For my next career, I want to get into precision hedge trimming. These are at least 8 feet tall. Who does this stuff?

Speaking of which, I think it's time for a hair cut.

And, O.K., maybe I was a little hard on my poor old 18-200. Yeah, there's a lot of distortion - it's a zoom lens - what was I expecting? But it's pretty darn sharp and you've really got to love VR. I did some "test" shots (sitting on my couch, shooting my bookshelves illuminated by a 60 watt standard bulb - fancy, huh?) and was able to get reasonably sharp photos at 1/8 sec. at 200mm (300mm in 35mm terms). You're not supposed to be able to do that. You can't do that, handheld, without VR. So, I'm just going to have to work with it, and get used to its unique "charms".