Derailed and other stuff

Senility is clearly starting to set in as I approach the end of my 20s. Heading downtown this morning to get some work done, it wasn't until after I swiped my T pass at Sullivan Square that I realized I had forgotten the keys to the office. Oops. On the bright side, I had a nice mile-long walk to the station and back again, and I got to catch up on Best Week Ever and the Designers Challenge episode starring susandennis's decorator. while drinking the ice coffee I'd picked up at the subway station. On the down side, I still need to go get some work done and now sloth has totally set in, so I'm debating whether I could get it all done tomorrow before my softball doubleheader. Today was supposed to be my productive day because Kelly's in class all day, but now I really want a nap.

In between forgetting stupid little things, I have been up to quite a bit lately. We've booked our trip to Seattle for August 5-13. We have plane tickets, hotel reservations and baseball tickets. We're in the city for a few days, out on an island for a few days, and then back for an evening in the city before we fly home. We were able to get first class tickets using frequent flyer miles, but we need to go via Atlanta, which is a little bit indirect. We're also making some progress on wedding reception planning, but I'll feel much better about that when the invitations are ordered.

I had a rather impressive car repair adventure a few weeks ago. For a while, my car hadn't been riding well and Kelly and her parents had all said they thought the shocks needed to be looked at. One evening, we finally got around to driving it up to the dealer in Wakefield. So we left the house and got into our cars and Kelly was ready to go and my battery was dead. When I tried to start the car, the alarm went off, which was odd because I hadn't been able to get the alarm to work for a while (and hadn't gotten around to dealing with it). Kelly got the jumper cables from her car and some nice neighbors who happened to be sitting outside helped us get my car going again. So we drove up to the dealer and I left them a note about the battery, the shocks, and also that the front door lock was sticking a bit. The dealer wound up replacing the battery and replacing a part in the front door, which was covered under my extended warranty, but they insisted that the shocks were just fine. Miraculously, the car drove a lot more smoothly when I got it back. The front door repair seems to have fixed the car alarm too. Since my commute may change to a suburban driving thing next year, I need to start paying a lot more attention to how my car is working.

Photos

When I visited my parents last weekend, my grandfather mentioned that nobody had given him any pictures of his birthday party in February (usually, he's the one taking pictures and sending photos around). I had taken a few pictures with my digital camera, including a good shot of my grandparents, so I told him I'd send him some prints. I'd been planning to get prints at CVS, but I realized I could order them through iPhoto and have them sent directly. It was really easy to have the photos sent to his address, but there's no way to include a message, so he's going to get a random envelope of photos. He could probably guess who they're from, because there are photos of the other 3 Slinker siblings but not me, but I'm going to call tomorrow and give him a heads-up. The fun part will be trying to explain to my grandparents (who are fairly clueless about computers) that I didn't include a note and I haven't seen the prints because I ordered them over the Internet.

Also speaking of photos, I'm looking for a new digital camera, probably in the 5-7 megapixel range. There's nothing wrong with my current camera, but it's getting hard to find memory cards for it in stores, so losing one could put a real damper on a vacation. I don't need a digital SLR, but I like having at least a few manual controls to play with. Any recommendations? So far, I've looked at a few different Canon models and the Fuji F10. I'm particularly trying to figure out whether I could live without an optical viewfinder. I generally use the viewfinder to take photos instead of the LCD screen, but a lot of the smaller cameras don't have a viewfinder.