It doesn't seem possible

If I have to repeat this post one more time I will give up and post whatever is there, mistakes and all.

I think I mentioned that I got a new-to-me camera, a Nikon D200.  I have been trying every setting on the camera to get it to autofocus with every thing the manual suggested, but still no success.  The lens(s)are -AF and should be fine.  So after 2 or 3 hours I was no further along and gave up last night.  This morning I decided to switch out the battery, although it registered about 50% power remaining.  So I recharged the spare (just in case) and I turned the camera upside down to get to the battery in the camera.  And guess what?  The lens fell off the camera and rolled across the floor.  I fished it out, wiped off the bayonet mounts and put it back on, lining up the two tiny white dots.  Ok, now...  And I remembered reading that you had to turn the lens counter crosswise, until it clicked.  It was a little stiff, but I had turned it clockwise when I first put it on; and sure enough, I heard the click as it engaged each other.  And! It autofocuses like a champ.  I didn't tempt fate, so I did not try the other lens, I'll wait until there's future need for that lens.  And I am sure there is dust inside the lens, but that too can wait until I find the little grey squeeze thingy that puffs a little air to blow away the lint/dust.  Carefully.

Now I have to find my list of images recommended, from the Digital Photography Complete Course, if they are inside photos for photogs with a walker.  Wrong phrasing  but you get the drift. 

Several years ago I left my D40 camera on the dining room table all the time, with a glass bowl over it to shield it from cats and dust.  It was there for me or N to use for birds at the feeder, deer browsing, etc.  N told me one day that the camera just kept saying "too dark" and he gave up.  I asked about the lens cover and he said "Damn!"  He had taken most of the same photo classes that I did, and of course every time the instructor said, take the lens cover off.  It is like with computer users that are calling a help line.  They hear, "turn the computer off, wait a few minutes, turn it back on."  To hear the caller have a long pause and then say "turn it off and on, how do I do that?" Anyway... ended up with a lot of nice shots of humming birds.

Time for a nap...

I am playing with fonts today and this is way too small.  anyway, this one is good I think.

I am trying to get Christmas cards ready to send today, but it turns out I need more stamps.  I'm not surprised by that; every card has something wrong with it.  Either I messed up "Family", or put the phone number where the zip should go, or forgot to sign one altogether.  I looked for 20 minutes for my Christmas address stickers, and found them with (where else?)  the cards.  I should have used my erasable pen, but it looks so faint, and rubs off too.  Good thing this only occurs once a year.

I went to the clinic today for a check up with the surgeon that worked on my ankle back in July? when I broke it in a fall.  Two surgeries on my ankle, but 6 on my knee.  The appointment was for 8:30 am, which involved getting up at 6 am, when I usually don't get out of bed before 9 am.  We had snow on Wednesday, but although there was only 3 inches or so, it was on top of a layer of ice covered by sleet.  And we didn't know how the traffic would be, if the roads were still icy.  As it turned out, we only arrived 15 minutes before my appt.  The appt.  was originally on Wednesday morning, but I rescheduled it for today because the roads were truly treacherous on Wednesday, although the trees and shrubs are beautiful with snow/ice on every twig.  I wanted to take a photo, but the windows in the car are too smeary.  C and I had a bet on how long the doctor would spend with me.  C said 2 minutes, and I said 5 minutes, but C was right, 2 min 11 seconds.  All that hurry flurry for 2 minutes.  How many patients could he see?  Well, he has surgery on Fridays, so he is only there until 9 am, so I guess I'll cut him some slack.

My two foot tall Christmas tree looks very festive on the mantle in my room.  It needs a star or something on top, but the ornaments used on the big tree upstairs are pretty scrambled.  I want a poinsettia to go on the other end of the mantle, but it will have to wait for the next grocery run.  I'll take a photo once it is all set up.  

I am slowly typing up the blog posts.  I bought a book about formatting and submitting your manuscript.  I have only paged through it, but I can already see where I have gone wrong.  The book says to first write a "query" letter, send it to one or several agents (?) then once accepted write the manuscript.  My manuscript is already in rough form, and I have only  seen the word "blog" where it pertains to increasing readers of the book, once it is printed and finished.  I guess I could look at it as having no competition, or maybe just flogging a dead horse to try to get it accepted.  I can't think of any way to disguise that it is from a blog, starting with a title page... I think the individual posts are nicely written, but I am probably only fooling myself.  Anyway, I will try it submitting the whole thing first.  It will be either be on a thumb drive or on a CD.  I guess no one reads typed submissions these days.  

Dinner time, I am off for today.

Poor typing

If I had known how much I would need typing skills I would have practiced more.  Now high school gives classes under the name of keyboarding, which is a good bit different from typing.  Also more useful, when a keyboard has extra keys like "delete".  No more white-out in gummy little vials, and extra keys like all the function keys and arrow keys that let you move quickly across blocks of text.  I still have to look at the keyboard while I use it, leading to uncaught errors that are blocks of text in the past.  

There are quite a number of things in high school I would do differently now.  For one thing, I'd ditch the Bible I carried.  I never read it, why did I carry it around?  I'm sure it warned guys off;  hard to compete with Jesus.  I would smile more, aiming for a sunny disposition.  High school wasn't really that scary, just crowded with 2000 students.  There were 900 in my graduating class, mostly ordinary kids. The 50th reunion for our class brought 40 or 50 alumni, not much of a showing.  There were kids I knew from elementary school, but they went to a different junior high, where I lost touch, and now they seemed so much more sophisticated than me.  The ones that were jokers in elem. school were still big clowns now.  The chorus classes were the best, giving concerts several times a year.  I still remember singing second soprano for the Hallelujah Chorus.  Now I can't carry a tune in a bucket, what happened with that?  One other class I liked was Drama.  Another student and I were doing a joking part in Hamlet, where two servants did a light slapstick routine.  The only problem with that is when the guy was supposed to slap me,  he slapped me for real, I had a red handprint on my cheek for several hours.  I yelled, "Hey!  What was that for!?"  which Shakespeare never included.  In the psychology class, we spent several weeks learning to "read" body language.  That has proven to be useful. And we did an abbreviated IQ test one semester, and fortunately the instructor never revealed that I had the highest score, that would have sealed my doom. 

The math teacher, ex Marine, taught an advanced class which I truly enjoyed, it was like doing crosswords every day.  Never found matrix math to be a bit of good, or Calculus in high school either.  Crosswords.

The Main Number One that I would change is that Norm wouldn't die in my arms of a stroke at 72.  Just days away from our 46th wedding anniversary, I don't think either of us thought that he would go before me.  He had a mini-stroke earlier, don't know when, but the doctor in the hospital said that it isn't the first stroke you need to worry about, it's the second.  And he shared with me that his father survived his second stroke, and it would have been a mercy if he had not.  If only.  I lay awake at night thinking of all the what ifs.  

 

 Ye Olde Christmas Tree

For this year the tree is up!  Last year we bought the one on clearance after the holiday, and this one is primo.  The tree is all put together, just lift the base out of the box and put the top section on it.  Lights already on, and a few bows and baubles and we're done.  Merry Christmas!

I am planning to submit a manuscript of blog posts to an editor for tweaking and submission to a publishing house.  It will be a lot of typing, but if I do one post a day it will  fly by.  When I read back over the early posts I am thinking, "Hey, I'm a pretty good writer! "  I have seen a lot of books that have typos, bad story lines, and unbelievable characters.  I guess they were unedited, just cobbled together and pay a fee to get it in print.  No thanks...  I am not that vain to lay out that kind of money just so I could say, 'author'  But the criterion for submitting a manuscript is fairly picky.  Double spaced, left justified on a one inch border, all around punctuation different than what we were taught (one space after a period instead of 2), and so forth.  Luckily there are models to help with all that.  I will have to remove all the cartoons because I don't have copywrite for them.  It never mattered while I was not widely read, but to publish them, no.

The lady who wanted my cemetery plots in VA contacted me last week to continue the sale.  After not hearing from her back in Oct. I put it all back in the safe deposit at my bank, and getting them out when the lobby at the bank is closed was no simple thing to do, these days.  Also, I need $$ before I send out the bill of sale to her ( and the check cleared).  So complicated, bill of sale, Quitclaim deed and so forth.  If the money doesn't arrive, I will once again put all the paperwork away.  Like I have nothing else to do but play games.

 I want to get this settled before Christmas; it isn't simple in these days to get in and out of the safe deposit vault.  I have been kicking around the convenient idea of locking up the safe.  But heck, I'm not doing anything here at home.  And I am hoping the deal goes through.  My parents bought the plots in 1951, and there is nothing of consequence in the safe, other than a watch and a bunch of papers.  Don't you think the 80 pound safe is OK to keep the contents from burning up in a fire?  

These are the kind of thoughts I get when I am awake at 3 am.  

Anyway, the joke for today is:

Bye!