No Decaf for YOU

Last week, starting saturday, Poway suffered under a boil-water advisory. The restaurants, coffee shops, and store deli were closed. Water was being distributed by the city at Lake Poway and city hall. I only drink decaf, so the coffee has to have a good flavor. Starbucks long ago drove out the small coffee shops, and I find their coffee to be bitter and burnt tasting. It's funny how I was craving just what I couldn't have.

Top: Bean coffee roastery truck serving
 coffee in front of the Starbucks.
Bottom: Water distribution at city hall
viewed through the legs of the statue titled-
"Seeing" by Johnny Bear Contreras

Monday, I drove around town trying to find a new coffee truck that appeared the previous week in the Von's parking lot, since the usual sources of decaf were closed. I did not find him. On Tuesday I enjoyed a walk around town sketching some of the scenes from the no water experience and came across him in front of, duh!, the closed Starbucks. Brian roasted me half a pound of decaf beans and made me an Americano. Yay!

As I was sketching the water distribution at city hall, a man walked out of the building carrying a clipboard. It was a cool day, but he had a large sweat stain down the back of his shirt. I couldn't help wondering if the stress of the "boil water" was getting to him. I really need practice on human figures, but the sweat stain was easy.

12/03/19 Brontosaurus, the cattail gobbling machine.

A couple times a year, some large and very loud machinery travels down the stream behind my house cutting and grinding up everything that grows in the stream bed (mostly cattails), presumably to ensure flood waters have room to travel through without backing up. It took me a few years to actually see the elusive machine. On my walk I found it parked next to the chewed up stream bed. There are chains revolving around in the arm that shred the plants. It was amusing to find out that the machine is named Brontosaurus.

Technical Difficulties

I have been scanning my sketches on my Brother all-in-one inkjet printer. The printer itself is the most aggravating printer I have ever had, mostly because it eats ink at a rate surpassing any previous inkjet printer I have purchased. It is only a year old, I rarely print and usually in grayscale, but it has had four changes of ink cartridges in that time. I am looking into alternatives. It has been unplugged to prevent the frequent (and creepy) habit of starting itself up and running cleaning/diagnostic procedures.

To replace the scanning function of the unplugged printer, I tried to resurrect an old stand alone scanner that I bought about twelve years ago. At that time, I was running Windows XP on my personal computer. I had some difficulty getting the Canon software to work on my Windows 7 computer, but with the current Windows 10 (one year new) computer the software would not communicate. Enter VueScan software, which is designed to make old scanners run on new computers. Shazzam! (does anyone say that anymore?) The scanner makes some moaning noises, so I don't know how long it will work, but it scanned easily from the get go. VueScan is available as a free trial, but to get rid of the large watermark I had to pay $19.99. Still cheaper than a new scanner.

Scanned with Brother MFC-J480DW at 600dpi

Here are scans of a leaf sketch from first the Brother MFC-J480DW printer, scanned at 600dpi and resized with Paint.

Leaves scanned with CanoScan LiDE 600f
600dpi

Then the same sketch scanned with my CanoScan LiDE 600F, scanned at 600dpi and resized with Paint. I like the latter scan much better! The colors and contrast seem much better to me. Maybe I could get a comparable scan from the printer if I played with the contrast settings, but why bother? I am happy with the improvement. And the scanner powers from my computer's USB port, so I don't have to walk over to the printer every time I want to scan another sketch. I feel like I have reconnected with an old friend. 

The leaves were collected from the street during a walk. They are a reminder of my Michigan roots. The fall colors of the Beech/Maple hardwood forest that I spent most of my life in are unbearably beautiful, but a few trees here in SoCal have good color, if you wait long enough. I don't know what tree the bottom leaf fell from, [Update 02/15/2020 I found the same leaves under a Bradford Pear that is now in bloom. Top leaf is Liquid Amber] although I spotted a half green shrub in a yard nearby. I used my Faber-Castell Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils, activated with water after coloring.