Wednesday December 5, 2007
We had the greatest, fun day yesterday, Graham’s birthday, in our quiet way.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a great hit, and is lined up to be viewed in sensible-size chunks following on my current Northern Exposure season. Then, all three Tales of the City series and we’ll finish up with A Year in Provence. When that lot’s done, chances are, we’ll be living a very different life and, possibly, in a different house and location. The ‘possibly’ is my caveat just in case the housing market conspires against us.
The camera–a Casio EX-Z75 was likewise a great hit. I was a little P-Od when Graham unpacked the box, though, because they don’t include a memory card. There’s a little built-in memory, enough for three snaps, but that’s no more than a teaser. We’ve ordered a 2gb card from Amazon and it’ll arrive today or tomorrow. Even so, the tiny little blighter works flawlessly and delivers photos to the PC without fuss or hassle. Graham specifically did not want a mega-quality camera for fear that it’d shove his Nikon FM2 on one side again. He’s got his wish. The photographs are fine, at snapshot level.
It really is a tiny little thing, and that makes me a bit wistful. Actually, it’s very, very close to the same front dimensions of my new Panasonic but perhaps one quarter of its thickness. Or less. And a fraction of its weight. However, as Graham pointed out, my camera has a 12x optical zoom tucked inside rather than the 3x that comes with the Casio, along with a Leica lens and CC-whatsit.
Whatever. They’ll both be landfill in two or three years and we’ll be cooing over some new advance in technology.
And then our idyll came to a rapid end when Graham had to go over to open the bar for the Elvis Presley night.
“This is intolerable,” I said. “We don’t even get to do birthdays properly any more.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’ll all be different next year.”
When I got home Dolly the Mega-cat sighed at me and I sighed at Dolly the Mega-cat. You could say we sighed together.
“Come on, Dolly,” I said, pouring myself an early glass of wine. “Let’s go to Alaska.”
When we spoke in the small hours I piped up, cheerful as cheerful does, and asked: “Can we do Christmas now?”
“I’ll put the tree up on Friday.”
“Good. Deck the halls with old crepe paper and such.”
“We ain’t got no old crepe paper.”
“Don’t be so perishin’ literal. Having another birthday doesn’t give you the right to be perishin’ literal.”
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