Why People Have SLRs

(Both pictures have been cropped to eliminate reflections from the surface they were sitting on, and have had some minor exposure/contrast corrections done in Aperture.)

2 year old 7 megapixel point and shoot, propped on a mailbox, 15 sec exposure using self-timer:

4 (?!?! holy cow -- it's been that long?!) year old 6 megapixel Digital Rebel, on a roll of packing tape on top of my car, 36 second exposure using my nifty new remote shutter release:

There's still some grain and color weirdness in this one, but not nearly as much as the point and shoot, and significantly less noise (I had to zoom in and use the loupe to see it on this one, as opposed to just use the loupe for the point and shoot).

Of course, now that I'm getting the hang of more of the manual features on my Rebel, I'm starting to feel like it's time to think about upgrading to the 40D, not that I have money for that at the moment (Sparky Junior, I'm looking at you).  The 5D hasn't been updated in forever, and the 1D is overkill for a hobbyist like me.

(Dang, though, this is an expensive hobby.)

Meanwhile, it's been quite the week.  I picked up a stomach bug on Monday, had to go to a meeting on our useless language arts program on Tuesday, wherein half my class fell 100% apart (turns out I gave the bug to Superhero, who was grumpy), and Bulldozer had the bug today.

But my funny story today.  The other week, I got my hug from Goodfella.  We have APE class with most of Teacher M's class, including Pudge.

The teacher is....

Yeah, anyway.

So every time we go to PE, Pudge finds Aide Mrs. B and latches himself to her (usually covering his ears in distress from the insane noise and activity level in there -- it's a sensory overload nightmare and I'd actually consider bowing out for the summer if Mr. Voice didn't receive the service).

Today, after banging sticks on the floor to the tune of "We Will Rock You," they got out yarn balls and had the kids (I kid you not) chuck 'em at each other.

Pudge was wandering, vocalizing a bit, and his teacher was following him.

Pudge wandered over to me, so I said, "Sit down, buddy," in my softest, most soothing voice.  He plopped down in front of me and leaned on my legs, and stayed there for ten minutes.

(Until they got out the ginormous beach ball and let the kids hit that at each other.  Yeah.)

In related news, if you ever want to see a textbook example of "overstimulated" and "sensory overload," come visit M after APE.

Seriously.