New Camera, Bed, Phones and Costco ...

I have a couple of cameras .... a digital SLR, Canon EOS 400D with a couple of lenses and an Olympus C450.  Love both of them, especially my EOS but it isn't something that you can chuck in your handbag because of its size and the extra lenses so my little compact digital serves me well.  The EOS has a reasonable size camera bag, probably the size of a medium to large handbag.

Sadly of late my Olympus is chewing up batteries and at times decides it needs to rest and I came to the decision that it needs to go to camera heaven with my old SLR.

I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a new compact so did some researching and decided I could get a very reasonable camera for under $200.

While my son and his wife and grandson were down from Queensland we decided to take a trip to Costco and I figured I would look at the cameras there.  I armed myself with a list of candidates along with their price and compared them when we were at Costco.  So I forked out the yearly Costco subscription fee of $60 and hoped that I could at least recoup that in a few visits.

Putty Beach headland

I ended up buying a Fujifilm T400 and saved $45 on the cheapest price I have researched - then they had a bonus offer with it - a leather case ($15)  and a 4Gig SD card ($20) so I would say I saved at least $80 all up.  I am a very happy camper!!

The bonus thing is its size - 10.5cm x 6 cm x 3cm and weighs 159gms including the battery.  My old Olympus  was 11 cm x 6cm x 4cm and weighed 170 without the batteries, so it is a little lighter and slimmer plus it was 4mp and 3 x optical zoom; the new one is 16mg and 10 x optical zoom.

I love my EOS ...  it is great when I want to take reference photographs for my painting.  I often drive up to the Central Coast to take pics of the surf crashing onto rocks so I use my telescopic lens quite a bit.

Actually I generally use both cameras for reference shots but there are times when I have gone somewhere not thinking of photography only to see something that grabs my attention and now I can snap it with my little compact.

Of course in this day and age of smart phones and tablets I could also take snaps with either my Galaxy S3 (8mp) or my Sony tablet (5mp) but I prefer to use an actual camera if I have one on me.

What I would dearly love to buy is the Canon EOS 5d Mark iii - great camera!  Of course with a price of around $3000 it is beyond my means but I can keep it on my wishlist .... lol.

I could lash out on this beauty also while I am dreaming - it is only $2200 - cheap ...lol.  The other lenses are around the $800 mark so I am afraid they all have to live on my wishlist until I win Lotto ... lol

Anyway, back to reality ... my trip to Costco was rather fruitful - not only did I buy the camera but I got one of  my DIL's christmas present (a set of Kai Komachi knives) and then indulged in some Illy coffee in the metal tin (it was $4 cheaper than the local supermarket IGA) and a few other items that brought my total savings for the day to well over $120.  The kids also went shopping and managed to save a respectable amount also.  Maybe between us all we were close to $180 in savings.

For the past 36 years I have slept on a soft-sided waterbed; I love it but I have had problems recently with my latest one.

It is an orthopedic one with 12 baffles inside to cushion the back - for some reason the baffles started moving around and it was becoming uncomfortable to sleep on.  In some places it was hard and others soft and others supersoft or super hard.  I came to the conclusion that it is because I sleep alone (except when Fozz sneaks up) so the pressure on the baffles was kind of lopsided.

I decided that I only had two solutions - find a partner to sleep on the other side or buy a mattress ...  I figured my luck with partners is horrid so instead I chose to buy a mattress .... lol.  Although I have to admit one man is looking good .... no baggage, no weird talk - just a normal nice guy!

I ended up buying a King Koil Chiro posture one, top of the range in that type ... didn't bother with the base as it could sit on the old queen sized wooden waterbed base within the wooden bed frame that I already had.  Man, the mattress cost a fortune .... lol ... it better be good or else!!

Mind you it is so high; the mattress is about 30cm thick so I almost need a step to climb into bed at night!

So far it has been very comfortable - I bought the firm one as I am used to the waterbed and the others I tried were too soft.  Just feels a little weird; not sure how I will go in the winter as the waterbed is gloriously warm in winter and cool in summer but I will worry about that when the cooler weather returns.

I also lashed out and bought some new cordless phones - my old ones had finally reached the point where they needed new batteries and I figured it was better to buy new phones instead as they were quite old.

I bought the Uniden 8055 ... very happy with them.  Three handsets and a repeater station that means it will boost the signal enough to use it in the garage or outside.  An added bonus was the ability to block certain numbers .... yep, added in all the ex's numbers so at least he can no longer annoy me that way .... rotfl.