One of the challenges in maintaining this blog is fulfilling my desire to add images to the posts. In many cases, it involves scanning at home -- or similarly transferring my photos from camera to computer. And that occurs When I Can Get Around To It.

So this morning, I've sprinkled a few more pictures into previous days -- even back to the initial posting. And I'm still not satisfied with the scan of that one; I need to check with the administrators here to see just how big I can make the image of the first Beautiful Balloons column (from The Buyer's Guide #19, Aug. 15, 1972). I'd like it to be legible. Those who yearn for more illumination can do a quick scan back through the two months.

Nor are even these additions as much as I'd hoped (or hope) to do. For example, when I was hanging out with Carolyn Kelly and Mark Evanier in Los Angeles following the San Diego convention, Carolyn and I were strolling to Mark's house after a restaurant breakfast and we noticed a guy on the streetcorner surrounded by a small group of people, one with a clipboard.

"Isn't that the Borat guy?" I whispered to Carolyn, pulling her around the corner and hauling out my camera. The man was standing with some sort of wrapped sandwich and posing as if to put it into a streetcorner Postal Service mailbox.

I still don't know whether it was actually British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen or a lookalike posing for some sort of photo gag. But it's the sort of moment you can run into sometimes, not only at conventions but also in wandering around cities. I had a friend who always wore a camera clipped to his belt -- and that was in the early 1960s. Today, many of us profit from those camera-equipped cellphones -- but this was taken with a (heavy) digital camera.