Another day at the office

Do I have the best job or what?

Mini miracles

As if it isn't miraculous enough to be able to fit 1,000 pictures on a little one-by-one memory card and put them on your computer in seconds and have little tiny pictures of each photo for you to pick from and tweak if you're a tweaker and send out to friends and print for mementos -- but then you can get word that someone on the other side of the world is enjoying them too.

This is a miracle beyond words.

It's a new miracle. One that wasn't around 20 years ago and that makes those of us who were around 20 years ago drop our jaws at the wonder of it all.

So to celebrate I'm putting more pictures from my little one-by-one memory card that are now one of thousands and thousands on my little-bit-bigger-but-still-surprisingly small computer, and I'm disseminating them to the other side of the world.

These are pictures that I took on the other side of the world. In greeting and as thanks.

Good to the last shot

My faithful friend finally gave out on me. We've been together for exactly four years. It was in August of 2006 that I took the first shots with my digital SLR Canon, after trying out a digital point-and-shoot Kodak for eight months and after being one of the last to admit I had to switch over from film.

The life expectancy of these early SLRs is 40,000 to 50,000 shots and we made it to 58,464, the last 10,000 without autofocus, but still making great automatic exposures of everything from flowers to oceanscapes, from people to fireworks.

I'm fiercely loyal to something that's served me so well, and it still sits on my desk with the black finish worn in spots and the dust showing in a few corners. Though it won't turn on anymore, it never let me down. Even the last shots before the error message came up and the LCD blanked out for the last time, were keepers. Shown above, a few of my last thousand-or-so pictures. Below, just out my bedroom window on an August morning, picture number 58,452.

Walking at night

It's just about impossible to get a good picture of people walking at night. Even my fellow gallery photographer who just bought a many-thousand-dollar camera that can reach ISO (sensitivity to light) numbers of 100,000 or something astronomical says so.

Still, I had to try.

I tried with a flash, without a flash, with a tripod, without a tripod, with a high shutter speed, on automatic, with close-ups, with distance shots, with a Nikon and with a Canon.

But the most important thing wasn't getting the picture. The most important thing was the walking at night. They were doing it, as others around the country have been doing it, to raise money to fight cancer. Many of them had friends with cancer, many of them had family members, some of them had survived the devastating disease themselves. The little votive candles in bags along the way honored those who couldn't be there and wouldn't.

But spirits were high and determination was evident as they walked and walked, doing something -- anything, to try and help win a war that's seen some victories and wants to see more.

I honor those who are fighting the fight. Those who raise money for it and those who fight it with everything medicine has to offer and every hope faith can bring.

Keep walking.

Caught

I have looked at these pictures many times, but only just now -- a year later -- noticed the bee making a be-line (bee-line?) for the flower.

I could not have caught that moment if I'd tried.

Rather, it caught me.

Happily ever after

It has to be a first. And I congratulate the writers of the recently released movie, Knight and Day, for breaking the mold.

For once, in a romantic comedy/adventure romp, the wedding went ahead as planned. No flattened wedding cakes, no musicians with emotional problems, no brides changing their minds at the last second, no embarrassing in-law speeches, no lies being admitted in front of the masses, no ruined dresses. Whew. And yeah.

It was the dress part my daughter and I were worried about.

Early in the movie, Cameron Diaz tries the bride's maid dress on, gets several compliments, then manages a chase scene or two without a spot of dirt. Still, when the bombs are dropping and everyone's running for cover on the island, we know it can only be bad news for the dress, which we'd earlier seen her tuck into a black handbag.

And while our husbands were watching the action ("what handbag?"), my daughter and I were watching the black handbag with the dress as it escapes with its owner in a helicopter and ends up someplace in Austria.

I can't tell you more without seriously affecting the many surprises in the plot, but I'll just say the short wedding scene was such a relief I didn't mind the destruction that followed every other place they went and every other vehicle the two touched and every other person who might have been a threat.

Weddings are ruined way, way too often in movies. And those of us who've been in them or who've tried to make them perfect for those we love have a hard time seeing the humor in their ruination.

Seriously, did any woman anywhere laugh when Matthew McConaughey crashed that beautiful wedding cake in that movie about girlfriends? Or why couldn't Sandra Bullock have come clean with the family before she was at the altar in that movie about US/Canada work permits?

I'm all for drama, but let's give the 50 percent of the audience who thinks weddings are dreams come true a little breathing room. Sigh.




Speaking of weddings. I attended a perfect one just last Saturday.
Congratulations Maria and Rich!!

The picture tells the story

I didn't ask the girl sitting on the floor with her crutches about what happened. But I think I know. I think that maybe just the day before, or maybe just a few hours before, she was one of the girls standing in front of the windows and dancing. And maybe she slipped or maybe she landed wrong or maybe she was hurrying somewhere too fast and tripped on something or someone she didn't see.

But she didn't go home. She's still there, watching, learning, waiting until she can join in the kicking and cheering. And in the meantime being disappointed.

I've tripped before. Not maybe the kind of tripping that requires crutches, but the kind that means something you tried to do didn't work. Maybe even you failed.

So you have to sit and watch other people who maybe weren't so clumsy or unlucky, and hope you learn what they're learning, even though you're sitting on the floor.

And then you get up and do it all again. Because it's no fun sitting on the floor. And even when there's always that possibility that you're going to tumble again, you know you just have to get up and dance.