I’m so happy that my silly little point and shoot camera still works on day two. I haven’t broken this one yet. Sigh of relief.
I’m also pleased that my car has an inspection sticker (the last one expired two months ago and I just got around to it today) and I was able to play some guitar today. I am not happy about how the lack of calluses on my left hand fingertips results in HUGE pain when I play, but I will rise above that little hiccup.
It was just over 11 years ago. June of 2015. We had tickets to two Rush concerts. One at TD Garden in Boston and the other at Madison Square Garden in New York. I wanted to bring a pocket sized point and shoot camera into the two arenas so I bought a little Nikon Coolpix S7000 at Best Buy. 16 megapixels, a 20x zoom. Good stuff.
I took about a couple hundred pics at the two shows and was really happy with some of the results. For example:
Over the years, I used the shit out of that camera. It went with me pretty much everywhere. I made a conscious decision somewhere along the way to use the S7000 instead of my iPhone and from that moment on I took a zillion pics with it. Then it broke. Shit. The lens cover wouldn’t open all the way, and it wouldn’t close at all. It just died. Boom. Dead. Sadness.
In September of 2025 I went to eBay and bought another one. A replacement. I was so happy to have my stupid little pocket camera back. Unfortunately it was a lemon. Every single photo it took was blurry. All of them. I would crank up the ISO in the hopes of it using the fastest shutter speeds possible but it didn’t matter. Everything was blurry. Sadness again.
Now here we are in July of 2026 and I have tickets to see Rush at Madison Square Garden (the show is less than two weeks away! SQUEEEE!!) and damn it, I want to bring a pocket sized camera into the show again. I want more of those pictures. This time there will be a keyboard player and a different drummer, but otherwise I want more of the same.
Fuck it. Back to eBay I go. I bought another one. If this third camera is also a lemon then I will give up and just use my iPhone like a normal person in 2026. The seller was in New Hampshire so the shipping was nice and fast. It was delivered today. The battery was charged. I threw the memory card that was in the second camera (that I am pretty sure started life in the first camera) and did a lap around the house snapping anything.
Is it a lemon?
Nope. It looks good!
Success (he said knowing a million things could still go wrong between now and the Rush show, but give me a break. I want to be happy for a change. Let me have this one, m’kay?)!
Here’s hoping this little sucker lasts me for about 10 years the way the first one did. Fingers crossed
I went out to run some errands today in Andover and Methuen, MA. I took my camera for some stop light theater pics.
Same building from the opposite direction.
Downtown Methuen. Still route 28 but with the clock that I can’t ever stop taking pics of every time I am near it. It’s a compulsion. I should probably talk to a therapist about it or something.
The clock through the sunroof. Epic.
You know that song about loving that dirty water? This is the water they were talking about. It’s not as dirty as it used to be though.
I have two musical goals for tonight after work.
First: Put together a playlist of the songs on our potential-singer-audition-songs list so that I can start practicing the holy hell out of them.
Second: Decide which guitar I want to use for the band’s come back work. As of right now I am leaning toward the birthday Les Paul that my wife bought me for my 50th birthday almost three years ago. I’ve been playing the two 70’s Gibsons that I had all of the repair work done on since November or so, but I think I want to start the return-to-the-band process with my newest guitar.
Whatever guitar I decide to use for the band’s comeback (which is scheduled to start this coming Sunday) is going to need new strings. I have a couple of boxes here, but I might need to order some more from the Amazonians today. We’ll see.
It’s time to start focusing on getting the band running again. I’m mentally ready for it, but not quite ready from a guitar playing ability standpoint. I have a lot of rust to shake off.
These are pictures I took for today’s photo a day challenge, but they are not the guitar I am talking about. Oh well.
Two days in a row my photo a day pic has been taken with an old point and shoot digital camera. What is commonly known by the trendy YouTube photography folks as digicams. Look at me being all trendy and shit.
Check it out, I got a little blurry background with my digital point and shoot. Epic, bro.
I dropped one of the point and shoot cameras into a cup of water this morning. Whoops. I cleaned it off and tested it by taking a pic of the not-board pedal chain March music guitar rig.
It still works.
I just drove to Cambridge and back to pick something up at Jen’s favorite electronics store. I tried taking stop light pics in the city but everything came out a blurry disastrous mess.
Sorry to let you all down. I’ll do better in the future.
First time grocery shopping in two weeks. Are things getting back to normal?
I got ya a double shot today.
Inside the Red Head's Head 