When I first started record­ing video to post on this blog I used a web­cam.  A cheap one at that. The res­o­lu­tion was awful. In a moment my rosy com­plex­ion would turn Yoda green.  Then, I bought a dig­i­tal cam­era that also had video capa­bil­i­ties. Unfor­tu­nately, nat­ural light­ing is required as the flash isn’t steady when film­ing.  Recently, I adopted a Droid.  Sure, I could read the man­ual from cover to cover and watch the handy dvd that came with it, but why do that when I can sit for hours tin­ker­ing with it and get­ting utterly frus­trated. Only at that moment do I con­sult the man­ual… or the 22 year old who works for me.  The Droid has a cam-corder app.  See­ing that thrilled me to pieces! Plus, there’s light­ing! The qual­ity isn’t too bad once I fig­ured out how to adjust bright­ness. Prior to that my face was so illu­mi­nated that my nose lit­er­ally van­ished off my face.  Trust me, with my honker that is no small feat.  The prob­lem arose when I tried post­ing directly to Youtube.  The file size was too large to go the tra­di­tional route. Wi-fi was required. But I HAVE wi-fi.  We got it so we could use Net­flix through the Wii. A good part of Fri­day was spent on trial and error.  I’d record; then record a shorter ver­sion. I even tried talk­ing faster. The video sim­ply would not trans­mit.  Now I know how Luke Sky­walker felt about retriev­ing the mes­sage out of R2D2. By the end of the night I sounded ter­ri­bly scripted. Plus, I’d adjourned to my bed­room to record as not to get the noises of my son’s video game or tele­vi­sion pro­gram in the back­ground. Oh, and let us not leave out the howl­ing of the goofy cat. You ask what’s so bad about being in my bed­room? The God awful, hideous wall­pa­per. That’s what. It looks like a 1977 Rose Bowl float threw up on my walls. This is a rental that I’ve lived in for five years.  I don’t bother to ask to paint/strip/whatever because it’s dark and my eyes are closed when I’m in there.  OK? Point being, it is not an attrac­tive back­drop for a blog post­ing unless I’m con­duct­ing some retro, creepy porno involv­ing old ladies.  Which I AM NOT!  So, I tried to hang some­thing on my head­board to dis­guise the heinous wall­pa­per. What resulted was the appear­ance I was attempt­ing to hide some­thing. Bleah.

This is the result of resort­ing back to my dig­i­tal cam­era video fea­ture early in the morn­ing before the cats and child could dis­tract me.  No, the light­ing isn’t great. Yes, the back­ground is beige. In this house you either get pan­el­ing, beige blinds or fugly as hell wall­pa­per. Or a dirty kitchen — I’ve been bak­ing. Shup!

If you’d like to be part of the next DEAR MARISSA, then send me your ques­tions! My email is wildhair65 at gmail DOT com

Dear Marissa: Just Bring It!