Lost in the Light Bulb Aisle

Wow, did I sleep in this morning -- until 7:45 a.m., which is ridiculously late for me. It felt great. I was really dragging this week, partly from jet lag, and I feel like now I may finally be past it.

I sat down last night and played around with Lightroom. Above is one of my first photo editing efforts. It's not quite right -- still too dark, though I want it dark around the sides, and the guy's feet are too close to the edge of the frame. But still, Lightroom is pleasant to use and pretty intuitive. In some ways it's like the old iPhoto, with similar slider controls and adjustments. A promising beginning, I'd say.

I took that picture yesterday evening at a local shopping center where I went to buy light bulbs. (I had to replace the ones destroyed by our poltergeist.) Why is buying a light bulb such a ridiculously complicated task? You should see the assortment. Here in England they seem even more bewildering than they do in the states, though that may be due to my own unfamiliarity with British voltage requirements and that kind of thing.

In what must surely be a hallmark of middle age, I once again found myself completely stumped without reading glasses. I was trying to read the specifications printed on the bulbs, but that writing is so tiny. I had to hand the bulb to a young, bearded sales assistant and have him tell me what it said. I still wound up buying one incorrect bulb, which I have to take back today.

I spent much of yesterday reading "Walking in Ruins," by Geoff Nicholson. It's a book about just what it says -- walking amid ruined structures, or ruined neighborhoods. It seemed at the outset like a dubious idea for a book, but it's really enjoyable, investigating the human aesthetic affinity for ruins and structural decay, and recounting Nicholson's own explorations of ruined areas. He can be funny, kind of Bill Bryson-ish. I'm about halfway through, and if you're any kind of walker or photographer or artist, especially with an appreciation for urban environments, I'd recommend it.