All The Ladies Are Checking Out My Sugar Lumps!

First off, let me apologize for not posting anything in the last week and a bit; just been in that “not wanting to post anything” mood. That, and my online time has be monopolized by three other topics – our wedding, our honeymoon and my new camera. Combine this with the new seasons of Flight of the Conchords (we’ll get to them in a sec) and Lost, and we have a quintfecta (not quite sure that is a word – spellcheck doesn’t feel it is) keeping me away from Caring For Apathy and updating you, the loyal reader(s). So with the apology and excuses out of the way, let’s get started…

Who knew planning a wedding would be so much work? Add to it that we are planning it long distance and I thought it would have been a breeze. I kid, I kid. Wedding plans are going pretty well actually. The location is booked, photographer is booked, the missus’ dress has been ordered, I have found my tux and just need to order, wedding website has been set up (we still need to fill it with info), invitations have been created to match the website – the list goes on. I am sure we have done more stuff that I just can’t remember. Next on the “high priority” list is finding someone to do our cake(s). With that out of the way I think all the major to-dos will be complete. That is until something else magically appears on the list.

So with the wedding coming together nicely, we have started honeymoon planning. We decided that we didn’t want to go crazy on it as there is lots of traveling we want to do while here in the UK. The next trick was finding someplace with decent weather at the end of October. We decided on Spain. Olé! The Brits love Spain and so getting there is easy and cheap and it is going to be a blast! Not only Spain, but we get a little treat before we head to the sunny climes – the New England Patriots, the best team on the planet, are in London and so we will be catching the game the night before flying to the Iberian peninsula (aka Spain, just a little fancier). Do I have the bestest gal or what? Holy crap, that sounded like I am from the 50s! All I need is a sweater with a big school letter patch on it and I can be in Grease.

Now, add to all this planning the purchase of a new Canon 400D DSLR camera and you can see why I haven’t been around this part of the interweb in a while. I took the plunge in the DSLR (digital single lens reflex – the biguns where you can change lenses) world because I have been frustrated with not being able to take the pictures that I want with the point and shoot. Being able to take great photos isn’t going to happen overnight, nor cheaply, but I have to start somewhere and so this is it. I realize that it is going to take some practice, but I would like to take it up as a hobby and so I am willing to put the time in. I need something other than computers and TV/movies for hobbies, but this isn’t too far from those. I picked up the camera used on Ebay and it is in great condition, and I am really pleased with it. It came with a 18-55mm f/4-5.6 lens, and I have since picked up a 55-200mm f/4-5.6 telephoto lens and a 50mm f/1.8 prime lens, as well as some other accessories. In addition to the gear, I have also picked up a few books to help the learning curve and get started on the right foot. As you can tell, there is a price to pay to have the control you want, but I have enough to get me started and to experiment some. I just hope that I can capture the photos as I see them in my head during our travels, as that is my main goal – landscape/architecture and portrait photography being the areas I can see myself getting drawn to. Here are some photos from the last couple of days of experimenting.

All of this just to get to my sugar lumps, the title of this post. If you haven’t had the pleasure of seeing season one of The Flight of the Conchords, turn off your monitor, get your shoes on and go get it. Or, download it like everyone else in the world does these days. Either way, check it out. Now, you could skip season one and start with season two that started airing on HBO a little over 2 weeks back, but then you are missing out on the 12 episodes of comic genius that was season one. Here is a scene from Sunday’s episode that had me laughing so hard. Oh my, my sugar lumps were almost sore from it. Enjoy…

Tags: Flight of the Conchords, honeymoon, SLR, wedding