...is for my big, strong, hunka, hunka, burning lens.

The Olympus E-500.



I received this camera as a gift last Christmas and have yet to mention it here. Until now. Of course.

The main reason I haven't mentioned it is that I really don't know much about it, except that it has a lot more pixels than my last one, that it takes around 14 fucktillion pictures before the rechargeable battery runs out and that it makes me very happy. I have yet to find make my acquaintance with the manual, but I'm sure it's very nice.

I was initially kind of uncomfortable with the extravagance, but I know better than to dicker with Santa. Besides, it has been my experience with the old hairy guy, that whenever he is really good to me, he rewards himself threefold, which gets me off the hook from that indulged feeling.

The second reason I haven't mentioned my new camera is that I've been feeling kinda guilty. About my old camera. And how, after it served me faithfully for 7 years, it was rewarded by being used to photograph its replacement, after which, it sat in a drawer for six months.

Oh, the humiliation.

In fact, I'm only posting this now because in January, I put the old dog back to work as the boat camera, because it's more portable. So there.

Even though I haven't found read the manual yet, I quickly came to appreciate the camera's diverse capabilities simply from looking at the easy-to-read dial on the top of the camera.



While I have yet to utilize all these features, the icons are easy to recognize and self-explanatory in their simplicity, as follows:

A-This is the Find Me a Girlfriend setting, as indicated by the icon of a woman's head, with a bouffant-y, upsweep-esque kind of do'. You have to tilt you head a little to see it right.

B-This is the Find Me a Boyfriend setting, as indicated by the icon of a man's, well, it's kind of hard to see in this picture, but it's clearly a profile of a man's, well, you know. You have to tilt your head the other way from the girlfriend angle to see that its clearly a man's, well, you know. If you can't see it still, I'll just say it's a big hangy thing kinda hanging over smaller hangy thing. k?

C-This setting will give you superhero athletic skills.

D-This one will make the person you are taking a picture of smell better. It also works for self-portraits.

E- This icon shows a star and a crescent moon, which is the universal symbol for for psychic powers. On this setting, well, you already know, right? I knew you did.

Although, I still don't know what that Auto PASM thing means. Although it sounds kind of freaky.

There is just one thing about this camera that concerns me. There are some settings that provide a brief description in the control panel screen, of the setting's specific purpose. There's one such description that reads "Shoot Active Children." I'm like, "All of them?" Yikes!

See? I don't need no stinkin' manual.

All I need is a thing of beauty on which to focus, and the rest kinda takes care of itself.







Scratchin'My Itch
Today is our 7 year wedding anniversary. Tomorrow we're sneaking off to the cottage for our annual slumber party for two, where we hope to float some boats.

So I'll be out for a coupla.

Bloggy Dearest
You are not getting up from this table until you have finished that meat.-Joan Crawford as depicted in "Mommy Dearest"

Before I get to that, LeeAnne, Neil, Kim and Chris, you may be excused from the table.

As for the rest of you...I'm going to keep putting Friday's post in front of you until you finish making your comments on it. I want no less than 15 bites.

And when I come back on Tuesday, I expect to find that you finished the job.

CeCe, Now
::You thought I was kidding, didn't you?::
Post Preface: The following post (this is not the actual post, part) is cognitively fueled by my family's genetic predispostion to explain every thought in one's head that is even remotely related to a given topic, at any given opportunity. Historically this familial phenonmenon has primarily been observed in restaurant settings where over the years, thousands of hapless wait staff have fallen victim to hearing loosely related thoughts and/or personal histories regarding menu items of interest, as shared by select (very) female members of my family. And it goes something like this (still not the post part, k? I'll let you know)

Waitress: Are you ready to place your order?

Fictional Female Member of My Family (FF MOM F): Well, the chicken looks good. Are there any nuts in it?

Wait Staff: Nuts in the chicken?

FF MOM F: I have diverticulosis. Just one sesame seed can kill me. ::pats tummy::

Wait Staff: Well, we wouldn't want that. Would you like some more time?

FF MOM F: The halibut looks good, but I just had fish on Wednesday. I had dinner with my son. He's been married four times,but this last one seems pretty nice. I think the rehab helped. When he was little I used to tie him to a tree in the back yard, so I could get some housework done and watch my stories. One time I accidently tied him to the dog. Boy, that was a quite the to-do. We had to put the dog down. Poor thing. Nerves, dontcha know.

Wait Staff: I can come back...

FF MOM F: Mmmm, I was thinking about the halibut. There isn't any shrimp in that, is there?

Wait Staff: Only if the halibut ate some as his last meal.

FF MOM F: Oh, no! I can't eat shellfish. Even if I'm sitting next to someone eating shellfish and I accidently stick my finger in their food or give them an open mouth kiss or something, I will spend the next two days in the bathroom, if you know what I mean. ::pats tummy::

Wait Staff: Really, ma'am, I was just joking. There's nothing on the halibut but a crunchy potato coating.

FF MOM F: There aren't any nuts on those potatoes are there? I can't have nuts...

Start Post Here...(you were warned, remember)
Ce Ce! What shall I see?
A horse's head where his tail should be.-Nursery Rhyme

A pretty face on a horse's ass. That's kind of how I've been feeling about my well honed skills at badly following a good pattern. But, back to that in a minute.

When Bonne Marie first released CeCe, I fell in love with her beauty, brains and personality, on sight. After purchasing the pattern, I decided I should finish that damned Peaches before casting on for yet another lace cardigan. Plus, it was too late to finish in time to wear to work for spring, when I would get the most use from a short-sleeved cardie.

And then: 1) Bonne Marie added 3/4 length sleeves to the pattern mix and 2) Peaches bit the dust.

And here we are, almost ready to make a selection off the menu.

After swatching three, gauge appropriate yarns from my stash, I found myself with no other choice but to go buy some yarn. At my neighborhood yarn store, I fell for a lovely wad of cocoa-hued Cascade Sierra.

Even though it wasn't on the prescribed list of yarns, I thought I could make it work because the gauge recommendations fit the pattern's. Mostly I thought I could make it work because I really, really wanted this color. It reminds me of buckeyes, which reminds me of the time I collected buckeyes as a kid, and thought they were so beautiful that surely people would want to buy them, so I went selling buckeyes door to door. I was, of course, mistaken. Consequently, over the next year or so, I was the neighborhood Kid's Choice for teasing and the random punch in the stomach.

I did get the stockinette gauge, but because I was in a hurry to cast-on for the next road trip north, I skipped swatching for the lace pattern. After casting on in the car and knitting up over four inches of pattern over the next couple days, I decided I didn't like the fabric. It was too beefy.



Now,I'm a girl who likes me some beefy. I likes me some beefy cakes and some beefy mitts and even a nice beefy wine. But beefy lace? Um no. Not on my swatch.

So I ripped it all out and started over with a larger needle, which resulted in the not-so-beefy look I was looking for.



Lovely, ain't she? My CeCe? The only comforting thought I carried with me, as I ripped out the four or so inches of the first try, was that the next try would go much quicker since I already had lots of practice with the pattern.

Ha. Well, let's just say my Comfort went Southern and I ended up ripping back two more inches, twice. You see...

::This would be about the time I'd start telling ya about that wintery day in the 7th grade, when I got off the bus and was laughing so hard that I peed my mini skirt. I mean, this stuff was a day's worth, race horse force, shooting and steaming from my in betweens, initially straight down into the snow, and eventually reduced itself to piddle, right into my stylin' plastic-fake-leather-look fleece-lined shoe boots. ::

...While going with the bigger needle, I had to go with a smaller size in the pattern, but I had memorized the pattern for the larger size, and therefore kept knitting that one, which reminded me of the time in kindergarten when I threw up all over my rabbit muff in gym class and how even though that muff never smelled or felt the same after that, I still loved it so..

Waitress: I'll give you a few more minutes.

Despite two more false starts, I'm happy to say I now have two full lace repeats completed, with nary a boo.

CeCe how I am?

Pre-K Wasteland
Things have been getting a bit gnarly here in the house of Cakers and Swine. We held up pretty well the first couple of days of being housebound on account of the inclement climate. While daddy worked in the basement, me and the girl had ourselves some crafty times, coloring, painting and doing nails via a special spa day afternoon. ::THAT spa thing was so fun that I've pretty much decided that it is an event not to be replicated until the Cakers'senior prom, or beyond, to better enable us to remain living and/or not incarcerated fully treasure the special and wholly unique memory of the day.::

At the end of the second day, however, I was seriously needing a cure for my shredded nerves. I did, however, make mental note of how well The Cakers was holding up through the hole-up. ::I'm now convinced that sound mental health can be talked to a slow, tortuous, and certain death.::

That being said, after my well polished Cakers was well in bed that night, I came upon this scene in the playroom:



Evidently, some of us hadn't been holding up as psychologically sound as I originally thought.

Here's a close-up of Mattel's latest release,Morning After Barbie:



This Barbie comes with her own bigger than life-size, hand free vibrator:



I'm not sure what he's planning to do with the compact car, but the dog adds a cute touch.

Really, things have been crazy ass around here. I am way behind in reading blogs and responding to comments. I especially wanted to get back to some of you on comments on my cottage neighborhood post. I hope to still do that. ::Sigh::

And I suppose I'm not even close to being caught up on the Alpha bit thingy, eh?

Thanks all for the compliments on the ribby shell. It really doesn't look as obviously swirly in real life, as depicted in the picture. I have worn it with total emotional abandonment.

I really need to make this a wrap. I've been working on this post for two days, two sentences at a time. At this moment, I should be taking full advantage of The Cakers being out of the house for a couple of hours, so excuse me while I try to fire up Barbies Robo-brator get some sorely needed housework done.

*Blogger will not let me upload pictures today at all. WTF, again? So the Barbie pictures are hand jobs and cannot be clicked to enlarge and look a little hinky, to boot.

Labels: ABC, Deep Shit, My Daughter Scares Me, Pho-Ho', The Casting On Couch, Tree From Where I Fell