I need to start taking a camera with me - disposable or not - wherever I go. I used to do that all the time, and stopped for some reason. Maybe I got boring for a while and stopped doing interesting things, who knows. But a simple shopping excursion with SM in Chicago Saturday turned into several mini-photo ops.

First, we decided to forego mass transit and instead hunt for parking in the Loop down near State Street. Thank goodness we did, too, or else we would've missed the gang of bicycle-riding Santas on Michigan Avenue. We laughed heartily and thanked the gods for our humorous fortune. But then cursed ourselves for being camera impotent. We found decent parking and walked the icy cold walk toward State.

We then came upon the fun little German fest on LaSalle. Another pic-worthy moment. Damn. Again, had we El-ed in, we probably woulda missed the wonderful stench of beer and cinnamon. Hmmmm, yum. Our frozen bodies could take no more aimless wandering, we spotted Field's on the horizon and headed to our destination. As we were leaving, we happened upon SM's (oddly) favorite part of the day: a bunch of pigeons warming themselves by (eternal?) flame on the square. Like, 40 of them, all huddled around this one fire, shivering, coo-cooing and knocking into each other. Made me think, 'hm, pigeons may be flying rats, but damnit, they sure are smart.' Priceless moment lost to lack of shutterbug-ness. More priceless? The look of pure joy on SM's face in discovering them. Now, I really woulda loved a shot of that.

Finally, as we shuffled along toward Marshall Field's, I became nostalgic. Ah, Field's, a regional classic. Soon gone forever. To become Macy's. Friggin' Macy's. Here were likely my last minutes with the retail giant, and alas, I was camera-less. (Granted, they were a quick 6 minutes, as we discovered we would rather shoot ourselves than fight the crowd.) No photo of the Christmas tree. No photo of me Price-of-Righting next to the famed holiday windows. (The sentimental moment was a bit lost on Alabama-based SM, but she shiveringly supported my nostalgia.)

We, of course, had photographable moments later that night drinking. But as always, we were armed with a camera then. Why is it we as a drinking population always seem to have cameras at the ready when we're likely to do something stupid?...