oooooOOoooooo, Charleston...... in shiny things

Finally I'm making an appearance-- sadly it looks like I'm back to my old habits of ignoring PB, just like I ignored OD. Apparently I have nothing to write about....other than taking a trip to the lovely Charleston last week. We actually spent four nights, which is unheard of when travelling with Baker B. Usually we're doing well to spend three nights. I'm not sure what has happened to the ordinarily travel-phobic, comfort-zone-dependent Baker B, but I strongly suspect going to England last summer and spending a whole week on his own there helped him enormously. I think he learned that being WAY out of his comfort zone not only will not kill him, but is in fact a good thing.

It was actually kind of a mistake that we spent four nights. I'd reserved four, since we were planning to drive down on Friday the 4th, and I'd taken off three days the next week just because I have tons of vacation time and it's still coma-inducingly slow at work. SO I reserved Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, figuring we'd come back Sunday but it's easy to cancel the last day, and also having four days gave us some leeway in case the usual trip-interfering hurricane didn't make it beyond Charleston by Friday. We had a certificate for a free night, because we always stay at the Mt. Pleasant Red Roof Inn. It's convenient, very close to Charleston proper, and close to the beach too. And cheap compared to everything else. And they give you a free night occasionally which is always nice. I had to call a different number to make a reservation with the certificate, instead of just calling the motel's own number (although sadly they have started sending your call to the corporate reservation line anyhow if you call the individual motel to make a reservation). The woman who made the reservation had to make a separate one for the one free night, and she made it for Monday. I did ask if I could change the free night to one of the other three nights if we decided not to stay Monday night too, and she was like, Oh, sure! No problem!!!

Well, unfortunately it WAS kind of a problem, as we found after we'd already checked in and then discovered it was too late to just move the free night. Because we'd already checked in and I didn't think to ask before we were officially checked in. (The reservation woman also did not reserve us a room with a fridge which she'd asked if I wanted, and I said, oh, definitely! so we had no fridge for our beer/wine/iced lattes either. That ended up okay - we bought a cheap cooler and filled it up with ice and the room was cheaper that way- but still was annoying.)

The long and short of it (hahahahaha!!! like I can do "short"!!) was that we could have used the free night later but it expired September 3, and there really isn't one anywhere else we want to go, like West Virginia, and Baker B wasn't too interested in another Charleston trip that soon and although I'd certainly go alone, it's too far for one night and I'd be spending more money on another night by myself. SO Baker B agreed to just stay one more night, if we left really early on Tuesday (he had to work Wednesday). So that's what we did. Boy it was nice having so much longer than usual. And he ended up being a little sorry we left early instead of staying till 1 or 2 like we usually do on the day we leave.

And..... I bought a new camera!!! So got to do a lot of playing with it in Charleston. I'm glad I went ahead and got it, since my goal in life now is to learn how the settings actually work. I ended up getting the Rebel SL1:

Which is the one I was already leaning towards. It ended up just being $600 with one lens, as opposed to the original $700, which was nice. And I loooove it -- it is amazingly light, easy to operate, and has a gazillion settings. I've used the manual settings since my first SLR (and film SLR) but I have never really learned why things happen when they do. I just fiddle with the dials and usually am happy. But I am determined to improve my skills and stop depending on luck.

SO, some pictures of Lovely Charleston:

Not even sure where this was, but it was very pretty:

(OH, yay, Flickr has totally changed everything AGAIN. Already. Thanks, Flickr. At least it wasn't quite as hard to find the code as before. )

Oh, there's the bigger medium size. SIGH.

On King Street:

My favorite windows on Rainbow Row:

I'm still trying to get the color the way I want it. I had my old camera set with a special program thing that enhanced the colors just a bit, but some of the ones I took with extra saturation were too enhanced. Most were okay, though.

Okay, Flickr is really REALLY slow today and this is way too long, so more later.