In Memoriam

Hey, three weeks (or so) without an update and BAM - not what you wana see.  But you know what?  I don't care.  My camera took a dive from the table while I was workin' on Grayskull, and now it doesn't want to do anything without saying "lens error" and turning off.  I wouldn't feel so bad if it's last job wasn't filming the dumbest video ever...but oh well.  We don't get to choose how we go.  Come join me in remembering my little red camera and some of it's earliest and unused pictures.

This little guy came to be on October 8th of '09 - my birthday!  My wife and I were cleaning and she said "Here, hold this", and wouldn't you know it: I held a stealth present.  That very day I started taking pictures.

...and the first pic was a pumpkin.  Well, one of those tiny pumpkins, like a gourd.  I had wanted to turn it into one of those shakers - you know, let the inside dry out and then the seeds shake around inside?  I'm not quite sure how to do that.  This guy ended up getting tossed out what with the rotting.

Now, since this was right at the beginning of my Alexx Shorts (G.I. Joe reviews, for those out of the loop) I began with some joes.

*sigh* And the pumpkin.  There was also Sonic the Hedgehog on the pumpkin from this post, but you get the idea.  At the time I had wanted to go over the v3 25th Anniversary Snake Eyes, but I never ended up getting to him, for some reason.  Like just about everything now!

Since we're on the subject: I still like that figure!  Holds his weapons well, they can store on his body (even if the knives are little awkward) and they somehow molded the perfect pelvis which allows for easy and realistic take-a-knee stances.  He ain't perfect, but he's close.  (Also, I gotta give some sorta "most improved" award for those night vision goggles.  They leave a big hole in the side of his head, but EH, who cares?  He's mostly black anyway, so you can rarely tell.)

Anyway, you can tell by all those close-ups that I was impressed with the clarity at close range!  I didn't have that with the previous camera, which was just an underwater camera we had around as our all-purpose camera for vacations 'n such.  The little red guy also made good use of the surrounding light if I put a little effort into it which, once again, was way better than the previous camera's "eh, screw it" philosophy when it came to available light.

After those few shots, I took the camera to work with me and decided to play around by taking pics in the old house.  I know this is a toy blog, but I thought they turned out nice and I'd like to give my camera a good rest knowing that even it's earliest pics were used in some way.

I work at a library (have been for some time) and the main building is attached to an old house/mansion (however you wana see it).  The house was originally donated by the owners to be the library, and it was, for a time, until they ran out of room and built the main building that is today's library proper.  They sorta chopped off the back end of the house and fused it to the main building.  Feel free to imagine chopping a house and fusing it with a building in some awesome form, like with a karate chop or a Masamune.

This is the stained glass window that fills the main stairway with light.  You can't see the stairway from the main hall, so we often have to tell folks to KEEP GOING and believe in their hearts that the stairway will indeed be there for them when they arrive.  Just because you cannot see it doesn't mean you shouldn't believe it!

This is one of two Local History rooms, sporting some classic filecard drawers!  They no longer tell you where to find books.  Instead, they hold the archive of various names and topics from the local newspaper (from around the 1800's to '94).  As I tell folks when they're looking for people: We have mostly obituaries.  Not all, but mostly.  This is because the most important thing that a lot of people have done to get in the newpapers is...well, die.

*cough*

An old bathroom!  Plumbing still works and we use this bathroom even today.  The bathtub has been removed and the toilet updated, but the sink is still classic marble.  We've got a carpeted old-time bathtub for kids to play in down in the kid's area of the main Library, and we tell 'em it came from this bathroom...but I think that's just the most convenient story.  Pretty sure it may have come from another one of the bathrooms (of which only one other is still in working order and not used for storage).

This is the view from the second floor window in the elevator room.  This room (and it's elevator) were added on to the house for handicapped use (and heavy lifting, or what have you) so it stands out as quite different from the surrounding wooden accents and railings.  The view is of Bishop Park; a place I've been to often from childhood to now.  Granted, the play construct you see wasn't there when I was a kid, but it's no less impressive for that fact.  It's also safer than the fun concrete play items that were there when I was young!

And hey, didn't I say wooden railings?  This goes up into the third floor- the attic.  The blue room in the background is the elevator room.

But I kept moving around on the second floor before goin' up to the third.

Another look out the window, down the street from Bishop Park: The hospital!  That's the tall tan building, and also where my wife works.

Here we are in the kitchen with the old refrigerator.  You can see some brass latches on the doors back then, but in recent times someone went in there and unscrewed them.  Then stole 'em.  Who knows where they are?  Seriously though: If you stole brass latches from a library...I'm sorry about the troubled times you must be in.

Anyway: Did I mention that's a refrigerator?  That's a refrigerator!

The small door opens up and you chuck big chunks of ice in there to keep them meats nice 'n cold.  Old school!

Okay NOW I went to the third floor.  Not sure why they were in this order.  Anyway, this is the main hall in the attic.  There hasn't been as much work done here, since it's not open to the public like the first and second floors are.  I was partly takin' pics up here 'cause it's neat and partly trying to capture ghosts.

Yeah, what do you want from me?  The place is technically haunted, but it all depends on who you ask.  Me?  Nothin'.  Been there for years in all the perfect conditions and not a single strange thing has happened.  Meanwhile, others have seen apparitions on the stairs, had chairs move, lights go off and on, etc.  Heck, on this very floor, one of our desk clerks saw a pile of table legs rise up and clatter down!  So you never know, I guess.  Perhaps the ghosts just don't care for me.

This is where you'll go if you go through the door at the end of the hall.  This is basically the main attic area.  We store junk here, and this particular area is where we tell ghost stories on the Library Lock-In nights (the Lock-In is a reward for kids who finish the summer reading program; it's like a sleepover in the library.  If you seriously wana explore that link more than just looking at it for a second, you'll see me somewhere in the pics from the second one on.  ...if you know what I look like).

If you walk straight and look out those windows, you'll see the Ford-MacNichol Home.  I don't have the history off the top of my head, but it's old and awesome, and used as a museum.  

Now if you wana turn away from that beauty and look at the rest of the attic: here it is!  It's better at night, when that expanse is just inky blackness.  A friend of mine hid back there in his freaky clown mask one Lock-In and nearly gave the kids a fuggin' heart attack.  Good times!

Now that door leads back to the hall, and going straight from there will bring your to the Cedar Room.  It's all made of cedar, as you can see.  It was for storing clothes...?  I honestly can't remember.  It's a creepy little room, though.  Hard to say why.

I WILL say that my camera had a face-finding feature (it would even find the faces of my figures!) and would focus on a face when it found one.  And it found a face here.  Around the cupboard.  I'm sure the camera just does that sometimes, specially with all the variations in the wood, but it was creepy at the time.  Feel free to imagine something staring at you!  NOW.

If you can pull yourself away to the right, you'll see more stairs.  They go up into the tower, but I've never been.  Supposed to be unsafe, though I've been told everyone ELSE has been up there!  I gotta ask one of these days, if I can remember.  

And I ended here - one final shot of the park, but from the Cedar Room.  The room you're seeing is the main library building.

So those were some of the first pics I took with old red!  But I ain't gona stop there...

...because.  Reasons.

The rest of '09 can pretty much be seen in Alexx Shorts with terrible pictures, though there were some in the old unused file, like this:

I took a lot of pics just 'cause.  I never had a place to post them, most of the time.  So here's He-Ro's sword in front of '09's Christmas Tree!

...and here's my dog's frog legs.

Now for the rest of the pics, I just dug around in my unused file for some things that probably would have been shown if I had this blog format while back.  

This is the Crimson Dynamo from the second Iron Man movie line sporting some Nanodot armor (little magnet spheres) back in 2010.  They're so shiny that you can see me in 'em!

Me and little red...*sniff*

Also in 2010, my dog being weird:

Back in the old apartment, as well.  I have no idea why she climbed up on the back of the couch.

Otherwise, in 2010, I had taken a bunch of "winter" photos when I put up a towel for a review.  I guess I didn't want to waste the towel time? But once again, I never ended up doing anything with these pics.  I guess it was just for fun, at the time.  They've been resized and some of them have been captioned, just for you!

As you can see...there wasn't much cohesion.  *sigh*, I miss the lighting in the apartment toy room!  It was so nice back then.  I gotta work on my current lighting situation.  And a camera.

Anyway, on to 2011:

A shot of Mackinac Island on a fall trip.  

My arm after some little girls viciously attacked it with paints on a Lock-In night.

And Ripparpartimus Prime!  They did some filming for the third terrible movie in Detroit, so my friend and I went down to see what we could see.

It was cool seeing some movie junk, but we didn't get to see anything too substantial beyond a cool cart full of rubber guns (that I didn't photograph?).

I guess that's about it, without going overboard.  Unless I already did.  BUT YOU CAN DEAL.  'Cause my little buddy got it's proper send-off!

Now, I invited some special guests to say a few words on my camera's behalf:

THANKS JERKS.

Well, I feel like I've given it a proper farewell into that bright light at the end of the tunnel.  Which I guess is a Great Flash, since I dunno....it's a camera.  It has served me well these past five years, and would have continued if not for being dropped on it's face.  I can only hope it harbors no ill will toward me on it's journey into the unknown.  I don't really need to be haunted by a camera, as it'll probably keep me up at night by turning on the flash and taking pictures.  Ghost cameras do those things.

And by the way, my wife has the exact same camera in black; that's how these new pics were taken.  So uh...there isn't really any reason for Grayskull to be coming along so slowly other than my laziness.  And things.  Lots of important things.