And the TROPHY is...

A Mug!!!

You can use it as a display piece, to drink out of (coffee, tea, hot chocolate, juice, milk, etc), put a plant in, hold your pencils/pens, marbles (you know, so you don't "lose all your marbles"--okay, okay, I know that was bad), paper clips, media cards, batteries, loose change, and so on and so on. Now tell me, isn't that better than a dumb old Christmas tree topper that can go rolling around and crashing on the floor??? (No offense Steve, I actually thought your trophy was nifty). Now aren't all the rest of you "jealous"? I know I am, and I WANT THAT TROPHY BACK!!!! Only two more months to wait, sigh.

Okay, so it will be in the mail on Wed. or Thurs. at the latest.

Now on to today's post. I decided to take a ride up the leeward side of the island. The less touristy side, but also the less attractive. The beaches are beautiful, and the mountains are wonderful, but the towns leave something to be desired and most of the beaches contain large communities of homeless people living in "tent cities". Very interesting. I guess if one is homeless by necessity or by choice (as some of them are), Hawaii is the best place to be.



So after slogging through some bumper-to-bumper traffic due to road construction, I finally decided to pull off at one of the beaches. Take out the camera bag, lock the car, walk through the parking lot to the sand, wander around for a minute or two looking for just the right spot, get the camera out, switch lenses to my trusty 28-200, awesome, all-purpose lens, zip up the bag, oh wait, let's put on the polarizer since it's so bright, (are ya kind of getting where I'm going with this?), unzip the bag, get out the filter, put in on, zip up the bag, hold the camera to my eye and scan the vista to get just the right scene, press the shutter button, and NOTHING!!!! Argh.

Look at the camera, turn it off, turn it back on, press the shutter and same thing, nothing. Finally I realized that I'm getting an "error" message. Oh great. Here I am about an hour from home, in a place that I'm sure I'll not return to, and where, oh where, is my camera manual? Yep. You got it!!! Back at the house.

I took the battery out, wiped the contacts on my shorts (which, by the way, usually does the trick), took out the media card and replaced it, took the lens off and wiped those contacts too, turned the camera on and off several times--still "error". Okay, I tried the macro lens I had with me. It worked. Well, this is not a great lens to take scenics with, but better than nothing. So I took a few shots, unhappily, and decided to head back home. So reversing all that rigamarole, I headed home, only to be caught in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the way home, due to, you guessed it, construction on that side (which, by the way, didn't seem to be on that side before).

So all in all, it was a pretty unsatisfactory photo shoot, but considering the sun was shining, my car windows were down the entire time, and I had a view of the beach and the ocean almost all the way home, I guess the day itself wasn't a complete bust.


Posted at 9 pm on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2009