A Day In The Life...
...or, "I got a Camera today, oh boy"...

I've been saying I'm gonna get a digital camera for years now. Yet, I was afraid to get one. I compute, I blog and I wheel and deal on Ebay, and yet I've probably got a mild case of technophobia. But, that affliction finally met its match, because I'm "off my nut" about taking pictures. I've got one of those Polaroid cameras like the detectives on NYPD Blue used, the kind where the photo pops out the minute you take it. Handy for crime scenes, I guess. But, no one around here sells the film for it anymore. Earlier this year, I saw a 2-pack of Polaroid 900 film going for over $50 bucks! Gosh.

So I'm new to a lot of commonplace gadgets and gizmos that everyone seems to not be able to live without these days. Honestly, I have never even been UP CLOSE to a digital camera until today. And what a cool toy it is. I thought the owners' manual, for instance, would be un-understandable. And it was. Thankfully, though, there was also an English manual included, and I was on my way to photo-journalistic immortality. These little digi-cams are basically little computers, aren't they? And I found I could skip over portions of the owners' manual because, all of a sudden, things made sense. Yeah, there are still some settings that I don't know about, but I figure, through trial and error, I will one day come to know what they all mean.
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So the next thing to do, once I'd bought the camera, was to take it out to a scenic area and try out the doggone thing. Ulp! "I'm in for it now", I was thinking. But it wasn't that bad. Mainly because the owners' manual contained so many pictures. I've never been a good "print" learner, but give me a picture or show me how its' done, and I'm makin' fast progress. Well, at least I feel I made progress. I guess the thing I can't emphasize enough is how simple all this stuff is. Of course, me being the type of person who complicates everything, I am often my own worst enemy.
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This was one of the first photos I took. It was "took" at the Bastendorff Beach parking lot, some 60 feet above, and about a quarter of a mile away from the ocean. I shot this image thru my drivers' side window, would you believe. You can see the beachgoers' cars way down below; those rock walls in the water are the South and North Jetty, and in-between is how boats come and go from Coos Bay. At top right is a huge vessel which was entering the bay, then leaving it, and it would go out into the ocean for a little ways and then turn back around and come back in again. The first time I'd ever seen this, I thot, "???"...someone told me it's a dredge vessel, which makes sense. It scoops out the waterways so they're deep enough for those big boats to come through. The Ocean's current dumps a lot of sand, rocks, etc. in the "bar" (another name for 'passageway'), so this has to be done periodically. I've seen some GIANT ships come thru there.
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Here's a closeup view of that big dredge vessel (at least I think it's a dredge ship; I could be wrong...). This foto tested out the 'zoom' capability of this small yet sinister camera...I was surprised I could pull this image in that closely. No, the ship's not going downhill; you can see how the horizon is slanting in the picture. I actually did correct the 'tilt', but I forgot to save that correction to my files, so what you see is what you get. But, at least you get an idea of just how big some of these ships are. I bet they're gas hogs, too. And you thot an SUV or a Dodge Ram was big. And ate a lot of gas. Well, they do, but that's beside the point...
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Most of the ships that come into or leave the bay are related to the timber industry; I've seen tons of logs being carted in on big ships, and a large number of barges come in empty and leave full of wood chips produced by the few mills that are still working in this area. From this vantage point, the horizon is about 25 miles away; I've watched vessels come in from that far, and it takes a good hour and a half until they actually reach the bay. That's a lot of water out there, nary a drop to drink.
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This next photo depicts an ocean-version of the Independent Businessman, as he climbs in his little vessel with his faithful crew, to plunder the depths of the deep (?), in search of whatever fish that the U.S. Government will still let them catch. Due to low Salmon Runs further south, it has been decreed that, "fishermen, ye shalt leave the salmon population alone", which has put a big world of hurt on the captains and crews of these little boats.

When the water's really choppy, these small vessels will sink from view in the bottom of a wave crest, until, thankfully, it comes back in view again as it reaches the top. My gills get green just thinking about this...I've been seasick before and it is absolutely no fun. That was back in the '70s when our family went to Westport, Washington, on vacation, and my dad, the ever-fearless creature that he was, decided he was gonna take the family on a Salmon Charter. What a mistake that was...anyway, some of these little commercial boats go out 50, 100 or miles or more and stay out there for several days at a time. I've talked to fishermen who tell me that when they get back to land, they still feel like they're swaying with the roll of the waves. Thinking about that makes me "Dizzy, My Head Is Spinnin'". Ack...
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Of course, every day has a beginning and an end. And today was no exception. The Sun decides to Go and Hide on the other side of the world for a while. Here, you can see folks at the Beach Overlook, congregating in anticipation of yet another Ocean Sunset. It's basically been cloudy and rainy here for the last week and a half, so days like this are glorious. Most places, sunsets are taken for granted, but not here. Sunset watching is a popular sport here. Down below, on evenings like this, folks gather around bonfires on the beach, burning wood pallets, driftwood and anything else they can find. Hey, great as long as it's not some weird Ocean Sacrificial Rite going on down there...

And finally, here it is...the Sunset itself. Before this most recent cloudy/rainy period, which began right around August 1st, sunset was at about quarter to nine...two weeks later, this particular sunset occurred at about quarter after eight. Half an hour more, gone out of the day over a coupla weeks. I try in vain to not think about the days growing ever-shorter...

The sky was mostly clear today with some wispy clouds here and there; here the sun is partially obscured by some clouds over the horizon; each sunset has a personality of its own. I'm actually surprised my little camera caught the subtleties of the colors so well here. And you know, I can never get tired of a sight like this. It's absolutely soul-stirring.
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After sunset, there's still a little daylight left, which is good because I don't drive much at night anymore, and I really don't like driving at night anyway. Headlights in my windshield, headlights in my back window, headlights in my rearview mirrors, no thanks, not if I can help it. Besides, I have someone waiting for me when day is done...

Around 'eight' every evening, Little Jill, my Meyers parrot, begins stretching her wings and yawns with her beak, and she enters that state of hypnotic bliss that human beings spend billions of dollars each year on sleeping pills in order to achieve the same effect. Turned out, though, she wasn't quite ready for slumber yet. When I came in tonite, she chirped a couple of times. It looked like she wanted out of the cage, which I found surprising. Was that because she missed me? Did she want out 'cos she hadn't eaten enough by this time? Am I complicating things once again? Probably...


She swung her way out of the cage and perched on the outside bars and gave me a come-hither look, and the only thing I can figure is that Jill sees me as "the other bird", and so I've come back home to roost. It's a bird thing. I was surprised she wanted out, this late in the evening. So I picked her up, put her on my shoulder, and walked over to the ol' La-Z-Boy, near which I've placed some more food. Typically, she'll go over there and dine, and then fly/hop back to my shoulder. Facts are facts; she gets her way all of the time and I spoil her rotten. What can I say...
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How many of us raid the refrigerator at night; well, this is Jill's version of the same activity. She's consuming mixed vegetables (white container) and all kinds of seeds (blue container), after which she hops off-camera and lands on me. And that's when the wing-stretching and beak-yawning started all over again, and I knew, and she knew, that she couldn't stay awake any longer. Birds just know, almost to the minute, when to call it a day. Obviously, I don't...
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So there you have it. My unexciting version of "A Day In The Life". And, as you can see from the time I posted this (listed below), it's time for me to hop on my perch and Zone Out for a while. Chirp...