ok, so i went shopping last night.....rather than sit and wait for the fighting to start......scw and acw and i found several bargains before we moved on to best buy to look at digital video cameras.......i picked up the one for $1199 first...it was so small that i could barely focus my eyes through the viewfinder.....and the controls were so small that i could barely press them without pressing another control close-by.....hopwever, the quality of picture was much better than the ones for $599 and $699, which the best buy guy suggested 'and better suited 'for my needs'....these both do sepia, and stills, and will download onto a computor equipped with the right software.......he said that the still were not printable quality,,,and said that for the price difference we could get a decent video camera and a decent still digital camera for less than the $1199 camera.......hmmmmm....we just need to convince grandma that herb would have wanted us to be completelt decked out digitally.....my dad would have enjoyed the digital age.....i have fond memories of him splicing movie tapes together(movie film rolls were notoriously short) in order to make a smoothly progressing vacation film........he bought himself an apple when they first became available to consumers, and spent a great amount of time teaching himself how to use it......anyway, we liked the way the jvc felt to hold...much easier to hold.......now we must scour the consumer reports to make a decision and present the price points to grandma.....speaking of herbert crown, scw wore a completely osu color scheme to school today...scarlet and grey.....herbert would have been so proud........though he would not have wanted scw to actually go there, necessarily........herbert would have actually read the college mail coming to our house.......brown, amherst, yale.......herbert would have also been inclined to go to their web sites and learn about each school (whether they have architecture, for instance) .....i have thought a lot about herbert in recent days.......especially as we are on the brink of war.....he spent 2 years in occupied japan...where americans were not welcome at all.......i cannot imagine what my grandmother must have felt...shipping 3 sons off to war....vernon to india, herbert to japan, and richard to a navy ship somwhere in the southeast.......i occupy my anxiety with finishing seabiscuit.......................