Another one: The Assistant

I haven't taken many photographs lately. I've even gone so far as to lug my camera around school for a couple of days. But like my textbooks, ...the camera wasn't being used. I don't like the idea of lugging it around all the time. I'm afraid it'll get jarred too much or it'll get stolen or I'll leave it somewhere, ..etc.

One of the nice things about the Canon G1 is the fact that it has a remote. The other day I went to the old barber here in town, and I'd thought about setting the camera in one of the "people waiting to get a haircut" chairs, and keeping the super-small remote in my hand as my hair would be cut, ..getting cool pics of not only the old slouched over barber, but me and my stunning studly self as well. I didn't take my camera though. And I'm glad. The old barber was there, but his son was the guy doing the cutting. His son owns a taxidermy shop that adjoins to the same building. So for part of the day I guess he mummifies deer heads and small squirrells and mounts smelly fishes on wooden plaques, ..as well as groom and cut and comb dead animal fur, ..before joining his dad in the barber shop for an afternoon of live human hair grooming.

I'm learning not to care about grammar, here at this weblog, or maybe it's a journal, or perhaps you could call it the: Public Relations Headquarters for Drew Stephens. Whatever you like. I don't care.

Things have been nice lately. I gots glow in the dark snowflakes on my ceiling. Me-thinks that some of them are defective. A couple of the small ones don't glow. Something is certainly amiss. I had a similar reaction tonight when i opened up a package of Ramen. There were no obvious holes in the packaging, yet a small bug had evidently been living in the Chicken-Flavored package for some time. There were large amounts of powdery debree in the bottom of the bag, evidently such debree was made up largely in part, ..of critter-insect dung; Ramen that had passed through the digestional and intestinal and excretory systems of the said insect. I threw it away, only to discover that all four of the other Ramen packages were infected with the same plague. Next will come frogs. Or perhaps my bathtub water will turn blood red. Not to worry though. I don't have a firstborn son. Something though, is certainly amiss.

I want answers. Lots of them.

I've made, and will continue to make, changes, in the photography page over the coming days, until I get it right. Until all is satisfactory, or until I don't care anymore.

And oh boy! There are new photos:

Fire Light

Between Semesters

Collin: “Any and all inclement weather conditions we’ve thusfar experienced over the last year and a half, I’ve been out in’em.”

Both as apprentice electricians working for the same company, Corey has experienced the luxury of moving around to quite a few indoor and outdoor job sites, while Collin, has been outside, every day, and currently involved in a massive rough-in of a new high-rise hotel in Hot Springs; mostly digging, laying pipe, and setting panels before all the concrete is poured.

Every single day last spring, last summer, last fall, this winter, he’s been outside, “in it”, while I’ve been sitting in cushy chairs at an educational institution, ..pushing a mouse.

As of late, for some strange reason I’d rather be outside, swinging a pick-ax at hard dirt, and not sitting here. Some of it has to do with the feeling of accomplishment that comes with hard, physical, yet at the end of the day gratifying, labor. And some of it, ok most of it, involves my growing desire to leave school and make a living and have a life. I want, and will seek, movement in that direction. For my current state of existence has increasingly grown old, intolerably predictable, stale, and monotonous. I’ve simply been along for the ride.

passenger side.

The parents purchased a mid-priced digital camera. We are now familiar with said camera’s capabilities.

So I haven’t been updating much as of late, here anyway. It’s nice, in a weird sort of refreshing-change way. I know. That didn’t make sense. But hey.

My computer is at my grandmother’s house, with me. I’ve been staying over here for the past two days, doing this and doing that and fetching things and taking continuous requests. I haven’t at all been very “productive” in the way of tasks that I normally perform, but I don’t feel lazy. If I were at home, I’d feel really pathetic and worthless. ..Yeah, even me. But here at my grandmother’s, it isn’t that way at all. She needs a little help with things, so I’m around, doing this and that, and inhabiting the spare bedroom at night.

Today among other things, we continued moving the contents of her bedroom to a different room, a warmer room with more light. Yesterday afternoon with aunt Carole it was the bed, box spring and mattress, along with the desk. Today it was shelves, clothes, a jungle of doodads from the closet, and all manner of items that I can’t begin to recall, being transferred to the new room. The closet in the new room had to be emptied of everything before we put all her clothes in there. All kinds of weird stuff. Paint brushes, old wooden frames, ancient magazines, and mostly just boxes containing hodge podges of things that in no way relate to each other, like “Great Romantic Piano Favorites” on cassette, a fly swatter, a plastic container of old medicine and a photo cube.

Oh and shoes. Mostly women’s dress shoes, all the same size and shape, in every color of the rainbow. Like skittles.

Nobody needs over 40 pairs of shoes. Maybe Imelda Marcos, but not Nana. It blows me away. Makes me smile and laugh and wonder. Simply mind boggling. I guess everybody is a collector of something or other though, and I could perhaps see the day when I move out on my own and have actual money of my own, ..that I would slowly amass for myself and even perhaps “collect” t-shirts. Cool, weird, funny, stupid, strange t-shirts. Not that I’d go out strictly for the purpose of looking for such shirts, but I’d grab onto those I liked and build up a t-shirt compilation of sorts and take good care of them. I guess that’s what she did, ..shoe-wise. Probably so.