So while I've been out having fun with my new camera, going to the beaches as much as I can before I'd have to start paying for parking, and working my butt off for USPS, I've neglected the poor blog. But...let's not lie, my blog was mainly a promotions blog for my Etsy/Artfire/Ebay shops. And I've been letting my shops go for months. I found a great sea glass community (Seaglass Lovers on Ning) so I'll stop pestering my readers (what... all of 3) and post most of my sea glass photos over there from now on. So, if you like sea glass, get your butt over there.

I finally started making jewelry again and am trying to revive my Etsy/Artfire shops. Ebay can wait a bit because Ebay just doesn't take so much maintenence. Here's some of my new creations!Number 140 - Art Deco Clock Hand Earrings II

Because I won't be going to the beach as often soon... Number 139 - Seahorse Earrings!

And almost too late for Prom season - Number 138- Party Time Clock Hand Earrings

And I was going to use the rest of this post to talk about how I can now fit into a shirt I bought from Caldor in the Norwichtown Mall in 1997, not to mention pull off horizontal stripes even though I'm still apparently obese according to BMI, but I'm not happy with many of those pictures except this one. LOL.

I really miss Caldor. haha.

In other news, my friend, the CrabbyOlBastard just opened his Etsy shop to sell his photography, including photos of his urban exploration adventures. Check it out! 

Speaking of Etsy, I started posting my clock hand earrings there again too, just to see if I can boost my sales. I'm also going to be listing some new vintage & supplies items in the near future, so stay tuned! And I posted a brand new vintage pendant that I just got from an antique store.

PS: I'm having a spring cleaning sale in my Etsy shop, you can find it here!

At last, a new camera!

!!!!!

Some of you who have known me for a while know my history with digital cameras. Heck, some of you know my history with disposable cameras, including the summer of 2002 where I easily blew $200 on developing one disposable camera after another at Walmart, of all places.

That was the winning argument in convincing my mom to go half and half with me on purchasing my first digital camera, a Sony DSC-P31 for $200 that October.
For my first digital camera, this was everything I thought I could want. 2MP was about all we could afford, and 5x digital zoom. After all, I didn't really label myself as a photographer nor really even think it would become a hobby. I just wanted it so I could have some control over pictures I took of myself and take pictures where I wouldn't have a double chin. Basically, I just wanted it for myspace photos before myspace existed. LOL.

The summer of 2003 changed all that, when Zack and I went out exploring abandoned places such as Rocky Point Amusement Park, Ladd School, and many other fun & exciting places.
It wasn't like the Sony wasn't without its limitations, however. Vegetation looked a little too radioactive green. Everything in existence looked like it had an unusually high cyan coloration. All could be fixed in photoshop. And 5x digital zoom ROTS.

But...it was what I could afford. And I took some wonderful shots that I would have loved to sell as prints, but at a 2megapixel resolution...the photos looked good only for the web. Too grainy for print. Too obvious that I was too cheap to get a *real* camera.

The breaking point came in 2004 when I had a chance to see John Kerry 2 days before the election. Knowing the digital zoom was crap, I figured it wouldn't be so bad....until I got stuck 200 feet back in a crowd and the zoom was all I had.

Can you see Kerry? He's wearing a yellow coat.

Then I moved closer, maybe 100 feet?

And then I got even closer, maybe 10 feet or so, but at the last moment someone hit my arm and the only shot I had left came out blurry! Love affair with the DSC-P31 was officially over after this day.

Then my 21st birthday was coming, and my mom wanted to buy me a new camera since she knew I wanted one so badly. With a budget of $500, we went camera hunting. I didn't really know what I wanted except that the camera had to have a decent macro setting and an optical, not digital, zoom. We ended up settling on the Kodak DX7590 - 5MP, 10x optical and 3x digital zoom.

And from the start, I was pretty happy with this camera! It took a little more getting used to, some pictures didn't come out quite right, but one of the first places I went to experiment with photography was the Jewett City Flea Market.

And the following week, NYC & Central Park, where The Gates exhibition was going on.

New camera total ♥!!!

And all was well in the land, for the most part. Of course I quickly discovered my Kodak's limitations (low light, blech!!!!) but I figured these were things I could deal with until the day I would ever be able to afford a digital SLR. Note, that day still hasn't come, but all will be revealed shortly.

My Kodak served me well; in its first year I'd taken well over 5000 photos. Working as a journalist will do that though; it was common to take 300+ pictures at a single event, and some days I would cover 3 events. Unfortunately, things never worked out with that newspaper even though I tried working there twice, and I ended up working on the web team of Yankee Retail. And I went back to exploring abandoned places, like Holy Land USA, Fort Wetherill, and a couple other places. The camera continued to serve me well and went to Egypt with me. And so did the Sony DSC-P31, but that did not return.

This photo of the Africano Cafe in the Cairo Mall was pretty disappointing. Like I said, my Kodak hated low light with a passion. 2007 ended up becoming the beginning of the end for the Kodak--it reached 10,000 pictures in January, and then in September things started acting a little funny. Pictures that I had taken right-side up were coming out up-side down. The camera couldn't orient itself. It began to lag. Finally the menu button broke and only worked in one direction. It stayed that way for a couple weeks and then failed altogether. I almost bought the Nikon D40 from Best Buy that Christmas...but decided against it, which was good because I got laid off in January.

So all through 2008, I've taken every photo with a broken camera which has been more than a pain in the behind. In September of this year, something happened to the lens and there's a permanent smudge in the photos when pointing at direct light. (That happened during my trip to Canada).

So...Christmas came and went and I joked that all I wanted was a new camera, blah blah blah. I didn't really expect it to happen any time in the near future. Insert sad Megan here.

Then last Sunday my grandmother called. "Rather than pay you a little bit of money here and there for computer lessons," she said "I'm going to let you get that camera you want...and pick out one for me too while you're at it." (Her camera, an Olympus something or other, has been completely broken since 2005 but it treated her well since 1998.)

So it took three days of really shopping around, comparing features and consumer reviews, but I finally picked my new camera, and it's NOT the Nikon D40 or D60. It's a Canon Rebel XS. Now the waiting for it to ship is going to be the hardest part!

Again, with a budget of $500--I got this one from Amazon for $445. And I picked out an Olympus Stylus 120 35mm camera for my grandmother (she didn't want digital.) I also picked up an IR filter, camera case and some other stuff, but I'm paying for that myself.

New...camera...!!!!! In exchange for computer lessons for the rest of my life (nevermind hers! lol)....I'd say that's a good deal! Computer lesson tomorrow. :)

Back to the beach!

So...sea glass is starting to show up again on some favorite beaches of mine after their annual replenishment of sand starts to go away.

I had a wonderful time at Bluff Point in Groton, during which I found all this including another marble and a green blown crowntop bottle mouth (1/2). The marble is a real beauty too, especially since I hadn't found much that wasn't common and suddenly kicked this out of a pile of pebbles. A lovely aqua shard washed up at my feet too :). I hadn't been to Bluff Point since a field trip I took in the 5th grade and brought home a dead horseshoe crab...which sat around in our computer room for about 2 years and suddenly it started to stink really bad...so I sent it on its merry way in the stream that ran through our property. I'll bet that's going to throw some archaeologists off in about 30000000 years when they find its fossil among trout and dead deer. lol

So...sea glass!





And of course, last week I returned to my beach that never fails to show treasures (EXCEPT it actually did back in September...but I figured I just showed up too early and the annual supply of sand dumped on that beach hadn't been depleted enough yet and replaced by pebbles. Sure enough...another 3 weeks went by and that beach had changed quite a bit...)

Check these out...my first coins found on the beach! It's fascinating to see what the sea does to them. Only one has a readable date (1989).




Another thing I did was finally get around to organizing urban exploration photos I've taken since Insane Bunkers crashed in Feb. 2007. I just kind of left them in folders and realized that I kind of forgot certain photos, especially some cemetery photos because my camera couldn't seem to orient itself. This was about a month before the electronics went all wonky and buttons stopped working or stopped doing what they were supposed to do. (IE: Press review...and the camera takes a picture! And the menu button just doesn't work at all...so I can't delete photos off the camera without hooking up my camera to my computer and doing it there....but enough about my camera woes.)

So...speaking of pictures forgotten...here's an interesting photo.

This is a street sign embedded in a tree, as seen in 2004. As far as I know, it's still there, and I'm pretty sure I have better pictures of it but I have no idea where they are. lol

The media says the sky is falling but I look out my window and see a beautiful day!

Renita from VintageMomCreations suggested we all take a step back from OMGfinancialcrisisDOOMDOOMDOOM and say a little bit about ourselves. My blog lately has been a bit too Etsy oriented. So...if you're just starting to read now, who am I? I'm Megan, I run Mannequin Reject Emporium on Etsy, work for the United States Postal Service on the side (read: Saturdays and Mondays and some days in between).

I like to wear crazy socks, because I haven't owned a white pair of socks since 1999. I do that on purpose, because I think white socks are boring. My obsession with crazy footwear spread to shoes instead of black and white converses in 2006. And this is my latest pair of crazy shoes, which are wicked comfy.

I go to the beach in the winter to collect sea glass and dig bottles in the summer. I make jewelry, zines, all kinds of art but two of my bigger passions are writing (since 1996) and photography (since 2002).

This is what the economy looked like the second-to-last time I went to the beach.
And this is what it looked like on my way back from Canada earlier in September.
These are a Jeep Grand Cherokee, a Dodge Viper, a Saab, and a Porsche. The Jeep was mine so I parked next to these cars (all from Ontario) to feel special. Come to find out, the 3 owners of these cars were all friends on a roadtrip through New York state ...who knows where they were going. I thought it was funny that one of them drove a Saab, because I do too.

It's a bit older. But more special. HA.

It was nice to see windmills in NY! It's about darn time the US embraces alternative energies.

I also love to explore abandoned houses.
This house in particular is one of my favorites.

Problem is, it's somewhere in New York that I've only seen 3 times in my life, because I don't go to that part of NY all that often. I first spotted it in May 1998 and took these pictures with our family camera when I was 14 (made my mother pull the car over on I-90 so I could get it.)...but as you can see, the quality was terrible because the house was so far away. I last saw it in 1999 and wondered if it was still standing today.10 years later, it's STILL THERE! I think it's a shame it's gone to waste, but it's still beautiful.

So...that's a little about me. Yes, I think the economy is just as bad as everyone else does, but I do think we all suffer from the spin the media has put on it. I love to find beauty in everything and no financial crisis will make me think the sun won't come out tomorrow or that I'll wake up on the wrong side of the grass. This winter will be cold, no doubt, but we have a roof over our heads. Maybe we'll resort to a diet of Ramen Noodles and cut out meat because we may not be able to afford it. And I picked up two free badminton rackets and a birdie, which my mom and I had a blast with last night. We don't play right (net? who cares?) but we have a great time :).

I'm back!

Okay....maybe I didn't go anywhere to begin with. HA. First off, my apologies for not posting anything in over a month. The post office had me running ragged (and they still do, just not as often. lol) Mom ended up in the hospital the weekend of Father's Day because she had an esophagus spasm (which has the same symptoms of a heart attack, so the hospital wanted to make sure it wasn't one). We DID go up Lantern Hill about a week later with my grandfather (see Indy in the last post!), so here's some pictures!

Resting just before the top (490 feet).

Over near the silica mine after coming down from the top, looking for quartz crystals!

Mom found a turkey buzzard feather, which made her happy :).

Strange carved stone in the woods bearing the number 3. An old railroad used to circle Lantern Hill until about WWI, so maybe this is a leftover from back then, or earlier? There are several old foundations around the base as well.
BUTTONS. These buttons came from Mig, (my mom's boyfriend's mother). She's a professional seamstress but said she had no use for these buttons anymore, and some of these even belonged to her mother. I spent weeks sorting through these picking out ones I wanted to keep vs. ones I want to sell (keep an eye out on Etsy, these buttons will be making their appearance shortly!)Oh yeah, and I went digging for an hour one day. I wish it could have been longer but all I found was half a doll head and a broken vaseline glass thing (heartbreakers!). I also found a tiny Listerine bottle.
FINALLY, I moved into my office area, so here's my new workspace! Yeah, it's crammed and tiny, but it will have to do. :)
This is the room I do my Etsy shipping out of, but that part of the room is not so photogenic at the moment.
To celebrate, I made some fruit-rollup "sushi" with home-made rice-krispy treat & gusher filling and fruit rollup. This was so much fun to make, not to mention now I know how to make my own rice-krispy treats (incredibly easy).

The following are some product photos I took for Etsy that are not just photos, but also art! How fun is that? Avocado Art Glass Fruit Bowl & Candy Dish, $25

Number 107, my latest Steampunk creation! $35

Kodak Kodascope Eight 33, movie projector, $50

And this beauty... I think I'll actually hate parting with it because it's so vibrant and colorful, not to mention one of my favorite colors! 1968 Remington Ten Forty Typewriter (works!) - $55.

So that's what I've been up to...busy month! I hope to post pictures of me outside the post office truck, but I actually don't have any yet. I'll be delivering my grandparent's mail tomorrow though, so they'll probably take some of me next to the truck :D.

Photo walks, missing purses, crystals, bones.

I finally got the Saab registered to ME. Which means the driving commences NOW. I've been driving around for the past few days with the sunroof open, and got my second sunburn of '08....though it's already faded nicely to a tan. Something tells me I'm going to get quite a tan this summer :D

So the day after the Saab was registered, I went for a desperately needed DRIVE. Yes, even with the price of gas the way it is. Actually I didn't go that far, didn't leave the state. Hardly left Plainfield, actually.

And I had a mission, anyway. Look for bottles. Didn't find any. lol

So I stopped at this abandoned church that Zack and I visited on August 8, 2003 around 11:00 at night after we'd gone to Dominos and ran into Ryan O'Day and his brother Kevin, sitting in a truck. Sad thinking back on it because Ryan died almost a year ago now and this week has oddly been full of reminders (I got my emissions test done at Plainfield Shell, where he worked and there's still a picture of him on the wall and the remembrance his boss wrote in the Turnpike Buyer).

If you want to see pics of the church the night Zack and I went, they're not posted anymore. lol.

So I took pictures of the church during the day. I don't know why it took me almost 5 years to do so, but here they are. I can't imagine the building is in too great shape because the door on the side was missing even when Zack and I were there.

I drove to Moosup in search of bottles. Didn't find any. Of course it doesn't help that I can't get my bike rack on my car and if I could take my bike places the car can't go, I could cover much more ground that much faster. Anyway, I took these pictures from an old railroad bridge, which has since been turned into a walkway, near Baker's Dozen. And Baker's Dozen reminds me of my last week of senior year, when Lindsey and I would go there after graduation practice.

Well, something I never noticed before was how the old mill here (now a rubber plant) still has this wooden walkway over the Moosup River. I wonder three things: 1. Does anyone really use it? 2. What's in there, anyway? Looks like storage. 3. Is it safe? lol

Turning back to where my car is parked, I caught a glimpse of the price of gas. $3.57. I don't think you can see it in this pic, but in the original you can.

Moosup was full of 19th century bridges. One of the bridges was relocated to Sterling as part of their town pedestrian path, and it used to look just like this one. Now it doesn't look anything like this bridge, which was a disappointment when I saw it finished in 2004. This bridge used to be unsafe & fenced off, or at least it was the last time I saw it up close in 1999. I was happy to see that now it's a safe walkway instead of a skeletal thing in danger of collapse.

View of the Moosup River.

This was the Brunswick Mill an abandoned mill that caught fire in 2000. Some kind of demolition/quarrying is going on here now.

When I was 13, one of my old friends and his stepmother used to collect crystals from here, but when my mom and I went to check it out then, we only found a couple and they weren't the fantastic ones that my friend had found. But that was 11 years ago, so I decided to poke around. I was still hunting for bottles, but all I found was a piece of a broken insulator under that modern bridge you can see in the background of one of the pictures. And I found these lovely crystals, right in the path. (They are smaller than they appear...in real life, the tiniest crystal is only about 3/8-1/2 of an inch. ) Still lovely though :)
And that was it Thursday. Yesterday I had my second interview at the post office (yes!) and they sent me for a drug test, which I did right after the interview because...well, with the price of gas, it just makes sense. Come to find out, the Norwich postmaster and I have the same birthday (what's the chances of that???). When I got home, I spent an hour an a half looking for one sandal (never found it) and decided to throw on some sneakers and head out to the woods in search of bottles.
The first place I went was the location of a mill which burned in 1809 in Sterling. Once this mill burned, the former Revere Mill was constructed in a different location on a different river around 1810. The Revere Mill burned in a spectacular fire in 1980 (the owner set it on fire to collect insurance, he later went to jail), and even though I missed that fire, my bus used to drive by the ruins until the whole site was cleaned up around 1994. Anyway, that first mill in Sterling is one that most people don't know about, and it was located here.
(Obligatory car shot, lol). There's not much at the site, though I am dying to get my hands on a metal detector and poke around. I didn't find a bottle or a single shard of glass...unless it was new...as in "tossed out the car window last week". I know there has to be SOMETHING here...I'll just have to poke around some more.
Did I mention this spot is the most beautiful in all of my hometown? One of the least-developed roads, and the only road full of cedar trees like this.
BONES. OMG. Actually it's a deer or a cow. I'm thinking deer.
And the last find of the day, a purse. It was about 100 feet from the deer/cow, tossed down the embankment (most likely tossed out a car window). You know that's what purse-snatchers do, right? My mom had found another purse similar to this near the bridge that was on our old property in Sterling, but whoever tossed it out the window missed the river and it landed on the bank. I dropped the purse off at Troop D in Danielson. It was just full of makeup, car keys, and some photos that you couldn't discern at all because they were wet and it looked like this purse was down here for a couple years. No ID. No wallet, actually. lol So creepy that it was near a bunch of bones but YES, THEY WERE DEFINITELY AN ANIMAL. And I've seen lots of dead deer skeletons (Cedar Swamp Rd. in south Sterling had 6 of them when I was in high school) and these rib bones look about right, from what I remember. That said, any etsians need bones for any projects? Is it sick that I'm thinking of heading out there to collect the bones to sell as supplies to artisans? Just creepy? Answers appreciated. :)

Oh, and for those of you who were reading when I found that jawbone at the beach, it's disintegrating quickly and now it smells fishy so bad I don't want to go anywhere near it. I think it needs to be sealed with something.

Well, it's Saturday. I'd say it's time for some yardsales :D.