early saturday

Saturday morning started way too early for me. My Saturdays are sacrosanct; I consider it, along with Sunday, to be my days of rest. But my wife had an early morning MRI appointment at Florida Hospital. So I woke us both up while it was still dark, even for daylight savings time, and drove us both to the appointment.

The MRI waiting room was done up in classic Florida Hospital tans and browns. I suppose they carried out some sort of study and decided this had a calming effect on people waiting in their waiting rooms. Or maybe it was picked because it's the cheapest. Regardless, I got to sit for nearly two hours while they ran all the tests on my wife. I'd brought my Nexus 7 tablet with me, and settled down reading my Analog and Asimov science fiction magazines via the Nook app. In the background a large flat panel TV was playing episode after episode (no commercial interruptions!) of Law and Order, from the seasons with Jerry Orbach as Det. Lennie Briscoe. It's kind of hard watching those episodes, remembering Orbach passed away back in 2004. So I hunkered down into my reading.

In spite of the length of time it took it was still early morning, with the sun just up over the horizon. Looking up as I walked back to the car I saw the dawn streaking over the hospital highrises and onto the construction cranes adding more buildings to the Florida Hospital complex.

The two of us were ravenous so we headed to the closest Einsteins bagel place, the one on Orange and Mills, to grab a few egg and cheese begals with some coffee. I'm always into asiago cheese. If I can't have asiago I'll get sesame. We wolfed down our begals in record time and finally headed back home for our usual weekend chores.

I saw this in the morning, and came back after doing the grocery run. Universal's tourism business  seems to be on a rebound these days. They're in the process of building out the rest of their undeveloped buffer property at Turkey Lake and Hollywood Way. I can't wait for this 1950's inspired pile of concrete to be finished, complete with what appears to be wall-to-wall swimming pool. With all the shorelines on both the Atlantic and Gulf sides of Florida, Universal feels the need to create an artificial bay to keep its customers right there at the park. I guess, from an economic standpoint, you can consider this a "good" thing. Personally, as a very long time resident of the area, I wish Universal had never settled into the area.

Technical

Olympus E-M5, Panasonic 1.7/20mm on all but the last photo, which used the M.Zuiko 40-150mm R. Post processing in LR 4, Silver Efex Pro 2 and  Color Efex Pro 4, using a number of Color Efex Pro presets.