Do you like a cell phone with all the bells and whistles? Up until yesterday, I could have cared less for any extras on my phone. A phone should be a device to use for phone calls. I don't need it to play music to  me, check my e-mail or take photos, or even wake me up in the morning...

Well, yesterday I got a bit of a change of mind. We had gone to Vegas to get Carl's special shoes repaired. We dropped them off in the morning and were told to pick them up before 6 pm. So, with time on our hands, we decided to visit Red Rock Park. It is a good time of the year, with flowers abundant, making for great photo opportunities. I snapped away until the "low battery" warning came on. No problem - I always carry spares. I switched batteries, turned on the camera and this time got a "NO batteries" warning, and of course, the camera wouldn't work. Nothing helped: switching individual batteries (there are 4 AA), shaking the camera, stomping my feet - I couldn't make it work. With nostalgia I thought of my old Canon Film SLR: all manual and no battery needed. Maybe I will start packing it again! And then I remembered my cell phone. It does have a built-in camera - not because that's what I had wanted at the time, but I had liked the phone and it happened to have the camera, like it or not.

I spent the rest of our drive through Red Rock Park aiming my phone (it does feel absolutely silly...like maybe I'm trying to call E.T.?) at the scenery and trying to figure out how to make a telephone take pictures. At least it kept me busy enough to forget about destroying the real camera. And at the time, I didn't realize that it would take me the good part of two hours to find the secret of how to get the photos from the cell phone to the computer...

Here are three of the "phone photos:

We stopped at Wal Mart and I bought a battery charger that also plugs into the cigarette lighter in the car, and it charges 4 AA NiMH batteries in 15 minutes. I tried it out, and it works. From now on, I will be prepared with more than just an extra set of batteries.