misc.

You know you're a New Orleanian when the bell on the toaster oven rings and you think not "my toast is done!" but "Where is Washboard Chaz?"

I thought I would have the house to myself tonight, which would have been nice, but it's band practice instead. Which is also nice. And which seems like a good excuse to write something.

I bought my ticket to Pennsylvania today for Thanksgiving. I'm oddly kind of stressed out about it. I guess because it's a short time to go a long way.

It's somehow been a long week, and it's not over yet. Shani has brought an extra layer of civilized living to the house, and we've begun looking for other places, which is daunting. I've been doing a lot of photography for work, and it's discouraging, largely because I know that we're not really doing it right. The standards we have don't really address the things that are going to make a big difference in quality. And we really should be taking all the shots on overcast days. Except... there are none. There are just no clouds this time of year, as opposed to August when it pours every afternoon.

I also experienced a setback when my camera fell apart. When JR saw that I had a Canon 5D, he asked if the mirror had fallen out yet. I had never heard of this, but he said it happened to all of them in humid places like New Orleans. Yesterday it happened. Canon insisted that there is no problem with this model, and I didn't feel like paying $200 or more to have them fix it, especially given my last experience with their repair center. So, today I steeled my nerves and attacked a very expensive camera with a pair of rubber gloves and some super glue. Seems fine, but I'm still annoyed.

I'm still feeling off kilter in a lot of ways. I haven't been going out much, and have hardly danced at all since our trip to Showdown. There are a lot of reasons for that, but one of them has something to do with confidence, and with looking at people who are very good and getting discouraged. Being rusty now makes it worse. Lack of good partners is a perpetual problem here, too.

In the meantime, I've been thinking a lot about my future and that makes me think about the city. I really don't know what I will be doing in a year. I'm fairly sure I will have a new job, but I don't know what it will be or how easy it will be to get by. (And on a barely related note, please stop calling it the big easy. Just don't. Call it the crescent city if you must.)

But it's not just my future that i wonder about. It seems to become harder for me to envision the future of this city, not easier. I don't know whether that's because I'm forming a fuller picture of it, or for other reasons. I do continue to be frustrated with peoples' attitudes about the place. Everyone talks about how dangerous it is in general, and how bad certain neighborhoods are in particular. I won't argue with the idea that it's easier to find yourself in trouble in certain places, but my experience in central city the other day seemed so telling. Central City was the area that our surveyors were most worried about, where they took all sorts of extra precautions for their safety. I was there the other day, not for the first time. I got out of the car and started wandering around with a bunch of cameras, first up and down the street and then through the tall weeds and into the abandoned building. When I was almost done, a guy came up and asked what I was doing. I told him I was photographing the building because it was going to be demolished. He said what a shame that was, how it was a good building, how it could be fixed up, how whatever came in its place would be shoddy and ugly. I agreed, and we had a nice little comversation. A couple of minutes later a much sketchier-looking guy came up and asked me what I was doing. We had more or less the same conversation. This is practically the only kind of encounter I've ever had; with reasonable people who care about their neighborhoods. Once in awhile someone asks me where they can find work. It just makes me wonder what happens to other people out there and why. Is it just luck?

I don't know. More later.