Saturday Slight

First things first.  First, it's August First.  'bout time the date actually matches the beastly hot temperatures. 

Yes, it's gonna be miserably hot today, as it was yesterday and as it's gonna be tomorrow BUT then, I think we'll survive the rest of the summer, at least temperature-wise. 

And, since it's finally August after three months of hot,hot, hot, I won't complain too much. At least August is doing what it's supposed to do. 

Next, on the first things first list, I've gotta talk about my camera and my friend Mike and his wife Randy at Image Maker Photo Shop in downtown Sandpoint.

Even though we already were on a first-name basis, this week I have Mike and Randy, and their adorable mini-daschund Solstice firmly etched in my mine.

That's cuz it seemed that a whole lot of top soil had become firmly etched inside my camera, destined to stay there until something broke it loose.  

I'm thinking the "stuff," as Mike calls it, suffered its own mini-earthquake the day I fell, spraining my left wrist and watching my camera fly out of my right hand to crash land on the ground nearby. 

A while back I started noticing little water-type spots on some of my images.  Sometimes they were there; sometimes they weren't.  Well, recently they seemed to show up more often, so I decided a camera cleaning was in order.  

Mike cleaned the camera from stem to stern.  I brought it home, took some pictures, and saw spots, many in different places.   Hated to call Mike, but I did.  He happily took the camera back and cleaned it again---same-day service. 

Bill brought it home for me Thursday night.  I went outside, took a picture of the sky, came in, downloaded it and found a spot in the upper left-hand corner.  Upon closer inspection, I could see a few more. 

Frustration is not the word for how this camera junkie felt.  I sent the photo to Mike and then told Bill I was going to go take some more pictures and try to see a pattern in the inner workings of my camera.

So, we drove to Sunnyside, mainly on a camera mission.  Most of those pictures were okay, but some still had spots and one had what looked like a bunch of black dandruff right in the middle of the image.

Yesterday Mike called back and said to bring the camera in, and he'd work with it while I was there.  So, I did, and he did. We both agreed that residue inside had to be sloughing something inside due to certain camera/shutter movements.  

After a cleaning, he took pictures of the sky, and we still found one spot.  So, he cleaned it again.  Finally (fingers crossed), no spots. 

I brought the camera home and started taking some pictures, just to reassure myself that all dirt had left the premises inside my camera. I couldn't focus the camera. 

NO! Why is this happening, I thought.  No way could I take that camera back to Mike one more time and tell him this time that after all that cleaning, the camera wouldn't focus. 

At least, before resorting to that scenario, I was going to inspect every possibility of why the camera would not focus when I pushed the button. 

I finally discovered that when Mike took his photos of the sky, he had changed the lens to manual focus.  Thank God.  I switched it back, and my camera started working again. I'm old enough these days to realize that often operator error does cause most of our unsolvable problems. 

A satellite technician told me a while back that sometimes he has gone to clients' homes to figure out their unsolvable mysteries with their Internet/computers and has, as diplomatically as possible, instructed them to plug the cord in.  

Electrical stuff does work better when plugged in, just as cameras do when they're on the right setting. 

Long story short, I really appreciate Mike and Randy for their patience with me and my dirty camera.  We all tried to figure out the mystery together; eventually we found success, and they have assured me that if I encounter any similar problems in the next few days to bring the camera back.  

That's great hometown service, and I do appreciate it very much. 

So, today's photos simply represent some fun shots from last night and this morning with a clean camera.

Please don't mistake the sun flare in the top shot for spots. At first, I didn't think I liked that photo because I had shot directly toward the sun, but upon closer inspection, I loved the whimsy of it all, which reflected the moment.  

We experienced a little "passing the buck" last night when trying to decide where we were going to go to dinner.  Bill told Debbie that since she was the last one to arrive and since we hadn't seen her at Friday-night family meals in some time, she needed to know the new rules.  

Whoever shows up at the house last buys dinner, so it was Debbie's turn to buy.  Not skipping a beat, Debbie said, "Let's go to McDonalds."  Somehow that didn't meet with a lot of enthusiasm so we were back at square one. 

"Let's go outside and stand in the heat and decide," Bill suggested, figuring a little heat would inspire someone to come up with something just to get into the air conditioned cars.  

Well, several minutes later, we still hadn't decided.  Finally, someone said, "Let's go to Hope." 

Someone else suggested the Floater Restaurant, which has gone through a major renovation. Then, someone else suggested that we might not be able to get in without a reservation but let's go ahead and start there. 

We took the Jacobson Road route through the Selle Valley on our way to Hope, and, by golly, those elk Bill and I had seen the night before were still out in that oat field, chomping down on their dinner.  

I'm thinking they probably didn't even make reservations with whoever owns those oat fields. I'm hoping those oats weren't destined for someone's winter feed cuz those elk sure are helping themselves. 

Anyway, once in Hope, we arrived to a full parking lot at the Floating Restaurant and met with a stern but playful reprimand about making reservations BUT if we wanted to wait until after 8, we could probably be seated at a table. 

It was 7:15.  Nobody wanted to stand outside in that piercing heat, so we went to Sweet Lou's and actually had Bonner County's Favorite Bartender Seth as our waiter.  Yesterday Seth was featured in the "Best's of Bonner County" in the local paper.

All in all, the evening turned out just fine, and I'm a happy camper this morning, so far with my camera.  

Now it's time to get stuff done before the next round of high 90s saps us for the day. 

Happy Saturday.