THE NEW CAMERA

first picture with new camera

The new camera arrived in the mail today. It's a Fuji S1500, a point & shoot model with so many things it will do and so many buttons to push with heiroglyphs on them; I've spent much of the day reading instructions trying to make sense of them. Trying to learn the alphabet of hieroglyphs they use is as difficult to retain as what the buttons are supposed to do. Maybe I could make some flash cards like learning a language. It can make short movies too. Very short. Most of the things it will do I don't want. I just wanted a camera and all the rest will have to lie dormant in its internal computer. Like a computer for me is a glorified typewriter and that's about it.

The other camera went mising one day. I searched everyplace in my house 3 times and everyplace at Jr's 3 times. It wasn't in my truck or on the ground. I could only conclude that I dropped it into the trash inadvertently and it's now at the Kernersville landfill in a trashbag full of catfood cans and junkmail. It was a good little camera, though 5 years old, a dinosaur. I miss you, Barney. We got along good. It was easy to carry in my pocket.

First thing I did after getting all the parts together, card and batteries, I tried to read instructions, but it was too much like a physics textbook and none of it made any sense to somebody from another Age, the Age of Pre-Twitter, a right-brainer at that. I went out and walked around the house taking pictures along the way. I found a lot of basic things I couldn't do or figure out or find in the instructions. I can see that these very basic functions I'm going to have to search out in the instruction manual, and give them some study.

The missing camera explains why I've used several "borrowed" pictures the last several days. Now that I'm writing you every day and sending you a picture every day, I need the camera. When it was raining every day a couple weeks ago I couldn't get on the internet every minute it was raining. When the rain let up I could get on it again, for a few minutes. One day I couldn't get online at all and it about made me nuts. But I tell myself relax; it's not anything major, just a commitment that must be flexible to consider distractions of a wide variety.

I take my laptop to Jr's during the day, then take it home in the evening and put what I wrote in the day online. The laptop is new to me too, though it's 2nd hand, but just like new. It was cleared of all in it before and put in clear windows xp making the laptop the same as new. Now the two tools I need for the blog are in my hands and new, ready to go. New moon, setting out on a new adventure.

Speaking of moon, night before last I saw the vertical half moon drifting toward horizon to set late at night. It was down into the pollution zone above horizon and glowing orange. It was the first time I'd seen a half moon that looked exactly like a slice of orange. Deep red-orange like a Valencia orange, or what they call a blood orange. Alas, it was the time between cameras. It wouldn't have made a good picture without a high-powered lens. It was meant to be retained by memory.

The sky is full of clouds today. Gray clouds, white clouds, a steady flow of a full sky of clouds, though with plenty of space between them for the sun to shine through all day with occasional veiling. They're moving west to east. Yet it's not been like a "cloudy day." Plenty of sun all day long. Mid 70s all day.

I like it out here on the porch at Jr's where I write you in decent weather. A mountain across the highway, electric wires running everywhere, tractors, machinery, and off to the right the old sawmill down the hill in the meadow and locust trees that look against the sky like trees in Persian miniatures. You see irises and walnut trees in Persian art for sure. Don't know about the locust. The curve in the highway to the right brings to mind seeing a race on tv with the camera placed to see the cars coming out of the turn into the straightaway. The cars float around it in a nice curve just like on tv.

The sky is filling up with big gray clouds. I've heard there is some kind of forecast for wetness maybe. We could use it. I've not heard or seen a forecast in some time except for when I read the forecast on Saturday morning, though I never retain it. A weather forecast seems about like the most fluid thing there is. Subject to change.