Yesterday I went to the arboretum with my mother. I hadn't been there in ages and so I had never seen the huge bonsai exhibition they have. I'm ambivalent on bonsai; the process is so paintstaking and then it looks so sculpturally cool that it invokes my inner 10 year old (never far from the surface) who thinks wow! I would like to play with troll dolls around that bonsai tree! But then something in me recoils from, what is, let's face it, basically torturing trees. I barely have the heart to prune the roses; there is no way I could cut tree roots and wire limbs to force them here and there. They did have a bonsai made out of wisteria though and I could wrap my mind around that - I wonder if I could do it with honeysuckle. Torturing honeysuckle bothers me not at all; I actually find it quite a soothing and meditative practice.Then, in the evening, the kids and I went and had a festive dinner at Sunny Point, which I always thought was about the best restaurant in Asheville. I still think that - for breakfast/lunch/brunch. Dinner was not as all fired incredible as I had hoped it would be. It was good, but it wasn't great. I had the stuffed trout special, which came with mashed potatos. The whole thing was sitting in a stone cold sauce (so cold, in fact, that I am assuming it was meant to be cold) and honestly it was kind of gluey and all of it was white. Some lemon, something lighter, something with some zing would have been a good addition. M had a chicken breast with kalamata olives over risotto and while that was delicious, it was way too rich and not really as good as the chicken/olive/artichoke thing that I make from time to time. The risotto itself was really really good though, and you can't fake a risotto. A had a Cobb salad which was huge and, bonus, cheap. Go for the salad.
So after dinner, stuffed and logey, I went on over to Drinking Liberally and had a fantastic awesome time, even though, or possibly because, Screwy Hoolie stood up in the middle of it and announced that it was my birthday in a loud voice which carried across all of Jack of the Wood and then the entire bar sang Happy Birthday to me while I stood there and turned extremely bright red. Then people bought me drinks; my awesome astrologer friend J brought me a copy of my birth chart and we talked for a long time; my other friend J showed up, which she hardly ever does; I ran into yet another one of my friends J who I hardly ever see, along with a bunch of the old bluegrass jam people I also hardly ever see anymore; my friend C recited poetry at me and while I was sitting talking to my friend M I met a guy with the same birthday as me. So it was really fun, big fun and when I got home M and I watched The Lost World (he was incredulous at first at the simple beautiful badness of it, but he's hooked now too) and then I went to sleep. Ah birthdays.
And now, what is almost the best part, I am looking for a digital camera, because I also got some birthday money, hooray, hooray, and instead of being sensible and saving it to spend on bills and food and boring shit like that, I am going to blow it on myself and buy a nice camera. I've just been researching and while what I really want is an SLR, I don't think I can afford even a used one, damn damn, but oh well. So please, help me out here. I want the closest thing to an SLR I can get for under $400; I want to take awesome incredible photos that are much better than my usual photos. I would really like the ability to do macros, as well as a good zoom and I think I need at least 5 megapixels, since I really want to start doing a lot more high res, print quality stuff instead of all the mostly web things I usually do. Recommendations? Thoughts? Comments? Speak to me! Help me get the camera that I will have forever and love!
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