Gadgets are good. We open some of our presents on Christmas Eve, in keeping with K's family's tradition (I come from the "wait-till-morning" school). And so it came to pass that I'm now the proud owner of a digital camera.

Okay, fine, that's what everyone gets this year. But you need a little history to understand how remarkable this gift is.

The cameras I have owned have met the following fates (from most recent):

• Chewed up and left for dead by our dog, Buddy;
  
• Stolen while on a trip to London in college;
  
• Been run over by a school bus at my high school;
  
• Left behind at the end of summer camp. (This last was my first real camera; a genuine single-lens-reflex from Pentax, and I took black-and-white photos with it and developed them myself and everything. Man, losing that one was a heartbreaker.)
  

So you see, it's a leap of faith to give me a camera--any kind of camera, let alone a digital one. But on the whole, maybe I should think of it as a computer gadget. Those, I can make last remarkably well (says the proud owner of a Macintosh 128K).