7 Quick Takes (Vol 244)

Going out of town, even for only 4 days, totally throws off the old schedule. In my mind this is not Friday. I am not sure what day my mind thinks it is but I know it is not Friday. The calendar must be wrong. You know what you need to do. When you are done covering yourself with an insulating layer of blather to keep out the cold you need to click on the picture above to be whisked, at the speed of my growing need for craft beer, over to Conversion Diary.

Be the blather.

1.
One of the problems with going out of town, the backlog of emails when I get home. It isn’t that I haven’t been keeping up with and returning emails while I was gone. I had the trusty iPad with me for that. It is just that when I get home I open up my Outlook and all the emails that I have already looked at and responded to and deleted are all there again to be taken care of.

And I get a lot of emails on a daily basis.

Can you imagine what it is like when I take a trip that lasts for longer than a week? Email avalanche.

I am trying to deal with the “mini email overload” today.

2.
I drove back, yesterday, from seeing Mimi the Parental Unit. Can I just tell you that the drive was one of the more terrifying drives I have ever done.

The first hour was just excellent. I left Wheaton around 5:30a and was flying on 88 and then 294 and then 80/94…..and then I got to Indiana. I know what the weather is like in Northwest Indiana during the winter. It is very similar to the Frozen Northeast Ohio. I had been keeping an eye on the weather for several days prior just to be sure of what might happen. And the weatherman was talking about lake effect snow and bitter cold.

Drat.

So I made sure to leave early to avoid some of the lake effect. But in Indiana it was beastly. The temperature was around 2F and there was snow. Not the big flakes of snow but the little sugar snow that you see when the temperature is really cold. The stuff that swirls and impedes vision and is VERY slippery when on the roadway. Just tapping my brakes was sure to bring fishtailing.

And then there were the trucks. They were everywhere on the road and at the rest stops. I have to assume that many of the trucks that travel at night had pulled off to wait out some of the colder temps and were not getting back on the road….and going 40mph. And I was doing 40mph….and sometimes less than that. PLUS! It was so cold that my windshield wiper fluid froze and I couldn’t clean off my windshield. But I didn’t discover this until I activated my wipers and only succeeded in smearing the dirt and grime all over my windshield in such a way that I couldn’t see out of the windshield. I managed to make it to the next rest area where I was able to clean off my windshield but I had several “Carrie Underwood” moments….you know….”Jesus take the wheel”. And when I say that I am not joking.

My little house never looked so good!

3.
For several years I have been keeping what is called a Commonplace Book. Sometimes a Commonplace book is just a vast repository of all sorts of knowledge that someone comes across during the course of a day or a life.

For me it is quotes from books that I read, or perhaps a blog that I come across. I have been writing in it for some time and there are a lot of quotes.

And I write them all out by hand.

And it sits on my desk and does me no good most of the time because I don’t have the quotes readily at hand……

So, I am seriously considering putting all the quotes and sayings and writings into some sort of database that is accessible to me when I am not actually sitting at my desk.

I know I am going to do this but the question is in what form should it be. Excel spreadsheet is what I am leaning towards but I am still not sure.

Suggestions?

See, this is also the problem with the start of the year. I get these crazy ideas about rearranging all sorts of things in my life.

4.
The Olympics start it just 14 days, or there abouts given the time difference.

I am looking forward to an orgy of Curling.

And just as an aside. How many of us think that this Olympic Games will make it all the way to the end without terrorists striking, or trying to strike? I don’t think I would have all that much confidence in Putin and the Russians to keep everything contained.

But I am hoping and praying that they do.

5.
I am ready to be done with January.

January and I don’t get along.

I can’t get organized. My brain doesn’t have enough bandwidth to do anything other than simple tasks.

AND IT IS FREEZING COLD FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY AND GOOD!

Winter is coming……

I have got to stop watching Game of Thrones.

6.
The first home brew was bottled last week.

And I want to open one just to see how it is doing.

But I know I cannot. It isn’t done yet. I know that.

But I want to……..

7.
If you are a photographer and you listen to podcasts…

You need to listen to The Candid Frame.

If I could only listen to one podcast dealing with photography it would be this one. Ibarionex Parello isn’t talking about gear and the latest tech, he is interviewing photographers and talking about craft.

I cannot do without The Candid Frame.

And Ibarionex Parello doesn’t know me from Adam but I keep hoping that some day I run into him somewhere so I can tell him how much this podcast has helped me in my journey.