I get my work done with a little help from my friend

It is now 1:49 AM. I am in my office. I first came in and sat down to work about 10:00 AM this morning and, except for a couple of small breaks, I have been in here ever since. This is pretty typical for me, so I decided its time to show this side of my life, right here, in Wasilla, Alaska.

I have been printing pictures from Kivgiq that will hang on a wall in the North Slope Borough Mayor's Office in Barrow - not in the room where the mayor sits, but out in the foyer where everybody congregates.

As always, Jim, my good black cat buddy, was here to help.

He did take a break to get a drink, however. For about 7 years, I had a big oscar in that tank, but it died about six weeks ago. I have not decided what to replace it with, but I am changing the decor of the tank. I recently bought a good-sized ceramic pig and a proportionally smaller piglet.

After I soak them for a couple of months to hopefully leech out any toxins that might be in the enamel, they will go into the tank with whatever fish I replace the oscar with. 

It won't be an oscar. It will be a big cichlid, however. Maybe two.

Right now, a giant pleco still lives in this tank, but I will have to find a home for it before I restock, because if I don't, it will eat the new baby fish.

As I continue to work, Jimmy crosses the room and takes a seat in the window sill above another tank. This one has a lively population. Too bad I didn't have the lights on.

Even when Jimmy just sits in the window, it is good to have him here. His presence helps to get me through the day.

Jimmy returns from the window sill and takes a seat on the keyboard. I needed to pause, anyway.

Then he decides to come to me. No matter how busy I am, I never turn him away. I have learned how to keep working when he does this.

He can make it a little difficult to see the screen, however.

Later, as he often does, Jimmy determines that I must take a break and pay attention to him, not my work, and so he digs his claws into my sweatshirt and pulls himself up onto my chest.

He stays a little while, then leaps to the floor and I get back to work.

A bit later, he does it again. He makes it hard to breath. You notice I only have one arm to support him with. Obviously, I man the camera with the other.

When I am not holding a camera, I am pretty skilled at supporting the black cat while simultaneously manipulating my computer.

He steps away from me. Before I can get back to work, he steps onto my keyboard.

I can't believe it! The photo that I was working with disappears right out of Lightroom. I panic for a moment, thinking that he has deleted it and I will have to go find a backup copy. But Jimmy did not delete it; he changed the rating from 3 to 1, and so it vanished from the screen, as I had Lightroom set to display threes and higher. This one popped up in its place.

I had been arguing with myself which of the two to actually print, and had decided on the other.

If you look closely at the picture, you will see also that Jim bumped the rating up from three to four.

For a moment, I thought, "Okay, Jim, if you say so, I will print this one instead."

But then I changed my mind and went back to the other.

I love my black cat, but I can't allow him to become my picture editor.

Now that we are on Daylight Savings Time, it doesn't get dark until nearly 9:00 PM. The sun goes down before that, but in the north, we have long, lingering twilight.

As you can see, the amount of daylight creeping into my office is declining with the hour, causing the screen to appear more pronounced.

Jimmy is still with me. He is that kind of cat.

He sticks with me all the time.

I have to print this picture several times, because ink splotches keep appearing on it. I clean the heads, print again, clean the heads, print again, and still the ink splotches appear.

Finally, I pull out a big pad of ink soaked lint. It looks like it might be made of cat hairs. The printing proceeds just fine, after that.

Now, it is completely dark outside. Jimmy keeps me going.

But wait! This is not Jim! This is not a black cat! This is a tabby cat!

Why, it's Pistol-Yero!

He usually hangs out here with Jim and I, but shortly after we got up this morning, he went to lay back down on the bed and soon fell into a nap.

He napped all day.

But now that it is night, he comes to the office to do his part.

Pistol-Yero!

Yesterday, I was too tired to tell the story of how that cup of coffee came to be set in front of me at IHOP, but I promised that I would tell it later.

So this afternoon, about 4:30, when I was taking one of those little breaks that I mentioned, I drove to Mocha Moose. I figured that I would get a new coffee picture and use that to illustrate the story.

This is Kaylee. At first, she was a little shy about the idea of being in the picture, but then she said, "ok."

But right now, as I type this sentence, it is 2:08 AM.

I have to get an early start tomorrow. I need to get to bed, sometime.

I'm tired.

I really am.

That story will have to wait.

It was not really my intent to blur this picture. I had set the shutter speed at 1/250 of a second, but sometimes the knobs on the pocket camera change without me knowing it. That's what happened. The shutter speed got reset to 1/40 of a second.

I don't really mind, though.

Life's a blur, anyway.

Comments

[STANDTALL]

You changed the background of this blog, right?

There is nothing like friends that know when one needs a break. Up JIMMY!

[Wasilla, Alaska, by 300]

Friends are always good to have.

Thank you, friend.