“I don't know what we're doing for Valentine's Day, but my boyfriend said that if I wanted to go to monster trucks, he'd pay for my ticket.”

One of the nice things about working five jobs is it affords me the luxury of giving in to my baser desires. And oh, baby, am I about to succumb. They say “once you go black you never go back,” and it's true. Ebony body, tight, compact, sharp, and auto-focus… I write, of course, of the NIkon D80, one step down from the professional-grade D200 and hundreds of dollars less expensive.

I've been a Nikon gal from my SJSU photojournalism days. Even when people fled Nikon en masse for Canon I doggedly stuck to my N2000 and then my N8000. Bought a 300/2.8 lens from Terry Schmitt, my UPI boss who also let me tote his F3hm with a motor drive for a year — truly, a prince among men — and used that awesome lens to shoot some football pictures that I'm pretty sure got me one of my current jobs as a digital photojournalism instructor at a local college.

Three frames per second. Ten-point-two megapixels. Power-up time of .18 second. ISO from 100 to 3200. Up to 2,700 images on one battery charge. Ohhhhhh. And, a 1.5 focal conversion rate that'll turn my 300/2.8 into a whopping 450/28.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh…

Excuse me.

So I assigned a “Feature Picture Package” to my photo class, and OF COURSE someone turned in pictures of one of the Cold Stone shops I used to manage until they fired me when I was pregnant. Took extreme care in grading those pictures and gave her a very fair (possibly too fair) grade. And then, during the critique, I made certain that the class knew that “the photographer did a very nice job with Photoshop — the original shot was very dark, but in this version she did a great job of lightening it up. You can even see all the dirt on the floor!”

Well, haven't really posted since before we left for sunny California, which was almost two months ago — sorry. We returned to New England smited by sinus infections, including the baby, who had not one but TWO. Crazy madness. Then we got well and I picked up four jobs, including two teaching positions at a local college. I'm in the third week of those and they're going well — it's nice to return to my educational roots. When I'm not working on that, I'm doing Rhythmball stuff or work for a couple new clients. Or caring for baby, or cooking dinner. What, me overextended? Naah. And then in my “free time” when I should be writing a new play or further crafting my musical, I'm reading David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, which is freaking hilarious, even the endnotes. Especially the endnotes. And I've decided that this year I will read three books: Infinite Jest, Gravity's Rainbow, and the capper of all cappers, Finnegan's Wake. I figure the first two will be a good build-up to the third. We shall see. Now I need to send Valentines. More soon!