Before I get too far into this, I must appologize to two people who checked my blog on Monday. One was from Canada, the other from Italy. I can only presume they keyed on the title of one of my entries thinking it was something serious they should read about. Instead, they encountered gibberish which was nicely categorized by a young lady named Ally from Chile when she commented, “So, so confused by your blog …”. That’s when I learned the value of the titles used when posting to my blog. She was looking at my “Twilight vs. Hunger Games” entry thinking it was serious stuff. But, of course, it was meaningless, like normal. I’m sorry if any of you feel misled, but I do have a disclaimer alerting the readers that I tend to make stuff up.

Now, the cameras …

Yesterday we made a trip to Costco to get some “essentials” and I’ve been flirting with the notion of getting a new camera. One reason was so we could get good photos of “stuff” so they can be posted to Diane’s Ebay account, which currently has nothing. Other folks want her to list things to sell on her site, so it’s an opportunity to help them and get a few shekels for the effort.

When we go to Costco, Diane head toward the back, and I’m locked into the techie section just inside the door … you know, all those electronical things. Normally I just wander around and look, and play with things. Yesterday it was in the camera section since that’s what I’ve actually been researching. Camera’s with on board GPS were what intrigued me most because we wander around a lot and it would be good if all the photos were geotagged when they were taken. When we left I was the proud owner of a Nikon Cookpix S9300 and it seemed to be just fine and I used it to take the pictures I posted yesterday. But, I wasn’t pleased with the GPS aspect because it didn’t work like I thought it would. It requires a person to actually figure things out in order for it to work properly. It’s not a point and shoot, like I’ve been using for the past umpteen years. But, it was one of the least expensive that I was looking at which was the big motivation for getting it. Knowing I wasn’t going to like it for the long run, I removed all the pictures I’d taken and set it aside on my desk. Then I did a bunch of research on the other DSLR cameras at Costco and wished I’d gotten the Nikon D5100.

This morning Diane took her Mom, Jean, to the quilting group. She drove the PT and I took her Buick to the delearship to have some warranty trim issues resolved. I thought it was going to be a couple of hours, so I got comfortable in the waiting room and read my book. About an hour later the service writer came out and said the work to be done was going to take a number of hours to complete. Not prepared to spend the day there, he took me home where I went to work on the RV. It has a new name, Whimzzie. It was Wheezie for a long time, but that was for the really old Winnebagos we were going to resurrect, not the “new” one we have. There’s a few areas that need to be recovered where I ripped out some compromised wood products, and I got creative with cupboard doors to cover part of it.

Diane returned around 1:30 pm and saw what I’d done with the new camera and said “You don’t like it, do you?” Hanging my  head I admitted I didn’t. I thought I was happy, but I really wasn’t. The box we left with from Costco wasn’t nearly large enough. I wanted a bigger box, with a really complicated camera inside, that would stretch my picture taking deisres to their limits. After watching a couple of recorded TV shows, I guess I looked sad enough that Diane suggested we go back to Costco and get the camera I really wanted.

So, we did. Now, at this point I need to explain that my association with Enron a number of years ago reaped a modest payday that I wasn’t expecting. So, it was like found money and, thinking like the Mom on “In The Middle”, decided that found money isn’t something you waste on bills. I got the Nikon D5100 with two lenses. On the way home we stopped at Jo-Anns so Diane could get some material for the RV seats. While she was in the store I stayed in the car and played with the camera and read the manual.

Now I’m a really happy camper and I’ll be posting pictures just as soon as I figure out how it works. It’s got some many dials and buttons on it I just don’t know where to start. Since I’m a tactile type of person, I need to push the buttons to see what happens – I don’t get much info from manuals. I just read it so Diane would think I was being diligent. No sir! I need to make lots and lots of mistakes before I figure out how new things work. This could take months. Thankfully, I have thousands of pictures I’ve already taken.

Here’s a pictures totally off the subject. It’s the Miss Washington, the sailing ship used in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” It’s the Black Pearl. This picture was taken at the docks in down town St. Helens. They show up a cuple of times a year. The real skipper of the ship is the guy in the movies that has the fake parrot stuck to his shoulder all the time. Fun.