Headache #1 - Camera shopping. I've sort of decided which camera will replace my beloved C-3020, since Olympus hasn't bothered to reply to my email asking for a repair quote. It'll probably be the SP-510, unless I change my mind. It has some nice features that the 3020 didn't have, like 10x zoom, more megapixels, and the ability to do really long exposures (a "bulb" option on the shutter speed). Now, according to the manual, which I downloaded from the website, the bulb setting can go up to 8 minutes, but the catch is that you have to hold the shutter button down the whole time. Yeah right. Apparently, though, there's a remote control that works with this model, which should get around the holding-the-button-down problem. I think - Olympus' online store is down right now, so I can't find specifics, and Google isn't being unusually helpful.
Then I remembered that Olympus sells on Ebay, which is how I got the lens adapter and polarizing filter for the 3020. They're selling refurbished cameras online, and I've got a notion to get a smaller (pocket-sized) cheap camera to haul around in my purse for occasional use. That way, I don't have to risk the "good" camera having an accident like the one that has presumably done in my old Faithful. It just comes down to figuring out which model or models look good and are in the price range I like - think sub-$100 here. So there's more research to do online. Gah.
Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of a new camera. Kind of. I really like my 3020, and for someone who's as much of a geek as I can be at times, I am oddly resistant to change in some areas. Maybe I just don't look forward to the learning curve of a new camera, which isn't helped by the fact that Olympus likes to send out their manuals as PDFs only. If you, like me, would prefer a printed manual to read, make notes on, flag things with Post-It's, or whatever? Well, sorry, you'll have to print the stinking thing out on your own printer, or pay to have a printed manual sent to you, if one's available. And trying to do research as far as user opinions, available features, prices, reviews, and all that is time-consuming. Especially since I'm home alone with El Burrito all day, which isn't really conducive to research, since the amount of time I have without distractions is practically nil, and not helped by my increasing tendency to be scatterbrained, unfocused, and easily distracted.
Yes, I'm whining. I'm alone most of the time lately, and my conversational skills are dwindling rapidly, along with my vocabulary and probably my patience. That's what you get when your only company is a pre-verbal 8-month-old. He's cute, but he ain't much of a conversationalist yet. At least not in a language I understand - but he spent an hour last night babbling something to us. Probably winning lotto numbers and a best-selling novel.
Headache #2 - Space. As in, we don't have much. This is a small condo, relatively speaking. Roughly 1000 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2 very small bathrooms. May seem palatial to someone used to a 500 sq ft apartment in New York, but to me, it's cramped, heading for freaking claustrophobic. The floor plan is abysmal to say the least, as is the air circulation, which is why there's probably a 5-degree temperature difference between the bedroom and the hallway. The only square rooms in the place are the bedrooms; the living room has seven sides (9 if I count the nooks where the TV and aquarium are). I tried to draw a floor plan once, and gave up after an hour. The bedroom has exactly one place to put the bed that won't block a door. The only large furniture in the living room is a love seat, glider/rocker, and coffee table, but there's basically one configuration that doesn't block the path from the door to the hallway.
We've got a playmat for El Burrito, maybe 2x4 feet, so he can have some floor time, and there are, right now, exactly two places to put it. One blocks the path from the front door to the rest of the house. The other means stepping over the boy to get from the couch to anywhere else. (And we eat dinner on the couch - there's no room for a table to eat at.)
I'll spare any readers (are there any?) my rants on the extreme lack of light in this place, natural or otherwise. There are no windows, just doors, although the doors for the most part have large panes of glass in them. For built-in lighting, we have a light in the kitchen, one over the stairs, tracklights over the kitchen bar/counter, and vanity lights in the bathrooms. Oh, and florescent tubes in the closets. That's it. Everything else is lamps. It's like living in a cave.
Headache #2.5 - Again, lack of space, baby-related. That same lack of space means less space for El Burrito to explore. Right now, he's not crawling yet, and the place isn't totally baby-proofed, because we meant to be moved into a house by now. And there's not a lot of floor space, so there's really no good place to spread a blanket and let him roll around. Also no room to put a playpen or exersaucer-type thing, which is what he's ready for. He had a bouncy chair (somehting like this one but without the canopy or remote control) that he loved to death, and so did we, but it gave up the ghost last night. He's still got the battery-powered swing, which is supposed to be rated to 30 pounds, but it hasn't had enough oomph to swing the boy since he hit 15 pounds. I've resorted to powering it myself, with some yarn, but that won't last much longer before he outgrows it altogether.
To be continued, later on. I've got a never-ending list of things to get done.
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