Yet another tale of camera woe, plus, what we did in California

First, a short tale of woe: I lost another camera. It fell out of my backpack as I was walking to work last Thursday. I'd had it in the small pocket at the bottom, where my phone charger also was, from traveling (normally it would have been in a larger pocket). I pulled out the charger on Wednesday night and forgot to zip the pocket back up, and completely forgot the camera was in there as I walked to work on Thursday. In fact, I didn't notice until noon when I planned to upload my photos from the trip and blog about them.

Dan looked everywhere at home. It wasn't there. All the photos I took in California, plus the camera itself: gone again. I put up signs on Thursday afternoon along my route back home. I went into or called everyplace that I thought someone might have taken the camera to (the Capitol, a middle school) if they found it outside. On Friday I called pawn shops and filed a police report. No dice.

So once again we went on a trip and I took a whole bunch of amazing photos that are now gone forever. Also, I went online to find another camera (I wanted the same one, a Canon Powershot A720 IS, because I really liked it). When I bought it in March of 08 it was about $200. Now, to buy the same camera new, it's over $400! Ridiculous! Even the slightly used/refurbished models were over $200 on most sites. So I looked on Ebay and found the camera and bid on it and won! My first ever ebay auction, and I was the winner! I should be getting the camera by some time next week (I hope).

Meanwhile, I don't think I'm a talented-enough storyteller to amuse the 4 readers of this blog with tales of our California trip. I will say that it was the most relaxed trip we'd had to the Golden State since sometime in 2006. There were no parties we had to plan, no weddings to plan or attend, no graduations. I got to eat the baby as much as I wanted, and watched what may be the best movie ever made about reform school girls with Leah and Simon. We became rock gods via Guitar Hero World Tour (Me: singing, drums. Dan: guitar) with the Irish German. We attended a 30th birthday party at a great pub in Berkeley. We got to see lots of friends and family members and spent hours lazing outside at another great pub. We ate greasy burgers/burger-like items, Ethiopian food, gelato, noodles, and microwave burritos. We experienced the newly-refurbished and -reopened Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, and saw everything but the planetarium. My knee mostly behaved. I learned I am terrible at darts. And we got to hang out with my friend Patient Zero Matt from the old message board, which was totally awesome because we hadn't seen each other in five years! The best part was when the three of us went to (yet another) pub to meet up with Scarlett at the end of an evening, and it turned out Scarlett and her boyfriend Jason knew Matt from attending the wedding of some mutual friends. Craziness, and small world.

I can recreate some of the shots I took some other time when we're in California (mostly they were of the UC Berkeley campus and the new Academy of Sciences), but it's just not the same thing. I took some great ones. I hope someone, somewhere, gets enjoyment out of them.