Kirstiecat | Blog

My mom raised me frugal. Really frugal. Like 80% off sales frugal. So what that means is that every time I make any signifigant purchases, I feel tremendously guilty. (I swear I can’t even be up at the counter when record purchases are being rung up. Cinchel has to do it even though it’s a joint bank account.)

I was at the Sharks and Seals/Midstates show Thurs night and my camera broke midway through. It has something to do with some kind of internal chip. It was an Olympus and a nice little thing. It had been working just fine earlier that night and for Rob Dickinson Wed but it decided to quit and I guess the LCD sensor and something else had gone. I felt like I had lost all feeling in my extremities when it happened.

Friday, the next day, I took a trip downtown after work to the only camera repair shop still in business in this city International Camera on 9 N. Wabash. (Which is incidentally surrounded by an overwhelming amount of stupid jewelery places…never saw the appeal in a bunch of pretty rocks) The guy who worked there was really nice and told me that I was looking at a hundred and fifty dollar repair. So I had a choice of whether I wanted to spend half of what the camera cost on repairs or buy a new camera.

Now, I’m really not the sort of person that just throws loved camera ones away but I can’t justify spending that much if I can’t even really guarantee it’s going to have a long life after that. I get so down about the disposable American culture too…like how things are not made to last forever so we just end up creating so much waste.

Anyhow, I looked at other point and shoot cameras but well the guy there had me convinced that it would be better to make the investment to SLR. So I bought a gently used Canon EOS Digital Rebel with a super sweet EFS 17-85mm lens. I spent over a thousand dollars on this. (This also comes right after Cinchel and I bought a projector system)

I’m feeling guilty. I mean Cinchel and I give regularly to charity but still people are starving to death and I’m watching films and taking pictures. I’m probably going to go to hell when I die for this.

Anyhow, please forgive me mom for not being the frugal daughter you raised. I wish I could live up to your level of thrift. But, you also raised me with the idea that art is important and I’m your daughter that went out in the snow on new years eve to take pictures of snowflakes. You know I’ll use this camera every chance I get.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 26th, 2006 at 1:15 am and is filed under rambles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.