The Old Whatchamacallit

I have it.  My camera arrived!  Now I can be a sneaky Dick with my candid camera.  Next thing you know, there will be two way wrist radio watches.

What times we live in.  

But my camera arrived.  Both of them (shhh!)!  This I've told to no one, but I replaced the stolen Leica M7 film camera AND bought a camera a step up from the stolen M10 digital.  By now all bets must be placed.  Do I regret and have Deep Puritan Guilt or am I happy as a nursing baby?  

It's a break even payoff.  Both are true.  The amount of money I spent scares me terribly.  I know something is going to go wrong now and I will need a lot of money to fix it.  But when I hold those cameras, it is love.  

I don't recommend anyone buy a Leica camera, though.  You don't need one.  Just about any digital camera will do the same job, and they will do much more than the Leica does.  Every lens for the Leica M cameras is a prime.  There are no zooms.  You can't really use a longer lens with them as the frame lines are too small.  And for those negatives, you must pay a premium price.  And everything--EVERYTHING--from a plastic battery cover to a plastic hot shoe cover is stupidly expensive.  If you wear glasses, you will need to buy expensive screw on diopters.  Just don't.  

But if you do. . . . 

Now I have to use them.  I'll put them in the car so they are always available.  That way I will always have them at hand.  

Ha!

Oh. . . I bought something else that is fun, too.  

A Classic Claxton Fruit Cake.  It is the season, and I LOVE fruit cakes.  Once I knew a woman who made one for me every year.  Long ago.  They were delicious.  One night, drunk and stoned, I think, I came home from a night out and dug in with enthusiasm.  However, she inadvertently got a piece of walnut shell in the mix.  I was chewing away like a madman when--CRUNCH!  I split a molar clean in two.  There was blood.  I ended up with an expensive crown.  

And STILL I love fruit cakes.  I chew them much more gingerly now, though.  

The seasonal fruit cake makes me happy.  

My mother was searching for a word yesterday.  She does that more now.  I told her that when she can't think of what a thing is called, just say "whatchamacallit."  I hadn't thought of that word for decades.  

"Remember dad always saying that?  That's funny."

My mother was laughing at the memory.  Good old pop.  So yea, Leica charges an arm and a leg for every fucking whatchamacallit.  

Look at that.  Three things that have made me happy this week--cameras, fruit cake, and the old whatchamacallit.  

So why are my nights so dark?  

Not now.  We'll stick with the sillier stuff.

One last thing, though.  Q scoffed at yesterday's post. 

“…a bone chilling cold you don't get in the north…” Hahahaha….. holy shit. 

Then he attached this. 

WTF?  When my relatives would come down from Ohio for the big stock car race in February, they would freeze their asses off.  It is the humidity.  Forty degrees at eighty percent humidity and a slight wind will kick your ass.  You can't get warm in the Florida cold.  

As Mark Twain once said, "The coldest winter I ever spent was one summer in San Francisco."

Same thing.