Scraping By Without Patience

Dearest Rachel –

Life is something of a whipsaw between having seemingly all the time in the world and suddenly running out, and having to transition from dawdling to running full pelt in the blink of an eye. What happened to you was an extreme example, of course, but it’s a situation we all deal with on a daily basis. And I wouldn’t be bringing it up if it weren’t for the fact that this morning was one of those days.

Literally; I was having ‘one of those days’ to start the morning. This may take some explaining.

I set my alarm last night for a quarter after six, but that’s meant to allow me time to shower and dry off before getting dressed and heading out to the men’s Bible study. Since I’d showered yesterday afternoon after coming home from my workout (part of a whole other story that I’ll try to get to you some time this weekend), I concluded I had an extra thirty or forty minutes to spend as I chose. After burning some of that time trying to continue to sleep (a futile effort, as I’d been at least half-awake since a little after four), I headed upstairs to try to compose my morning letter to you, instead.

Try as I might, however, I couldn’t make a whole lot of progress. Oh, it wasn’t a complete waste of time; I did create a couple of visuals to literally illustrate how things have been going, for one thing. But I have several things going on at once here on the computer upstairs, and it’s getting harder and harder to concentrate on the one thing I’d intended to take care of when I came up here with the plan and purpose of doing. It’s almost too easy, if I can’t think of anything to write down (or even if I can), to just flip through the newest available styles to incorporate into my AI art setup at the ‘office,’ and download them for later use, despite the fact that I won’t be able to get back there until Monday.

On a less generic level, I also have most of your old photographs here, and in order to create a LoRA (short for Low-Rank Adaptation; and no, I don’t really know what that jargon means. It’s why I keep having to look up the acronym every time I try to explain it to someone, when they’ll let me) of your pictures for the AI system, I need to both enlarge and sharpen them, either through Photoshop (as I’ve detailed with you previously) or by using certain other software I’ve acquired that actually works better and more efficiently, but is a little pricey at first (although when all is said and done, it comes to maybe four or five months’ of the Adobe Cloud contract, so I’ll likely get more of my money’s worth out of it). So again, it’s one more distraction from my letter to you today. And while there’s nothing out there requiring me to write something to you every day, it bothers me when I set myself to the task, only to find myself so distracted from it like this.

But whether I was bothered enough to desist, or too engrossed in every new task or acquisition (spoiler alert: it was the latter), it wasn’t long before it was past time for me to leave the house. Already, I knew I wouldn’t get there in time for the speaker’s video on this week’s subject matter – granted, I had watched it last night in the bedroom, in lieu of a YouTube video or two, so it wasn’t necessary for me to be there for that, but it didn’t seem right to be sneaking in while it was to be running. I needed to be on my way, and quickly.

Unfortunately, the weather had other plans for me. Oh, it was nice enough out, to be sure, especially for a February morning; crisp and sunny, with almost nothing in the way of snow or slush to deal with (although I hope that camp isn’t quite so warm and comfortable; the high schoolers are going to have a less-than-fun time at winter camp if there’s no winter). The one thing that I have to deal with is a sheet of ice crystals on the windows and windshield.

Now, what I should have done was to fire up the car, put the defroster on high, and scrape everything off before heading out. And I suppose that, in my defense, I did perform two out of three of those tasks. I simply thought I could see my way through the crystals – and where I couldn’t, I could just use the wipers on as they defrosted. As far as I was concerned, it was no worse than other times when I was dealing with a dirty windshield that I didn’t have the time to clean; I’d be able to make things out as I drove along, and it would resolve itself en route.

That… was an overestimation, as it turned out. Even as I pulled out onto our street, I was realizing that I could not tell where the white dashes were to the left of me, or the curb to the right. It would be one thing if I were driving on a side street within the subdivision, where I wouldn’t be dealing with other traffic at that hour, but this was a dicier situation than I had expected. And when I turned onto Euclid…

I probably don’t have to remind you what it’s like to be driving east of a morning. It’s the one time of day you find yourself wishing it was raining – or at least cloudy – rather than sunny. Even through a clear window, the sun is in your eyes, and you can barely deal with it; squinting keeps the sun at a minimum, but also reduces visibility to the same extent as trying to drive with eyes wide open. And with the windshield still not defrosting as fast as I’d hoped or expected, that sunlight was diffused across the entire windshield. In fairness, there wasn’t any single point of light that seared my retinas, but the fact that my entire field of vision was an immense beam of light meant that I could not see where I was going, nor was I about to any time soon. My impatience had gotten me to this point where I was gingerly making my way forward, going 20 mph in a 35mph zone, trying to ascertain where the right lane was so that I wouldn’t block both lanes of traffic until I could find the next side street (assuming that I could), pull into it and pull over, and scrape my windshield clean like I should have in the driveway.

Finally, I saw the curb to my right pulling away from me in my peripheral vision; I’d reached that first side street. I switched on my blinker, and made the turn… and that’s when I saw the truck. One of those big public works trucks (or maybe a ComEd type – I couldn’t see, I still hadn’t cleared the windshield, after all), with tools and equipment hanging on the side. I pulled the steering wheel as tightly as I could, but I still heard the scrape.

Now, the driver of the truck could have confronted me about this, and he’d have been well within his rights to do so. I’m guessing the fact that it wasn’t his truck may have had something to do with why he didn’t. Either way, I’m going to be grateful for that.

It’s an embarrassing thing to have to tell you about, but it’s certainly something I’d have had to explain if you were still here, so… there you go. At least there was no confrontation, no cops involved, no real penalties to speak of – unless you count the fact that the car is now indelibly scarred as a reminder of my own impatience.

With that having been said, keep an eye on me, honey, and wish me luck – and a little more patience. Clearly, I’m going to need both.