those gorgeous clouds and more

I have been packing like crazy..... I am down to those tiny little nonsense things that mean nothing to others, but to you they mean the world, and hold so many memories... of places seen and things done. I have too many of them already, and building even more all the time. I've already missed one deadline.... suitcases all too heavy, folding bike in a box too dam big and too dam heavy.

things seen recently on the streets when I can break away from the nightmare of packing...

moving again - the story of my Life

okay, I know I've been AWoL frome here but you wouldn't believe my life these past few weeks.

It seems I was infected by a virus some months ago but it sat quiet. My sister let me buy a new faster motherboard, CPU and memory.... when that arrived I installed everything, then loaded my old hard drives from the old box into my new faster setup! After testing and revalidating my windows (wot a pain), I finally got it working - and it was fast but still not as fast as my laptop.... something seemed wrong. I ran tests and it was during the testing phase of the new system that I discovered I was infected by the bug Trojan.vundo. It finally reared its ugly head and made my life miserable for three whole weeks before I decided to wipe it and my hard drives clean. I didn't want to do that but now that I look back, it seems logical. I just didn't want to reinstall everything but ended up doing it anyway... I could have saved myself three weeks of hell and misery: sleeping maybe three hours a night, testing, scanning and finding those critters.

Fortunately they affected only system files.....

So, now my system is up and running (again) and the tests are good, being the fast system it's supposed to be, much faster than my older system I picked up while in Oregon and lightspeed faster than my old dinosaur in my apartment in Spain... hopefully within a week I'll be able to box this desktop up and take it on the plane in April when I return and start my waiting game for a cargo plane to Spain.... not looking forward to that at all!!

So, for the last seven months I've been packing up slowly, and now even more than before. My biggest job was to box up my folding bicycle and now that I know how to FOLD it (so simple yet so difficult for dumb non-bike owners like me), that is finally done and out of the way. This will be flying with me on my initial British Airways flight to Spain as excess baggage and I'll be paying for that to go with me. I have never carried so much on a plane before!! I'm already dreading it when I have to take this up into my apartment on the second floor, but at least there I have an elevator!

So, my life continues: I'm living in boxes yet again, and am hoping this will be the very last time till my death. During the day while sis is at her 7am to 5pm job, I pack and clean and during the afternoons/nights, I am on this desktop trying to move everything off onto my ext hard drives (eHDs) so I can access it later through my laptop.

I do not expect to have home net access for many months when I return to Spain. So often a person who has moved gets ISP service to later discover it's not what they want. This is due to not knowing what is available, what is better than others, and just wanting something quick. I hope to resolve that possible situation by NOT contracting net service until I am truly ready and not the reliability and quality of the service I'll be paying for! There's a lot of cybercafes in Rota, plus I hear there's a free wifi spot now downtown!

In the meanwhile I continue to search for my lost boxes from Spain and Oregon (two remain hidden ~ where I have no idea), and separating stuff into three groups: take with me, take in April with me, and shipped to friends' in VA and I won't take to Spain with me until later this winter.
So, if you don't hear from me, you know what I am doing: packing and I've probably packed my brains by accident!

Less than a month togooooo before I fly out!!!

On the weekends I've been gone on small foto trips to destress from all of my hectic schedule and activities..... pray for me I don't pack my eyes too!!!

views from Pinnacle National Monument

that white night.....

I had planned for several days to take a walk around the downtown area of San Francisco to photograph the homeless. Usually I don't make it a big thing to photograph them, as I do it whenever I am out and about with my camera.... this would be the very first time I would devote time for such a theme.

I have been downtown on previous occasions to photograph the skyscrapers at night in all of their reflective beauty, so I have been in certain areas and seen homeless, so I know "where" they are basically. There are areas of the City I wouldn't venture into though there are a lot of homeless there... I might be crazy but I am not stupid.I ate leftovers from a week ago, made sure my camera battery was charged, then set out an hour before sunset. Walking down from my sister's apartment building in the late afternoon sunlight, I cut across Columbus Avenue and Mason Street toward the Embarcadero. I had no set path in mind, determined to vary my path as the light and search varied. I was at the foot of Telegraph Hill when I cut down some steps to sea level, just a few blocks away from the Embarcadero. I passed by a few stores and a neighborhood shopping center... all closed due to the holiday. People were being turned away by security guys... everything was closed. Crossing the street, I looked down and saw a flash of thin folded green.... it was a rolled-up bit that was a dollar, and I picked it up though I really wanted to leave it - I thought it was rolled up meant it was used most likely for drugs. Disgustedly I reluctantly picked it up using the very tips of my fingers - though I am now in the best financial state in the past seven or more years, I need money too.

I saw several nice views of Coit Tower and the Transamerica Building, so began snapping. I was surprised and shocked to see all the parking meters were flashing "FREE PARKING". Continuing with camera in hand, I crossed over to the wide sidewalk that is the Embarcadero and started walking south toward the Ferry Building. I stopped at the pier at Pacific Avenue, filled with many tourists as always, but amazingly no homeless who normally sit here with their shopping carts full of their lives.... The clouds were gorgeous as I watched the unseen sun set behind the waterfront skyline, backlit by the sunlight, seemingly a brush stroke of light, gray and orange against the darkening sky. Many people with cameras of all types and sizes were snapping away, of the seagulls flying overhead, the clouds toward the west, the boats passing east of the pier, and of the bay bridge. Onward I continued to the Ferry Building where I discovered that area empty.... instead of its usual busy restaurants full of tourists, now empty of chairs and tables, the building itself also closed and doors locked. It was a depressing sight, as if you were in downtown New York City and encountered not one person, nor cars or birds.... everything closed and abandoned. This was a dream out of an eerie movie of decades long past. I crossed the Embarcadero to the wide plaza now filled with people in the temporary ice-skating rink. A long line waiting to buy tickets for shoes and time. This was quite a contrast to the emptiness just across the street.

I passed this all and entered the Embarcadero Center. The lights were lit of the tall buildings and I captured those flashing lines in the black windows of nearby windows of other buildings. I walked across the street to the Hyatt Regency Hotel and saw again the lines of lights hanging from the sky within... I had only seen then entered this place once before since when I was a teen, this all did not exist. Most of what I walked through now was built during my decades-long absence from the City.
Up to this time, I had only seen a few homeless - normally I would see many more, along the Embarcadero, the SOMA area... but saw only enough to count on one hand. On the other hand, I saw my first food shop open.... I moved up Market Street, where many times I had seen lost souls wandering up and down the wide streets, their shopping carts filled high with their bags of clothes..... I watched the people around me. It was a sight to see... mostly tourists lost or headed back to their hotels. Many looked around them as they quickly walked in the dark light, suspicious of anything and anyone near them, regardless of attire.


How utterly depressing.....

have a merry christmas!!! :-(

how utterly depressing

... to be alone on such a day! The shopping malls are closed early, so you can't even window-shop or just have a quiet walk. The theaters are also closed early so you cannot hide inside a cinema. Everything is dark and empty, save for a few tiny restaurants that nobody knows about, so they are completely empty also.

Sat in the parking lot of a closed but lighted Safeway grocery store, and laughed as I saw in just 30mins more than 15 people drive up, park and walk to the closed entrance. There were three cars in the parking lot! Nobody could be seen within the store!! They still tried to open the doors and finally walked across the street to Walgreens - a drugstore!! What will they buy in a drugstore that they wanted to buy originally in a grocery store?

What a sad day if you're not married, or don't have any close friends as is normally the case in this very virtual world. Fake friends who only want you for friendship to go drinking together.... drunk friends aren't real friends, they are people who will try to get you addicted to alcohol are trying to get you killed or worse.... Thank goodness traffic homeward was very very light. I counted the number of cars encountered/seen while driving 20mins to be less than 10 - and not one weaving crazy driver in sight!

Ah christmas: such cheer, such happiness and such sharing. If you have a family or a significant other.......

Now, what about the homeless? Those emergency teams and individuals who work? Soldiers separated from friends and family in places where people want them dead and gone.....

Oooooh, what happiness!!!

It's just 10 to seven in the morning here, woken by the songs of some unseen chirping birds. Looking out the window I see those strange but gorgeous trees backlit by sunlight and clouds, while the ground outside is still wet from rains last night. Went to sleep at 1am but as usual, travel mode doesn't permit me to sleep too much which I do not mind at all. I have the big lens on the camera in the case I DO see a bird but I can hear them, but see not one at all. There are a lot of trees in front of my friend's house and the rustling of the wind is ~ to me ~ similar to the gentle sound of lapping of ocean waves upon the shore.

It's not a completely different life here: people eat, work and go out just like in any other place in the world. I do see a lot more beer-drinking here but of course, I've seen that elsewhere too. The wineries already seen are gorgeous and in all my years in Spain, I haven't really ever had an opportunity to snap pixs of the vines and hanging grapes. I now have quite a few pixs and though I know the vines seem to be the same variety as can be found anywhere else in the world where wines are produced, I know that were are my pixs of aussie vines!

As I type this, my water is boiling for yet another tea with honey for my throat and hopeful bettering of the vocal chords. I have the front door now open and hear the constant chatter of the small black birds that sing once they perch atop a branch somewhere. Again: I can hear them but cannot see them. A few fly overhead now and then but they don't stop anywhere near where I can snap a pix, but these trees are so gorgeous with thin branches that twist and turn each and every way imaginable..... it seems as though out-stretched arms to the sky above.

So far I haven't had problems with the language and the things I do not hear is more due to my lousy hearing than the slang and accent. I have noticed that I've been nearly run over several times by people while walking on the streets and in shopping centers. I am discovering that in these few countries where they drive on the left, they also walk on the left too!

On a very chance sighting from a speeding van on a freeway, I saw some kangaroos the other day while returning to Sydney from Hunter's Valley. Behind all of the brush and trees, a fellow wedding guest saw a kangaroo, which quickly turned into a small group of about six kangaroos, all hopping off to parts unknown. The sighting didn't take even a few seconds, but still was very exciting to see of something so uniquely Australia. I likened this situation to see deer while driving on the Marin hills and backroads.

One thing that was particularly funny and unique was the teen sporting the "O" green hat (University of Oregon) whom I saw and chatted with for a few minutes while waiting for our checked baggage that didn't appear for over an hour. His journey was longer than mine, flying from Boise, Idaho to Salt Lake City, then to LA and continuing to Sydney. We discussed briefly the Ducks vs Beavers game and how it was a fantastic chance for the Ducks.