I got to leave work early on Friday! I had to use a little bit of vacation time to do it, but there really wasn't anything to do and me and G. were both just itching to leave, so M. went and asked T. and she said yes! Woo Hoo!
Of course, this meant that I wasn't just rushing to get home to pack for the cabin, so when I saw the big-ass tent at National Camera and heard the siren call of all the bargains, I just had to stop. It was cheap this year though. Flashes? Nope, I've got one now. Lenses? Nope, I'm pretty happy with all the ones I have. Digital Cameras? Time to do a happy "I have a Rebel XT" dance, but there's no room in the tent.
I bought a UV filter since I had a lens that didn't have one yet. I also snagged an extra battery for the Rebel XT, because it's good to have a backup. I also got a new tripod, because my old one had been bought very cheap at Target and it had a few issues. The worst of those being that it was impossible to get the thing attached really tightly to the bottom of the camera, so if you tried doing any vertical shots the weight of the lens would pull the camera down, making it rotate on the plate that was supposed to be holding it. The beauty of NatCam's annual tent sale is that most of the stuff is at least half off. So I was able to get a pretty nice tripod (although not super nice because those were on sale for over $100) for only slightly more than the crappy Target one cost. Yup, it's much cheaper to hit the sale when one isn't coveting anything expensive.
So then I got home and I packed. Made sure I had all the essentials: clothes, homemade wine, games, new camera (duh!), PlayStation 2... *grin* Yeah, I know, going to a cabin and bringing a PS2. But there was an ulterior motive.
lucky13charm has a DDR pad too, so we decided to both bring them. Then, once kalfoley was off work we hit the road with her, boy child, and girl child. hellbob was going to hang out in town until kaldeth got off work at 11:00 and drive him up.After we'd settled in at the cabin, but before the boys arrived, one of us remembered the Perseid meteor shower, so we went down to the dock to see if we could see any shooting stars.
Oh. My. God. I can't remember the last time I saw a sky like that. There wasn't a cloud anywhere, the moon had already set for the night, and there was virtually no light pollution. It was AMAZING! It was so clear and the stars were so bright that we could see the line of where the milky way was super thick. We couldn't even find most of the constellations we knew because there were too many stars! And we did see a ton of meteors. It was just so beautiful.
Well, time to leave for work... I'll update more later.
