“I’ve been everywhere, man!”

Well, sort of. After our trip to Newfoundland (which was fantastic, by the way), we decided to take up geocaching because we nerds needed a nerdy reason to go outside and enjoy the great outdoor. Geocaching sounds like a nerdy enough reason, even if it sometimes makes us do really stupid things, like checking out all the plaque on every single park bench down by the river for clues. But at least it gets us to use our legs and walk!

Geocaching also, more often than not, brings good photo opportunities. Many geocachers are thoughtful enough to hide their caches in scenic areas and some hidden gems. I’ve seen some beautiful old churches and old cemeteries I wouldn’t have known existed otherwise. I also love driving through beautiful Ontario farmland and checking out the random cows and horses and the occasional donkeys. It’s not really a way to save on gas, but eh, everything has its cost. And I get to take some pretty pictures.

This past weekend, we got to hide our first geocache! You see, I’ve been obsessed with sudoku puzzles lately and one night I had a dream about sudoku and geocaching. So we decided to combine sudoku and geocaching and made our first hide a puzzle cache. The puzzles are like the easiest sudoku puzzles in the world but hey, it was our first cache and we wanted people to go find it! We might make the puzzles a little harder for the next one.

Um, what else? Oh, I started selling expired film and some of my cameras on Etsy two weeks ago, and I’ve got three sales so far! Without any marketing! Maybe I just got lucky. I need to list more items but it’s been rainy and cloudy lately and I need good natural light for my product shots. Not a big fan of flash/artificial light here. My Etsy shop is called Many Cameras.

I already got a domain called manycameras.com before I started the shop. The original plan was to install an online shop front there, but then I got lazy. Not wanting it to go to waste, two days ago I decided to start a new photoblog there where I post my favourite photos that I shot on film only with many different cameras. If you’re on Tumblr, feel free to follow me. Even if you’re not on Tumblr, you can still subscribe to the RSS feed. And here goes the link to Many Cameras, the photoblog.

And that’s all what we’ve been up to lately. Yes, very exciting indeed!

I packed up four cameras and half a dozen rolls of film before we went up to the cottage last weekend and guess how many rolls I shot? One. Or I should say two-third of a roll because I didn’t even finish shooting it. I was planning on taking a lot of pictures but that was before I realized how many bugs were flying around the cottage. If they weren’t biting me, they were hovering over my head, just being annoying in general, which drove me nuts. So I mostly just spent the long weekend inside the cottage playing hours of Plants vs Zombies on a Nintendo DS Lite that Troy got me from a garage sale in the middle of nowhere for $25 earlier this spring. I know, very exciting indeed. Though I did bake a really awesome banana pound cake one day. Well, I thought the cake was too sweet but Troy said it was just perfect and even though I know he was biased because he loves me and all, I’ve decided to believe him. Hence my calling the cake awesome.

Tomorrow is the 6th anniversary of the day Troy and I got married. Time flies! He still loves me and I still love him so life is good! We bought a netbook today though we won’t be picking it up until tomorrow and I like to think of it as an anniversary present to ourselves. :) Apparently 6th wedding anniversary is called the Iron and Candy anniversary. Well, I’m sure there’s some iron in the netbook and it looks like candy, at least to me, because I’m a nerd so that’s appropriate. -Ish. So tomorrow we’ll be picking up our netbook and go for a round of thrifting as usual. Not sure if we’re going to have an anniversary dinner. I don’t really care either way. Troy’s parents are taking us out for an anniversary late lunch/early dinner on Sunday anyway. We’ll see!

Our trip to Newfoundland is coming up very, very soon and I’m getting, very, very excited! It’s one of the reasons we bought the netbook: we need the storage for the many pictures and videos I’m planning to take and something to access the Web to feed our internet addiction whenever there’s WiFi during the trip (likely won’t be much). And I may or may not have decided which cameras to bring. It’s a problem you have when you own 200 cameras. More or less. Probably more more than less. I’m going to have to sell some of them and some of my film stash too, and we still have yet to have a yard sale, but that belongs to another post.

I had this thought this past Mother’s Day, of how everyone who still have a mother should make a video of his/her mother at her happiest, talking and laughing, telling you she loves you. I wish I’d had a video camera way back when my mother was healthy, happy(ish) and alive so I could make a video of her because now I’d do anything to hear her voice again, to hear her laughter, her singing, her calling me “Tomblok” (her pet name for me). But alas, my mother passed away before the digital age.

Of course you can do the same to any of your loved ones. Even pets. Digital cameras and many cellphones come with a video feature these days. Your video camera is lacking audio feature? Borrow the one with audio from one of your friends! There is no excuse. This may sound like an utterly morbid idea now but trust me, someday you’ll be glad you did.

Pinhole Day is only two days away! Well, technically, it’s three days away, but since the last Sunday of April this year is also Easter Sunday, they will accept pinhole photos taken between April 23 and May 1. You don’t get three days a week to come up with a pinhole photo to submit to pinholeday.org every year, I can tell you that much! That’s why I urge you to participate. It’s fun, and you’ll be amazed with the results if it works out. Emphasis on ‘if it works out’ because sometimes it doesn’t, but you know, there’s always next year.

Last week I built myself a pinhole camera out of a smallish cardboard box for the body and stuck to it is a roll film back from a vintage press camera we won in a live auction in Paris (Ontario, not France) years ago. The pinhole is made from my favourite material: pie tin (the thin, disposable kind; easy to puncture). I meant to take it out for a test roll last weekend, but alas, the weather just wouldn’t cooperate. I’ll just have to guesstimate the exposure time this weekend.

I’m planning on shooting with the pinhole camera while doing the annual egg hunt that the Stratford Festival is having this Saturday. We did the egg hunt last year and were lucky enough to find one egg with a pair of free tickets inside to a play we hadn’t got tickets for yet. We’re hoping to be as lucky this year. Fingers crossed! I’m also crossing my fingers for a fair weather. This week’s weather has been quite icky.

Also on Saturday, Troy’s parents are taking me out for a belated birthday dinner and a couple of friends are going to join us. After dinner, I’m assuming we’re heading straight to the Avon Theatre to see the Grapes of Wrath that we all managed to get cheap tickets for. Should be interesting.

I kind of wish that tomorrow was Saturday but I kind of don’t. The house is messy and we need a day to clean up!