Incidents and accidents

71: The glass plate I was heating some frozen chicken patties on for lunch today EXPLODED in the microwave. I really do mean exploded. WTH? If the door hadn’t been shut there’s be glass bit in the walls across the kitchen. As it was, I was sweeping and picking glass bits out of the microwave for 30 minutes. Thank goodness I wan’t holding the plate at the time, or I’d have ground beef for fingers.

70: The bees were sure busy. 1 pound of honey and comb in a week!

69: I bought some flourescent tape to tie onto things in hopes of attacting hummingbirds earlier this year. They can see UV light.

68: I love wisteria. I take pictures every year. I have so many photos of it, but I still take more.

67: I finally got my red petticoat in the mail. I still need more.

66: My first self-fulfilled order, ready to go out.

I needed to borrow my best model for my April newletter. I threw some wings and my favorite petticoat on her and turned her loose at the local botanical gardens.

65: EVERYTHING is covered in pollen.

64: OMG BEES!

63: Played with Sabr and her horses!

62: Had a shoot for April’s newsletter ad with my favorite model today. More of these to come.

61: I planted a Clematis on the front trellis.

Update: I just takled to the bee specialist. He says that this time of year they split and 30,000 bees go find a new place to live. They seem to have just mooved into our walls, rather than have giant homes up there already. He’s coming on Wednesday to take them out of the ceiling humanley and he’s a bee-keeper himself. I wonder if he can add them to his hives.

We’ll have to seal off that room that day, but the rest of the house will be pretty safe. The important part is that they won’t be killed. It takes a week for him to get here because he has to have insurance, or something about insurance that I’m too much of a layman to understand.

Thank goodness we have a back way out of our apartment. The bees suddenly got mad at somethting and all came out at once. They’re not out anymore, but there were 1000’s of them, COVERING our trees, cars and walls. Here’s the photos I snapped.

I woke up this morning to see an inordinate number of honeybees outside my window. They were all checking out the building where I live, so I strolled out to see what was up. They are apparently nesting in the roof or walls of the building. BEES IN MY WALLS!!!! The entire room that we call John’s mancave HUMS. OMG, panic. Larken and I were walking with Benji elsewhere in the apartment complex and we saw something similar. They had to call the bee specialist out and he pulled a honeycomb the size of a two-year old out of that roof. I’m thinking we have more of them, because the whole ceiling is noisy. Auhg, flip out! They called the bee specialist out here too, but I don’t know that i will be brave enough to get pictures once he’s here. They might have to cut up the rof or ceiling or floors to get at them. There may be BEEEEES in my apartment!!

Southern Belles and Beaus in Watkinsville hosts birthday tea-parties! They provide the space, the dresses and the cake. You bring the girls and the presents. It’s SO much fun! Call her at 706.769.5375.

I worked out a fun agreement with the owner there when I turned in the book I made for her. I am now on her pricelist. I get a table and I get to collect e-mails. She adds a fee onto the party package and I show up for pictures. The fee she added is passed right to me! The store’s a children’s boutique, so i should be well on my way to attracting high-end clients.

Where is the line between that you really need and what you just think you need?
I have a very nice camera for my photography business. It’s a Rebel XT, 8MP. It cost me about $900. I have two lenses for it. Both of them were about $250 each. That’s about $1400 in camera gear that I use on a pretty much daily basis. It’s also a 1.6 crop factor camera, which means my 35mm lens acts like a 50mm and my 55mm lens acts like an 85mm. This is fine. I like the way they work. I’m mostly happy with the camera now, but there are two things it’s lacking that are making a difference in my work. One is spot metering, the other is more MP. With this camera, it’s hard to shoot against the sun, and I can’t enlarge prints more than 20×24. The XT is rated for about 25,000 shutter clicks, and I have 16,000 on it now. It has a real shutter that bangs on one side of the camera when the button is pressed, and it will eventually bang itself to pieces inside the camera. It’s not a fixable situation. So, eventually, I’ll need to buy a new camera. This is the problem. I’ve narrowed it down to three models.

Rebel XTi- Good: 10MP, light and small, same funtions as the one I use now, easy to learn, 1.6 crop factor so my lenses would fit on it. Bad: No spot metering, 25,000 clicks. Price: $700

30D- Good: Has spot metering, has a bunch of other functions that mine lacks, semi-small body, easy to learn, 1.6 crop so able to use my lenses, 100,000 clicks. Bad: only 8MP, same as my current camera. Price: $1250

5D- Good: Full-frame camera means that it’s sharp as hell, 200,000 clicks, very very low noise at high ISO’s, has spot metering, has a lot of other awesome funtions, 12MP. Bad: Full-frame camera means that my lenses act like the 35 and 55 they are (so I’d have to sell the 35 and buy an 85), huge and heavy body. Price: $2700

So… I WANT the 5D, but do I really NEED it? The 85mm lens I want to go with it is $1800 all by itself, bringing the 5D price up to a total of $4500. Not bad for something I’d use for 5 years or so, but woof on the upfront costs. My business is not exactly suffering because of the lower-end camera I use, but I really could do so much more with the 5D. Not like any of this would come to fruition any time soon. We’re still trying to scrape up enough to get to NY.
It doesn’t help that 3 people on my list have just bought the Nikon d200 in the past week. I’m in serious hardware envy over here. I want to bite things.

60: Stumpy enjoys the outside. John’s taken to calling her ‘Little Mess’, which I think is hilarious.

59: We gamed. I’m rockin’ 9th level.

58: I bought a giant teacup today. I’m going to stick babies in it.

57: We rented Howl’s Moving Castle and the Chronicles of Narnia today. Howl’s was just plain weird (but good), and I sobbed through Narnia three times.

56: I saw my first rose bud on my rose today.