First of all, I got confirmation at work today that next year I can move out of counseling and into a teaching position at the school. So yay to that. And also:

My macro lens arrived! Like my last eBay lens, it shipped quickly and seems to be in good working order. I wandered around the house and backyard this evening attempting to take close-up shots. The lens was a little tricky to work with, but mostly because I haven’t done any reading about the best way to use it; I just threw it on the camera body and started walking around snapping photos of things. Mostly I had a hard time getting the lens to focus, and I had to put my Speedlite on it to get enough light which made my camera pretty damn heavy; this may be my heaviest lens yet.

That’s a shot of the chandelier, BTW. I am pretty happy at this point with my lens collection; I think I’ve got a nice variety of choices to use in different situations and for different effects. At some point I’ll line all my lenses up for a photo of them, but I’m not in the mood tonight. It’s late already and I’ve got a full day ahead tomorrow.

This is a shot of the beveled glass in our front door. Apparently we need to clean it; didn’t notice that until processing the photo.

And this is some sort of decorative geegaw that was stuck into a floral arrangement. Damn, it’s also dusty. I’m going to have to do a better job cleaning if I’m going to keep using the macro lens around the house. Oh, who am I kidding. I’m going to have to do a better job paying someone else to clean my house if I keep using the macro lens around the house. #firstworldproblems.

This is a bracelet that was hanging on a jewelry box that sits on top my vanity. I have loads of bracelets and earrings that I never wear, so at this point they’re more like decorative accessories for my bathroom counter. Not as dusty as the other stuff though, so that’s a positive.

As far as jewelry goes, I’m not much for anything other than necklaces. I don’t wear earrings at all anymore, and even my so-called wedding ring is a simple band from Tiffany’s – I love it because it has a tiny band of Tiffany’s blue running through it, but it isn’t an official wedding ring or anything. I had one I wore for 13 years, but I developed an allergy to the nickel in it and had to replace it. When looking for a new ring, I couldn’t generate enough interest in anything I looked at to feel inspired to spend thousands of dollars, so I went with the sterling silver band with Tiffany’s blue and am fine and dandy with it. It only cost $150. Much less than this macro lens I’m using. I realize that at this point it would make sense to have a macro shot of my faux wedding ring, but I didn’t actually plan this little digression in advance so I didn’t take any. Moving on.

Well, what can I say? This is my favorite so far. Penny is hard to catch in front of the camera.