Today I decided that my camera needed a good scrubbing!

Get on in here, Canon!

I was swimming some laps during lunch and I saw my nice camera by the side of the pool, where I normally keep it, and thought, "When was the last time I gave my camera a good scrub down?". And since I was already in a large body of water, I thought I may as well take advantage of the situation. So using the pool brush and a chlorine tab as soap, I gave my camera a nice soak and went to work cleaning the body and lens until they were sparkling. When I was happy that I got into every nook and cranny, I laid the parts out on the pool deck to dry. I can't wait to use my new, super-clean camera and lens!

I love it when it has that new-camera smell. I think it's the chlorine tab that does the trick.

I'm ready for my close-up...

Okay, even though I lack common sense, even I'm not enough of a dumbass to do that to my camera. But since I posted on the National Enquirer of the internet (Facebook) that I took a dunk today at lunch with my camera, I thought I may as well explain how a thirty, err, twenty something woman in her pajamas and her Canon digital SLR with a Tamron 28-200m 78mm lens ended up 6 feet under water in the middle of the day. 


Last night, I put the last finishing touches on the Belle shirt and called it a night. As you know, but I will tell you anyway, about a month ago I received an order for two Disney princess shirts to be worn while running the Disney half marathon coming up in October. My client even found the website that sells Under Armor fabric by the yard so I put my order in and when I got home from Maine, I was ready to rock and roll. Wow, that sounded lame. Sorry about that. Anyway, I finished Mary Poppins last week and then Belle this week but I like to get pictures of the shirts outdoors to show the colors in natural light.

Belle- ready to run!

Mary Poppins- now in moisture wicking material!

So today during my lunch break, I bring out the Belle shirt on the dress form and set it up on the steps on the left side of the pool. And despite the visual you all probably have of me falling backwards into the pool, arms flailing like a dancing monkey, that's actually not what happened. Well, at least not today.

I usually like to enter via bicycle

I like to get the shirt in focus with the background blurred so in order to do that, I back up as much as possible and then zoom in. Since it's a 200m lens, I can back up pretty far. So I walk around to the front of the pool (still on solid ground at this point), aim my camera, and zoom. I'm still too close so I start backing up. My camera is the type that you actually have to hold up to your face to look through the viewfinder so I've got my camera in front of my face and I'm concentrating on the picture. I'm backing up, I'm backing up, all the while moving parallel to the pool, not perpendicular. Then I'm under water. 

The orange and teal buoys signify to others, 'dumb Polack underwater here'

Our pool is kidney bean shaped, and I started off in the indent of the kidney. So when I was walking backwards and what I thought was just next to the pool, I was actually walking straight back into the fat part of the bean. Otherwise known as the deep end. So there was no falling; I literally stepped right into the water and went straight down. Luckily, fat floats so I bob to the surface like a buoy, and grab my camera strap and haul ass out of the pool.

I just stood there for about five seconds trying to take in the fact that I was actually so mentally challenged that I walked into my own pool. Then I went right into fast motion, like the Benny Hill show, running into the patio and removing the card, battery, and lens from the camera and desperately shaking all the water out. I was screwwwwwedddddd. The camera body looked okay and will probably work tomorrow but my lens looked like a snowglobe. 

Hey, does this lens come with a sun hood?

And it took pictures of this hottie. 

The sad part is the death of my lens. I've had it for 11? years, since the time we still used film in our cameras. It moved to the digital age with me and has taken pictures of weddings, anniversaries, christenings, and has helped me take amazing pictures of my two beautiful nieces from the time they were born. I swore I wasn't going to cry! It's like I'm losing a pet. Okay, maybe a pet rock, but a very useful pet rock. And I'm supposed to take pictures of my friend tomorrow and in return she was going to model these latest shirts for me so I'm hoping the gods of cameras will take pity on me and magically evaporate all moisture in my lens overnight.

What are the chances he'll still look like this in 10 years? Slim to none. It's a good thing I got a  picture.

So that's the story of today. I'm glad I could provide amusement to you all (Jillian, Kyndall, Debbie- I'm thinking pointedly of you) and hopefully tomorrow I will have a limb ripped off while wrestling an endangered species so that the mirth will continue. We can only hope!

Maybe if I wear a pork chop necklace I can get this done by noon!