"You're a really nice guy," her friend said. "It's mostly just hype," was my reply.

A better shot of what I actually see from my chair


Ain't that always the way? Your cell phone rings at the most inopportune time. Mine was in my pocket as I was sitting with tiny screws and camera parts spread across the corner I cleared on the kitchen table.

It isn’t always the way, it just that you notice it more when it's inconvenient. And it was kind of my own fault anyway. She had called me earlier and mentioned that she might need a ride for her and her inebriated friend. As fate would have it, it was her camera that I had disassembled in front of me.

Fate has a habit of elbowing me in the ribs when I don't expect it and when I turn to say "What the fuck?" fate smiles back. I had just fixed the second problem on the camera or at least I thought I had when the call came in. My biggest worry was putting the screws back in the correct order.

I was rather proud of myself despite the missing screw. The camera had been dropped and the bit of plastic that holds the batteries in had broken off and was lost. I was able to drill the tiniest of holes and insert a carefully bent piece paper clip to act as a catch for the previously lonely latch.

The batteries then made proper contact but another problem arose. I was told that the mode ring was in a wrong position and every position I had tried made no difference. It was this problem that caused me to take the camera apart. Once it was apart, I found the smallest of ribbon cables leading from the mode ring disconnected. I figured out how to reconnect it and did so.

After all the screws but one were back in, the camera worked just fine.

I'll tell you the rest later, maybe.


A better shot of where the big tree lives.