Insurance Journal has purchased me a very nice digital camera so I can take pictures for the magazine at all the very exciting insurance events I attend.

Naturally, I had to test it out, which I did at the Cubs game yesterday and on a walk with Sporto in the early evening.

Here are a few of the pictures I kind of liked:

• A guy at the ballpark
• A kid’s scorecard
• The ladies look on
• Karen’s hair
• A view from Fargo Avenue Beach
• Purty flowers
• Sporto’s got it goin’ on

I doubt I’ll be posting photos with any regularity, as I usually shoot with my good old fashioned film camera and I’m too lazy to scan them and too cheap to pay for those digital CDs or whatever.

While working from home has lots of advantages too obvious to outline here, it also has plenty of drawbacks, which I guess came as a surprise to me.

I really do miss the camaraderie of working in an office, and I also feel there’s a limit on how much or how quickly I can learn my trade from home. Yes, I can call and e-mail my colleages around the country and I try to set up meetings as much as possible here in town, but it’s not the same as being able to pop your head into someone’s office and shoot the breeze.

That’s how you really learn in journalism, I think. That mentoring process is absent for me right now, and I’m not sure what I can do to replace or recreate it.

… but the man knows how to write. “Everything changes. Everything.” is a fantastic post about his search for a dented light pole in the Southern California town where he grew up. He writes:

Twenty-two years ago, late in the evening one night in March of 1981, to be specific, my mother was killed in an auto accident on Foothill Boulevard in a town called Claremont. This was one town over from ours. She was on her way home. She was killed instantly — at least in every meaningful sense of the word. And the impact of her car left a softball-sized dent in the foot-thick metal pole that held up the street lights at the intersection where she died.

Read it all. I wish I could write that well.

Oh, how I recall those simpler days (back in March) when I first suggested to Karen that she start her own blog at LiveJournal. I thought she would enjoy how easy it is, and thought she’d get a kick out of the neat little features like moods, user icons, communities and the like.

And she did. But it wasn’t enough. Soon she hit the harder stuff, nabbing a domain name and now using Blogger, which she plans to only use for a transitional period before moving on to Movable Type.

Which explains why she’s barely looked up from her laptop for the last two nights while setting everything up. So this is what it’s like …

At least for me, cycling is the best form of exercise. I had an old used bike fixed up and went on my inaugural ride yesterday. I remember now how much I love it. To ride along Lake Michigan on a beautiful summer day and feel wind on my skin … it’s a good thing, as Martha would say.

As exercise, I love it because I can go as fast or as slow as I want, I’m actually going someplace and doing something and seeing people, not sitting in a health club with a bunch of sweaty people around. And I don’t tire as easily when cycling, since what tire first for me are my feet and my butt.

Well, both are at rest — more or less — when I’m on the bike. And if I get a little winded I can just pedal hard and let the momentum take me for a bit until I recover. There’s less temptation to stop more often. It’s probably not the best form of exercise; I’m sure there’s some fitness trainer who’d tell me that much. But for me, for now, it’s a lot better than nothing.

And fun to boot. Life can’t be all bad, in spite of what goes on in the world.

Twelve young adults died when a wooden porch in Lincoln Park collapsed early Sunday morning; 57 people were injured. A high school classmate, Kelly McKinnell, was one of those who died:

Kelly McKinnell, 26, used her eyes and a gift for photography to affect those around her. Lynne Wellen, coordinator of the adult education program at the Latin School of Chicago, said McKinnell graduated from the Latin School in 1995.

She came back in 2001 to teach digital photography in the adult education program and was applying to schools to get a graduate degree in photography.

“She was a wonderful young woman. She really was. And she was a terrific teacher,” Wellen said. “Very full of life, very upbeat. An exceedingly positive young woman.”

McKinnell’s mother, Jean Ware of Barrington, said her daughter had just mailed her application to the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, Calif., on Saturday morning.

“She’s an only child … she’s my only child,” Ware said. “You just get numb.”

Kelly and I weren’t close, but everyone at the Latin School, which we graduated in the same year, was a lot closer than average because each graduating class had only 75 to 80 students.

She was a nice girl, and even back in high school — when she shot for the yearbook — an evidently talented photographer.

There’s a bigger spook to this for me because only last Monday I attended a friend’s birthday party, a barbecue held on a wooden porch. These are designed as walkways, not as places for scores of people to congregate. To be honest, it never occurred to me that it might not be safe, though there were perhaps only a dozen people at that party.

This is yuppie Chicago’s version of E2.

Let’s see, I moved in with Karen after the honeymoon in September. And finally — yesterday, to be precise — I got around to unpacking and organizing my CD collection, which is a big relief.

Now I don’t have to listen to the same 30-odd CDs I had set aside in a wallet. And Karen won’t keep asking me, “Aren’t you sick of that album yet?”

Thanks to The New York Times for relieving that heavy burden.

“Online Dating Sheds Its Stigma as Losers.com” is the headline on this Amy Harmon story. As more and more people have turned to the Internet for dating help, the number of wackos grows proportionately smaller. In Internet time, Karen and I met aeons ago — 1998.

I’ve always thought we had a head start over people who meet through online matchmaking services, because we weren’t really looking to find love online. It just sort of happened. The element of calculation and misrepresentation that has plagued online dating wasn’t at all present.

Still, it’s nice to know that online dating is becoming more acceptable — and more successful for the people who do it. If you’re thinking about it, here are some tips to consider.

I admit to not having read the paper or barely even any news on the Internet the last few days. At first it was because I had a big deadline to meet, but then I just looked at the headlines and couldn’t get excited enough to dig deeper.

Then again, I did read and discuss the Supreme Court decisions quite a bit. I guess a week of light news consumption might be considered heavy by the average, non-news junkie. I don’t know. I just can’t seem to muster the interest right now.

I’ve gone through periods like that with sports. And then at other times I find them endlessly fascinating and can watch “SportsCenter” three times in a row. Moods, I guess.

I like my trips to the barbershop to be quiet and meditative. I find all the buzzing and clipping and spraying and combing very soporific. Anyhow, since I’ve to take off my glasses and can’t see anything clearly, about the only option is to close my eyes and try to doze off a bit.

Not everyone takes this attitude, as evidenced by my visit to the barbershop today. Sometimes the barber thinks he’s got lots of interesting things to say, but one reason I go to Father & Son Barber Shop (1122 W. Thorndale Ave.) is because the barbers there stick to barbering. Occasionally they’ve tried to strike up a conversation, but a few monosyllabic responses from yours truly gives them the idea.

The customers, on the other hand, can be a different story. One guy in there today (a salesman, of course) subjects everyone in the entire place to his know-it-all personality. He came off like some combination political pundit, media critic, sportswriter and stand-up comedian. What does he think blogs are for?

I should get a discount for not making my barber have to pretend I’m funny or interesting. That’s not his job.

The Stris has saved the day by bringing me a spare space heater.

It’s freezing in my office right now. Some might be pleased by the moderate temperatures, but the thought of 50- and 60-degree high days as far as the forecast can see is very depressing to me.

Come on, spring. Why haven’t you sprung yet?