d.tan - journal

24.01.07
I’ve run the course of illness over the last week, fatigue, dizziness, fluctuations in temperature, the feeling of jumper cables clamped to my optic nerves; that type of sickness. I was ready to crawl into bed and not get out for days last Wednesday, but then I woke up early on Thursday feeling fine and went to work. Friday was fine too, though I did the unthinkable and called my dad on the way home so he could pick me up from transit. Saturday was spent feeling like a fish stick in a hot oven: scorching on the outside and frozen on the inside. I was either in bed or slouched on the sofa watching The West Wing on DVD. Sunday showed improvement, and by Monday, though the smart money would have been on staying home, I wasn’t feeling too bad and it was the last day we had some equipment we would have to ship in for repairs, so I went to work. It turned out one of the other photographers called in sick, so we were short. Same thing happened on Tuesday. Now we’re all at work and I feel back to normal, thus completely missing my chance to use my sick days. Dang.

18.01.07
The biggest danger is getting lazy. After handling hundreds of objects, the one-handed, two-at-a-time, I'll-just-carry-it-over-there phenomenon sets in. Nothing happened, but today I shot pictures of impossibly delicate gold Chinese diadems that looked too intricate for human hands to have fashioned; and they were at least 800 years old. That'll scare the object handling protocols back up to scratch. Then there was the 2200 year old belt hook...

15.01.07
Why is Kumar holding Jack MacFarlane’s son hostage while Dr. Julian Bashir tries to find that guy from 22 Minutes? And John from Ally McBeal? And isn't that the guy from The Matrix? And the guy from the Great Canadian Food Show was also on at the same time on Little Mosque on the Prairie. Not that this is particularly unusual, except that the whole “real-time” concept wavers. Also I’m expecting Kumar to start dancing with a bag of weed while Elliot does a cheerleading routine, Julian starts spouting technobabble, Sean slips into his Newfie accent, John starts stammering, and Carlo starts singing opera to mollusks. But no; serious show here. Very serious.

14.01.07
My eyes! One of the side effect of the medication is dry, red eyes; all the hallmarks of a hangover without being able to drink. It gets more painful if I’m in bright light, or dry environments, or staring at things without blinking. Good thing I work with flash units going off hundreds of times in a day in a dehumidified museum looking at twin 21 inch monitors searching for the slightest flaw in a photograph. If I can’t see, I can’t work; you do not mess with the eyes! And now I’m home working on websites, more staring at computer screens and I’m less likely to take regular breaks. I’m going through eye drops like some kind of addict. I will not miss this.

Here are some more things for you to stare at:
Best stop-motion fight ever, if you’re not one of the 2 million people who have already seen it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJzU3NjDikY
World of Warcraft music video to that polka hit “She’s Too Fat For Me”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JT22n6x7J0g
And Allan!, driving his imaginary car.

And of course: congrats to Cynthia and Hanson!

12.01.07
I like how car dealerships look in the snow. The rows of bright and shiny new cars with the flashy features are reduced to uniform lumps of matte white sameness. You are not buying a lifestyle, or status, or cachet; you are buying an internal combustion engine in a metal frame, on wheels.
We think. Assuming there’s really a car under there.
It’s as if they are selling the idea of a car, as represented in a general car shape; like on architectural models with that appealing sense of blankness on which you can superimpose your life.

Also, after starting the Chronicles, I found my horoscope for this week:

Speaking of which, there’s a little bit more for you in the Costa Rica Chronicles (hereafter CRC).

07.01.07
You’ll recall on a previous incarnation of my website, I started a few pages on my Costa Rica trip. Stuff came up and I never finished it before that host died an ugly death. I always wanted to have it complete. I did make the lab’s Costa Rica site, but it lacked my own experience of being there. Well, now I’m doing something about it. I’m giving you the stuff I wrote when there. There are photos in existence, and you'll see a couple eventually, but I was shooting on film, so the numbers are less and some stuff didn’t come out well. I’m also including a list of the stuff I brought, and the stuff I wish I’d brought; useful for anyone planning an expedition to the tropical rainforest.
Go read the Costa Rica Chronicles.

05.01.07
Happy New Year all, hope you had lovely holidays. I, of course, planned to do way more than I could ever have accomplished in the time available, so I'm still rather occupied. Thus, instead of laying out the holiday photos nicely, I'm dumping them all into zipped folders, unedited, unreduced, you do the work. I've got three separate folders, the first is all our general merrymaking including:

Allan's surprise at Brent's house