New Canon’s First Shots

My new camera is here, hooray! It arrived on Thursday afternoon, but I forced myself to do work all afternoon before opening the box and everything. I figured that that was sufficient motivation to finish my tasks at hand, haha. Before our church softball game though, I only had time when I got home to unpack the camera and everything from the box, pop in the batteries and the memory card, take a picture to verify it worked, then it was time to hustle up to Bellefonte First Baptist for the game. I didn’t play in the first half of the game, but that allowed me a chance to take some of the first pictures with my new camera. 🙂 In the second half I played in left-center, making a catch on the only fly ball I could get to (there was another one just a couple feet out of my reach that I was charging, sigh). I was 0-for-1 at the plate, but reached base on an E-6. The other team could club the ball pretty well though, and we just had too many defensive errors to stand a chance, so we lost 29-5. Ouch. But we don’t often do well against them anyway. It’s still probably my favorite field to play on, because of the scenic setting:

Last night was the end of an era, in more ways than one. First off was the final team trivia show in State College for Trivia Jerry, who got a new job down in Philly. It was a fun show, and we managed to nab 2nd place when it was all said and done. We’ll have to wait and see whether Jerry’s replacement for the Friday night shows at the G-Man is any good or anywhere near as much fun as Jerry (or Trivia Steve before him).
After trivia it was on to the Lion’s Den for Moyer’s farewell party, which drew out a bunch of meteo people. Moyer’s been here for something like 8 years (counting undergrad), so he’s been a staple in the Penn State Meteorology department for quite some time. 4th floor will never be the same without him (or as loud, haha)! But he’s only moving down to the Philadelphia area for his new job, so he’ll be back up plenty often, especially for PSU football games in the fall.
I had hoped for a chance to take my camera out storm chasing today here in central PA, but the weather never really materialized. Back on Thursday afternoon the models looked potentially promising, but it wasn’t to be. As it turned out, central or northern Virginia might’ve been a good target area, but with gas being $4/gallon we didn’t really feel like driving 4+ hours each way just to give us a shot at seeing any good storms. If gas was still $2/gallon, we might’ve gone down there to chase. Oh well.
And speaking of $4/gal gasoline (well, technically it’s $3.95 in State College right now, but close enough), how many of you out there can say that you’ve only had to fill up your car once since late March? It certainly helps my pocketbook that I never had to fill gas at all during the entire month of May!