Back at the renos

I've begun priming the trim on the house...FINALLY.

I scraped some of it and filled major cracks in some of the window sills about 2 weeks ago, but seeing as it hasn't stopped raining here for more than a few hours until monday I haven't been able to do any painting until now. I'm planning on doing it all hard core on the long weekend (rain rain go away) but I'm trying to sneak in as much prep and priming as I can here and there before then so I can just paint like a nutter when it gets to that point and do it all in a few days. It's odd repainting something...all that work for it to look the same! Well, OK it needs painting badly so it will look way better, but I like the colors there already, so why change a good thing? :)

I have the tinted primer and the Grey Fox grey paint but I still need a can of black spray paint for the mail box and a small tin of red for the door and a bit of red trim...with any luck it'll all come together and the sunshine will hold for a while. I want to stain the back deck grey as well, but that may have to wait for spring after I pressure wash it...we'll see just how I'm feeling about that when I get to it. I might be done painting at that point and wait for spring :) Thing is, I just need 3 or 4 solid days of painting and it'll all be done.
Here's crossing my fingers for sunshine...

Weekend pics-testing out the new ubercam

Now that I'm home and fed and watered (OK beered) I've been toying with the new camera to get the pictures off of it. Way more fun than cold meds and bed. Since I managed to figure out how to do that, I thought I'd give a little blurb about our weekend, complete with (ooh aah!) pictures.
This weekend J and I went up to Little Bear to visit my parents and relax. We had a great visit and despite the rain and thunder saturday morning it cleared up nicely for some hiking inthe afternoon and a canoe ride saturday evening after supper . I love to canoe and J and I went out for a few hours and went up and down the lake a bit on a lake nearly as calm as glass. It was beautiful. AND when we got back we had the last of the peach pie I made up after holidays in BC. Yum.

The next day the sky was clear and we got to go out fishing with my Dad and an old family friend for the afternoon. We went to Heart Lake where the fishing is good. To get there it's a 20 minute boat ride down to the end of the lake (the boat got up to 35 km/hr...windy!).

Once you get to the end of the lake it's a 5 minute portage with gear to get to Heart Lake. My dad keeps an old punter boat chained up there so we just need to bring the rest of the gear for a great day of fishing.

We caught our limit and had a bit of fun testing out the new camera. We tried to take a human VS fish eye view of our boat ride out into the bay to fish...it wierded me out to see J put the camera in the water, but they didn't lie to us...it really is waterproof!

And yes...girls DO know how to fish.
I am proudly holding one of the fish that I caught and brought in (without a net *ahem*) . It was a great day out in the sunshine in the boat relaxing and catching up.

Then we got back in time for a bit of a swim in the COLD lake before a quick supper with family. Then we had to head back home. It was a great time. I'm happy to say our new little camera is really cool. It takes great pictures and unlike the old camera, the anti-shake makes the ones I take actually in focus! The whole underwater things is rather fun too...I'm looking forward to playing with it some more :)
Hope you all had a great weekend.

...but I got better!

Now that the cold meds have kicked in I must say I'm feeling a bit more optimistic. FLoaty headed and giddy to be honest, but I'll take it. I've done my main experiment and will keep whittling away at my work until I can go home to some tea and a book.
I think Pride and Prejudice and Zombies will do...

So it's gonna be like *that* is it?

So far today (and it's not even 8:30) I have already:

-put salt in my coffee
-nearly fallen down the stairs (thanks cat)
-tried to wash my hair with conditioner
-run over a cute little mouse on my bike accidentally on my way to work (absolutely awful)
-spilt coffee all over myself here at work while trying to think so I can look like mrs stainy pants all day
-sneezed all over my monitor (I have a bad cold at the mo)

and perhaps the most annoying: I had to go in to work 2 h early to do a bunch of calculations for an experiment I'm starting today, which I have already done, BUT need to redo as I left my notes up at the lake where I had a blissful weekend, and they're no good to me there...*sigh*
I want a do-over...

Take a picture it'll last longer...

While away at Shambhala (which I still need to post about...I know...) some asshat stole my little backpack which had (among other things) my camera and gorilla pod in it. Annoying. You don't realise how much you use a camera until you don't have one.

Now my old camera (Canon Powershot A80) was about 7 years old and quite big and was sucking batteries like a sucky battery demon...so we'd been thinking about getting a new camera for next year. It was a good little camera, but it's days were numbered. This sort of pushed things up a bit. We've done a lot of web snooping and found that the Panasonic DMC-TS1D is going to be our new camera friend. The Canon version of this (D10) was good, but rather large and potato shaped...not really a pocket camera. It was neck in neck with the one we've chosen:
The Panasonic DMC-TS1 is much smaller than our old camera, it can record 2 kinds of video and takes photos at 12.1 megapixels. It is antishake, droppable and dustproof and waterproof to 3 metres (ie. me proof). It has a good wide angled lens, lots of features that even I can use...AND it comes in orange. I like. It is a bit more pricey than I'd initially hoped, but luckily we have been saving for this for a while, so we won't get too beat up about it. I will pay a bit more for quality and getting exactly what I want in a camera. It should do us another 7 or 8 years I'm sure. With any luck we can pick one up this weekend...we have to see if anyone local has one in stock. I can't wait to play with it. :)
I will post a nerdy little product review once I've gotten my mittens on it :)


Side Rant: Missing the "Positive" Consumer Experience: I've found lately that a lot of stores list an item but it's not actually in the store - that you can "special order" it in...which usually takes at least a week...and then is often backordered taking up to a month more. I know it is impossible to stock all things...but this is why mega stores bother me so much. Smaller specialized stores will be able to carry stock of specific things...I don't need to be able to buy a toilet and shoes while purchasing a can of soup. I can go to multiple locations. This is becoming more and more common...very annoying. The big box mall stores popping up (even here) all look the same. There is no push for quality...just quantity. And buyer beware. Even with the tiles I specially ordered to reno our kitchen, after the 2-3 week delivery period I got a call saying they'll likely be another month. I've made trips across town to stores to get other things I like only to be told I was misinformed or that I'd have to come back some other time or that they would be longer to arrive. People who work in some departments at hardware stores who know nothing about what they are selling.... I DO try to purchase locally from companies that respect and honour the customer and ideas like quality and customer service...but it is getting harder to see those things in life. Are you finding this too?

Anyways...enough of that.
Hope you all have a nice weekend. I know I will :)

Moon

We have an old theatre in town - the Roxy. The main theatre is painted up like a street in a small European town, with the roof painted up to be a sky that has blinking stars in it that twinkle softy. I love seeing movies there.
Last night, I had the privilege of seeing Moon there.

I will admit I knew nothing about the film before going, but J has been wanting to see it for a while. He figured it would never make it here (we miss a lot of the less widely released films) but we were lucky enough to be in the mood to go out to see a film when we found this was at the Roxy.

It's a great film -one of the best I have seen in a long while. It centres around the one living character in it, Sam Bell. Sam has a three year contract to work for Lunar Industries. For the contracts entire duration, he is the sole employee based at their lunar station where his primary job responsibility is to harvest and periodically rocket back to Earth supplies of helium-3, the current clean fuel used on Earth. There is no direct communication link available between the lunar station and Earth, so his only direct real-time interaction is with GERTY, the intelligent computer whose function is to attend to his day to day needs. With such little human contact and all of it indirect, he feels three years is far too long to be so isolated. He is beginning to hallucinate as the end of his three years approaches. All he wants is to return to Earth to be with his wife and their daughter, who was born just prior to his leaving for this job. With two weeks to go, he gets into an accident at one of the mechanical harvesters and is rendered unconscious. Injured, he awakens back at the station in the infirmary, and GERTY tells him that a rescue team will come to the station to clean up. After his recuperation, he makes an unexpected discovery. Because of his find, he begins to doubt everything, and slowly deals with the situation on his own terms...

This film is understated and brilliantly acted. Sam Rockwell (who up to this point I only recall as Zaphod Beeblebrox) plays his role very well. Kevin Spacey's voice as GERTY is also good fit. The dialog is wonderful - the computer GERTY really has a role in the story and it lures you in minute by minute as you discover what Sam does and how he plans to deal with the situation he is in. Subtle story with great depth.

I recommend you see it if you can - I really enjoyed it.

I also enjoyed the pie I had later. I'll be sad when the pie is finally gone...:)

Cha cha changes

Hullo.
Just got back from my brother's house and I am so amused that I had to pop in and post.
My brother likes to get J and I an anniversary gift...he is awesome. Usually they are odd and unique and full of thought.
This year his gift is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Mehee.

Turns out I live under a rock and haven't heard of it until now. And here's the cool part - there're ninjas AND zombies in it. I found the original Pride and Prejudice to be dry and far too fluffy to want to ever reread it again...so I definitely do think that some zombie fighting ninja trained sisters added to the tale will make it infinitely better. As I have no particular attachment to the clearly mutilated original novel, I am amused and quite prepared to wade in and give it a read.

Thing is, after a 2 minute skim I am already intrigued - the list of illustrations has image captions like:'"My dear girl" said her ladyship "I suggest you take this contest seriously. My ninjas will show you no mercy"'. Add to that an opening sentence of "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in posession of brains must be in want of more brains".

I will let you know how the zombiefest pans out. I am optimistic :)
I'm off to read with a cuppa.

Do the safety dance, HAH!

Ah yes. Work.

*sigh*

2 weeks off was heavenly.

At least I have some homemade pie to soothe me...mmm...pie...

I'm back baby!

Cheerio my good peeps.

I'm back from holidays...in a bit, when I have a moment I'll post all about it.

Just had to pop in and say hi on my way back to the real world...

MUAH!

Legends and myths

I have heard legends about a mystical land. A valley in the mountains where all good things are found...a paradise.
Shambhala, I believe they call it.
I intend to see if the legends are true...

Pamcakes

The other day I read a little Hellboy comic...and at the end of it was this little 2 pager simply entitled "Pancakes". It made me grin from ear to ear.

"He has eaten the pancake. He will never come back to us now"...

This morning I made some pancakes...:)

News Flash!

While they my look remarkably similar, salt and sugar taste very different.

Particularly in my cup of coffee.

Bleargh