A Girl...

Glamour Shot

Well, we're back from Vegas with a little less money, a little more sunburn (reverse raccoon-style!), a tiny bit less sinus congestion, and only about 250 photos to account for a three-day stay. See, twenty hours into our trip and only twenty minutes before the wedding, my usually trusty camera showed an error reading I'd never seen before; it basically said "UR FCKD." It wouldn't turn off, it wouldn't take. I tried both batteries, took the card in and out, sweet-talked it and promised it a nice dinner out on the town and a new pair of shoes, but no, nothing, ixnay on the orkway. This was twenty minutes before the wedding of a dear, dear friend, and it looked like I might leave him and his bodacious bride at the mercy of the hired chapel photographer, who ended up forcing them into every pose sanctioned by the Official Glamour Shot™ Book of Soft-Focus Memories. And they are waaaaay too punk-rock for that.

As a last resort, I reformatted my memory card, which meant erasing evidence of our flight, our first day on the Strip, and our night at the swank hotel lounge with Will and Co. Gone gone gone. I would have shed a tear for each of those lost shots, but I was in wedding makeup (behold the eyeliner!), so there was nothing to do but thank god the reformatting worked and then press on and hope that by crossing my fingers while clicking the shutter button for the rest of the night, I'd come away with a few good photos.

Which I did. Phew.

After the reception, my first priority was to get the pictures off my camera, onto Simon's laptop, and onto a flash drive for safekeeping. An hour spent cursing at the screen, though, and none of his download functions was working, which meant I had to leave all those pictures--250 of them--stuck on a fritzy camera that might commit suicide and take the wedding photos with it. (My guess is the camera got jacked up in the heat; it was about 97 when we made the loooong trek to the hotel before the wedding.) At that point, my best option, if I wanted to save what photos I had, was to leave the camera in the hotel room for the rest of the trip. Well, leave the memory card in the hotel room for the rest of the trip. Not wanting to risk the theft of my presssshhusss, I lugged the damn thing, in all its cursed impotence, up and down Las Vegas with no memory card.

I think the sacrifice was worth it, though. After talking to the Slackmistress about the gaglicious traditional wedding shots they were subjected to via the hotel's photographer (not his fault; just doing his job), I wanted to give the newlyweds at least one bitchin' shot for their scrapbook. And I think I got it:

More later. If you want to see the video of the wedding, it's online here courtesty of the Slackmistress's reader Avatar. At about six and a half minutes in, the camera pans right and then fades out just before it gets to me and Simon. We were sitting behind the guy in the awesome mustard-yellow suit. The fplks in charge really should have notified us of the blind spots. Grr.