My Flip has the added feature of becoming extremely dangerous.  I like that.  Presently, the most dangerous element of my Flip is me flipping out trying to learn how to edit what I’ve captured on the Flip.  However, when spouse grabbed the Flip the other day, he insisted on pointing it toward my derrière—falsely assuming he was funny.  Acute danger filled the room.

An insensitive videographer was the last person that filmed my derrière while recording my daughter’s wedding.  She framed the parents of the bride as we each departed the scene of the marital vows.  It wasn’t a pretty picture—even in my gorgeous purple dress.

The Flip, for those wondering what the heck I’m talking about is a mini HD video camera, about the size of a cell phone.  It is so cool. It’s miles apart from my  Sears brand 8 mm camera that captured me giving birth to my daughter 36 years ago, as was that clunky old video camera that recorded stuff that is, shall we say, is soooo Eighties.

 I caught an elephant seal birth on my Flip—but it ended rather tragically.  Oh, the elephant seal mama and pup were just fine, but when a fellow docent came up behind me while I was shooting and asked me a question, I answered, “I’m catching this birth on video,” all while using my hands to gesture my excitement.  So? Well, it’s just awful because I didn’t stop the video while my arms helped explain what I was doing.  Watching it play on the computer screen, my tummy grew woozy with motion sickness.  I even broke out the Dramamine.  The sway, jerk and sway clips demanded cutting. 

After six hours of an unproductive learning curve in the MPEG edit file,  I flipped.  Besides unsuccessfully editing out the sway, jerk and sway at the end of the elephant seal birth, I also skipped editing my blue language.

Grand plans are in the works, however.  I thought to record a reading from my book, The Gathering Basket—the part where my character flips out while brewing a hot New Mexico green chili stew; perhaps spouse could demonstrate on his website why his sustainable home water filtration system is so great; and I could illustrate some blogs with my own video.  The possibilities are endless.

I’ve zoomed and widened photo frames since my newspaper days when my editor forced  a camera  into my paws, so I’m not afraid.  But this time there are computer terms I don’t understand—henceforth my own terms—most banned by the FCC.

So, watch out! Mama’s got a brand new bag!