Sunday, November 22, 2009

I love my neighborhood.

You'd think I'd write about it sometime, wouldn't you? I've lived in Humboldt Park for years and I don't recall if I've even ever posted shots of Humboldt Park-the-park, or the two bakeries near me, or the construction and demolition that occasionally goes on (an entire building a block away from me completely disappeared this week and I didn't know until it was an empty lot. It was one I don't particularly miss; I'm just a bit perturbed because it shows I didn't get out much this week). Here's a couple shots I took on a brief errand Friday. My neighborhood is not actually this color; I've just gotten into digital cross-processing on Flickr this spring...



The nearby shopping center (seems too small to call a strip mall) recently got resurfaced, and the store below now has windows. Big windows. I stopped first at my favorite dollar store of the ones near me (well, it's gone from three to two dollar stores, not counting Family Dollar. They're a decent store but NOT a real dollar store, though when they turn up in news broadcasts [I swear Chicago has a lot of Family Dollar calamaties--roof collapses, shootings, I forget] they're referred to as a "dollar store"). It was a short visit, made even shorter by the fact that the store had the overwhelming smell...of skunk. Well, that's a new one in my Chicago retail experience. The store IS near a park, but...huh? The clerk explained when I paid for my stuff--a man smelling of skunk had been in the store. Possibly raises more questions than it answers.



On to the liquor store, for cheap beer for the weekend, and empty boxes to sort things in my apartment. I noticed the unrefrigerated 16 oz. 6 packs of Old Style were still marked as $3.99 (I used to buy the commemorative Cubs cans of the stuff) so I grabbed one. The clerk didn't know the price and had to ask someone else, which took a while. He said it was $5.79. I said the sign still said $3.99 and he said it was just the Colt .45 6-packs that were $3.99. I went back and got a 12 oz. 6-pack of Hamm's, same price, instead, glancing again at the sign (still said Old Style). I told them they should change the sign. I wasn't going to argue my way into paying less for Old Style, I like to think I have SOME dignity.

Another employee saw what I'd bought and asked if I could carry 2 6-packs. "I'll pay for one." Shocked, I managed a "yeah." And he bought me another 6-pack (of Hamm's, though I didn't notice that till hours later), pointing at the Old Style and saying "as long as you never buy that again!" In a mild state of shock, I thanked him, grabbed some empty boxes on the way out, and walked home. I wanted this post to be a little more in-depth than "I GOT FREE BEER," but I won't deny, that's the main reason I posted.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Under repairs

I should have just found some kitschy old image that would signify "closed for repairs" and put it up a while ago. Well, blog's not closed, I still mysteriously get a hit or two a day of photos here showing up in my Flickr stats. But I AM going to drastically redo the blogroll--adding at least one new category, combining others, fixing the links of people who keep changing to new sites (some photographers I know, ahem), getting depressed at which blogs are now set to private, etc. I'd really like to change this to a three-column format, but Blogger bizarrely doesn't offer any as an option. Learning to split it into 3 columns myself (I've already searched this out) would be preferable to trying to move the whole blog over to Wordpress, however.

I've finally put the effort into getting a feed for blogs I follow (Bloglines) and bookmarking (Delicious), and I've got a new email address (I don't think I ever put the old one up here, which actually prompted a few people to start Flickr accounts just so they could email me there!) I'll post, and I may have started or restarted a few other places online, so there'll be a lot more "where else to find me" stuff here soon.

I even impulsively started a Tumblr blog and posted a couple dozen times, but because 1) virtually no one I know is on Tumblr 2) no one I'm following there added me back 3) it's just not very interactive, I will be...get ready for this...starting a SECOND blog on Blogger. It's for a different audience but I trust there'll be some overlap. It means I have to repost all my Tumblr content on Blogger, but at least I decided on that quickly (so it won't be like how I was uploading Flickr photos from the wrong directory for my first 6 months and then had to replace 1500 photos one by one). My brilliant theory is that I'll be signed in all the time to keep THAT blog frequently updated, so I'll have no excuse not to be signed into THIS blog all the time. Because I haven't been...since spring. Did I mention that many times already?

Also! I'll probably change the template here, though I do like this one quite a bit.