Long Day

I spent a good portion of today working on one of the three-page papers due this week. Tomorrow is supposed to be the monthly meeting for all the Prescott area bloggers, but I will probably blow that off this month in favor of getting the paper completed that I had hoped to finish off last weekend. That shouldn't take long; all the information is there, I just have to make it all pretty. I'd like to get a solid start on another paper that is due May 3rd, but I'm not getting my hopes up. It will certainly be nice when I'm not forced to write all the time; I may get back to where I actually enjoy blogging again.

I did take an hour or so off school work so we could walk downtown. The fire department was on the courthouse square doing their annual thing trying to get people to not do stupid things while in the woods and to take some responsibility for their homes. We hauled the new camera down with us. I didn't do much experimenting in the way of messing with any of the settings. I just set it to auto and paid more attention to figuring out how to best hold to camera so I can easily work the controls without accidentally changing settings. And how to work the zoom. My last "real" zoom lens had a single, large collar that you rotated to focus, and pulled in and out to zoom. The new camera has two separate twist rings. The focus ring is extremely close to the body and very narrow, but most of the time, I'll be using the autofocus. The zoom ring is big with lots of rubberized nubbins and works very smoothly, but I keep trying to pull the thing in and out. Even when I remember to twist the dang thing, I invariably twist it the wrong way. I'm definitely going to have to spend some time with this puppy. And the neck strap that came with it will absolutely have to be replaced. The one that came with the camera is waaaay too short. I have to find a local shop for small stuff like this, and filters and such. I know a lot of the Prescott bloggers are photographers, so I'm sure they will have suggestions for where to look.

I didn't take a lot of pictures and I don't know if any of what I did take will be worth keeping. I think we got some decent dog photos and pictures of a couple old-school fire engines, but until I have a couple hours to get them off the camera and check them out on a bigger screen, I won't know for sure.

Anyway, not much else to report. We're still just in a holding pattern.