Suzie Scores a Deal

Yes, yesterday was indeed her day. We were drinking our morning coffee yesterday and getting ready to go to a camera swap meet in Puyallup when I spotted an ad on Craigslist. When I told her it was just up the hill in Federal Way and what was included, she ran back into the room and read it over my shoulder. Here's a screen print of the ad (you can click on it to read it full size):

"Did you email him yet? Email him!" she said excitedly.
She already has a zoom lens for her camera, but it's only an 85-200 or something, and she really needed an extra battery as well. After emailing him with our desire to look at it and her cell number so he could contact us while we were out and about, we proceeded to the Puyallup Fairgrounds.

It was actually a pretty cool swap meet. The people there reminded me a lot of the geeks that used to swarm over computer swap meets back in the 80's when computers were in their infancy. Yep, a lot of camera dweebs just like us (sorry Sue). I found a cool "star" filter for my camera, and Suzie found herself a couple different filters for hers as well. We had a good time poking around through all the stuff and admiring all the antiques and photography-related stuff from down through the years too. We were just about finished when her phone rang. It was the guy from the ad! Apparently we were first to call, so we headed up to his place after making a stop for cash.

We got there before the guy got back from his errand run. He said he had realized that there were still pictures on the camera cards so he stopped at a store to print them out or whatever. He showed up on a scooter a few minutes after we got there and let us into his apartment. While he went to get all the gear we looked around. There was a collection of Barbie-sized dolls called "Living Dead" dolls (Google them... Pretty unique) still packaged in their casket-shaped boxes and standing on top of a shelf. There was also a statue of the 3-headed dog from the Harry Potter movie. Quite the place. When he returned, he explained that all that stuff was his roommate's stuff.

When he started laying out all the camera stuff, it was quite the pile. At one point he remarked, "I have this wide angle lens I'll throw in too." I thought Suzie was going to lose it at that point. She has been craving a wide angle lens for a long time. Bonus! While I was playing with the camera and Sue was investigating the other things, he said, "Oh, I also have a bag" and disappeared into the other room once again. After he left, Sue and I made eye contact and did the "open-mouth/flabbergasted" look at each other. By the time we got out of there, she probably had $1000 worth of stuff in her hands! After we got back to my place and laid it all out, she was so tickled. She gleaned several items out of the purchase to keep for herself, and still has a very impressive package to turn around and resell again--Possibly for even more than what she paid. She gave me the owner's manual that came with it. Mine didn't have one when I bought it and I had been searching for one for quite a while. That was nice of her!

I felt the urge to spend some money myself yesterday, and went back up to Federal Way to our local computer store where I bought myself a new monitor. While my free Dell LCD monitor (remember? My neighbor Chris gave it to me) was a clear improvement over the old CRT monitor I had, it lacked clarity and brilliance. Anyway, when I first got it home and hooked it up yesterday I wasn't all that impressed--It seemed overly bright and washed out. I ran Adobe Gamma on it to set it up, which is a monitor setup utility that comes with Photoshop. It looks good now!

Yesterday was quite the day for sure. Suzie is probably still excited about it! Me? I'm going shopping for Living Dead dolls...