Smoke, rain, and wet stinky dogs

It sure is nice to be able to see. I mean I can't see perfectly right now, but I can *see* and that's just great. I still have the blind spot and the pinpricks of light, and it's very difficult to read web pages with dark backgrounds and light text; I can only read about two paragraphs before I have to stop and go look at something light, and then I can go back and read two more paragraphs or so. But I can still *see* them. That is so neat.

Many thanks to all of y'all who provided support and encouragement the past couple days. Nice to know people read and even care. You guys are the greatest.

It's funny how when something like that is threatened, you start imagining your life without it. And then when you realize you still have it, everything is different. You get some perspective back.

Today, I bought a new camera via Amazon. I paid a bit extra for expedited shipping, but my new toy should arrive early next week. I am eagerly awaiting it. As in, I think it's going to be hard to sleep I'm so excited about it. A real camera!

For kicks, I took my poor lil' beat-up Nikon for a spin tonight to give it, shall we say, a final opportunity to do some fun stuff before I abandon it in favor of the Konica. Here's a Nikon picture of a three-inch-tall dragon sculpture I made about a hundred years ago:



















There are certain things this Nikon does well, such as capture mid-range tones (as long as they're not red), and certain things it does poorly, such as capture bright tones. I'm eager to see how the Konica will handle this same setup and lighting.

Here's another shot, at a slightly different angle and with different lighting. It didn't focus as well.






















I'm meeting my friend B and his two kids for breakfast tomorrow at First Watch. I see him fairly frequently since he works a couple buildings over from where I work downtown and we have lunch sometimes, but I haven't seen his kids in about three years. He has two girls, and I really liked them when I last saw them when they were five and three. They were super-girly then and the way he talks about them now they still are. So I made them these little sculpture things that I hope they'll like:
















I hope they're girly enough. I don't really get girly. For perspective, those are cicada wings. The fairies are just about an inch tall each, too small to put details on the face easily (i.e., I'm lazy and didn't want to bother trying, because it would have taken forever). Note of interest: you can bake cidada wings in a 300-degree oven for twenty minutes and nothing happens to them. It's weird, because they look and feel so much like plastic that it seems like they'd melt. But they don't.

The rest of the day was pretty nice. Work was laid back, nothing rushed for a change, although Monday's looking to be a work-late doozy. Had a nice conversation with E via Yahoo IM about cameras, college, and crazy exes. It was good to be able to talk shop a bit with someone who's as into photography as I am; M knows I love it but doesn't really get into it at all so it's like talking to, say, Moby about Nascar. I walked to the Court Street Market at lunch and got loads of veggies that M and I grilled and ate with teriyaki when I came home. It was pouring rain and we sat out under the awning by the hot grill, watching the rain and smelling the food cook and playing with the wet stinky dogs. I love how smoke looks in the rain. The grill was putting out just enough smoke that it looked really neat. Dinner was delicious. Nothing quite as fleshy and yummy as a portabella mushroom cap smothered in teriyaki and cooked on a grill. Ahh, so good. Later, we watched some SpongeBob SquarePants too. That SpongeBob. He's a funny guy.

Okay. It's late, and I have an early breakfast date with two cute kids. Maybe they'll let me take their pictures.

Appreciate what you can see.