new camera

rhino courtyard fountain new camera test
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

Ebay is miraculous and a thing of wonder. I got my new to me camera today and it's in amazingly perfect shape. It was all lovingly packaged in the original box with the original manuals and everything; I tell you what, it totally pays to buy stuff from obsessive-compulsive neatniks. Now I am ashamed, because I was going to sell my old camera and I don't have the faintest idea where any of the original packaging or manuals or anything are - probably long since digested by the dog. I wonder if anyone will buy it if I mention some of the special features: Canon S2 IS - owned by slob! Still has lens cap by some miracle! Lens not scratched too badly! No original anything! Yeah, I don't think so either. So anyway, I have a fabulous new camera - a Canon Rebel XT - and all I have to do is figure out how to use it, to which end I'm making my laborious way through the manual, which, as is usual for these things, is sort of semi translated from the Chinese and full of incomprehensible diagrams. I'm thinking maybe I'll take a photography class if I can find one - I never have before.

In other news, the outpouring of love and support from all my friends has been really wonderful and I deeply, deeply appreciate it. Y'all are totally amazing, sweet people and I feel unworthy but very loved and it's fucking awesome. While I still feel like I've been emotionally run over by a bus - after all, I kind of have, a demon bus of rejection and woe! (give me a moment while I wrestle myself back under control, here) - I also know that I'm not alone under there and that there will always be a lot of hands to pull me out. I owe everyone a beer. I'd like to buy the world a beer. Except I bought myself a camera instead, so, well, y'all will have to be content with a thought beer. Even as you read this I am beaming a pure thought beer of love into your brain. Don't virtually drive for an hour.

While I was lying on my bed of extreme emo-ing out on Wednesday, my daughter A came over and made me go to Asiana Grand Buffet with her so we could have all you can eat sushi and tidbits of the other wonderful stuff they have at Asiana, like chunks of green jello you can eat with chopsticks, salt and pepper squid and those bizarre buns shaped like peaches with strange stuff inside. I like going to huge fluorescent restaurants when I'm feeling kind of fragile emotionally (I am a child of the American 70s. Linoleum and fluorescent lights spell spiritual home to me.) and also, I pretty much never run into anyone I know at Asiana. Face it, Asheville: we all know that we all go there occasionally, but we don't always admit it. Hell, it's not as bad as the East Buffet, home of the North Carolina Roll: spam, pickles and cream cheese all wrapped up in rice and nori for your barfing pleasure.

So for some reason as we sit there eating too much sushi and watching the Great Wall of China undulate special effectively away on the wall, A starts talking in a wistful tone about how she wants to learn to make pies. I guess because pies are like the only thing they don't have at Asiana - pies and those ginger cookies I used to like, damn them.

"I can teach you how to make pies," I said, "they're not hard."
"Yes. . . " said A dreamily, "Lots and lots of different pies. I want to make up pies, new pies, and give them funky names."
"Monkey names?" I said, genuinely baffled
"Yeah Mom," she said, "Like Chee-Chee and JoJo. Then I could cut little chimpanzees out of pie dough and put them on top, you know - all my pies will have monkey names."

Okay it doesn't sound that funny now but I swear to you that the Asiana waiter guy looked at us very suspiciously as we more or less fell out of our booth crying with laughter.