On To Happier Things...

I've been making some progress on transcribing my old paper journals into a blog format. I'm up to mid-1992 or so, and I've gone through 2 1/2 notebooks. It's a big job and it's going to take months and months if I try to do them all -- and I'm still undecided about that. But it's been fun and I've happily reminded myself of details of some good times that I had long forgotten -- and I've happily edited out some venting that I'd rather not remember.

The end game, I think, is going to be to keep all that writing online and make one book out of it, just for myself, so that I have a hard copy (for when the apocalypse comes and the Internet no longer works). I'm still undecided about whether to make the blog public. That writing seems like a lot of inside baseball. I'm not sure anyone would understand it, or care, except me.

I also have to put together a selection of photos for another Royal Photographic Society project. For about a year I've been photographing barber shops and hair salons, with an eye toward showing how they represent the diversity of the communities they serve and the city as a whole -- fancy salons in fancy areas, ethnic salons in more diverse neighborhoods, that kind of thing. It's time to pony up some pictures, so I'm going to be working on those this weekend.

I'd considered going into a barber shop and asking to photograph the barbers and the customers, but I never did. I just couldn't bring myself to be that intrusive. Besides, being bald as a cue ball, I am the least likely person to need a barber shop, so I don't have a relationship with any barbers, you know? My photos are all storefronts, which is kind of my thing anyway.

Here's a completely gratuitous picture of Olga sleeping on our pillows. She has figured out that the best way to sleep is with her body beneath the covers and her head poking out, just like a person. If she can get her head on a pillow, all the better. She's a smart girl.

And here's our latest dog-walking find. Someone had set it out with their trash, and yet I'm pretty sure it's silver -- probably silverplate, but still. The bottom is a wooden disc. It looks like a vase for a dried arrangement, or for kitchen utensils, maybe? I have no idea. It may go to a charity shop, but I thought it was worth rescuing from the garbage, at least.

(Top photo: A guy playing a street piano outside a train station in South London, two weeks ago. He had a lot of sheet music with him and it looked like his regular practicing spot. He sounded great!)