Halcyon Repose

So I have been contemplating getting into photography for a good long while now. The only thing that has been holding me back is expense, and lack of time to devote to it. I would love to take a photography class to learn all the details about lighting, aperture, shutter speeds, and focal length, but I just haven’t found the time. Joe and I are planning on taking a trip to Ireland this fall, and I have fell in love with so many pictures of Ireland, I really wanted to be able to take a few shots myself. Of course in order to do it right, it would be best if I got a camera a few months before hand so that I could get comfortable with something that was labeled as ‘point and shoot’. Not only that, but my sister’s wedding was coming up this weekend, and it would be nice to have a new camera for it. It really did seem like a good idea…

This weekend, I just so happened to be walking through the worst impulse buy store on Earth, Costco, when I noticed that they had two camera packages on sale. The Cannon EOS Rebel XTi and the Nikon D60, each with two lenses and a starter kit, and both hovering around $1000. This of course got the juices flowing again, and while I didn’t immediately pick one up, I did go home and start doing some research. I also talked to my friend Frances to get her input on things, and she recommended what everyone else online seemed to recommend, which is to get one step up from those offerings and go with the top of the line amateur camera. Of all the reviews I read, the Nikon D80 had very little negative comments, and plenty of gushing, happy comments. I started looking around and Costco carried the D80 as well, and it was only a few hundred more than the packages I saw originally. Unfortunately, that price was a more expensive than I could afford, and I continued to look around a bit more. I eventually discovered that BestBuy had the best price on the camera around, and with a 10% off coupon Kenny recommended from the post office, it would put the camera down into my ‘will definitely buy’ price range. Unfortunately I checked the inventory listings online, and none of the local stores had the camera in stock.

I decided to try my luck at the BestBuy near the fencing center, just in case, and sure enough, they had one more left in stock. Of course you can’t just get the camera, I also got a starter kit with a spare battery, a getting started with digital SLR book, and a camera case, as well as a memory card to hold all the lovely picture goodness. I got the new camera to the fencing center, but didn’t get to take many pictures as work kept me busy, and I had to wait for the battery to charge up. I did get to play around with it some, and I can already tell that I want to get a better lens than the one in the kit, but I also feel that it will last me a little while till I can get some more money back into the account.

My only hope now is that I don’t annoy all my family at the wedding while I play shutter bug the entire time.

Things have been so crazy recently, I have barely spent any time at home. The month of a 1,000 concerts is finally over, and while it was very very awesome, I am ready to just chill for awhile. This Sunday I had absolutely nothing on my schedule to do. My friends were going to go see Forgetting Sarah Marshall (yay Kristen Bell), so while I waited to hear from them, I did absolutely nothing.

A blossoming writer by the name of Brandon Sanderson will be finishing off Robert Jorden’s last book in the Wheel of Time series, and I wanted to get a little bit familiar with his work before it came out, so I picked up his first book Elantris. Too say that I enjoyed this book was a total understatement. It really drew me in, and I spent all day Sunday reading. I got up, read for a few hours, started getting hungry so I jumped in the shower. Got out, read a bit more, went out to Taco Surf on 2nd ave where I read some while waiting for my meal, then, since was such a nice day out, I decided to take a walk on the beach. I found a nice spot in the sun, I pulled out my book and I read some more till it got too chilly out on the beach. I went back home, crashed on the couch, and read until Brenden called me letting me know he and Adam were coming home, and they were going to go out and get some drinks, so when they arrived, I went out with them for a bit. After a couple of hours of beer sampling, we got back home and I read till about 2am. I didn’t manage to finish my book Sunday, but I got a good chunk of it taken care of…

I never did hear from my friends about the movie, and while that did make me a bit sad, I was nice to not have to jump in the car and drive anywhere for an entire day.