Bridges are neat-o

I've been walking at lunch. I have an hour and I'm surprised at how much ground I can cover. I think I'm walking between 3 1/2 and 4 miles but I can't really be sure. I keep a fast pace except when I stop to take a few pictures now and then.

Monday when I was walking I saw a drug bust on the Veterans Memorial Bridge that goes over the Licking River, which flows into the Ohio River between Covington and Newport in Kentucky (the link has an aerial photo of what I'm talking about). Police in unmarked cars were chasing an early-nineties Toyota that wouldn't pull over, but a marked Covington police car came at the car from the other side of the bridge and they trapped the Toyota on it. Something came out the window of the car and went over the bridge railing into the river. This all happened as I was walking across the bridge. The police had one man in cuffs face-down on the pavement of the bridge as I was walking by and they were yelling in the face of another man about the identity of whatever had flown out the car's window. I got a good look at the face of the man on the pavement. He had an odd expression--like a combination of 'hurt little boy' with 'pissed off' with 'well the shit's hit the fan now.' I passed about three feet from the man who was being yelled at and he looked confused and sullen. Strange events.

Today, it's finally cold. WeatherBug told me it was 33 when I left the office and that the wind chill was 27. I believed WeatherBug and wore a hat and gloves. I didn't mind the cold so much at first--in fact it was nice, after such strange, unseasonable weather these past weeks. Even my dad was saying recently that he doesn't ever remember an autumn when it stayed this warm this long. But now, it seems winter has decided to come tearing through the Midwest in the form of nasty storms and tornadoes and cold currents. It started snowing on the last part of my walk. No accumulation or anything, but it's the first snow I've seen since last winter, and that's always nice. I've been walking on all the bridges that go across the Ohio River. This is a photo of the Purple People Bridge, formerly known as the L&N Railroad Bridge. It's much windier up on the bridges than it is walking through the artificial canyons created by the downtown buildings. On the river bridges, I sometimes have to lean into the wind to keep from being knocked over by it. My face froze into a smile when I was coming back across the Taylor-Southgate Bridge (neat little photo tour on that link, if you're interested). It took my cheeks a while to thaw out after my walk.

Tomorrow is ze big photo show. I have flashes of nervousness about it that come and go. We'll see. I made up some business cards with a link to my Flickr page on them and stuck cards to the backs of all the frames. I found out yesterday that there's going to be another photographer at this thing--dangit! It's the husband of someone at work. If he charges the same prices that are listed on his website, I'll be undercutting him.

What else...today, I learned it's not a good idea to Google "catgut stitches."

Tonight I watched "The Place Promised in Our Early Days," which was exceptionally good. There is this section right around the middle of the film when the main character is talking about an extended time during his life when he felt that his dream life was more vivid and important than the things he did when he was awake, and I had a big chunk of empathy for him during it. Some of the things this character said in a sort of voice-over monologue depicting scenes of this time period of his life really tugged on me; I understood the sadness and pain much more than I wanted to.

I was glad to wake up this morning and be only able to remember very small pieces of whatever I was dreaming, rather than the overwhelmingly vivid weirdness that my mind has been churning over while I sleep as of late.

Speaking of sleep. I guess I ought to.