Hey Mom, can you teach me to knit with my paws?
Sam, our Maine Coon helps me with knitting today.

EGADS. It can’t be ... no, no. Please calm down. NO. After 25 years of marriage Rick and I did not finally decide to have a baby.

Actually, I blame it all on Susan in WA. If not for her I wouldn’t have had “baby envy” and had to go out and get one of my very own. Well ... not completely true, but she did push me over the edge of the cliff I’ve been hanging on for awhile now.  I’ve been thinking for quite some time that I really needed a small tote-along camera rather than lugging the Rebel along with its huge telephoto lens everywhere I go, plus I wanted the capability to take movie clips. Don’t get me wrong, I’m quite pleased with my Rebel and its performance, but it’s not the easiest thing to take on a trip. It literally weighs me down. So, I hereby proudly introduce my new baby—my Canon PowerShot SD800 IS:

I like the way the camera can be stood on end. Pretty, isn’t she? When I uncovered her from all her wrappings it was love at first sight. Lucky, that, since I never did see the camera in person before I ordered one. Slim and light, she fits in the palm of my hand. I like touching her body and it has a nice heft to it. Just right. Her bright LCD screen takes up most of her backside and the controls are readable without having to put on my reading glasses, a real plus. The difficult thing was to wait until the battery had charged before I could start to play. Patience, girl.

Not only did she look good, but within a short amount of time I was flipping through the different modes with no problem at all. Very user friendly. I am not one to be immediately at home with a new techie toy. Without really trying, the images were good. Here are a few

Rick’s cheeses ageing in the basement.

Our dinner last night: (my own creation of pistachio-crusted Turkey Parmigiana; recipe here) Trust me—it’s delish!

I took a short walk and tried different settings in different kinds of light. This next image was taken with the macro lens. The feather is teeny-tiny, no bigger than about an inch long.

It did a good job showing up the color and texture in the bark of this tree in my front yard.

Can you guess what this is? It’s a water-filled, muddy print of a bear’s hind foot. Again, it captured it nicely.

In this image I think it did a good job with color and contrast with difficult subject matter. I even caught some kind of duck in flight.

And last, cute white-tailed deer in my foggy front yard yesterday morning.

I’m still struggling a bit with the macro and I need to figure out what I’m doing wrong. But other than that, so far I am pleased. This camera was the best fit for me after doing lots of research online by reading and comparing reviews. I wanted it to be small enough and light enough to carry in my purse. While others looked great, they were just a bit too big. The SD800 had some features that I thought were important (at least to me they were), such as: an optical viewfinder. Even though all the reviews complain about how the ones on the smaller cameras aren’t accurate, I know from experience that in bright sunlight LCD screens can be next to impossible to see. Another feature was image stabilization to eliminate camera shake and allow you to take photos without flash in lower light situations. I didn’t want to be able to choose my own manual settings, I really wanted this to be a point-and-shoot, but creatively, travel camera. If you’re interested, the review is here. It could use a longer zoom lens, but that was one of the trade-offs I made.

For now the baby is behaving nicely. No tantrums, and no one is whining. Now I can’t wait for the Las Vegas trip!

4:00 a.m. I was stirred out of a sound sleep by something ... a noise. A low rumble? My sleep-fogged brain struggled to make a connection. Thunder? I reluctantly peeled one eye open to a slit and was rewarded with a brilliant flash of light. Uh oh. I counted: one-one thousand, two-two thousand, three-three thousand before a huge crash of thunder shook the house. Rick jolted awake and the dogs started barking all at once. The dogs hate thunderstorms. They decided that on the bed with us was the right place to be. Thankfully we only had to endure a few more claps of thunder before the little storm went on its way to rudely awaken other households.

Just another reminder that Spring is here. Yesterday we still had a patch of icy, snowy sludge on the pool’s cover; this morning it’s gone. We still have a few patches of snow hanging in there after last night’s rain. I haven’t seen any spring bulbs bursting through the ground, but frankly I’m not sure we have any in our yard. No, the outward signs of Spring are still not quite here but you can feel it in the air. It’s palpable. Yesterday it was 78 degrees! I took my new camera for a walk down to Green Turtle Pond. It’s still frozen but you can see the thaw coming by the color of the ice.

Ah, Spring!

But wait—what did my wondering eyes see this morning when I checked the weather forecast—a winter storm watch? Chance of snow and sleet tonight (90%),  and tomorrow a near to 100% chance of snow with 2-4 inches of the white stuff? Huh? Reading further reveals that Friday night there will be “additional heavy accumulation with 15 mph winds and gusts up to 25 mph?” Check the calendar, quick; is it April 1st? Surely they jest.

March is very capricious this year!

An eerie start to the day this morning as the sun rises behind clouds.
Note: This photo was taken with my new little camera (Canon PowerShot SD800 SI), but more about that later!

I still have some photos to share from our New Orleans trip, so I thought I’d better get them out there before you all forget that we even went!

While in New Orleans, I learned that people painted their shutters green to ward off evil spirits.