The photo is unusual for a couple of reasons. First, it's one of the few times I pushed Kodak Ektachrome 320T up to ASA5000 (a 4-stop exposure push requiring a 5-stop development push) and second because Tereza is the oldest woman I've photographed nude. The colors and grain are the result of the push. Even at that film speed it was about an eighth-second exposure, hand-held, wide open. Tereza, my first real girlfriend (lasting more than a week or so) since the Ex kicked me out, was forty-five at the time. She was life-affirming (as the smell of bacon is).

It's supposed to rain for the next few days. This season has been very dry so we need it, but it also means hillside houses sliding into canyons resulting in public assistance (read "state tax money") to bail out the filthy rich idiots who thought that California hillsides would be nice places to live. Personaly I'd rather have water in the reservoirs than the idiots on hillsides. But being Southern California, it will also mean hundreds of huge SUVs and hot little imports in ditches (OK, we don't really have ditches because it never rains here - we only have "crashes," "wrecks" and "off-the-side-of-the-roads.")

(Are parentheses a crutch?)