my new wide angle lens

I took my new wide angle lens out on a short excursion through Midtown... got stuck in traffic and so while sitting at red lights I would snap a couple of pictures out my sun roof. Unfortunately, at some point I accidently switched it to P setting instead of Automatic, so the later pictures are a bit grainy and even a little dark. Guess I'll just have to go back out and take some more.

the Maiwald Family

I met the Maiwalds at Intown Community Church. Tom was an elder there. He and his wife worked with the singles group. I love that family and really felt a kindred spirit with his wife. I got the rare privilege of getting to stay with the kids and dogsit several times. Didn't realize it was such an honor till someone told me that they are really picky about how they ask. 14 years ago was Tom's first time to battle cancer - pancreatic. He was supposed to have died. His son wouldn't be alive if that had happened. He's battled cancer several times since then. He has lung cancer right now. His blog is beautiful... http://www.caringbridge.org/ga/tmailwald.

Camera Equipment

I'm taking pictures at dinner next Friday for a couple at my church. Allison's father is being honored for his work with Navigators. She wants me to take pictures, and her sis-in-law to video the night. I think my zoom lense will be good, but I also really want to go ahead and get a wide angle lense. Do I go for it or not? That's the question. Nikon has a AF Nikkor 24 mm f/2.8D (need to double check that it is compatible with a Nikon D40X); its description said it was great for landscapes, interiors, events, etc. It is $394.95. I think that would make me lense needs complete. And then...

I would just need to start saving for another camera. I think I'd like a professional one. Mine is just below professional grade. I thought I'd sell it when I had saved enough money for a new camera, but now I'm thinking it might be nice to have a back up and nice to have two lenses go between quickly for things like this dinner... not that I take pictures like that all that often.

One camera that would be nice and not take quite as long to save for as some of the others is the Nikon D90. It's only $899.95. Yes, I said 'only.' The others are $2000+ and even $4,000+. It is 12.3 megapixels. I think mine right now is 10. It even has some cool incamera editing features like - fisheye effect (which yes, Shannon your phone can do), straighten and distortion control, as well as d-lighting, red-eye reduction, image overlay, monchrome, etc.

These are the type of financial goals I establish for myself. Sorry, Dad. ;)

When Worlds Collide

I love it when my various "worlds" collide.

I tell everyone about my YMCA. Guess you can say it's a one person cruisade to up our member numbers and return the closing time back to 10 pm. I don't really expect my efforts to pan out if it's someone who doesn't live in my neighborhood (SA), but nevertheless I try my best.

Last Monday some sort of nightmare woke up me around 6-ish, and I decided to head to the gym. I'm in the cooling down stage on the treadmill when someone taps me. I turn and to my surprise it's Angel from my church (EPC). I'm very incoherent in the morning, so it took me awhile to process I was seeing. She actually thought she'd scared me, but really it was me trying to put together seeing an EPC face at my SA YMCA. She and her husband had visited the YMCA - b/c of my recommendations - that Sunday and had received free week-long passes.

Well, she & Anthony are YMCA members now and coming the gym. It's giving me some incentive to get up when I wake up at 6 (a new discovery... that I actually do wake all on my own at 6, but choose to fall back to sleep) and go to the YMCA. I got a good run in this morning.

Travel

A friend emailed me this quote today. She saw it on an adoption application, and it made her think of me.

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindness." Mark Twain

Love that quote!!! I think it is ssssoooo true!

Another favorite travel quote -

"The world is a book, and you those who do not travel read only a page." Saint Augustine.

Compassion

It has been awhile since I have blogged. I can't blame the shutting down of Vox. Shoot it had been awhile since I had blogged on that. I can't remember if I had ever even blogged about my Africa - my beautiful, wonderful, heart aching trip to Africa. It wasn't so much that I was hurt. Looking back and processing it a little more I think it was just that I so deeply felt the pain of the little ones I got to know. Not sure why, but I recently decided to look up the word compassion for a Bible study I am doing on Mark. I love that word, but never realized I never really knew its definition. Now I love it even more... Compassion is a deep awareness of and sympathy for another's suffering. It looks like I'll get to start supporting little Eddie's 6 year old sister. I just feel in love with little Eddie - a 10 year old orphan whose education is being supported by my friend. His heart ached to be held by his mother. His precious, gentle heart reminded me a lot of Ian. I ever so much wanted to hide him in my suitecase and bring him home to live with the Shads.

Invisible Man

An intern working on community organization with me in my neighborhood loaned me Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison months ago. Started trying to read it while I was in Africa. A little too intense and deep for that... loving the book though it's taking me awhile to finish. The first words hit home and made me see the folks who live both in my neighborhood as well as the slum I was visiting in Kissimu.

"I am an invisible man. No, I am not the spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids - and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination - indeed, everything, and anything except me."