changing you in ways that will ultimately reveal you.

Nancy

In 1999 I had a personal website where I maintained a blog about the customers and waitstaff of a restaurant I frequented then. One of my blog posts was about a conversation I had with Nancy, a bartender there. I am reposting it here.

Sunday Morning 9 AM

When I rolled out of bed at 7:30 it was 72°, sunny, and a little breezy. I left for my morning walk through the ‘hood at 9:17 AM. Immediately my name was called out by my neighbor Butch. Butch is an old guy who lives a short way up the street. Although, as it turns out, he is actually younger than me. So he says. How can an old guy be younger than me, The Kid? He’s probably lying about his age. People are so vain. I never lie about my age. I’ll admit to anyone that I’m 39. I am 39. Trust me.

Soon I walk past Violet Bank and the Cucumber Tree.  Violet Bank is a museum now, but once upon a time it was someone’s home. People actually lived in this big house that looks vaguely like a government building. The architectural style is called “Federal”. The house was built around 1815 to replace an earlier house that was destroyed by fire.

During the Civil War (sometimes referred to in the South as the “Recent Unpleasantness”), General Robert E. Lee made Violet Bank his headquarters for a time. It is said that from Violet Bank he heard the explosion that created The Crater. (For history buffs, see Battle of the Crater.)

In the front yard of this building called Violet Bank is the locally famous Cucumber Tree. The actual botanical name for this tree is Magnolia Acuminata, which is Latin meaning “Big and Gnarly”. Well okay, I don’t really know what it means, but that’s what it should mean.

The tree was planted in 1718, and despite its name, it does not have cucumbers sprouting from its limbs. (In fact, cucumbers grow on vines, not trees.) It is also called a Blue Magnolia, although once again I must point out that the tree is not now, nor has it ever been, blue. Not even a little bit blue. Not even bluish. So who’s in charge of naming these things? Probably somebody in the government.

I turned up Arlington Avenue, a short and pretty street. Soon I was at the CVS drugstore, which I entered to peruse the magazines (and ended up buying a copy of Scientific American). The checkout gal was an attractive and personable woman name Kaye, and we engaged in a little checkout banter.

I left and continued home. Now I’m blogging about – well, basically nothing – and yet you’re still with me, so I must be getting good at writing about nothing. If only I could monetize that skill.