Camp Liza, as my aunt called it, ended on Friday.

I spent the week finding fun things to do with a five year old boy and a seven year old girl, both of whom are incredibly energetic, inquisitive and all around delightful. We took trips to the library, the Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air and Space Museum, the park by their school, another fun park a little further away that had mini-golfing, a train ride, a carousel, lots of trails, a playground and ice cream, and to a paint your own pottery place. On top of that, we played lots of Uno and Clue and plenty of Spider Solitare, and I was also resoundingly beaten in the numerous tic-tac-toe and Pokemon battles they conned me into. Really, they had incredible persuasive abilities, add that to being completely okay with making up their own rules and I had no hope at all. The kids seemed to make it through unscathed, but I was exhausted, in a very good way, by the end of it.

Luckily, I had a four hour car ride to get a bit of rest, before stopping by to see more family- this time my step-dad's parents and brother and his family. I always love visiting them (and I'm not even saying that 'cause they read this blog! :D) and this trip was no exception.

This time, however, there was something else besides visiting that I got to do, and that was to go meet a guy from craislist to pick up a camera and a couple of lenses.

Oh yes.

The camera is another Pentax SLR that I doubt I'll use, and the lenses were really what I was after. Since getting my camera in February (thank you again and again and again, Dan, Ellen, Q, Flo and Theresa!), I've just been using the kit manual focus 50mm lens. Now I have that, along with a 70-300mm and a 28-80mm. On top of that, I'd ordered a fish eye lens off of ebay earlier in the week, and opened that as soon as I jumped in the car on Saturday.

Oh yes.

I've been playing ever since.

This evening, I dragged my little brother off with me so I could do some night shooting (and be safe should we encounter questionable characters, he is a ninja afterall). Mainly I was just doing lens comparisons and figuring out what I wanted from each of them and getting a little more comfortable. That at least was the goal, and it was working out wonderfully until my batteries died. D'oh. (Note to self, never, ever, ever again go shooting without an extra set of batteries. That is dumb.) I got some fun shots in before that happened.

The World War II memorial, all lit up.
I went through and did this shot from the same position with all of my lenses, just for comparison.


Looking over the Severn River bridge, towards Annapolis. Taken with the fish-eye.