Missin' out

My gimpiness has been limiting my fun. Phooey. Family friends are in town. We hadn't seen them 15 or 16 years. While growing up they were my parents' best friends, we spent all sorts of time with them. Their daughter was my first friend. We were tight like sisters when I didn't have siblings of my own. For whatever reason, my parents lost touch shortly after our last visit to their home in KC, MO. Facebook encouraged me to reconnect with each of my old friends from my youth. I've since found 4 of 6 of them. Once we reconnected, my mom friended them and we're all caught up now. They'll be staying at my mom's place later this week. For now they're at the Golden Nugget. It's their first time to Las Vegas, they're enjoying the sights but they're overwhelmed by the sheer size of everything, the walking and hawkers - they got swindled into a timeshare presentation on their second day. We met for dinner at Grand Lux. Good company and tasty food, I tried to offer as many tips and tricks as possible, but I think I threw out so much information it possibly left them in more of a daze. I would've liked to show them around and be a tour guide of sorts, but I had to get back home and rest.

Yesterday was "Nickel PBR Night" at Todd English's P.U.B. Mike has been dying to go since I first told him about it. He's been saving every nickel that has come his way, he collected a big 'ole baggy of them. I was going to join Mike and Frank for this adventure, but not knowing the situation of crowds and whatnot, it was best I stayed home. Hopefully, it'll stick around long enough for me to check it out.

While they were out, it gave me a chance to play with my new toy. Not that kinda toy... heads out of the gutter, you pervs. I'm talking about the Nikon d40, it's an entry level digital SLR.


I've been comtemplating an upgrade for a several months, but the prices of cameras and lenses had me suffering from sticker shock. I left my thoughts on the back burner until I was familiar enough with manual settings to fully know what I wanted and needed. Then, I had an opportunity to buy this Nikon from a friend, she was upgrading models and wanted to find it a good home. It seems to be just what I need to learn the ropes. It made sense to go this route rather than drop a bunch of coin to find I lost interest or preferred the ease of point and shoot. So, last night I familiarized myself with the basics. I'm anxious to get more mobile so I can take a photo field trip to see what kind of captures I can take. It'll take time to tinker with it and actually know what I'm doing, but I suspect it will be a fun learning process in the meantime.