Not Impulse Buying...

Yesterday I was watching one of my new chipmunk friends making a spectacle of himself on my back porch mere feet from me. He couldn't see me through the glass window of the French door so the first thought that came to mind was to grab my digital camera and snap a few shots of him, but then I sighed and said "why bother, the pictures won't come out well anyways."

My old Kodak DC3800 had become a real disappointment. It was a good camera in its day but as with all electronics these days, "Its day" didn't last very long. It had a whopping 2 mega pixels, an 8 meg memory card, and no zoom capabilities, that pretty much makes it about as good as any camera phone these days. It really wasn't all that expensive of a camera to begin with and I have really wanted to get a better one, but I'm just not a spender. I'm the person who always worries about the "what ifs". What if the car breaks down? What if I loose my job? So consequently I'm always saving my money.

I had finally had it with that camera and after the chipmunk incident, immediately hopped into the karaoke battlewagon and headed off to the store. Now this does not qualify (in my mind) as impulse buying, as I had thought about it for a long time, and it wasn't like I was at the store right when the "desire to purchase" came over me. Ok, so a new camera wasn't high on my list of "needed things" to get, it was more like on a separate wish list. There certainly are much more important things that I could have kept saving my money for. The thing is, I have been working a lot of overtime lately, and saving every dime (can you hear me convincing myself in my head), and haven't splurged on anything in quite some time, and so don't I deserve a "little" extravagance for myself?

Looking over the cameras in the store it pretty quickly came down to two, an Olympus and a Canon (their most expensive models). The best part was I had two of the girls in the camera department helping me out and it turned out one girl owned the Olympus and one owned the Canon and I managed to get them to argue over who's camera was better. The girl who owned the Canon (the slightly less expensive model) did admit that the other girls camera was better, but proceeded to rattle off a list of reasons why her camera was better, and she put up a pretty convincing argument, the best of which was that the Canon had a fold out LCD screen that you could point downward and shoot while holding the camera high over your head (she showed me a picture she took at a concert by using just such a method). The part of that which I liked the best was that you folded the screen face against the camera body protecting it; the Olympus' screen was affixed to the back of the camera, leaving it exposed. The Canon finally won out (I never buy the most or least expensive of anything and I was maybe feeling a little guilty about the money I was spending).

So after picking out a few peripherals, I left the store with my new "Canon Power Shot S3 IS" with 6.0 Mega Pixels, 1.0 gig memory card, 12X zoom and 0.1 second between shots (I missed a shot of some deer in my backyard the other day with my old camera because it took too long to be ready to fire again) in hand and also a DVD copy of "Apocalypto" by Mel Gibson (another thing I didn't need, but it was an excellent movie especially if you like Mayan and Aztec cultures like I do) and thereafter proceeded to go shutter happy (how was that for a run-on sentence?). I've spent most of the weekend (except stopping to watch the movie) taking shots, loading and playing with the software that came with it, and reading the plethora of materials that came with this complicated machine. There are a lot of different settings, which I am just starting to learn what they all do. I was very happy to find that it has a "Diopter Adjustment Dial" that allows you to focus in the view finder, just like focusing a pair of binoculars, because while I was in the store I was unable to admit that all the little icons in the view finders were blurry, and I thought it was just because I need a new pair of glasses (another thing on the list), and the girls might chuckle at my poor eyesight (you think about these things when you're a guy and you get... older).

So from now on my blogger posts should contain more and better pictures even though I still have to edit them for size (the pictures, not the posts), as no one wants to have to wait to download a 3 meg picture. I've included in this post new pictures of "Tunneler" the chipmunk who dug a tunnel under my sidewalk to my flower bed and has an amazing ability to "dive" into the bark in the flower bed and pop up somewhere else, also some better pictures of "Chubby" the groundhog and "Oscar" the red squirrel who live in my shed. I hope you all have had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend, I'm just glad to go back to work tomorrow so that I can pay for this shopping spree...


Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.

-Sydney J. Harris

My First Time (blush)...

So I've been tagged by the dearest Pobble, and yes that is the very first time I've ever been tagged so I guess that means I've finally lost my meme virginity, "Pobble, was it good for you?"

The rules of the tagging are as follows:

* Post a similar post like this one and add a link back to the person who tagged you.

* List 5 reasons why you blog about the things you blog on your blog.

* Choose your 5 tag ‘victims’ and tag them nicely.

(Hey pobble, just what qualifies as tagging nicely?)

* Write a comment on their blog letting them know that you tagged them.

Ok, this seems simple enough on the outside, as the question of "why one blogs" comes up occasionally, but I've always thought that "I really don't know why I blog". Since I have been tagged I must try to come up with at least some sufficient answers, so here goes...

1.) First and foremost "I like meeting new people and making new friends". Many bloggers feel they must write about "exciting things" in order to keep their bloggers entertained, but I've always just enjoyed hearing about the everyday "goings on" in people's lives. I become attached to the bloggers that I read daily and become saddened when a blogger leaves, feeling like I've lost a friend. It's all about the human contact...

2.) "I love to write". My biggest problem with blogging has always been trying to keep my posts down to a manageable size (and you thought it was my grammar). I spend a lot of time, when making a post, just trying to cut it down to something reasonable. If I ever posted my first draft it would likely fill up half of my blog page...Yes, I tend to ramble on a bit...

3.) I like "being able to speak my mind without interruption". Just let me say what I have to say, and then make your comments. I find quite a few rude people these days who will try to "speak over you" right when you are in the middle of a sentence, which I find quite annoying. I also have a dislike for "conversation hogs" that won't let you get a word in edgewise. Blogging, by it's nature, promotes polite conversation (Ok, down off of my high horse)...

4.) There is something very special about putting your thoughts up on the web and knowing that someone from half way around the world may be reading them at this very moment. I like hearing what people think "straight from them", not from the media telling me how people think on varying subjects...

5.) "I love the comments people put on your posts". It's when you find out that people all over the world really are just like you deep down inside...

Now for the tagging bit. I don't normally tag people when I put up a meme, rather I like to just let them steal the meme if they like it because I know some people don't particularly like being tagged, but "hey, it's part of the rules on this one", so here goes...

"Spider"

"Tai"

"Kimber"

"Liz"

"Hope"

I know a few of these bloggers have been absent for one reason or another (as I have myself) and a couple are "off on adventures" but who knows I may get lucky and get a response...

I want to thank "The One and Only Pobble" for tagging me and giving me the "hey where have you been" virtual smack upside my head. I know I have been absent a lot lately and I just want to let you know I'm still alive. I hope this posts, as my last post never found its way to the net. It still sits "in draft" as blogger refused to put it up and after three days of trying I kind of gave up on it.


Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.

-James Barrie

Afraid of the Dark?

When I was a wee tot about a millennia ago a bedroom became available in my house and my mother decided that it was time that I should have my own room. So they moved me into the bedroom next to the one I had shared with my older brother pretty much for all of my entire young life. Now when it came time to go to bed my mother thought that I might be afraid of the dark, though I had slept in complete darkness my whole life, this would be the first time alone. So to head off this problem she decided to leave the desk lamp on hoping that this would help me to not be afraid of sleeping alone in the dark. I screamed bloody murder.

The desk lamp threw-off garish shadows from the bed, closet and desk, which I was sure all the monsters in the world were hiding in. After several nights of this my mother decided to try it without the lamp, and I slept just fine. As it turned out I was maybe the only child on the planet who was not afraid of the dark but indeed afraid of the light. My entire life I have spent taking great comfort in the night, feeling very safe surrounded by the darkness, which I could slip off into and none of my enemies could find me. There has never been any fear for me when the sun goes down which seems to be a sentiment very few people on the rest of this planet seem to share.

When I originally moved into this house eight years ago with my now ex-wife there was street light in the back yard up at the peak of our roof which illuminated the entire back yard turning night to day. The switch for this light was down in the basement, not easily accessed, but since this large halogen light had a sensor that would turn it on at dusk and shut it off when the sun rose it was always left on. My wife and the kids were greatly comforted by this light and the only time I remember it being shut off was on a couple occasions when the ex and I went skinny dipping in our pool and at least one occasion when we slept out in a tent which was when I found out that our neighbor's young adult kids liked to skinny dip in our pool as well. The wife, kids, pool, and the neighbor's kids are all gone now but that light is still there turning night to day.

About two months ago I was down in the basement and I saw the switch to that light and decided I really didn't need it running all night long, so I shut it off. As with many people I have been trying to lower my footprint on the planet, to help in any way I can to put less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which means shutting off those unnecessary lights wherever possible. Now this may only be one light, and one might think that shutting off one light won't make much of a difference, but it can. As it turns out that one light, that I paid little attention to before, was responsible for 25% of my electric bill! Fully one quarter of the electric I consume was being generated for one light whose only purpose was to light up the back yard, and most of the time it was doing it was while I was asleep, benefiting no one! Now that seems like a good bit of savings, not only for the environment, but for my wallet as well.

Now its not like its totally dark out there at night, the street lights running up and down my street do a good job of turning night to day, because apparently the headlights on peoples cars aren't good enough. Out back there is plenty of light provided by the old shop across the field that closed down last year but still has a dozen street lights illuminating their entire parking area for no one except one guard, and has at least one of those street lights that burns both night and day. The moon and stars do a pretty good job of lighting up the night, what little of them you can see anymore, as they are mostly blocked out by all those lights we seem to have some need to burn all night.

Which makes me wonder are all the people still so afraid of the dark that they can't just let the night be the night. Are they still worried about predators in the darkness, even though we've wiped most of them out, that they feel a need to wipe out the darkness as well. Can't they enjoy the charms that the night brings, that any skinny dipper will tell you, has its advantages. After all, the only monsters I've found in the darkness seem to be lurking high atop those telephone poles...