My new toy

I just bought a new camera and I'm so excited about it! It's a Panasonic Lumix ZS5, with 12 megapixels, 12x optical zoom, manual controls, and a whole host of cool features. My crappy old 6-megapixel, 3x-zoom, no-manual-controls camera doesn't even compare. I got a good deal on it too - Best Buy was selling it on "clearance" for $250; I got it on Amazon for $180!

Like an excited kid on Christmas morning, I just wanted to play with it as soon as I got it and didn't really bother reading the manual first. I'm sure there's much more I can do with this camera, but for now here are a few samples from this past weekend...

The first thing I did was test out the zoom. I took this picture from the Alexandria waterfront, facing north towards DC. You may be able to see the Capitol building way off in the distance.

And this is with the extended zoom. I think my jaw may have actually dropped when I saw this.

Here's another picture I took with the zoom.

The camera also has the ability to stitch together a panoramic image. This picture was made from four different photographs.

Here's a fun feature called "pinhole," which gives the picture an old timey look.

And finally, spring is upon us!

You know what that means...baseball and cherry blossom pictures will be forthcoming!

Adventures in baking

Today was a rainy, gloomy day....

So I did one of my favorite rainy day activities: baking! I've always loved baking, but given the fact that I'm usually only baking for myself, I don't do it as often as I like. I don't need a whole cake or three dozen cookies just for me (although my coworkers love me for bringing in leftovers). Hence you can imagine my extreme delight in discovering a cookbook called Small Batch Baking. All the recipes are scaled down to serve one or two people. It's like this book was made just for me!

Today I decided to try my hand at making miniature chocolate cakes. I got out my new handy dandy cookbook holder that I got for my birthday (thanks, mom!)....I don't know how I ever lived without one.

How might one make miniature cakes, you may ask? With tin cans!

Here are my little cakes after they came out of the oven. Patiently waiting for them to cool...

Et voila! The finished product! There's even a filling in the middle.



The whole process was actually quite easy. And afterwards I just have to throw away the cans instead of washing cake pans! I definitely recommend this book for all my single (or newlywed) friends who like to bake.

So this is what I've been dealing with...

You don't fully realize how much you rely on email until you don't have it. I haven't been able to access my Gmail account since Saturday. The good news is, at least it wasn't hacked like I had feared. Here's a message from Google:

"Imagine the sinking feeling of logging in to your Gmail account and finding it empty. That’s what happened to 0.02% of Gmail users yesterday, and we’re very sorry. The good news is that email was never lost and we’ve restored access for many of those affected. Though it may take longer than we originally expected, we're making good progress and things should be back to normal for everyone soon."

Yes, I'm part of that 0.02%. Apparently there was a software bug that caused all this. And they've shut down my account while they're working on it, so I can't even log in. In case anyone has tried emailing me in the past few days, here's something else you should know:

"If you were affected by this issue, it’s important to note that email sent to you between 6:00 PM PST on February 27 and 2:00 PM PST on February 28 was likely not delivered to your mailbox, and the senders would have received a notification that their messages weren’t delivered."

*Sigh*

Sorry I don't have any fun pictures today. But I'll let you all in on a little secret....I recently got a bonus at work (yay!) and I'm planning on buying a new camera! So I'm sure I will have lots of pictures to post in the near future. :)