I'm going to be shutting down early today. By that I mean I'm cutting off all contact to everyone and everything once this is posted. I'm exhausted and tired of everything. Right now I'm not in the best state of mind to talk to anyone. I currently am trying my best to avoid my mom because I can't take her incessant talking to herself. I will go make her lunch as soon as I'm done, but I will leave the room and drown her voice out with music as I'm doing right now.
My face is inflamed and slightly swollen once again, but this time I think I found the culprit for sure. I have to moisturizers that I use. The one I switched to when all this started happening, and the old one. I'm getting low on the new one so I decided last night to use the old one and sure enough my eyes began stinging and getting puffy last night. I woke up to my whole face stinging, red, and hot to the touch. I immediately threw out the old stuff. That is the only thing I did differently last week from any day in the last two weeks. Two weeks where things have been improving greatly. Until this morning, the dryness was going away, and so was the flaky scaly skin. I'm hoping that since I caught it and made changes this morning I can avoid going to far backwards. Only time will tell.
I just saw a tweet from one of my Senators that is absolutely hypocritical and disgusting. He was blasting so called elites for telling people to wear masks and to get the vaccine, meanwhile he was first in line to get the vaccine a week ago. I must remind you that I have no hope of seeing that vaccine until probably April at the earliest. The governor of my state declared an executive order that people 75 and older move to the head of the line, but there is no available information I can find on how to get my mom who is well over 75 the vaccine. The say you can have it then make it incredibly hard to get. I'm sick of it all.
I don't have a favorite anything of the week this week, because all is dark to me right now, so I suggest you do your best to find something for yourself that makes you happy, for today, that will be wallowing in my own misery. Time to call it a day and turn everything off. Peace in and whatever.
I want to start out with a rant first, then we will get to the fun stuff. I am both sickened and angered by seeing Senators and Congresspeople that have downplayed this virus, calling it a hoax and having maskless events being the first ones in line to receive a vaccine. As you may know, I have been locked down in my house taking care of my dementia ridden mother following all protocol even before it was protocol since mid February, and I have no hope of even sniffing a vaccination shot unit probably April. I'm not saying I should get it right away, I'm all for front line workers, elderly and the most vulnerable to get the vaccine long before I do, but I'm infuriated by seeing these so called leaders that have done everything in their power to kill their constituents getting a life saving vaccine before even those most essential of workers. Don't even get me started on the peanut throwing of a stimulus they have planned to satisfy the cake eaters. I'm not in need, but others are and desperately so. They need far more than $600 dollars 10 months into a pandemic to help save them from complete financial ruin. It is a compete Maria Antoinette moment of "let the eat cake", while they get their vaccine and make millions from PPP loans. Ok, rant over with one punctuation, and yeah some colorful language is coming up. Fuck them all.
I found two companies that make hair dye that is safe for beards. The first one that returned my messages is the one I went with. I ordered three different colors to try out, and I of course went with my favorite color first. I did do the allergy test, but a friend told me I should have waited 7 days instead of the recommended 2 days, so now I'm worried that I'm doomed again. That being said, I feel fine right now and it's day 3 after dying my beard, but I also felt fine at this point with that garbage that I used before. The difference this time is, that this is a semi permanent dye and uses all natural vegan and cruelty free ingredients, so I'm hoping that my worry of not waiting for 7 days is for nothing. Ok, here is the picture of the new beard the day that I dyed it. It's faded a good bit already, so it's not going to look any better than the day of.
That weird reddish color at the bottom is still from that old dye not fading completely out yet. So I got purple obviously. I also got pink and aquamarine. After this purple fades out, I'm going to try using all of them for some fun pattern or something. I have ideas, but nothing is solid yet. I have plenty of time. Even though there is quite a bit of fade already, it should truly take about a month to get it all out. I have to admit that I like it much more than I thought I would. I knew it would be fun, and I do need to entertain myself for reasons stated above in the rant, but I really think it looks good on me. If I don't have any adverse reaction, I think this will be an all the time thing from now on. I don't know.
I forgot to share a picture with you last week. While I was editing photos, this was my view.
The key is to not focus on the laptop, but the sides of the photo. Yep, I had an audience watching my every move. I think they thought I had food or something, that is the normal faces I get when I'm cooking. They were sadly wrong about that but I still got a laugh out of them staring at me watching me work on photos. I love those Pitty pups of mine.
Time for Favorite Song of the Week. I was going to go with a christmas song this week, but something changed my mind last night. I got a recommendation on YouTube and decided to give it a try, and now I can't stop listening to this band. The first song I heard I noticed something different about the singers voice. They also had an old eastern block sound to them. Yes, Russian metal was a thing with imperial sounding marches in their metal influences. Turns out this is a Swedish metal band. I opened up video after video and was just transfixed by their sound that was new, yet very old and familiar to me. Brought me back to my metal days, which believe it or not, brought me comfort. Hard to believe that the heart pounding rhythms of metal music can bring comfort, but it's possible. Anyway out of all the songs, one really stood out to me and that's the one I'm going to share with you. Here is Swedish metal band Avatar with their song "Silence in the Age of Apes".
I understand that that isn't going go be for everyone, but it's a wonderful thing to hear something that takes you out of your comfort zone, so just sit back and enjoy.
I wanted to remind you to go check out the story I wrote. I really just want people to read it at this point. I took the paywall off of it, so it is free for everyone to read. Please enjoy it and let me know what you think.The Patchwork Knight That link will take you to chapter one. When you get to the bottom of each chapter there is a link to the next chapter, just click on it and it will take you there. I really do think this is my finest writing and I hope you enjoy it. Peace in and goodnight.
I'm happy to announce that my face is almost back to normal, although I'm sure there are some people that would argue that it's never been normal. It still has a grainy texture to it, but it's more like 2000 grit sand paper at this point. Needless to say, I'm pretty happy about this. I have some ideas for pictures and the sooner my face gets better and my skin heals, the sooner I can put those ideas in motion.
I found another new show that is really good. It's called Alice in Borderland. It's a Netflix original from Japan. If you don't like subtitles you can always turn the dub on. I personally hate dubbed movies, so I'm happy to read it. Anyway, it starts out as 3 misfit guys get into some trouble and avoid the police by hiding in a bathroom stall, but then the power goes out and when they exit the stall everyone has disappeared. They find themselves completely alone or so they think they are. A prompt comes up on a giant screen directing them to go to the game arena to play a game. Turns out it's a deadly game but if you survive you get a visa for 3 days. You have to play another game by the end of those 3 days or you are killed. It's really fantastic and you should give it a try. I'm not finished with it yet. I just turned episode 7 on right now.
I promised that I would have those temple pictures for you this week, but I failed to get around to them, so I'm going to share with you my favorite photo of the shoot. Before I do though, I have posted a few pictures to the CSP Instagram, so if you want to see those, please go check them out and give them a like. Here is my favorite picture of the shoot. I haven't posted this one yet, but it will be going up tomorrow around noon.
Let me know what you think about it. One of my nieces has been kind enough to send me some keto products so that I can test them out and let her know about them. She send me a large bag of almond flour, which I will eventually make my keto cookies with, but I wanted to try something new last night, so I made a dredge and did breaded pork chops. I used one cup of the flour with salt, black pepper, turmeric, onion and garlic powder and paprika. Don't ask me how much of those other spices I used, cause I have no idea. I mostly cook by feel, so it's usually what I feel is right. They ended up coming out great.
Yeah, the one in the middle is a little darker, but it wasn't burnt, that was just the color of the ghee after the first two were cooked. Had those with a big pile of sauerkraut. It was fantastic. This morning I tried out some keto pancakes. I found a mix at Target and decided to try something different for breakfast. I don't have a keto friendly syrup so I just drizzled organic peanut butter on them. They were dry, but good. I had strawberries on the side, next time I'll slice the strawberries up and put them in between to give me some of that natural sweetness and moisture to them.
I'm not going to say much about this, but I've found someone that can sit with my mom from time to time. That means a little time to myself. It will probably only be 1 or 2 times a month, but just a few hours a month will be way better than what I have now. This gives me that free time to clear my head, and I might be able to fit some photoshoots in. It felt so good to be behind the camera again. It made me happy and isn't that all that really matters some time?
Ok, Favorite Song of the Week time. Taylor Swift did it again. On Thursday she announced the surprise release of a new album. Turns out, after she finished the last album Folklore, that team continued writing songs, enough for a whole other album. Let me tell you, these aren't throw away songs either, they are really good, and the first single has a fantastic video as well. I'm truly falling in love with Miss Swift, not in a sexual way, but in a, I really want to be her friend way. Anyway here is the first single of the brand new album Evermore, "Willow".
I hope you have a wonderful week and keep your eyes peeled for a special message from The Pepperoni Report. Peace in and goodnight.
It's been a rough week. My eyes once again tried to swell shut. All the things I thought were causing it before, I hadn't done at all, so I'm completely at a loss now. My skin seems to slowly get better each day, but it is still extremely dry. At least the cracking has stopped. At night it seems to get worse, and when I go to sleep and roll over on my side, the side of my face stings like it's sunburnt. I still place all the blame on dying my beard with Just For Men, and lesson learned, I will never use that product again. Oh, the latest thing that is happening, is my vision is being bothered. Mostly in my right eye, but it feels like the inner lid is swollen and sometimes like there is debris caught in my eye. I'm not sure what is more maddening, the stinging in my skin or my eyes bothering me. I have to get over this. I'm not sure how or when it's going to happen, but I will have better skin again.
I do feel lucky, because I got to do that photoshoot yesterday. It was really good to be back behind the camera. I was a little rusty, but in the end I got some really great shots. I'm not done processing them yet, not that I really do all that much to them, so I only have two to share with you tonight. Both of these kind of blew my mind when I got a real good look at them, and I always feel that's a good sign. Before I get to them I have to tell you about the locations. We didn't get all our desired spots in, but the ones we got were pretty good, especially the first one. We went to a buddhist temple that was peaceful and tranquil, it made for a juxtaposition with what we were doing. I'll have pictures of that next week. I did take a few stand along shots with out the model. Mostly to get my bearings and figure out how to set up the camera for the shot I wanted. Our next location was supposed to be a cemetery but night had fallen, and they have a strict no entry at night policy, so we moved under a bridge near the waters edge, and although I didn't use the scenery, I got some really great shots, one of which you will see below. Our last location was the Astronaut Memorial in Titusville, and I got some shots with the memorials, but the other shot I'm going to share was simply using a street lamp for light and since she is a smoker, I got some really cool shots with the smoke lingering around and being highlighted by that lamp. Without further adieu, here are the two shots I have to share tonight.
I'm really looking forward to shooting with her again, but I don't have any idea when that would be, or when I will get the chance to go out for a few hours. It really did feel good to be out. I needed it, but it wasn't enough. It just reminded me of just how stuck I am with the bare minimum of help. I'll get through this, but I am going to have a real big chip on my shoulder when it's all done.
I have realized that talking about it really gets me nowhere, so let's get to Favorite Song of the Week. This song comes from a one man band. Ok, he is actually part of a band, but he writes all the songs, and plays all the instruments on the recording tracks. With the pandemic going on he has been in a writing frenzy, and he began to notice that some of the songs really didn't fit in with what the band does, so he decided to put them out as a solo project EP. I'm happy to introduce you to Honorary Astronaut with their first single "E.K.E.".
Yes, the video is a bit weird, but that's what makes it so fun. Oh, and the band that he is a part of is The Dear Hunter, in case you want to check them out. Those albums are more like storytelling concept albums which will blow your mind.
That's all I have for tonight. Over the next few days, I'll be working on those photos. I took 157 images and as always, I won't use them all. Some of them are duds for sure, and that is all my fault, but that is how I work. I will waste a shot to see what the settings get me, and then I'll get it right with the next shot. It's all part of shooting in manual. I'm so glad I shoot in digital, because if it was film, I would have no idea what the shot looked like until they were developed. That's not all true, I would have an idea of what they looked like based on lighting and settings. I do know what results I should get from what settings, but it's still fun to try something new and step out of your comfort zone. Magic happens when you do that. Take that as a lesson. Try something new, you may be surprised by the results. Peace in and goodnight.
