Day 2. Lifes simple pleasures.

Throughout my life I have worked at big corporate jobs, served 2 combat tours in the US Army, worked for local mom and pop shops, traveled, been married for 15 years, have 2 great children and had a number of “big events” that seem to landmark points and time.  As I get older though, the big things are still there, but its little occurrences of my daily routine that seem to fascinate me.  As you will see that today’s entry is not about any major occurrence, its about all of the little simple pleasures we often take for granted, get excited about, or find solace with their presence

Today started off like any other day: Wake up, check email/twitter (@cwithersmedia)/facebook/ZHPMafia.com and the other places that are important to my business.  Watch a few videos to find my inspiration for the day and then delve into photoshop to process images for clients.  I was putting the finishing touches on infant shots of Zippy Martinez when my batteries in my wireless mouse died.

Mouse needs batteries, not a big deal, just head to the local Target and pick up some AAA’s and get things moving again.  As I got my socks and shoes on, I noticed a drip coming from the fan area of my ceiling and called maintenance on my cell phone to come fix the problem with my air conditioning.  Pretty routine stuff, but as I had a little drive ahead of me to get the batteries, I started reflecting in the quiet of the car.  I need batteries to function a tool that allows me to be efficient in my work, I had to make a call on a cell phone that had the maintenance number pre programmed in it so I could have someone come fix my air conditioning unit,  I am driving to get the batteries in a car with my cell phone and air conditioning both on.  These simple pleasures  alone saved me massive amounts of time and rather than be upset that  I was knocked off of my routine, I just basked in the convenience of technology knowing that it could be much worse.

Batteries now in hand, I headed back to the dungeon to meet up with Arnulfo who was going to fix my AC.

Arnulfo is a cool guy, he speaks little English, works his ass off and always has a smile on his face.  When he came downstairs to tell me that he had to remove the closet flooring to fix a broken hose, I was a bit perturbed.  Yet, I took a minute to realize that here is this guy, looking like the Mexican version of Ron Jeremy sweating his ass off, doing his job….I have nothing to be fired up about, I just told him no problem, we moved stuff out of the closet, and he pulled up the floor and fixed it.  Here is where simple pleasures will bite you in the behind.  It was warm, the AC was off, and Arnulfo was looking pretty beat up when he came downstairs.  I offered him some water and he declined, so I offered him a Dr. Pepper.  Dr. Pepper in our house is liquid gold.  The dilemma, I only had one left.  Of course, Arnulfo wanted a Dr. Pepper and I willingly gave it to him for his efforts.  I went ahead and had water.

Having had a highly productive day and wanting to get out and shoot, I convinced and eventually dragged my mom to La Mesa for the 50’s night car show knowing she would have a blast and I would get content.  We arrived in historic downtown La Mesa to see streets lined with cars ranging from the 40’s to the 70’s, rat rods to rolls royces, and enough muscle to make Arnold tremble in fear. Music from the 50’s was blaring up to keep the mood right and we saw many people getting into the role with era appropriate outfits.

This was one of the cars that quickly caught my eye as we made our way up the street crowded with nostalgic onlookers.

As we continued looking I noticed a super clean VW bus with its doors open and a beautiful young lady sipping some wine in a small chair, I peeked my head in and introduced myself.  Justin and Cache were more than willing to let me grab a couple of shots of the interior and we talked for a few.  I then warned Cache to watch out for Justin because people with a couch and curtains in their van cannot be trusted.  Justin laughed as obviously I was joking, this perfect example of a Southern California Surf Cruiser was not typical of the Free Candy type of van that we warn our children about

If you like characters this is definitely a place to meet some,  we saw several vendors up and down the streets including the beautiful Jackie Henry, who is known affectionately to me as #100 as she was the 100th person to like my facebook fanpage.  We also met a cosplay pinup model, an Elvis looking dude, and the “Don’t Shoot, or I’ll Shoot” laser tag guy.

This was just my type of event, all about the people and not so much about the cars.  However, there were some cars…..

This was the type of event where you could just go kick your feet up, lay back and hang out.

I even found time to enjoy one of my favorite little simple pleasures.  Bacon wrapped, cheese and onion covered, hot dogs.  I only had one, but man, talk about 5 minutes of unhealthy heaven.  Even the sign to the left seemed to be directing toward the stand as if to say, “there is only one way”.

Then of course we come to Ruby.  Ruby is my mother, and she is pretty funny.  She is a simple person with a complex personality, but I am sure that will come up later.  For now, lets just focus on her simple pleasures.  Ruby collects antiques and loves anything red.  I was not there to go into all of the vintage apparel, wares, and furniture stores that line the streets of La Mesa and did my best to contain Ruby, but this next  series of pictures will tell the story.  As we were leaving, something caught her eye, and like a mosquito to an electric zapper, we were in the store.  The rest is history.

That was it, knowing my mother and her willingness to part ways with money for stuff like this, I figured she had taken all she could handle and I got her out of there before we left with a trunk full of goods.