I wrote an entry about missing Easter Church service this year because of baby/family commitments, but about halfway through I re-read it and realized it was really depressing and not going anywhere, so it’s been thrown in the digital trash can. So, instead, I will make myself feel better with some retail therapy and materialistically brag about my new purchases.

The Asus Eee PC Microlaptop
I loved the concept new Apple MacBook Air. (Solid-state memory hard drives make me swoon.) However, the cost of the laptop made it simply unrealistic for me. However, I discovered this little guy via a friend of mine and I was immediately drawn to it because of it’s durability, light weight, and most of all, dirt cheap price. The Eee PC is tiny, but powerful enough to work as a travel laptop. It’s got 4 GB of memory as a hard drive, but I added an 8 GB SD card to it to give it a little more space and since it has USB ports galore, I can always plug in my external hard drive to view photos or listen to music. The Celeron processor isn’t a screamer, but the Linux OS is so lightweight that it is still very capable of streaming online video and such. The only downside I’ve experienced so far is the tiny keyboard which can sometimes be difficult to use, but I’ve picked up a wireless USB keyboard for work and it works perfectly with the laptop. So far, I’m very pleased with the laptop

Tokina 12-24mm wide angle lens
This photo was taken with my new wide-angle lens. I rented a fisheye lens a couple weeks ago and had a ton of fun with it. However I wanted to own something that would give me a similar wide angle, but decided on something a little more practical. This lens should give me the opportunity to take some good landscape panoramas and I’m eager to try it out this football season (though I will probably rent a fisheye during the season for stadium shots anyways.) The only downside I’ve experienced so far with this lens is the suprisingly small aperture, it’s pretty slow when I shoot indoors without a flash.