Welcome to the pond

Here's my birthday report:

It was a very good birthday! I woke up bright and early and checked my email. I got a really nice birthday letter from a very good friend of mine! That was so special. I spent the day reading and watching a movie until it was time to go to dinner. We went to a bbq/steakhouse place with my parents, sister and her friend, sister-in-law and niece. I had the salmon with a blackberry bbq sauce on top. Yummy! I got to choose a dessert to take home and ended up with a white cake with strawberries in the middle. That wasn't eaten until today.

When we came home, I opened my gift. My gift, of course, is my brand new Canon Powershot A610 digital camera! We had some awesome chocolate ice cream cake after that, and I spent the rest of the night playing around with my camera.

I'm getting really good with it already! It's just a matter of playing around with settings until you get what you want. I just wish the screen was bigger so I could see what the pictures REALLY look like. It's also very hard to see in the sunlight, but thankfully my camera has a viewfinder too.

I spent quite a bit of time today taking "official" pictures both inside and outside. Here are a few of my favorites:


This is a picture I took of my cat Harley. I caught him mid-meow!


I've been anticipating an opportunity to take a photo of this lone patch of flowers next to a tree on our street. I took one version, didn't like it, and came back for another try. This is the second try.


I love taking pictures of tree branches. This is my first branch shot with my Canon, and I think I did well!

Click on each picture for a bigger view!