Well, End Of Some Beginning of Others

I will postpone my long trip series in favor of honoring "The Ends".

I was working on my computer at home in late December early January when the operating system failed and left me with a difficult time retrieving my images files which included all of the digital pictures I have ever taken. This followed a scary holiday experience in which I was the front passenger in a mini-van, waking up just in time to see through the fog as oncoming traffic avoided us as we landed in a snow covered farmers field at 11pm on Christmas Eve.

In November one our members from The Pilsen Photo Group passed on... to be followed in January by our gallery space.

In mid January I decided it would be time to get a new vehicle. Maybe it was the leaky gas tank, missing exhaust system, chip in the windshield, rusting rear drivers side door, missing stereo(attempts to steal it have been so frequent I removed it myself and hummed my way to work), no, It was the slowly failing transmission that made me decide to move on. I have had that car since mile 7 and I put darn near all of the 180,000 miles on her and knew I could count on speeds of 75-100 miles per hour! Not anymore. Dying at stop lights put an end to that. I decided that I would trade it to a friend instead of junking it, he would fix it and use it as a beater. The last car I traded to my friend was my Lincoln Continental MK IV, I got a black Nikon FA body that had some brassing but still works to this day. So I got the new car. Great, the next day I would drop off my old car and not have to see it junked. Super J driving the new car and I in the old car travelling down I-94 to drop it off and at about 79th street it starts to lose power Ugh! and I was able to make it up the ramp and right turn into the alley behind Churches Chicken where it smoked and died. I figured the city would ticket the heck out of me if I left it there so I had SuperJ steer and I pushed it around the block. I was in luck because there are several places that will come and get your old dead car and give you cash on the spot. I had SuperJ call around while I removed my belongings and then began removing the cerwins and fosgate speakers I had installed years earlier. So I got $75, enough to pay for license plate transfer to the new car.

We are dealing without a microwave that also died in January and now my 10year old JVC reciever is on the fritz not to mention the yamaha CD-R drive in my pc died when my OS took a dive.

These are "The Ends",

Visioncity


P.S. Oh, and the SuperJ's favorite "The Berghoff" closed it's doors after 107 years this past Tuesday evening. We stopped by on Monday night to take in the fare one last time.