Yes...with a new camera comes new blog posts.  This blog is my journal, and it gets boring with no pictures, but with my new toy camera we are back at it!


We have been pretty lucky here this fall - beautiful temperatures hovering in the 70's and up into the low 80's.  Hopefully this is normal, because I could get used to this.  I know the cold is coming (and actually it's here this weekend as I type...but this post is for last week), but we decided to enjoy the weather while we could.

Bubba goes in to Annapolis once a week for some shoulder work with an ART Chiropractor.  It's a bit of a drive, and we have to cross the bay bridge to get there.  I'm really not that fond of bridges, but I'm not terrified of them either.  I sometimes think of the stories of bridges collapsing and cars plummeting into the water.  Yes...my mind really does go there, but more when the weather is dismal and the water looks cold.






Oh, but on Tuesday the weather was PERFECT.  So, we stopped at a marina on the way home and enjoyed some time bay-side with a beautiful view of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

After we got home we decided to load up the bikes onto the truck and go down to Trap Pond State Park, about 25 minutes from the house.  They have a great little 5 mile trail loop through the forest and along the pond that we like to ride and it really was a great day for it.  It took us quite a bit longer to get through the loop, but that's what happens when I bring my camera.  It really is beautiful there and I just had to keep stopping to take pictures.  

The colors are changing now, with golds reds and purples mixing in with all the shades of green - it really is beautiful and I'm so glad we got out to enjoy it.  I hope it doesn't get too cold too quickly here...it sure would be nice to have a few more days like this.

There is a bridge right along the road by the park entrance.  The bridge has a couple of built-in benches so you can sit back and enjoy the view.  Every time we have been there, there have been people on the bridge - either just sitting on the benches or standing along the railing trying to catch some fish.  One day we even came upon a man studying the scriptures there.  It truly is a peaceful, beautiful spot, with the most spectacular view. 

We were lucky to have the bridge all to ourselves on Tuesday...and this was our view:

 

Black-Screen-Death...Oh My!

A little over a year ago, I made a horrible, sad discovery... at a very inconvenient time and place.  It was the at the O'Hare Airport in Chicago and we were on our way to Vietnam.  My Canon camera - the one I sold my plasma to save up enough money to purchase - decided to stop working.  I had checked it a few days before leaving and all was well, but once we were on our way it just went black.  What I didn't know is that this model is prone to "black screen death", or at least that's what all the other poor Canon customers were calling this issue.  So I had to lug this large useless  camera  brick halfway around the world and back, and had to settle getting pictures with Bubba's little point-and-shoot Olympus.  After returning home, I tried all the "tricks" that worked for other people on the various forums I trolled, but I still had "black screen death".  Well, at least I still had my work camera if I needed it - except now I'm not working and had to send back all my equipment - so no camera for me...until now!

My mom and M-I-L both sent $$ for my birthday (the best present, in my opinion) and I went camera shopping.  I really wanted a digital SLR and I was going to take photography classes and become this fantastic photographer.  Um....yeah....when will I do this?  So I decided to settle on a cheap little point-and-shoot camera, but one with a better zoom than Bubba's (his is not that great).   I came away with a not cheap (but reasonable) Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX9V.  This is Sony's top of the line Cyber-shot...but I went in for the lower end one that was on sale.  I love how they totally up-sell you on these things, and I was an easy mark, an easy, easy mark.  E-Z...really.  I love gadgets, and the more something does the more I WANT it!  LOL  This thing does everything but cook me breakfast (and I have Bubba for that).  I still have not figured out everything - but I'm having fun with it.  It does sweeping panorama shots in normal mode, HD and even 3D.  It does impressive macro shots and you can blur the background like the more expensive D-SLRs.  It also records movies in full HD 1080.   It has a 16x zoom and the colors translate so well.  I am in love with my little camera - one of these days I will graduate to a D-SLR and maybe even take some photography classes, but for now this is more than enough camera for me.