Photography 365 Project: (Days 43 - 49)

Life is moving a little quicker than normal lately.  I'm having to be smarter with maximizing moments to work on photo projects, and blog, and the like.  Being down to just me at work is doable, but the pace has quickened and thus I'm always having to be "on".  I don't get the same emotional/intellectual downtime that having a constant partner to work with gave me.  I've also signed up for another photography class that starts later next month, so I'll deal with juggling that when the time comes.  It's only offered once a year, thus, I jumped on it when the chance arose.  But enough about the future, here's a little glimpse into my past/present:

Wednesday there was a treat waiting in the mail for me.  A friend who read a recent blog post I wrote about my relationship with God not only recommended a great book, but also bought it for me off of Amazon, bless her heart <3.  It's proving to be very worth giving up some of my sleeping time on transit to read:

Thursday I was training solo at work for the first time since my coworker left.  When the students dispersed for the morning, I took a moment to grab this shot.  This is the GOOD training room.  We don't get to use it as often as we would like.  Normally we're down in the basement of the hospital with no windows and a LOT of mice.  Yes, mice.  I'm so dreading my upcoming classes as the little traps that are set are not winning the battles let alone the war down there... Shudder....  Despite the gloomy title of this picture, I really am glad to be chained to a desk beside such nice windows.  They just tease when it's nice out:

Friday was Singles' Awareness Day.  Seriously, don't get me started on how much people complain about Valentine's Day.  When I was single, I just ignored it!  I don't get what the big deal is.  Then again, I never really was much of a romantic.  However, my husband is, and he's slowly winning me over to the sappy side.  He picked me up from the train after work with a bouquet of flowers and made dinner while I worked on getting the shot below (which would have gone so much faster if I had realized I could auto focus through my macro filters...).  We had fondue and watched the last StarWars movie that we didn't finish on the long weekend.  Then, being the great romantic that I am, I fell asleep during the movie around 6:30pm and didn't get up for oh.... about 16 hours.  Yeah, I'm awesome like that ;)

Saturday Nick dropped me off for worship practice which went surprisingly well.  I'm getting more and more used to playing on the grand piano and not freaking out quite as much.  He picked me up again after the evening service and we had the rest of the night together.  We picked up some snacks from the grocery store and settled in for a marathon of watching the newly released season of House of Cards on Netflix.

Sunday after playing (me) and filming (Nick) at both services we headed back for a quiet afternoon.  I edited photos (and wrote the majority of this blog post even though I'm not going to post it until Tuesday).  Nick worked on some video sequences he took during the morning and ran to pick up Sushi so we could resume our House of Cards marathon.

Monday was exhausting.  Between the emails that kept coming in and the vastly different learning speeds in my class room that day, I didn't even get a chance to stick a bit of breakfast in my mouth until 3:30pm.  I also had one piano student absolutely melt down into hysterics because I didn't know how to play the game "jinx" and apparently I was NOT supposed to keep talking/teaching her after she called it?  Oh the joys I still have to look forward to in life as a parent one day!
The good parts of the day, however, were 1.  I left work half an hour early to make up for missing lunch and caught the early train home which gave me almost a full hour to relax before my first student.  2.  My first student was new, incredibly friendly and bright, and I'm really going to look forward to working with him.  3.  My regular students actually practised for a change (which is always a nice surprise, haha!).  4.  Nick and I cuddled and watched a movie for the rest of the evening which we still need to finish on Tuesday.  Well, I also edited the below photo for a REALLY LONG TIME while we watched because it's not easy to remove a bright glowing Mac logo from behind a white sock!  PS and I are getting better acquainted through these long evenings spent experimenting on various ways to get it to cooperate with what I want, ha!

Tuesday thankfully slowed down a bit.  Not a ton workload-wise, but the work was quietly sitting on my desk in piles vs. asking me questions every 20 seconds!  I appreciate work that sits and waits for me to finish my thoughts vs. interrupting me all day long.  But I can't really complain when students actually WANT to ask questions and engage.  I'm just really thankful for a desk day after Monday since no one signed up for Tuesday afternoon classes.  I'm also really thankful for a desk day in this weather!

And thus concludes another week at a glance :)

Photography 365 Project: (Days 36 - 42)

Is it possible that last week already seems like a month ago?  I look back on these photos and they don't seem recent to me, yet they are.  

Last Wednesday (or Tuesday late afternoon to be precise) I found out my only coworker is being taken away until the Fall to work on a project.  My work load just doubled, which is doable, but... I sure miss her.  Add to this, the skytrain breaking down that day making me late for all my evening lessons on my busiest teaching night and Nick getting stranded in the cold for a while due to a car / communication mix up, and Wednesday was not my favourite:

Thursday it was so cold my hands would turn red within seconds if I didn't keep them deep inside my pockets.  BUT I did have a lovely walk back from a remote training location at work and even got home a little early that day, which is a rare bonus.  We used the extra time to pick up a few new friends for Bacon:

On Thursday night, one of Bacon's new friends didn't quite make it, so we headed back to the fish store on Friday to replace the little guy.  And boy, do I have a story for you.  Bacon decided to attempt suicide that night with a flying leap out of his tank.  You can read about his dramatic rescue HERE:

On Saturday, I left Bacon under Nick's watchful eye while I headed down to the States for a photography lesson / hang out with a friend.  Nick had a handful of guys over for games, so it worked out well.  These next three pictures are from the long weekend, which you can read about HERE if you like:

And lastly, today.  Tuesday.  Which feels very much like Monday after the extended weekend.  I've been super busy flying solo at work and also squeezing in some errands over lunch.  I had to pick up and mail out a prize for the winner of January's daily photo competition in the group I'm running that is doing this 365 project with me.  And I was very good, and didn't buy any for myself ;)

And now, I have a lot of work sitting on my desk, and lunch ended 5 minutes ago, so I'm signing out :)

Lazy Long Weekends

I think in a perfect world every weekend should be a long weekend.  BC celebrated "Family Day" yesterday.  As sentimental as that sounds, I'm fairly certain someone probably just said, "Hey, it's a long time between New Years and Easter without a stat.  Let's add one in February and call it..... something legit sounding.  I know - Family Day!".  But I'm not complaining!

Saturday I got up "early" (8:30 is early for me on a weekend), and headed down to the States.  I won a free flash trigger / receiver set and a one-hour Skype lesson online on a photography forum I'm a part of.  However, I happened to be friends with the person extending the offer, so I went down for an in-person pick up and visit instead :).  She sent two of her kids out for an adventure with their dad and we kept the most cooperative "subject" at home with us.  Here are some shots from the day practising natural light and then also flash for a head shot.

Sunday was my one super lazy day where I refused to leave the house at all.  Nick ran out to drop some stuff off at church and pick up some sushi, but I didn't even get out of my pajamas the entire day.  It was amazing.  We started watching all the Star Wars movies later in the evening, and pulled out our mattress to the living room to watch them on the tv with the proper speakers.

Monday we finished watching all but one of the Star Wars movies, and I had to be a little more productive than the day before.  Even though it was a stat, that doesn't mean I don't still teach piano.  Before I headed out for my first set of students, we had a nice fondue dinner.  I'd never heard of fondue before meeting Nick's family, and I have to say it's a favourite now!  I remember being so jealous when I watched him open a fondue kit for Christmas when we were dating, and now I get to enjoy the benefits of that gift as well :)

After I came back and finished off my last student of the evening, in keeping with the fondue theme, I cut up some fruit and pulled out some chocolate chips to melt.  There was no point in trying to go to bed at a reasonable time after a three-day weekend, so I just accepted the fact that coffee would be a necessity the next day, and we settled down with another Star Wars movie on the couch and worked away on our own hobbies while we watched (me catching up on editing and Nick making some clay game pieces for friends of ours).  We may have also spent a bit of time chucking the marshmallows at each other in an indoor snowball fight instead of eating them...  And that pretty much wraps up a perfect long weekend :)

Saving Bacon

Friday was an interesting day in the Froese house.  The previous day we had gone fish shopping to get Bacon some friends.  He's kind of pathetic so we thought maybe he would perk up with some buddies to annoy him.  However, a few hours after their arrival, one of them didn't make it.  So, on Friday, we took new guy's poor little body back to the pet store for a water test and a free replacement (since apparently our water is excellent).

We bypassed derp fish:

We also laughed and said no to minion fish:

We settled on something small and compact that Bacon wouldn't want to eat.  Anything too elaborate with pretty fins will only will start an all-out war with a fighting fish.

Bacon puffed out his chest a bit, but continued to lurk in the shadows.  That's him in the back on the left there:

But all was well.  Or so we thought....  Nick came home a few hours later from finishing some stuff at work and went to see how Bacon was getting along with his new house mates.  There was only one problem.  He couldn't find Bacon anywhere.  We pulled out the decorations.  Checked inside the filter.  We even looked around the table on the floor because Beta fish can jump.  (While I knew this, I have never had one actually leap out of a tank before).  He was absolutely no where.  He couldn't have just vanished.  He was too big to be killed and eaten by the new comers.  And he was just there an hour ago!!  I looked around and thought, "What if he jumped a full foot, cleared the far edge of the table, and then flopped his way along the floor and under the couch?".  No... But I had to check.  As I got down on the floor, I realized it's been a good solid year since I've cleaned under that couch.  There were dust balls, hair tumbleweeds and the like.  It was impossible to see.  I slowly reached my hand under and towards what looked like a hair ball.  It wouldn't be him.... As my finger tips brushed it and it twitched, I screamed and pulled my hand back out.  I started exclaiming, "It's him!  It's him!  Nick, get him out!".
We pulled him out on a sheet of paper and plopped his almost listless body into an ice cream pail.  Thankfully I had a few gallons of already treated water in the pantry for future tank changes that I quickly used to fill the pail.  We watched him and wondered if he had died in the last 10 seconds as he barely moved.  I tentatively reached out and touched him, and nope, definitely not dead!  We googled and found they could breathe air for a few hours and still survive.  A couple days even if their bodies were kept wet, which his definitely was not in all that dust.  A quick call to the pet store confirmed that he would not be able to untangle himself from the dirt and hair on his own.  We gave him a couple hours to come out of shock and then proceeded to remove all the dirt and hair slowly with tweezers throughout the night.  As he swam a bit, more would come loose enough that we could grab it and and tug it slowly off of him:

We warmed up a separate bowl and quarantined him for the night.  He came into the bedroom with us as it's the only room with the heat kept on through the evening, and the other fish needed their little heater back.  We were still scared he'd try again, so I covered the bowl with Christmas netting and tied it down with scotch tape and a ribbon.

He was okay.  We put him back in the main tank the next day.  His beautiful fins are a little torn and ratty and there's a cookie sheet overtop of the tank right now until I get a better permanent plan.  But hopefully he's not like a goldfish and has a better memory, and simply won't try again!

His middle name is now officially "Moron".  We love our little Sir Francis Bacon Moron Fish.  Even if he's looking a little rough for the next while until his fins repair themselves!

Photography 365 Project: (Days 29 - 35)

Officially 1/10th done!  

Wednesday was a typical, rainy, wet day.  The construction workers in the alley were probably wondering why I was crouched on the ground with my umbrella cast to the side, but I wanted to capture some of the misery.  This alley is a shortcut we use to get from our main office to our off-site training room.  This particular day, however, we were just having a quick weekly meeting for a boring project we're working on:

Thursday I posted a pretty heavy blog post, which you can read HERE.  Nick had our camera at work for the majority of the day, so by the time I finally got my hands on it around 6:30 that evening, my photography options were limited.  I thought this picture adequately summed up some of the day:

Friday I posted about running to the bank to convert money for our up-coming road trip.  I got quite a few shots of this little gang of birds, but I think this is my favourite.  You can see the rest HERE.

Saturday I was L-A-Z-Y.  After staying up waayyy too late, I had a nice long sleep in until after lunch.  Nick left early to go edit a wedding for the full day, so it was just me at home.  I had chicken wings for breakfast and popcorn for lunch.  Healthy, I know.  It was a stay in your pajamas and curl up in bed day.  This was especially easy to do since I only had the heat on in the bedroom and the rest of the house was freezing!  I was very productive on my computer, however.  I'm running a FaceBook group for this 365 project and we have monthly themes and competitions.  It's a little more work than I originally anticipated, but not too much.  It's up to me to organize collecting all the photos, sending them to various judges that I've contacted, working with ClickinMoms who graciously agreed to donate prizes, and answering questions as needed.  Since it's the end of January and the beginning of February, I had a couple hours of work to do with wrapping up our first competition and introducing the parameters for the next.

I also took the opportunity to cull, edit and back-up all of my photos from January on my computer.  Annnnddddd sort, resize and put in an order for prints to replace about 21 frames throughout the house.  It's a good thing I did all my piano invoicing on Friday for February, or I would have had that to do as well.  So, while I haven't left my bed except to get food and feed Bacon (our fish), I've been quite productive all things considered :).  I swear, when we eventually have kids, it's days like this that I'm going to miss more than anything!

Sunday was another relaxing day spent mostly in bed for me.  Nick ended up having to work for a few hours in the afternoon after church, which was unfortunate.  However, he brought Vietnamese take-out and my photo order home with him for the evening which was lovely.  They didn't make it into their frames (due to the intense laziness happening), but they're printed, which is the first step!

Monday morning was particularly irksome this week.  We have a really busy training schedule at the office for the next while, and I'm not looking forward to it.  We have a couple of days offsite as well, which means even longer commutes.  Again, not excited.  We spent the majority of Monday in "the dungeons" of the hospital teaching a class.  This is one of the long halls we need to venture down to reach the computer lab.

Tuesday, my wonderful husband gave me a ride to work as I needed to go for some training at a remote location and I wasn't sure exactly where it was, so driving was way easier than trying to figure out the transit plan.  I did, however, spend a tremendous amount of time finding my way back from that location to the office this afternoon.  It was sooooo cold outside to be waiting around for a shuttle, but it was bright and sunny so that made it worth it.  I grabbed some shots along the way, but the one that I ended up liking the most was actually the wall in our building's lobby:

And so ends week 5 :).