I’m in need of a camera. I need a decent one with which I can take more than just a few pictures before it dies on me. It probably is the battery, but the camera being such an old one, it’s not even worth getting the battery for it. I have been pondering about it quite some time now, and since my finance will not allow me to get any excess in life such as a camera –yes, I have my priorities straight on this point– I got to a point of throwing my hands up and saying maybe in a couple of years.
Then just yesterday, I received an email from Thankyou Network, which I had forgotten about. I knew I had a reason why I switched to using my bank debit card instead of cash every chance I get, but I had forgotten what the reason was.
I eagerly went to their website to see if I could get a decent point-and-shoot camera with it. I knew I don’t spend enough money to accrue points to be eligible to get a fancy pants DSLR, but I should be able to get something that has more than 5X optical zoom, lets me decide when to use the flash or not, and has an image stablizer since my hands are on the unsteady side to put it mildly. I was a little disappointed at my total points and the eligible cameras in my points range, but it’s much better than the sorry excuse of a camera I have now, not to mention IT’S FREE!
I narrowed it down to, or more precisely, picked the top two cameras which satisfy all of the above conditions:
- Sony Cybershot DSC-H10 - 8.1MP, 10X Optical Zoom, Super Steady Shot
- Canon Powershot SX110IS - 9MP, 10X Optical Zoom, Image Stablizer
According to the reviews, Sony DSC-H10 looks to be the better of the two, but I prefer SD memory cards to Sony memory sticks. But then again, I’m not too thrilled about the fact that Canon SX110IS uses alkaline batteries, which more or less would run out every 100 or so shots. Decisions… Decisions…
I dragged myself out of bed this morning and headed out to go to work through my usual route. But before reaching the highway, I was forced to make a left into some local road I’m familiar with, because of some police activity up ahead. Not knowing which way I should go, I followed the cars in front of me because they all seem to know where they were going, and no, why would the fact that they might not be headed towards the highway cross my mind? It didn’t. I was lost less than 10 minutes away from my house.
When I finally found my way back, I could tell I’d be 20 to 30 minutes late for work. Oh fuck, this is just fucking fabulous. The first day back to work this year. What a great fucking start already… I grumbled. I grumbled and got annoyed by people driving slow in the first lane. I was annoyed and aggravated by people who seemingly don’t know how to drive in between the lines. I was in a foul mood. Remembering my new year’s resolution but couldn’t see any positive at the time, I tried to calm myself and uplift my mood by reciting those eternal words of wisdom by Frank Costanza — Serenity now… Serenity now…
I changed the radio station to find some uplifting music and happened to come across the one where the DJ and some others were discussing the story of a woman who won 10 million dollar lotto jackpot her husband bought prior to his death a few days ago. And naturally, listening to the story that reminded me how I didn’t win the lotto, which would have enabled me to say, hey, I’ll just turn around and drive back home. Work? Pssh…, my mood became fouler. Is that a word? Fouler? More Foul? Anyways, serenity now…
I walked into the office and towards my desk looking at the clock which pointed out I was 23 minutes late. I frowned and heaved a sigh… Oh wait. What do I see? What? Is that desk next to mine a little too strangely clean? Yes, the one that belongs to the coworker who I despise with burning passion. Doesn’t that look a little too empty…? No monitor? No docking station? Could this be? COULD THIS BE? Holy crap that’s ever seen the light of this glorious day! I won’t have to waste my energy in trying to avoid and put as much distance as possible from him from now on! I won’t sprain my eyeballs anymore from glaring at him in meetings where he always has answers and comments and recommendations on anything and everything he has never worked with before! I don’t have to scream and yell at the him as to make the whole office eerily quiet for taking ridiculously long time to do a simple task and make all of us in our team look like fools because he would never admit he doesn’t know how to accomplish something! I can sit and eat at any table in the cafeteria! This is Merry Christmas all over again!
Serenity can bite my fat ass. The bitch is gone. This year is shaping up to be just fine, I say.
I go back to work tomorrow. My long and happy vacation days flew by. My goal was to take at least one nap each day and squeeze in a second nap from time to time during my days off and spend much of my time reading. But somehow I ended up finishing just two short books and with just a few naps during this time. I don’t know how that happened because I can’t quite account for ALL of the time not spent on napping or reading. I’m thinking I must have spaced out a lot doing absolutely nothing productive — yes, I consider napping a productive activity, shut up.
And now in the late afternoon, tired from just a few hours of sleep last night and a fitful 2 hour nap, during which time Foster licked my face a couple of times and Georgia stepped on me, I’m again staring at the time and wondering what the fuck did I do today? Nothing. I haven’t even touched a book today since I finished A Mercy yesterday and I still haven’t decided on the next book. And I frown and cringe at the thought of going back to work tomorrow. All this valuable time wasted on nothing at all…
BUT! Remembering my resolution just a few days ago, I’m trying to look at the positive side. So I’m anointing myself the Queen. Being the Queen kinda makes it all better… Sort of… Right…?
It’s all perpstu’s fault. She joined it and told me I should too. And I did. You know I couldn’t NOT join it when perpstu, a mother of a 5 year old boy, who works full-time while taking courses to get her degree and who is always busying herself with all kinds of craft projects, knitting, not to mention cooking. I had no excuse. So yeah, I joined Blog365 and now I’m suffering the consequences.
So I have to blog everyday for the entire year. And I’m already fresh out of blog fodder after TWO WHOLE DAYS. Oh yes, I knew it would happen and I’d struggle to come up with something EVERYSINGLEDAY. But after two days? The first day was easy because it was the new year’s day and all. The second day my fiercely loyal Brandy gave me inspiration by farting a lot. But today? I just want to take a nap.
Now what? 
Brandy just farted. The cutest thing. She farts, looks towards her hiney and cocks her head to one side questioningly. Every single time. Which means if she farts again while she’s giving her butt an interrogating head cock, she cocks her head to the other side. And of course in the case of the multiple farts, it gets pretty hilarious. After all this time, she hasn’t quite figured it out.
Brooklyn, of course, doesn’t fart in my company because it’s totally beneath her.
Foster, who one would guess as the funniest farter, is disappointingly nonchalant when he farts. If he happens to be standing up, he takes a couple of quick steps forward and turns his head to look at his butt and then throws a sidelong glance towards me as if to see if I’ve noticed it. But if he happens to be lying down, he doesn’t even move his head, but only his eyes move for a quick glance at me for a second.
The most comical is Georgia, who usually tries to blame it on the one situated closest to her butt, who somehow is always me. If she farts sitting or lying down, she jumps up as if scared, with an OMG! WTF! kinda look, turns around and sniffs all around me, then suddenly retreats and walks away and sits down a few feet away from the offending spot, and stares at me for a long time with a disgusted accusatory look on her face.
Aren’t they so exactly like people or what?
Usually I’m not one to make new year’s resolution. But this year, I have decided I’ll have to make one and try my best to keep my sanity… or insanity at its current level. The only resolution I have is to keep a positive attitude — think positive, act positive, look at the positive side of everything and everyone and every situation. It really doesn’t sound like much, but for me, this is one of the most difficult thing to do.
Last year was a year wrought with problems, doubts and worries in every aspect of my life, engulfed with the most pressing dread of losing my grip on my financial situation, however slight that might be, and finally losing my house in the near future. And I recognized the pernicious effect of such constant dread on my daily life, but I kept thinking about the problems and as I thought about them, being pessimistic, I imagined a number of scenarios of future troubles stemming from them and dug myself deeper into the quagmire of misery. And now I’m depressed as never before and I have to do something about it before I self-destruct.
The only thing I can do, after thinking so much about the problems I have, is well… nothing. There is nothing I can do about them at present. I’ll have to try to live with them and accept that there is nothing I can do (excepting occasional lottery ticket purchase to try my luck of course 
)
Anyway, so this year, I resolve to be positive in every aspect of my daily life. Even when I’m making this resolution, the doubt creeps in that I’ll never be able to shed pessimism and I won’t even remember this resolution of mine. But hey I’m going to give it a go and hope you guys will remind me from time to time.
What are your resolutions? Whatever they are I wish you success!
Happy New Year!
Me: You’re having a salad?
Sam: Yeah, I don’t like that kind of corned beef.
Me: THAT kind of corned beef?
Sam: Well… I like the kind I grew up with.
Me: What kind is that?
Sam: You know, the kind that comes in a can.
Long awaited snow, the right kind –the sticking kind– came Friday. I was ecstatic at the prospect of 4 to 6 inches of snow because my poor deprived dogs hadn’t had decent snow for some time. It snowed all day starting around 10am. Then it changed to sleet and rain by the time I headed home. I was not happy. This was what happened the last time, the time before AND the time before - snow followed by rain. What good is snow when you have to freeze your fat ass while cleaning your car and waste twice as long a time in driving home if at the end all you got is just slush and mud?
Fortunately, when I finally reached home, I found that it hadn’t rained too much in this area. We had a few inches of snow and it wasn’t slushy at all, and the rain turned to snow again. Dogs loved it. They ran around with white snow around the muzzle. I threw snowballs for them. They chased them and got confused when the snowballs landed and disappeared. They pounced on a “snowball” and looked around and pounced on a phantom snowball again and searched for it with their nosed buried in the snow and sometimes dug the snow to see if the ball hid itself. And my laughter rang out quite out of tune with the snow shoveling noise in the otherwise quiet neighborhood.
It was pure joy and happiness I’ve had in a long time.
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