Blackcap Blog

Published at 21:33 on 22 May 2012

Today I went to the doctor, expecting to launch a protracted odyssey trying to figure out how to find the root cause of a mysterious (and increasingly annoying to the point of becoming intolerable) allergic itch that has been plaguing me ever since I moved. That’s because allergies, particularly chemical sensitivity ones, are not something that Western medicine understands very well.

Instead, Western medicine, in the personage of my physician, took one look at me and informed me I had scabies. Not having had any intimate contact in years, the only plausible way I could have gotten it is via some re-used box utilized by the movers to pack my bedding. Which I believe they did, given that they showed early in the morning before I had much chance to pack it myself.

The good news is that it’s something Western medicine understands very well and has excellent treatments for. The bad news is that I now have to try and decontaminate any piece of cloth I might have touched in the past several days. That, and, and the fact that killing the little bastards responsible doesn’t make the damnable itch go away promptly.

Published at 16:56 on 20 May 2012

Mind you, in general I’m happy to live in a place where I don’t feel continually under assault by overly-strong sunlight which is threatening to burn my skin, but whenever something in the skies grabs my interest, sometimes I end up wishing I lived someplace that wasn’t so continually cloudy.

And so it is today, when the eclipse is happening above a thick layer of overcast which has about zero chance of clearing. And the normal trick of going to the eastern side of the Cascades is of no help today; today’s storm is one of those strong enough to make it across the mountains.

Sigh.

Published at 21:14 on 30 April 2012

I just bought one, and was somewhat surprised to learn that once you spend more than $700, your money is pretty much wasted because the extra money goes into substituting high-end road bike parts for the mid-range mix of road and mountain bike parts that are on less pricey models. So you end up with what is essentially a road bike with a straight handlebar.

Twenty years ago, once you spent more than $700, your money was pretty much wasted because the extra money went into substituting high-end mountain bike parts for the mix of parts that was on the less pricey models. So what you ended up with was a basically mountain bike with smooth tires.

The surprise is that the price point at which it’s pointless to spend more hasn’t budged in unadjusted dollars. Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise, since the hybrid I bought twenty years ago was made in the USA. That made it something of a holdout even then (most manufacturers had offshored their manufacturing to Asia, generally Taiwan, even then). Now virtually every bike is Made in China.

Well, some of the ones which are fundamentally road bikes with straight handlebars are made in Taiwan, but I don’t want a road bike. “Road” bikes are designed for an ideal world where street departments resurface every paved surface every five years. Particularly in Seattle, a city that has raised neglect of street maintenance to a high art, that’s an unrealistic premise. I’d rather have tires with a bit of width and tread to them to cushion the shocks and enable me to better stay in control.

Published at 22:21 on 26 April 2012

I blew about two hours trying to list an item (yes, just one) on eBay tonight. First I had to go and change all my addresses, and for some reason eBay has four of them, all independent of each other. Then I have to change my two PayPal addresses as well. Both processes mean waiting for and responding to a confirmation e-mail.

Then there’s the composing of the ad wording, taking of the pictures, editing of the pictures, and downloading of the pictures.

Wait, does my ad say the item is in Portland? Why, yes, it does, even though I just told eBay four times in a row that I now live in Seattle. Log back in, and eBay decides it’s unfamiliar with my IP address and now wants to place an automated call to my phone to give me a secret number I have to enter on their web site.

Finally get logged back in and edit the shipping information, which for some reason thinks where you last shipped from several years ago is more relevant than where you just told eBay your shipping location is.

Look at the clock and it’s 10PM already, and that’s just the first item I wanted to list on line. Sigh.

eBay is making just donating my extra stuff to a charity and taking the tax write-off more and more attractive.

Published at 19:21 on 13 April 2012

This is the weekend which, if everything goes as planned, I will get all my stuff back. I’m heading down to Portland to have the movers empty out my storage unit and move its contents up here to my new apartment in Seattle. Then comes the process of winnowing things down until everything fits easily; I’m assuming there will a stack of boxes in my bedroom (and maybe random boxes in other spots, too) for at least a month or two until that process is finished.

Possessions always seem to expand until there’s more of them than can fit easily in one’s home, and I’ve basically determined that a one-bedroom apartment is about as much space as it’s ethical for a single person to demand in this world of dwindling resources.

I’d probably feel differently about that if I lived in a small rural town, where 1-bedroom apartments are not common, venues outside one’s home are limited, and real estate is inexpensive. But as it stands, if it’s too much stuff to fit in a 1-bedroom apartment, it’s too much stuff.

All in all, it’s an attitude that’s a healthy middle ground between being the junior partner in a shared house (and having extremely limited personal space), and having a whole detached single-family house (or most of one) to oneself.

Published at 20:40 on 3 April 2012

Very tired after a long day of moving, because even if I didn’t do most of the lifting, I did enough of it in the unpacking I did and moving the particularly fragile and valuable stuff myself. Even got the Internet connected on the same day.

I’m also glad that I decided not to schedule the cleanout of the Portland storage locker for this weekend. That would have simply been too much, too fast.

Published at 19:40 on 2 April 2012

One last quick post before I pack up my computer. The next time I use it, I will be in my new apartment.

I was going to post a longer entry on how I’ve been surprised by how quickly things have been changing, but that will have to wait. On second thought, perhaps it shouldn’t have been a surprise:

• Everything was basically waiting on finding a job, and I found one.
• It’s spring, the easiest time of year to find a new home. Last time I looked for an apartment in Seattle, it was the winter holiday season, the absolute worst time of year.
• This time I adjusted my apartment-search strategy based on my knowledge of how difficult it is to find a decent apartment in Seattle. (What I did was to cease focusing on a particular neighborhood, and instead be willing to rent anything in a suitably close-in neighborhood that was reasonably close to a good natural food co-op.)

And with that, farewell until I sign on from my new home.

Published at 12:09 on 1 April 2012

In principle, it’s something I like, because I have found that living by myself can be unduly lonely at times.

In practice, I do not think it is for me, because a variety of factors intersect in my life, and the end result of this intersection is that there really are not many suitable shared housing opportunities out there.

The first factor is that I’m nearly fifty years old, and like most people my age, I’ve managed to accumulate a set of personal possessions that reflect both my interests and my life history. It’s not an excessive set of possessions by any means (I haven’t filled up an entire house with them), but it’s more than can fit in a single bedroom.

The second factor is that with one exception, shared-housing opportunities tend to involve but a single bedroom; in other words: just not enough space for me and my possessions. What I’ve done the past two years is to cram about half of my stuff into a storage locker, but I’m starting to miss having access to some of that stuff. The exception is if one is the senior partner, i.e. a homeowner looking to rent out a room. The senior partner is expected to come with a house full of things, and only offer an empty room to the junior one.

The problem with being a senior partner is that I have no desire to become a homeowner: I don’t like Seattle enough to be willing to make such a commitment to staying here long-term. Seattle works well for me right now because I’ve found a job that seems to be a good match. However, if that job vanishes, and I find work in someplace more to my liking such as Bellingham, I want to have the freedom to pack up and leave town.

The third factor relates to collective houses, i.e. properties owned by a collective where I would be an equal partner, not a junior or a senior one. There’s actually one which is a very good match for me here in Seattle, all things considered. But I’d still get merely a room, and the location of that property leaves much to be desired, because it’s surrounded on three sides by freeways. Not only is that an aesthetic downer, experience has taught me that excess exposure to tire dust and other traffic-related toxins makes me significantly less healthy (the dirtier the air, the more often I get colds, and the longer it takes to get rid of them).

At this stage, collective living ends up being very much like living in the city of Portland: it’s something which is very appealing in the general case, and not very suitable for me once one brings the particulars of my life into it. So it’s back to living in a single-person household for me, at least for a while.

Published at 15:41 on 25 March 2012

I’ve been missing having all my things accessible (about half of them are crammed into a storage unit in Portland), plus I’m really not all that compatible with my current housemate, plus the neighborhood I’m currently in has gone downhill since I moved here (rowdy partiers moved into the house next door).

I was racking my brain for strategies for addressing at least the final problem (I hate not having peace and quiet at night) while at the same time having to cope with being unemployed in an expensive city. Suddenly, I’m employed again. I don’t have to rack my brain: I just have to sign a lease on an apartment of my own and sign a check. Problem solved.

I’m definitely not looking forward to the whole moving process again, but I am looking forward to settling into my new place for at least a few years. As much as I find things to dislike about Seattle, it’s not all that bad a place when compared to the average big city in the USA, and it is in the ecoregion I’ve bonded with and consider myself part of.

Moreover, while not perfect (is any place?), the apartment I’ve found does have enough of the things on my rather lengthy list of wants and needs (some of which are difficult to satisfy in Seattle) that I feel comfortable signing a lease and bringing an unexpectedly early end to the search for a new home.

Published at 13:06 on 4 March 2012

First, slide film is not dead. Yet. Fuji still sells it, and fortunately I prefer Fuji’s slide films to Kodak’s anyhow. So I figure there’s at least several more years when I can continue shooting the exact same combination I’ve done for a decade now. As a bonus, the more people who do this, the longer slide film will last.

Next, color negative film is still going strong. I don’t like it as much as slide film, but Kodak has released a new emulsion in recent years (Ektar 100) that I’m actually quite fond of. So after slide film dies it will be decision time: is there a negative film available that is good enough? If so, I can shift to it.

If not, it will be time to begin the unpleasant process of learning how to cope with a new but inferior tool. Or perhaps time to abandon a form of photography which, while presently an enjoyable pursuit, will have become unduly tedious and frustrating thanks to technological processes beyond my control.

And I am loathe to bequeath the name “progress” onto such processes.