new

0Josh • 16th Jul 2004 • blog entries, cascades experences

this week I got two things in the mail that I had ordered, and that I was really excited about. On Thursday my brand new REI Rock jacket showed up. I had seen it at the store a few weeks back, it was on clearance…and I really liked it. Unfortunately they didn’t have it in stock in my size, no one in the area did, and neither did the online store. Last week I got to thinking about it again, and decided to call and see if ANY stores had it. There were two jackets left…one in Maine, and one in Sacramento. I called up the Sacramento store and ordered it. It’s hard for me to spend more than $50 on one piece of clothing, and this jacket was a little more expensive than that…it wasn’t an easy purchase for me to make…but I really liked it! I also justified it by the fact that it would zip into my REI jacket shell, and I would need it in Nome.

I also our brand new digital camera in the mail this afternoon! Now, it was only a few months ago that we decided to purchase a brand new Canon A70, after declaring our other one dead. We used some savings and bought the camera. It served us very well, and we loved it, we were taking more pictures than ever before (and putting most of them online, in the gallery section!). Back before the fourth of July family camp, during our staff outing to ‘lake yelm’, our beloved camera disappeared. We believe it was stolen. I had it that morning, and I unloaded the pictures because I knew it would be fun to take some at the lake. I put the camera into my backpack, we get to the lake and I put my backpack down. An hour or so later, I go to take a picture…and the camera is not in it. Now, I lose things….pretty often. However, if I can’t find something, Lydia usually can. After a few weeks of searching everywhere it might be, we threw in the towel and started to look for a possible replacement. I thought it might just be the best idea to get another A70, the same camera that we lost. I also thought that I might as well read some reviews, see what else is out there. I see some pretty nifty cameras, but nothing really compares to what we had before. The only thing that we like on other cameras that ours didn’t provide was a larger zoom lens. Then I find the Canon Powershot S1 IS. It’s a hot camera, in the same line as our old A70, but it has the larger lens…and lots of other cool features, but it was way out of our price range. I start looking in the papers for good deals on an A70, I place a few low ebay bids. I also place a few low bids on ebay for the S1, low in the fact that they were almost half the retail price, but NOT low compared to what I was willing/wanting to spend on a camera like our old one (almost double). My pipe dream bids were still more than I was comfortable spending. However, I lost all the A70 auctions, and won one of the new S1 auctions. Lydia & I decide to again split the cost between our primary checking account, and one of our savings accounts. I’ve still got to replace my memory card, and buy a filter to protect the lens, the cost keeps rising…but we got a great deal, and it is one SWEET camera.

All this buying, and buying stuff that is out of my comfort zone….and I’m in the middle of reading the book of James & using it to lead staff devotions in the morning (see jjjr for jesus). Now, James talks a lot about having money, being materialistic, and making sure that as Christians we are not friends of this world. Its been a great experience to read, but it has been very convicting, and something that I’ve been thinking a lot about.