Of Photos, Primaries And Letterman

Well, we had a few really cold days there last week. Even my leather jacket got a workout, and that's a rarity. Naturally, this all happened days after my brother and his wife left to go back to Virginia. They complained about how hot it was here in Florida. If only they could have stayed a few more days.

While I was in Boca Raton, I took somewhere in the neighborhood of 260 photographs with my digital camera. It's a nice Fujifilm camera that I got last year. I don't claim to know what I'm doing with a camera...I have no idea about things like shutter speed or F Stops, but I'm fairly OK at composing a photo. And when you take 260 photos, you're bound to get at least a few good shots.

So I was in Wal-Mart at the Kodak kiosk, getting some photos printed, and everything went just fine. Until I got to the counter, that is. The clerk at the photo lab took one look at a photo of my niece, Bella, and said, "Sir, you can't have these. These were taken by a professional photographer."

I assured her that I had taken the photo in question, but she just repeated herself. I told her again that I had snapped the photo with my own camera, so she took the photo and went over to some hand scanner device, looking for a watermark on the photo, I suppose. All went fine after that, but I felt flattered that my photo was mistaken for something professional.

Saturday my mother and I went to see "Juno" at the movies. It's a cute story about a 16-year-old girl that winds up pregnant and how she seeks to find good parents to adopt her baby. There's quite a cast and the girl that plays Juno, Ellen Page, had me cracking up more than once. A real piece of work there. I recommend the movie, but obviously it's not for kids.

Saturday night I spent time working on my Web site while watching the presidential debates on ABC. I thought it was very telling that they only had four Democrats during the Democratic debate. After Iowa, I suppose the lesser candidates have been escorted from the stage, not seen as "viable." I don't know about you, but all the candidates on both sides really started to sound like the grown-ups in a Charlie Brown cartoon. "Waa waa waa waaaa waaaaaaa."

With the Florida primaries just weeks away, I still find myself undecided. I've been sick of the politics for many months now, since the presidential race began over a year ago. It was bad enough when the race lasted a year, now we have to deal with these people for two years? Really, what did we do to deserve this?

In the meantime, I'm really glad that David Letterman is back after two months off due to the writers strike. I've been a fan of Letterman since I was 14 or 15. Letterman was able to negotiate a contract with the Writers Guild of America to bring back the writers to his show. And he came back on the air last Tuesday, sporting a beard and everything. He's been letting the studio heads have it, blasting them for their greed and for not ending the strike. All I want are my shows back on the air. Come on, people, pay the writers what they're worth.

Karl Erikson lives in Sebring and can be reached at karlerikson@yahoo.com