So I got a camera finally! I went for the Nikon CoolPix L110. I am still a rookie on it but learning how to use it slowly and not so surely it. The great part of the camera buying experience is that I get 6 free camera classes with the purchase (this is exciting also because one of my birthday goals this year was to get a grip on some aspect of technology. It looks that will be my camera!). Those happen in July. The not so great part? I went specifically to a camera store to get really great help and I’m afraid the help wasn’t so great. But I plowed through and think I made a good decision. My worry? That I’ll take this camera class in July and discover I really want a different camera (see Fickle, Beautiful You shows her face entry for more information on that little issue.). Sometimes knowledge is not power. That said, I LOVE the feel of my camera and I love that it has video, black and white capabilities and a continous sports mode (as I said to BF, “I can make a flip book!!!”) so there’s a lot going for this camera. It’s greatest weakness, if we are honest and I am nothing if not honest, is me.
The above photo is one of my first photos with said new camera and that’s the manuscript that I am now proofreading. There’s the waterbottle that will sustain me through the process and the green pen that will do the marking up. As my students will attest, I prefer to make my notes in green or purple or sometimes both.
Yes, I am still eating vegetarian. Well, I’ve strayed twice this week. I had a chicken breast over the weekend at a restaurant that prepares a 40 garlic clove grilled chicken dish and I just had to have it. I was not disappointed. And today Happy and I met friends (who adopted from ET at the same time we did) as they were passing through town at an Ethiopian restaurant, and I just had to have Tibs Wat (beef in berbere sauce. Yum). So other than that, it’s been vegetarian for me for the last month. Do I miss meat? Not on a daily basis and at this point I think I’ll just eat meat if it’s served to me or if it’s something irresistible like chicken coated in 40 garlic cloves or Tibs Wat or, let’s be honest, if there were a real barbeque tomorrow and someone was grilling hot dogs, I’d have one. But I do like the vegetarian focus and find that I eat a lot more fruits and veggies this way which is what I was after so score. The next challenge is going sugar-free for a week or two to reduce my love of sugar. That will be so much harder for me than going vegetarian. Need to eye the calendar to see when that will happen. And I am certain I’ll share the difficulty of that journey with you, too.
Alright, off to proof manuscript pages.
Lots to love in this post — new camera, awesome! Ethiopian food, delicious! There was a really excellent Ethiopian restaurant near us in Indiana, but I haven’t found a good one in MA yet…
Also, (and I realize that I’m plugging this book like it’s my job), Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Cooking makes use of a variety of natural sweeteners (agave nectar, sucanat, honey, maple syrup, etc.) which has really helped me avoid baking with processed white sugar. Less processed sugar is healthier in general, I think, but I avoid it mostly because it seriously increases my anxiety. And actually, Heidi’s website (101cookbooks..com) has a lot of recipes featuring alternative sweeteners, so that might be worth checking out, too).
I came here via your post on Conroy’s Prince of Tides–I’ve eaten in a couple of Ethiopian restaurants. There is a vegetarian one an hour north of here and there was one in Vegas that has wonderful meats.