March 24, 2004

   Nope, it's not a painting.  And it hasn't been Photoshopped.  Well, I take that back.  I did open it up in Photoshop to crop it, but nothing more.  This photo is straight off of Shorn's Advantix camera, and the only reason that I'm posting it now, instead of back at the appropriate time, is that we just got around to having that roll of film developed.  Sad isn't it?  That camera was all the shit when he first got it, six years ago.  It's so convenient!  No negatives!  And then they started giving us the pictures on cd, and it was even better.  We can store all of our pictures on the computer!  We don't even have to use this scanner we just bought! But now, now that  we've had the digital camera for nearly two years, I look at the Advantix camera with a mild sense of dread.  In fact, most of the time I don't look at it at all.  It only gets dragged out for air shows and vacations, when the trusty digital is too slow, or has too low of capacity.  We marvel at its simplicity, its quaint mechanical operation, its rugged durability in the face of physical duress.  And then we get to the end of the roll, and the camera dispenses its compact little plastic nugget of photographic memory.  I hold it in my hand, trying to remember how the routine works.  "You mean I have to take this to the store?"  I whine.  "Who has time to go to the store?  I want to look at my pictures now.  And what do you mean, I have to pay?!  Forget that!  You can just sit hear in the glove compartment and wait!"  You get the pictu...er...idea.

    And so you understand why it takes us five months to unearth our vacation photos.  It's nice, in a way.  Sort of like being on vacation all over again.  And the real kicker--we still have two rolls of film unaccounted for.  We could be experiencing this vacation for years to come.