For The Journey Not just the destination…

I went to the dentist today – what a crummy deal to go to the dentist on Halloween and hear that you have cavaties. That’s what I get for not going while I was at grad school. But I found out that the hygenist is my neighbor, and I still had Halloween candy tonight. I had to, we didn’t have any trick or treaters. Well, except for the trickster in the entry’s photo.

Clover helped herself to the Halloween candy bowl we left by the front door and luckily I caught her after just one chocolate. I quickly called the vet, and they confirmed that she’ll be alright with that small amount of chocolate, especially since it’s not dark chocolate. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one that called the vet tonight about chocolate poisioning of pets.

Last night, Thomas and I joined the AOC for a Sunset hike on Blood Mountain. We hiked up, watched the sunset, and then came down by flashlight. I had a great time, but realized I got a little out of shape since my last hike. I stuck with the slower hikers. As usual, I took photos.

* Blood Mountain Sunset Hike

I bought a new camera tonight. I have been watching a particular line of cameras and I’m really impressed with the reviews and stats on the newest model, announced last Spring – the Canon Powershot S2 IS. I’ve been waiting for the price to drop, and it finally did.

The one problem is that I found the camera listed at one place for nearly $100 less than the others. The lower price is good, but it’s low enough that it makes me a little curious why it’s so much lower. The seller seems to be a reputable company, and it goes through Amazon.com, but the fine print says that purchases will not be guaranteed. I’m not exactly sure what that means. Maybe they think they’ll run out before they update the site, or maybe the product has been opened and returned. I don’t think either of those will be a problem since going through Amazon gives me some protection as a buyer.

So this camera isn’t super fancy, but I’m not ready to move onto Digital SLR. I like being able to point and click most of the time. It has the swivel screen that I love in my current camera, but it will do much closer macros and much further telephotos. It also has image stabilization. Unfortunately, it uses different batteries and memory than my last camera, but it takes double A’s, which will be easier to find in a pinch. And I’ll have a bunch of small items, like filters and memory that I can add to my Christmas list.

For now, I’m going to hold on to my current camera, a Canon G3, especially until I confirm that this ordered camera is shipped. And afterward, I might just hold on to it for a bit longer as a backup camera. The orchid was taken with my current camera.

Last night, Thomas and I went to see one of my favorite bands, String Cheese Incident. I first learned about this band when my brother told me about them a few years ago. Of course, I didn’t listen to him then, but he turned out to be right. They’re a great bluegrass, jazzy, jam band.

The show was great – 4 hours long. The Fox Theater was beautiful; the ceiling looked like a sky and had twinkling stars and drifting clouds. We were on the front row of the balcony and had a great view of the stage and the audience down below. The audience was pretty interesting to watch. There were people dressed like fairies and pirates, and people were dancing like they were having some kind of spiritual experience. Balloons bounced through the crowd, and glowsticks would occasionally jet through the air like fireworks.

The band played barefoot and was more diverse in age than I expected. It was interesting to also see folks in the audience around my parents’ age. All the band members played a couple instruments each and they invited some displaced New Orleans musicians called Headhunters on stage to play with them. They had a great song about Hurricane Katrina. I tried taking videos with my cell phone, but unfortunately they didn’t come out any better than the entry photo.

The show was great and we both had a great time. I just wish my brother would have been able to join us; he would of loved the show.

Yesterday, Thomas and I went to the Scandinavian Festival at Oglethorpe University. It was small, but we had a good time. The food was especially good. We started out with bular (sticky buns), pound cake and Glogg (spiced cider with raisins and almonds). The Glogg was delicious. Then for lunch, we had Danish hotdogs, which were topped with roumalade, sweet cucumbers, and fried onions. The toppings were very tasty. For dessert, we had Danish Aebleskiver (donut holes), and ice cream cones. From my personal experience, Swedes are the best ice cream toppers – we had whip cream and cherry sauce.

We watched Swedish folk dancers, and went to the exhibits for the 6 countries – Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Denmark, and Estonia. Estonia is not technically part of Scandinavia, but the local groups have decided to include them. There were also booths with food and gifts, mostly Finnish or Viking wares, but Thomas considered getting some tradional Swedish Christmas candle holders. We also saw some reindeer.

* Scandinavian Festival Photos

It was alot of fun and Thomas got to speak Swedish to alot of the volunteers. There was an older woman who I couldn’t even tell she was speaking Swedish. But I was able to understand some of the younger ones, and I was able to use Swedish to tell them which food I wanted to buy.