Christmas Eve is here at last, and that means a couple more presents to open for each of us as we draw out our holiday celebrations over a span of several days due to time constraints. On her lap (along with the Papillons and the blanket my parents gave her), in the photo above Beth holds up two more gifts from "her sweet Gibbie-goo." As usual, I tried to craft some interesting labels: I packaged LOST Season 1 on Blu-Ray (reusing wrapping paper and ribbon from earlier gifts!) with a label indicating it was from "philosophers and airlines"--references to the characters John Locke, Danielle Rousseau, Desmond Hume, and so forth, and of course the dramatic airline crash that started the entire series.
Continuing the theme she started with the fairy house book she gave me on our first day of Christmas, Beth gave me a set of fairy house windows--we're going to be busy in the springtime building a miniature fairy mansion out in the backyard, that's for sure! (This does make some sense, really; we're trying to build a "fairy path" in the garden, and Beth gave me a little planter and several alpine plants to create a "fairy garden" for our anniversary this past year, too.)Amidst the Yuletide cheer, I did discover an unfortunately expensive habit from Mr. Parker, though. When I went to pick up my camera and flash, the power pack was no longer connected to the flash. That's right: Mr. Parker chewed through the cord that connects my Canon CP-E4 flash power pack to the flash, and unfortunately chewed through it right at the cord strain reliever on the side of the power pack (so no chance of soldering the cord back together for temporary use). That's a pricey piece of equipment even from big photo equipment wholesalers like Adorama and B&H, running in the neighborhood of $150 (the power pack was itself originally a Christmas gift two years ago from my mother-in-law).
The local camera shop, Penn Camera, fortunately had a replacement in stock and was open until 6:00pm despite it being Christmas Eve, but it set me back over $180 (ouch!). Problem is that I really needed that power pack to do my holiday photo shoots over the next few days, and there was no way it would get here from Amazon or any of the wholesalers in time. I'll probably order a replacement cord from Canon and repair the original, then e-Bay it to recoup some of the cost (I should be able to get $120 or so on e-Bay; used professional-grade camera gear sells for nearly the new cost most of the time--minus whatever Canon charges for the replacement cable, of course).
Mr. Parker has also apparently partially chewed through a couple of laptop power cords; he must like the low voltage shock on his gums or something (he's never tried to chew on a 120V cable, fortunately--and that's something we've got to nip in the bud right now!).
Good thing I got the replacement power pack, though, or I'd have missed this incredibly cute photo of Chance as he "breakdanced" on his pink bed with his "early," a small pink squeaky toy. I managed to get four or five photos in sequence, all of them keepers--without that flash power pack, I'd have gotten one, maybe two, as I'd have had to wait for the flash to recharge much longer between shots.
While I was out driving Beth to one of her petsitting appointments, I had time to pick up the flash power pack and even drop off a few holiday gifts for friends (Bon Bon du Papillon--I'll have to blog about those confections later...). Unfortunately, no time this evening to make Christmas cookies (sorry, Santa!), nor to watch our holiday favorite It's a Wonderful Life, but given we're spreading the holidays out, I suppose that's okay, too.
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