I got it!

Yesterday a string of sudden, powerful storms swept across the state, which knocked down a lot of tree branches and caused some power outages in the area. I didn't think too much about it after picking up what was strewn around in our yard, but then in the morning we found out that our school district was closed for the day. Darn, just as I was already stressing about the end-of-school activities this week and our plans for the summer. Luckily, my mother was available to come out to our house and watch the kids for a while, if Larry stayed later in the morning and I came home a little early. And, best of all, they would be in the house to accept delivery of my camera! Sometimes things just sort of work out.

The camera delivery might have worked out anyways, possibly with more drama for me to tell you about. My neighbor Patty had offered to hang around and watch for the UPS truck and intercept the delivery. She is a true angel. Just the thought that she would do that makes me happy. And those happy thoughts make me just LOVE my new camera all the more!

Yes, it is now in my possession. Prepare for a big upgrade in the quality of the photos that you see here. Maybe I'll throw in some sketches now and then for those of you who liked that.

I haven't had much time to experiment with it yet, but I did take it along to Jeffrey's baseball game. I got a lot of crisp pictures of a chain link fence with blurry images of children behind it. The camera can't do it all, there is some operator skill involved, and I'm working on it!

Here's one of Jeff doing nothing in the outfield, which is the majority of what happens when you get to first year kid pitch:

The improvement here is how much I was able to zoom in from where I was standing compared to my previous camera.

Another cool thing this new camera can do is "stitch" together multiple pictures to form a panoramic shot. It is kind of amazing how it does this. Here's one of the ball field:


More to come in the days ahead, stay tuned.