Well, one of them anyhow. And surprisingly enough, it wasn't Storm!!

Karla, my fat cat, decided she needed to pull aside my room-darkening shade to let in all kinds of sunlight this morning with full intentions of waking me up. There are two problems with this. First, my room faces east, and so on sunny days my bedroom is flooded with sunlight far earlier than I'm willing to get up. Secondly, she started this at 7.30 this morning.

I wanted to get up at 8am this morning. When someone or something wakes me up just before my planned wake-up time, I get reallllllllly grumpy.

I hissed at her to get her away from the window and tried to go back to sleep. She retaliated by crawling up onto my hip and crying loudly in my ear. That earned her a flying leap off the bed, and I finally shooed her out of the room and slammed the door shut.

Needless to say, I couldn't go back to sleep. But then neither could I manage to get up the gumption to haul myself out of bed right at 8.

Now I know what people without cats do. They sleep until they want to get up without disturbances!!!

One would think all I would have to do is close my door to prevent these problems. Unfortunately, that's not an option. If I shut the door with the dog in and the cats out, someone is going to be fussing all night long to either leave the bedroom or get in.

At least the cats leave me alone until morning when I leave the door open.

Anyhoooooo... I got my new zoom lens yesterday afternoon! I love the lens that came with my camera, but I wanted something a little longer, and this one was cheap by Nikon standards. I tore open the box and immediately changed lenses to see how very cool this new zoom lens (55-200mm, if you care about that kind of thing) would be. This is also a VR lens, which stands for Vibration Reduction. Supposedly I won't need a tripod anymore for long-distance shots.

I tested it out in the house by shooting Kurt's and my first portrait together, back in the fall of 2000. It hangs on a wall probably twenty feet away from where I am sitting here at the computer desk, so I figured it'd be a good test of the zoom capabilities and the VR. However, once I turned the VR on, I seemed to get even worse results with camera shake.

Did I get a broken one????

I kept working with it, and the more and more I used it, the more I thought maybe it wasn't working right.

Then I read the instructions that came with it. The lightbulb came on.

It didn't work right because I wasn't giving it a chance to work!!!! Who'da thunk to read the directions for a lens??

I never said I was the sharpest tack in the box.

Apparently what you are supposed to do is to go ahead and focus on an object by pressing the shutter button halfway. Then the VR will kick in and stop the camera shake. THEN you can take the photo. I wasn't being patient enough.

It's not as long as it sounds. The VR resolves camera shake in only a second or two.

Sheesh.

OH! Here's another pet peeve of mine. (My segues are amazing, wouldn't you say??) The use of the word "everyday."

See, most people use this word incorrectly. When you are talking about something you do on a daily basis, you do it "every day." "Jane goes to school every day." That's two words, folks. But if you want to talk about something that's routine or normal to do or wear on a daily basis, used as an adjective, it's just the one word. "Jane's long walk to school became an everyday occurrence."

I was on my way to Target a while ago when I saw a van using the word "everyday" as part of its slogan, when it should have used "every day."

I think people who make signs or otherwise have to use English in a very public setting ought to be sent to Mrs Harris's Grammar Boot Camp. It was an integral part of my English class sophomore year, and I learned more that year about grammar than any other year before or since.

She also tended to throw erasers at kids sleeping in class, which amused me highly. She even decided to water a plant hanging above a sleeping student one day.

Mrs Harris wasn't the nicest teacher out there, but I think she was far and away the most effective.