Later. So, the visit to the surgeon is done and I guess I'm done gonna to do it. He'll contact me with a date and instructions. No way around it, unfortunately, no need to do it tomorrow as I'm able to eat if I watch what and how I eat, but the day will come when I can't eat without pain anymore so it's best to do it now before I get much older. He says three hours on the table, two or three days in the hospital, two weeks of eating things without rough edges. No complaints, could be worse and, from the looks of one or two of his other patients, worse is not all that uncommon.

Other than that I futzed briefly with a picture or two using the 135mm f 2.0 lens with a “decouple” feature that allows you to throw either the background or the foreground out of focus by setting an adjustment ring. At least that's what the instructions say and it does indeed have a ring that rotates left and right to make this decouple business work. I used it for years as my primary telephoto lens when I was shooting film for candid portraits at parades, but I use it much less now that I've gone to digital. I bought it for its f 2.0 aperture (which is pretty hot) and figured what the hell, this “decouple” stuff can't hurt, but we'll learn exactly what that's about later. It turns out much later. Why not see what they're talking about now that I have the time? And (I hope) the interest?

Lens, schmens.

Well, again, you sit down at the computer and see what comes out. That's what came out. A first step toward photographic competence, in my book, figuring out how this equipment I've managed to accumulate works. Don't you think?