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Dragonfly on a Red Cardboard Box

I took this picture with a new lens I just bought, a Tamron 70-300mm lens with a macro function.  This photo is a composite of two different photos from the same perspective, using the better-focused part of each to make an in-focus whole.

My Wishlist Wishlist

As I was doing some shopping on Amazon.com today, carefully comparing some similar items and combing their reviews for useful information, I remembered a time when I used to do such things more frequently, albeit for a rather amusing purpose.

Way back in the early days of my relationship with the World Wide Web, when we paid $25 a month to get super-slow service from America Online, when e-mail was something of a novelty, and when things like Blogger and Facebook were only mystical concepts in the minds of the technological avantgarde - back then, in the dawn of my online experience, Amazon.com was my primary attraction to the internet. Strange though it may seem now, I spent hours on that site. In fact, I probably spent a rather large majority of my internet allowance perusing the world's biggest online store. And the irony is that I had no intention of buying anything. I was the ultimate Windows shopper.

My commitment to honesty compels me to admit that the simple joy of comparing the latest merchandise was not my only attraction to Amazon.com, per se. It wasn't all merely about finding out what was the best, the cheapest, or the best deal. Nor was it about just having fun, though of that I had much. No, I was a selfish little lad, as a retrospective glance at my ideas, misconceptions, and consequent action from that time would make sadly apparent.

I first learned about Amazon.com when Evan and Jill came over for dinner shortly after they had moved to New Hampshire. It's one of those random little memories that sticks in one's mind from his childhood for no explicable reason. Mama and Jill were talking about shopping, I think, and Jill asked if we had tried Amazon.com. I had heard of it - I think by that time it was already a pretty big company - but hadn't realized that WE could use it. I don't know exactly who I thought generally used it - probably rich people with fancy computers or college students who could sit down with only Notepad open and design a whole website (imagine!) - but that's beside the point. The point is that if Jill could shop at Amazon.com, so could I. Suddenly online shopping was a possibility, and I took my first opportunity to check it out.

Some time in the next few days, I opened my very own Amazon.com account. What excitement! And what bliss! I had already become the first member of my family to open a personal e-mail account, and to add "first Amazon.com member" to my resume cemented my reputation as the most tech-savvy member of the family.

But this was back in the days when pride had less appeal for me than materialism. Imagine my absolute delight when I learned three separate but related facts: Amazon sometimes overstocked and sold things for cheaper; Amazon asked what your birthday was; and Amazon let you create a wishlist. Clearly, Amazon users had only to report their DOB and ask for whatever they wanted, and the philanthropic managers of the good website would send you presents (if, of course, they happened to have more stuff than they really needed).

Well, from that moment it was my ambition to place all the overstocked merchandise I could find in my wishlist. I particularly desired a CD boombox and a digital camera, I remember, and I would fly around the electronics pages searching for whatever I thought was nice but unlikely to be extremely popular.

"This one looks nice. Memorex CD and tape player... with remote control! I doubt it will be overstocked, but I'll add it to my list just in case. Oh, here's a nice Sony... same features but way more money! No one will buy this! I'll add it..."

Birthday after birthday came and went, and though I watched the mail around those times with eager expectancy, my hopes for a complimentary gift from the wonderland behind my mother's inch-thick laptop screen were never realized. Nearly ten years later, I'm still waiting.

What you see...

…when you turn a 50mm lens around and, holding it face to face with your normal autofocus lens, look through the viewfinder of your Pentax K200D camera at the dead fly that’s lying on your bedside table:

The Joys of Painting

I mentioned in a previous post some of the sorrows of painting - how it can be tedious, how you have to bend over and move your arm a lot, how it can be messy, and how the end sometimes seems unreachable. I didn't mention how bugs stick the paint when you are painting at night and leave the door open.

But in all that moaning and expostulating I only mentioned one of the things that makes me like painting - that I can do it well. I meant to go on to mention a couple other things that make painting much more agreeable. In fact, I rather like painting. It's productive. It gives me a nice sense of accomplishment when I have finished a job. And most of all, I can listen to audiobooks.

For years, I have had a long list of books that I knew I wanted to read "someday." I suppose it would be more accurate to say I had several such lists, for I never kept any one of them very long before it got lost, destroyed, or filched. I would rewrite it, and the titles would change, but the more absolute list of books that I had actually read would remain the same. I lapsed into despair ... until, like the glorious, golden sun rising over the snow-capped Caucasus mountains in a perfect Azerbaijani sunrise, the great discovery of audiobooks peered over my horizon and became a part of my life forever.

I made this great discovery last year during summer work at Fairwood. I had known for some time that the NH library website offers free audiobook rentals, and I had purposely bought an MP3 player that could play them and hold a lot of them. (I had been planning to make this discovery for some time.) Most of my time that week was divided between insulating the attic over the main house apartment and painting the dining hall, and both jobs are great audiobook jobs. I tackled them, a very talented British woman whispering the words of Tolstoy into my ears, and by the end of the week I was able to cross Anna Karenina off my list. (Fabulous book, by the way. Highly recommended. And Wanda McCaddon is a highly recommended reader.)

I have continued to take advantage of the opportunity to mingle work with entertainment and education throughout my painting this summer, and I have certainly enjoyed it. I love being able to listen to great stories and be productive - and earn money - at the same time. My list for this summer so far includes The Golden Key and Gone With the North Wind by George MacDonald, The Magician's Nephew, The Horse and His Boy, and Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, and The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle. In just the past two weeks I've listened to The Great Gatsby, Prince Caspian, and My Antonia. And I have copies of Persuasion, Moby Dick, The Age of Innocence, War and Peace, and Wuthering Heights waiting for me when I want them.

The beauty of this - perhaps I should say "another beauty of this," since I have just enchanted you with the beauty of listening and working simultaneously - the beauty of this is that it's all free! Not that free is always a good thing - I must admit that some of the readers from volunteer-based audiobook sites like Librivox have obnoxious voices, and I know from experience that it is hard to pay attention to the story when you're paying attention to the narrator's ridiculous accent or monotonous tone. One Librivox reader I previewed would read with a kind of sawtooth intonation. At the beginning of the sentence she would speak with a high pitch, and she would gradually lower her voice as she uttered each word. At the end of the sentence or clause she would begin again, with the exact same tone as before. It is difficult to demonstrate in writing the soporific effect of this habit of hers. Perhaps if you ask me I will demonstrate it for you some time. In the meantime, I listen mostly to the library audiobooks: every one is professionally recorded, and I have not been disappointed by many of the readers.

Of course, real reading with a book is not without it's distinct charms and pleasures, and I really enjoy sitting down with a good book. The trouble is that I never budget my time with reading in mind, and I never end up giving myself the chance. There are a number of books on my list of which I can't get free copies, and some of the ones that I can get for free are read by people with horrible reading voices. These ones I will read myself...

... someday.

Of One Whose Driving Skills Are Poor

When I was driving home the other day, I was behind a man in a nice SUV. The man in the nice SUV came to a stop sign before I did, as people who are driving in front of me are wont to do. Even though the road we were traveling ended there, and the man in the nice SUV must clearly turn either to the right hand or to the left, his turn signal was left untouched.

I always find it slightly annoying when people don't use their turn signals - especially when they haven't forgotten about it but have decided that it's unnecessary. The point of using your blinker is to show the drivers around you what you intend, and if you don't see any cars around you that's no excuse: it's the cars that you don't see that need to know what you're going to the most. Besides, it's just a flick of the wrist! If you think it's too tiresome, just pretend it's a Bop-it game, and whenever you're going to turn or change lanes, your car suddenly says, "Bop-it down!" or "Bop-it up!" That makes it fun. And besides, not using your blinker reveals a vacant mind. I rest my case, which has been logically and unanswerably presented.

Where were we? Ah yes, the man in the nice SUV had not used his turn signal. Well, I wasn't really worried about this gross lack of courtesy. I have seen too many drivers behaving similarly to think this instance remarkable. Anyway, the man in the nice SUV had driven to the far left side of the lane, leaving more than a car's width of pavement to his right. Clearly, he intended to turn left. I was going right, so I pulled alongside him and began to check for traffic... when the man in the nice SUV turned right.

"Silly driver," I said, rather loudly. But of course he pretended not to hear.

A Tearjerker

I have been painting for work these days - painting my dad's new office space so he can move his business into a place with pretty beige walls instead of bare sheetrock. It's no use denying that I sometimes get tired of painting. No, seriously, I will not deny it! I do! The constant up and down motion, the constant bending over to get more paint, and either the constant vigilance or the constant cleaning of spills and spots - it just isn't something I think I'll want to do in heaven. And when you have over a thousand square feet of wall space that is frequently interrupted by wooden trim boards that have to be painted with a brush, the job can be very tiresome indeed. There's nothing like a full week of repetitive work to make you appreciate the Sabbath.

Painting does have several notable advantages for me, though; it's not all a trial and a bore. For one thing, it's something I know I can do well. Sheetrocking, which I was doing last week, is not.

If I have any sheetrocking skills at all, they're pretty thickly buried under a couple strata of inexperience. I started last week with a couple pieces that had to be scribed to fit a rather irregular wall that included a ledge, a sill, an electrical track, and a beam. I measured wrong somehow and ended up with a nice one-inch gap between the board and the wall for about six inches at the top. The next piece I cut was almost just right, but was just big enough that I had to keep trimming down tiny slices off the end to make it fit. At least it was snug when I finally got it into place. By that time I was quite tired (just as, incidentally, I am now!), and I almost quit for the day. Not really feeling like I had accomplished much, however, I decided to try for one more board, this one a simpler specimen. All it called for was a simple rectangular window cutout. I measured once, measured again, and set to work cutting.

Suddenly, I stopped myself. I had just been about to cut on the wrong side of the board! I sighed with relief as I settled down to doing it right. The cuts were clean and beautiful, exactly following the lines I had carefully delineated with a pen and a square. I was sure that in a few minutes I would have earned my rest for the day. As I picked up my opus (it wasn't really magnum; just an opus), I was confronted with the awful truth: I had been right the first time.

There I stood, grasping the mirror image of the piece of sheetrock I wanted and having no way to rewind the time so I could cut it right. It fit perfectly into the space for it if I held it against the wall backward, but that wasn't much comfort. I just left it there and departed for a long weekend. When I got back on Tuesday, the sheetrocking was almost done, and boy was I glad! I've been painting ever since.

The Tales of the Tired Mind

If you look at the timestamp on this post, you will note that it is rather late. I was actually working on another post - a longer, more detailed one - until about ten minutes ago, at which time something happened that showed me I should probably go to bed.

I was writing about some of the work I have been doing lately, work that involved sheetrocking. And I was really tired. Slowly, involuntarily, my eyelids began to droop as I typed away, recounting how the other day I had been tired but had decided to put up just one last sheet of drywall before heading to supper.

Suddenly, I realized I had been drifting into that misty semi-unconsciousness in which one is neither alert nor slumbering. I hadn't quite fallen asleep, but I had begun to dream at least a little. I shook myself, unable to recall where my thoughts had just been wandering, and looked at the clock. It was past one.

"Maybe I should finish this later," I thought, and when I looked at the computer screen I decided that was a good plan.

"By this time I was very tired," I had written, "but I decided that I would lend my land to the farmer boys..."