When I bought a new camera this past February, I was thrilled. I’d never owned a nice digital camera before and I was excited to teach myself to take, at the very least, good photos of brownies.

Then, after only owning it for a few months, I spilled Thai food sauce all over it. (Of course food would be its demise.) I was carrying leftover cashew chicken home from dinner, and I thought it would be a brilliant plan to put my naked camera in the bag along with the not-so-sealed container of greasy, oily Thai food. It took me longer than I’d like to admit to reconsider that decision, and by the time I had, the camera was ruined. I have a tendency to carelessly take risks with my property. Which is why I don’t generally buy myself nice things.

This incident happened a few months ago and as the days passed, I *really* missed the camera. At first, I used an old camera of Kevin’s to keep up with my blog photos. Then, that crapped out, as old cameras tend to do. Then, I tried to fix the Thai food camera, which did not want to be fixed. (It remains in pieces in a desk drawer.) Then, my good friend Billy generously lent me his camera. It’s a few years old, but it’s still a solid camera and it did the trick. But I borrowed it for way too long and since he reminded me recently that he’d need it back soon, I decided to take the bull buy the horns and buy a new one.

On our way home from the Berkshires yesterday, Kevin and I stopped at a Best Buy and spent a good hour looking at camera options, hopping online to double check our findings and to do more research, and talking to the surprisingly knowledgable Best Buy camera guy. He was super helpful and informative and he answered all my questions. In the end, I decided to get the newer model of the camera I broke. I broke the Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS, and the new one I got is the SD1200. It’s not much different from the SD1100, but it does have a couple new features that are really great and it’s easier to use too. I spent less than I’d planned to, which is always nice, and I also bought the 2 year unlimited warranty. So if I drop it in some other kind of sauce, they’ll fix it for free!

I cannot sing the praises of my Best Buy experience enough. The guy who helped us, Andrew, was amazing and if I can find the time, I’m going to write a letter to the store to let them know how great he was. I’ve never done that before, but he deserves it.

To avoid any future camera disasters, I also got a little case for her.

Here are the first two photos I took with the new camera, which I snapped on the final leg of our journey – the train ride from Kevin’s sister’s house back to the city:

I am pleased.