Although I am sick (dribbly nose, scratchy throat), I am excited about several things today. One of them is that my new camera arrived today. It was an extremely extravagant purchase (although I did get it used, for a very reasonable price) — but it really wasn’t my fault. It was this diabolical woman’s fault. Uh huh. See, I nearly bought a 2002 Canon D60 from her last week, but she sold it before I had a chance to look at it — and by then I had lived with the idea of owning a digital SLR for just long enough that I found it hard to let go of the notion, so I did a little more research and found an ad by this other temptress for a 2003 Canon 10D (the next model after)… and three days later, it’s mine. I am still sort of in shock about the whole thing, but it’s a good kind of shock. The camera is sturdy and satisfying to hold — not as heavy as my old faithful Minolta, but still a good solid beastie. It is much more badass-looking than my 35mm Canon Rebel.

Anyway, now I really have no excuse for not working on taking better photographs. This little baby goes so far as to show me tiny histograms of the pixel density in various parts of the picture I’ve just taken, so that I can correct the exposure immediately. If I take the time to learn how to use it well, I’ll understand much more about the technical aspects of photography that I like to ignore. My current M.O. is to compose, shoot, and hope for the best, with no real idea of how any given photo will turn out — rather than making sure I control everything I can control before I take the picture. It’s one of those things I’ve chosen to be helpless about, like driving before I decided I wanted to learn.

The other neat creative thing that happened today was rather serendipitous. Ross and I wanted to go see the Hitchhiker’s Guide at the Loewes theater on the Common, but when we got there we discovered that they had cancelled tonight’s showing, so we decided to walk home from Park Street. Along the way we got to talking about a particular Spare Change salesman that we recently started seeing outside Christina’s in Inman Square. He has a very distinctive look — he’s tall and thin, and he always wears a grey suit and hat, and carries a briefcase. And he’s extremely soft-spoken, diffident, and polite. We both think he’s lovely, and rather intruiging. According to his nametag, he also has a wonderful name — which I won’t put online, but which sounds very like a superhero’s name. Trust me on this. So on our walk home tonight Ross and I started talking about how cool it would be if we collaborated on a graphic novel starring J____ P_____ the Spare Change salesman as an urban superhero. And we walked, and talked, sniffing the delicious spring night air, and developed a backstory that we think is complex and has lots of potential.

We’ve had many ideas for books we’ve wanted to write together, but this one really seems like it could work. Stay tuned for updates.