06-06-05 @ 9:37 am EDT

/:(

Well...now I'm just confused. I woke up yesterday (Sunday) evening for Dad to tell me that Ma had gotten one of the cameras (I didn't know which) to take a picture, and she had taken it to bingo with her. She returned later that night with the Polaroid, complete with pictures of the Cross in the Woods and the Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, the Lily of the Mohawks. /:( What's more, the camera did not OVERWRITE my older photos, the infrared shots from the UAW--and this camera ALWAYS, ALWAYS overwrites preexisting photos if you take more photos the next day. (A glitch it developed sometime in the past year or so--I believe the camera and/or the memory card it uses, a 64mb, is slightly corrupt. The card acts up when placed in our card reader and we have to take it out and stick it back in for it to be read. *shrug*) This was one reason why I was so paranoid throughout my entire Mackinac Island 2004 trip--I really hoped I wouldn't overwrite any pictures! But I assume it is/was date related, as it only seems to do it when you turn on the camera and take photos the day after. This camera has also for a long time believed it is 1980, and Ma reset the time and date on it last night. (Last time I tried to do so the batteries went dead and it shut itself off, and I thought, maybe if I mess with the date it will start erasing photos at who knows when, so I decided to just leave it.)

She sat on the couch and fiddled with it, taking a few more pictures. They all turned out. I didn't even know that Kateri Tekakwitha thing was in Indian River. Huh.

Still later that night, she announced that she'd gotten the Canon to turn on. We tried the 32mb and the 512mb cards in it and they both work. (The 32mb wasn't involved in what happened Saturday, but the 64 and the 512 were.) Even the settings are the same as I had had them. Took more test pictures.

Even odder is that the Polaroid even stores pictures WITHOUT the card in it. I thought its internal memory went bad long ago. This is very strange.

How can two cameras not work one day and then work the next? /:( I'm keeping my fingers crossed because EVERY time something seemingly good happens, along comes bad news. I think we have a couple of weeks to decide to return the new Canon, which I would like to do, just to get my $90+ back. But it would completely suck and piss me off no end if we were to return that, have it be sold to someone else, and then for the old Canon to again die, leaving us with no camera compatible with my new 512mb card. So we decided to give it a week and see what happens.

This is very strange, that they refused to work yesterday, but SEEM okay now. And the Polaroid even seems to be working BETTER than it was before. You mean to tell me that all I had to do was dunk the thing in Black Lake for it to work better? This is just confusing. I do not understand how they could be so bad one day and seemingly normal the next. The LCD on that Polaroid was lit up WHITE when I fished it out of my sopping pocket (white screen = NOT GOOD), and the zoom lens on the Canon was extended and would not retract and the camera would not turn on whatsoever. (It did turn on twice, briefly, the first time to retract its lens and the second time to display the last photo I took on the card, but it refused to do anything else, and wouldn't come on again. The Polaroid we got to turn on later that night, but all it would do was display the LCD screen, a foggy image of what the camera was pointing at. Didn't even show any stats on the screen, and it would not turn off--we had to take the batteries out.)

I would really hate to get up my hope that these two things are actually WORKING somehow and then have it be dashed yet again. I feel anxious even writing about it in here lest I jinx it. I guess I'll have to wait and see.

On the other hand, Ma's brakes are acting up, and the oven acted up last night, so maybe THOSE are the clouds covering up the silver lining. *sigh*

Anyway. I don't want to blather on and on about what all we did at the UAW, plus I could never remember everything. I haven't finished uploading all the pics yet so keep checking http://photos.yahoo.com/social_phobe to see when it pops up--"UAW Family Education Center 2005," or something like that. Sounds dull, I know, but it's a really pretty place. It's on Black Lake in Onaway and is surrounded by trees; the buildings are quite interesting architecturally, lots of wood and glass, with some Asian influences; there's a Japanese bridge, the little lights look like they're wearing coolie hats, there's an artesian well, a tunnel of trees, an arboretum with trees from around the world (those that haven't been replaced, that is!), the Hub or Zodiac Room, an old abandoned barbecue pit (forgot to take decent pics of that, drat), an abandoned wine cellar set in the side of a hill, an Eternal Flame (cue the Bangles), etc....some of the doors have handles with imprints of Walter Reuther's feet. O_o He had big feet. There's a Reuther statue which Dad claims people like to stick a beer can in the hand of, or a golf ball. Heh.

They don't let foreign-made cars park inside there, either. They have to park outside.

Deer roam around the place like they own it. They're terribly spoiled. I saw THREE while I was there. The first one was standing in the woods watching us as we drove by and at first I thought it was fake with the way it was bobbing from side to side like a big plastic lawn ornament, then it turned its head and looked right at us. The second was wandering around outside while we were in the lobby (I think--I don't know all the buildings of the place); it saw me and was startled, but then turned and went on its way. I think those were both does. Then I went to take closeup shots of the Eternal Flame and it was only when I got right up to it that I looked down and first thought, "Oh, they stuck a lawn ornament here," and then secondly realized I was also taking pictures of an adorable little fawn curled up right behind it!! It was SO CUTE!! I whispered and waved at Dad to come see; even he couldn't believe how cute it was!! And I got pictures of it! Closeup ones! :D Its nose was twitching and it tilted its head to try to sniff me...AWWWWW!!! I carefully shot a few pictures of it and then crept away so that if its mother showed up nothing would go wrong. Dad had some copies of the pictures printed to take to work with him. Adorable!!

Got pictures also of the Children of the World, AKA the Dancing Fairies, a statue of a ring of abstract children dancing...makes a good desktop, but I replaced it with the tunnel of trees. Had the fawn on there for a brief time too.

Stood underneath the water tower and nearly fell over, it was so high to look at. o_o;

We located a monster moth on the outside of a building and Dad plucked it off and set it on a railing. I touched it and it flopped over onto its back. Dad missed this and turned to look at it, asking, "Why did you flip it over?" I told him I hadn't, it had done that itself...when it pushed itself up with its wings, landing back on its feet. Then it flipped onto its back again. Then onto its feet. Then onto its back. We stood and watched this huge moth do flips for a moment or two before leaving the weird thing alone. What a strange bug. O_o

On the ledge outside a giant window were the bodies of two dead hummingbirds. Unfortunately a common occurrence. :(

There were BULLFROGS croaking all over the place and they sounded like MONSTERS!! Have you ever heard a bullfrog? Try locating an audio copy of its call online somewhere. It's like the sound of a thick bowstring being pulled--this "THWUP, THWUP, THWUP" sound--truly freaky! It sounded like they were right beside me! I saw only one frog, though, a little one atop a lilypad. I've heard bullfrogs can get big enough to eat birds. o_o

Walking down through the arboretum, there was this light fluffy cottony stuff drifting through the air in little specks. It was so strange. Like something from TV; I've never seen that stuff in real life. Dad complained about it but I thought it looked rather cool...just these little cottony wisps drifting along on the wind. :D On the other hand, near the moth, and along the railings of the Japanese bridge, I noticed a thick coating of dust...pollen...ick! I'm so glad I don't have allergies or I would have been TRULY miserable there. The water of the manmade pond was COATED with polleny scum and bits of cotton and looked like something a dinosaur would walk through. Eegh.

HAHAHA! Just got a phonecall from...Dad! He says the people at work love the fawn pic and are talking about using it, so I will have to save it to a CD for him to take to work. Cute! ^_^

Lastly I walked through that tunnel of trees, then down onto that little dock, then onto the boat landing...you know the rest. -_- It's almost like it didn't even happen, I didn't feel any pain or fear of water when I was falling...the only thing I was thinking was, "NOT THE CANON!!" (I completely forgot about the Polaroid. o_o ) All I have is a little scrape on my elbow. I don't remember my arm hitting anything. Just--taking a step, then suddenly zooming forward like I was on a waterslide. Landing on my backside and sliding in up to my chest, and thinking, AREN'T I EVER GOING TO FRIGGING STOP?? And desperately trying to keep the Canon in the air. Hm.

Well, I got interrupted writing this, but that was about it anyway. I have two other little items to address: One, I'm going to retitle all the chapters of TAC, which means I have to print out a couple of pages for each too...*groan* I'm also correcting any appearances of "wrack," "hiccup," and "awoken" that appear, since I always misuse the first, often misspell the second (I could SWEAR I saw once in the dictionary that "hiccuped" and "hiccuping" were actual spellings!--otherwise I NEVER would have spelled them that way!), and there is just no such word as "awoken." >_< So that's why those will be popping up in the updates, and why every TAC chapter will be different. I'm aiming for one-word titles for each chapter...kind of difficult but different from my "witty title" approach with RTMI and such.

Two is...

Okay, I guess that's it...I know I owe some replies and e-mails and such...I hope to get to those. I'm not ignoring anybody, unless they've been jackasses, and those people should know who they are anyway. -_-

After I post this, both cameras will probably decide to break. >:(