snarl, june 2009, originally uploaded by heyoka.

Saturday, all day, in the darkroom, doing a first batch of test prints from the Imaginary Cities plates to date--I needed to figure out if they'd print at all, given that they are ambrotypes and hence very, very thin negs. First pass looks promising. Nothing like final prints, but reassuring. Except for my denseness: I always forget that the brown tones of viradon drop back quite so much when they dry, so the toning's a bit too damn subtle. Next to invisible, even.

Making plans for projects. There's too much up in the air right now, which is making me twitch slightly. It's tempting to just hide away and dig deeper into the Cities stuff, or try to rock my pt/pd prints to the next stage of not-suckiness. Too many branching paths, not enough damn time.

Waterlog? I shut up about that, because it's too damn boring. I think I'm back from France again, home in Dover. It's been so long since I started that I may have under-counted. I was being slack, down to swimming just once or twice a week for a while, but back to the tedious slog every other day again. Oh, joy. (But hello muscles!)

Smoking? Gah. Off the wagon with a bruising thud there. Keeping it to three or fewer a day, and nothing before evening, but there have been lapses on that too. I am rubbish at quitting smoking.

Zot, that crazy old bird, seemed to have a close run in with the reaper a couple of weeks back, but kicked his bony arse. She is mighty.