Because it is a Leap Year, today, the 20th, is the summer solstice – the longest day of the year. Normally, of course, it is the 21st. I love the time when the days are getting longer, partly, I think, because it is June and the earth is not so hot in June that the nights don’t turn into hot dawns. June dawns are usually cool and the sky a fresh blue. You get up . . . and the whole day is stretching before you.

But today isn’t really one of my favorite days because my personality is already mourning the end of the trend to more and more light. June 1st is an uplifting day because I have three entire weeks to wake up with the knowledge that each dawn with come earlier.

I feel this way about Christmas. My favorite days of the season are the four or five days right before. Although I do find it really irritating to walk into Wal-Mart at that time and see all the Christmas stuff cleared out and the Valentine garish red going up. Christmas red is merry, in case you are wondering.

Today is a sad day this year, though. Our neighbor who had a stroke last year and worked so hard to get better is growing increasingly confused. Usually it would happen with a urinary tract infection that would affect his mind, but then as the antibiotics cleared the infection, so would his thinking improve. This time the infection spread and he was hospitalized . . . and this time his mind hasn’t returned to its usual state. Yesterday, he was even gruff with the nurses and that is not him at all. He will be 95 come July 21st.

His wife is now going to the nursing home to be with him; we didn’t think she would be going this soon, but she didn’t want to spend another winter alone in her house and once the ball started rolling, it took off. She may actually go today. Chances are she will go this week-end. She was 91 this March.

Well, families decide what they want to do . . . or what some of them want to do.

We were going to do a bit of fence painting, my granddaughter and I, but the sky has threatened showers on and off and now when it looks a little clearer, we see our goal a little less clearly. I think we see it, oh, somewhere in tomorrow.

Tomorrow I have to go to Ligonier to talk with a man about mini sprint racing. I know nothing about it and will do some homework at this website he gave me. The radio museum is there and I think I’ll stop by again, take some pictures and throw them into an album for my husband. Ah, pictures and my husband – I have been trying to get him to move from his low pixel camera onto more resolution. He has been balking, but today he wanted to put the picture of Sydney at the fairground in the light mist of fog on his monitor, but it didn’t have enough pixels and he had to use the tile format.

Der Bingle, you must have him uppixel. Our problem is we need cameras with optical viewfinders and Olympus has dropped them from a lot of their point and shoots. And so have a lot of other camera makers . . . but let’s see:

Canon PowerShot A720 IS

Highs
Very good image quality, next-shot delay and dynamic range. Long 6x optical zoom. Versatile. Reasonably priced. Includes optical viewfinder, manual controls and manual focus.

Lows
Camera design places flash too close to where you hold the camera, possibly obstructing the strobe. Batteries may fall out of camera when changing memory card. (Duct tape, Bing.)

Bottom Line
This moderately priced PowerShot offers many shooting options, such as manual and exposure controls, plus practical features, such as an optical viewfinder, which can be helpful in composing in bright light situations. For such an inexpensive point-and-shoot, it was a very versatile camera that could zoom optically while recording video. It also had very good next shot delay.

OR the A590IS model at Best Buy on sale. It has a 4x optical zoom. The one above is supposed to be about $180.