And today I misidentified a big bright dot in the sky.
Spent the next two hours standing on top of a hill, crunching frozen grass, looking at it, waiting for dawn, wondering wtf, brain.
But I did find my first official fossil a wee while later, so. Yay.
Me: "I read a good Game of Thrones fanfic last night, well written, good finish."
G: "Ye? Who puts it into whom?"
Me: "The Night King puts it into Sansa Stark."
G: "Wouldn't his dick freeze to death if he stuck it into that?"
Brutal.
So, I set the camera up and tuck it under the parka to look like I'm in the middle of giving birth to a xenomorph, setting out to test the novelty. And I am new; I don't really make any good photos and my format settings are all wrong. I christen it by shooting Lyra, as Marki also made his first shot of her.
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| Underexposed, wrong warmth settings and grainy |
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| The first pickie ever taken by Marki |
The whole walk is tiresome, I am distracted, nervous, and I woke up this morning at 4:47, to find G's message photo of the adapter. He sent his son home early just to deliver it. I couldn't really get any other work done.
I try to download the photos, sure, that worked, try to open them ... Not working. Why isn't it working? They are not even opening properly. I google the common issue and find out that Adobe doesn't support the new Canon's format, because reasons.
Okay. Okay. Think. There is talk of Lightroom updates, I could try getting that. I never used it before, but when in need ... Or, if all else fails, I can try shooting in .JPG and making the most of those until I find a solution.
Admittedly, Photoshop is my second main tool of the trade. There are functions there I use absolutely for every photo I ever edit and there's a reason I shoot them in a dull lifeless neutral style, because it offers the widest range of edits. I'm not married to it, but I am very much used to it. The General calls the man we got the camera from and he says that the very latest PS version DOES indeed work with CR3.
Half of the good news. Now all I need is a five years younger Photoshop. On the plus side, the subscription is very reasonable. However, I be a boomer dum dum when it cometh to such advanced software engineering as downloading a program. It just wouldn't work. After several failed attempts, we called G's parents' young neighbour, and he remotely took over my comp and set the whole thing up. Like a proper IT guy, he tried explaining what we were doing wrong and how this works and we were just nodding into the phone, yes, yes, ahah, oh, right?..
But, a long day's work, we're one step closer to making good photos with a new machine.
Card in, waiting for the adapter. Tried learning enough of the novelties to remotely comprehend what the camera can do - and what the old one could do and I just never properly investigated ... - and the word 'remote' steals the cake: it is literally possible to use your phone to tell the damn thing what to do. Like, when did 2022 happen? I cannot wait to get a new lens some day, fit for this tiny beast. Oh, the wonders we'll find!
In the meanwhile....
Now, what I need, for starters, are a memory card and a lens adapter, until I can buy some lenses.
The lens adapter I was looking for wasn't listed in the store that sells Canon stuff, but I wrote asked when they might have it, and, what do you know, they have it.
Then I buy a memory card and an hour later, that store calls G and says: you picked the worst and costliest of possible cards, are you sure you don't want something else?
O.o
Maybe getting a higher education at the University of YouTube isn't the best idea. Or maybe I got scammed. But I have decided to try out this new thing called "optimism" and we'll see where that takes me.
A pretty, warm day to take the old camera out and play around a little, climbing the frozen little creek and shooting the weird little frost formations in the water. I was mindful not to step on ice over depths I couldn't see and I now know it helps to have a camera when a bunch of day-hikers pauses to stare at what the fuck are you doing, rolling in the creek. (The camera doesn't have a display, so to catch things from the frog's perspective, you need to be bendy.)
The sun's been up for three days. I don't mean 24/7, I mean for a change, the days are sunny. Cold AF, but sunny. I've been watching a LOT of funny doggy and kitten and pet goat and hamster videos, which has me dreaming all the usual depressing stuff, but also a lot of cute kittens and funny goats. I heard that accumulating happy thoughts at random, just recognising nice things all around, helps. My brain still finds three ugly things for every nice thing, but, you know. It could hardly be worse, in my wintery night.
I've published some more stuff, getting positive results, and with a little luck, I'm finally getting another camera - not super 100% new, but new enough, and a grand cheaper, if all goes well. So that's half of the half-realisable goals for 2021 done, leaving just the lens and the tidbits (cards, batteries, adapters...). Today was a fun day, we had three errands/obligations and they were all cool. First, we drove to the G's old town clinic, because they have a vaccination special and we expected there to be hundreds of people like in the city, but we were completely alone. He had a dentist's appointment an hour later, so we offed to the town's only cafe to see what happened there in the two years that we've been ignoring it... They renovated, very nicely, the tea was excellent, the cake was good and the lady working there was ... not the sharpest tool in the shed, but very lovely, friendly and warm and polite. I changed my review back to five stars because of her. I even saw a man writing a hand-written letter. Obviously, my brain suggested this must surely be a suicide note, or a hasty letter of a father who abused his daughter and is now desperately trying to communicate... but a handwritten letter nonetheless. More like a note. But a long one.
I got some good food in the 'almost expired' box in my street store, some nice pies and vegan wraps and sammiches. (I'm not stingy, I'm just not paying 4 bucks for five leaves of salad with an olive on it. Plus, you know how much I like mould.) So, now well fed and wattered, with a cheerful street beneath me and a stiff, sore arm, I'm back to editing. I have eleven more swatches to paint, shoot, today or tomorrow, and nine shot to edit and post, today. And this is just from the warming-up phase of the batch. What a difference some sun makes. On the gloomy days, all I do is read bad news and worry about poverty, disease and injury. there are not enough cilantro tacos and funny kitten videos to colour me up on those days.
Aww, my beautiful bow, after fifteen fucking years. How I've missed you. And look at my forearm. That'll teach me to think I don't need protection because I'm wearing a parka ...
Sometimes when people speak to me, I can't understand why they would say what they say. I forget that some people do that. I've been married to G for so long, it's understood no other man would just walk up to me and say anything, no matter how friendly. It's just not considered proper form to address another man's wife and besides, fairly all of his acquaintances by now know I'm half-autistic.
... And then a guy comes up to me and says: "That's a sure way to blow your shoulder right off."
We were playing with hunting rifles. (Hunters like to compare those sort of things.) The General's 12-gauges are all too big for me, I can barely hold them, but his colleague has a much smaller, much lighter bolt-action (Which I prefer.) and as I aimed, a third guy said that about my shoulder.
I did not understand at all. Like, why would ... anyone say anything like that to me at all? Not to mention we were wearing winter parkas. Even if I did hold it wrong - there are not all that many ways to shoulder a rifle - he couldn't possibly see it, standing behind me.
I was so confused, I just looked at G and worried I've done something wrong and someone much smarter was just trying to be helpful.
"She was an army marksman, buddy," smiled the General.
But why would the guy say something like that to me?
Guess sometimes some guys just need to talk down to a female as if she was a moron who shouldn't be confusing shotguns with Gucci purses?
Or maybe I should just stick to my bow.
I wonder if I am deliberately forgetting dad, so that I'd forget mom? The General just asked me today, if he should drop by as he was in their neighbourhood, and it completely upset me. Like, ruined the afternoon. An otherwise great afternoon - we got a new string and arrows for my bow, we watched videos about hiking with pack goats, almost 25 pounds of new pigments arrived ... But smack in the middle, depression came back like a rogue train.
I should stop that. It shouldn't still hurt so bad, just the memories.
... to come up with a great idea - 'What would you like to do for New Year's Eve?' Hmm, no idea. 'Let's drive up to a high hill and shoot fireworks above the city with the drone.'
... - and then prevent me from doing it, having to instead watch others do it.
Yes, it was windy and yes, my test drive was the first nocturnal drive ever and it was tricky, because it was so dark I couldn't see the trees or anything else, nothing on the hill was illuminated - no streetlights to speak of, the little landmark church was pitch black, no residential houses close by...- but that's why one has a spotter. In my opinion, I handled it perfectly - I used the map to fly it 'home' when it was too dark to recognise the terrain, and when the wind kept tilting it away from my landing corridor, I took over manually, with landing lights, and parked it in G's lifted hand. Tricky, yes. But I got it.
I would be a cool bunny if he wasn't my prudence enforcer.
Alas, G decided it may not have been such a good idea after all, so. So we watched someone else's drone take the footage. They didn't seem to care at all there is a no-fly zone on the other side of the river. And I have to say - for an advertised decision to cut back on fireworks lately, that was a helluva half an hour of insistent all-over-the-city fireworks parade. Darn, that's a lot of money to shoot into the sky.
Heh, earlier, when the mutt et moi had our doggy walk, some family kept firing up small boxes and it fumed and sparked and cracked and spit out little shows, except one which obviously fell over and started exploding serious rockets well into the river and into near-by trees, and Lyra and I actually had to run for cover. She was not quite so chill after that. I admit, noisy bangs bother me, too. Those things can set a parka on fire if they hit you.
