Pin Pal

Here are two views of the Disneyland lanyard I wore all weekend, except for the evening that Kate borrowed it. (More on Kate another time.) One of the things I do on my occasional trips to Disneyland is collect some of these pins. There have been many thousands of designs, so I don't even try to get everything, even in the categories that interest me. Mostly I concentrate on pins depicting vintage Tomorrowland attractions (Carousel of Progress, House of the Future) and other classic rides that matter to me (Haunted Mansion, Enchanted Tiki Room, Pirates of the Caribbean, it's a small world), a few select movies or characters (Stitch, Scrooge McDuck, Mary Poppins), and whatever holiday or special occasion coincides with my visit.

This time, the holiday was Columbus Day, but there were no Columbus Day pins. Must not be P.C. enough these days. Even the Halloween pins were hard to come by. There was a Mickey pumpkin one I saw everywhere on Friday, but by Saturday night all the shops were sold out of them. I ended up with one of Stitch in orange underwear with bats on it.

I also lost two pins over the weekend, but then another collector recommended a different kind of pin back that locks with an Allen wrench. Those are the gold cylinders on the back of my lanyard here. The black plastic Mickey shape pin backs are the ones these pins come with. One exception: the Soarin' Over California pin with my name on it has a conventional back to it. The locking backs don't fit on the spike of that one. Oh, well.


Not finding the pins I wanted, failing to get a design before it sold out, and losing one of the ones I bought were all annoyances of the weekend, but not the biggest problems. My inability to stay online on Saturday night was very stressful, and so was my not posting at all on Sunday night. I was and am very sleep deprived, which made it harder to maintain the good mood one expects to have on vacation. My feet hurt and my legs were sore, and at one point I had to stretch way over and wait for a back spasm to go away, courtesy of hard hotel beds. The bent component to my mouse was another problem. Between that, the worn-away lettering and the keys that don't work half the time, just using my computer is becoming a real challenge.

But the worst disaster of the weekend was on Sunday afternoon. John and I took my ailing Nikon to the Photo Supply shop and asked them to clean the lens. The guy took it in back, brought it out again, and had me finish the wiping in the corners with his soft cloth. We bought a lens cloth of our own, thanked him and said goodbye. Five minutes later, John tried to take a picture of one of the musical groups on Main Street USA - and couldn't. There was nothing to be seen in the viewfinder. At all. The camera would not take a picture. At all. Looking into the lens, we saw a huge bubble of moisture inside. How did that get there? Maybe it was the guy at the photo supply, but there was no way to be sure, much less prove it. Besides, it didn't matter. The point was that the camera, already giving us trouble deploying and retracting the lens barrel as well as the lens cover, was now completely dead. Dead, dead, dead.


Until the next morning, that is. Overnight, most of the moisture inside the camera evaporated, and the camera started working again. Sort of. Sometimes it took several attempts to turn it on or off properly, and it ran out of battery early in the amazing fireworks show, which I finally got to see and hear from the right vantage point on Monday night. Still, at least we had a camera again. That counts for a lot. Do I really have to mail it out for repair?

Since I do still have a semi-working camera for the moment, I can show you this sort-of self portrait, entitled Karen Photographs Another Sunset. I did not boost the saturation at all, but I did fiddle with tone levels a bit.



This one I did nothing to but resize.

There were 189 unread emails on my Mavarin screen name when I got back last night, and more received today. I've whittled it down to 110, but it's just about killing me. I've got to sleep! Robins, and bloggers I read via Feedblitz: I haven't forgotten you. I just am having a heck of a time trying to catch up.

Honestly, I will get to your blogs as soon as I possibly can!

Karen

Technorati Tags: Disneyland, Disney pins, Blogging, Personal