• Was feeling nostalgic for flying today. Looked up the tail number of our 1954 Piper Tri-Pacer and it’s still registered in Delaware to the second owner (it’s shared) after us. I hope they enjoy flying it as much as we did.
• Voices are rather important to me. If I’m missing people, I will call to chat, and hearing their voices makes it all better. If I don’t like someone’s voice, it takes sheer willpower to tune it out.
• I am not of my generation. I don’t like wearing t-shirts, jeans, or trendy footwear. What generation do I belong to? Not a clue.
• Near the top of the list of keywords people use to land on my site: “bad plastic surgery” (What gives? I haven’t mocked celebrity abuse of plastic surgery since the first year or two I started writing here)
• My father wanted me to become a teacher. I don’t do it for a living, but I enjoy it when people ask questions because it is one of the best ways to test how well I think I know a topic. And if I don’t have an answer, I look it up. Learning and sharing knowledge is vital.
• I’m shooting a photographer’s wedding this weekend. If I were a doctor, would I be nerve-wracked treating another doctor?

Photo: with Kermit in Paris, 2007

Speaking of drowning, this photo to the left has been my Flickr icon for five years. I like it as a thumbnail because it looks like I’m underwater. In reality, I’m standing over my camera, trying not to fall over. Maybe I’ll get back into the self-portrait phase again to experiment, something which I do from time to time but not with any regularity. I think the last self-portrait series I attempted was in Georges’ basement studio in Quebec City, over Easter Weekend. I borrowed a floppy hat. I love hats, but I have a large head (go ahead, I can take the jokes — I’ve heard them all!) and volumes of hair, which makes it harder to find a hat that fits and my noggin’ overheats quickly with all that insulation. Finding the Perfect Hat is a lifelong mission. This was my Perfect Hat for a long time, but it disappeared somewhere in the move between West Coast and East Coast.

… I know, the detergent fumes are getting to me, I’m rambling.

Chelsea, 3 months. I shot this in Vancouver two months ago, she doesn’t look like this anymore!

Today’s random thoughts while editing: whoever coined the phrase ‘sleep like a baby’ either didn’t have a baby or had a nursery rhyme baby that went magically to sleep at the sound of a music box and woke up exactly eight hours later. If we all slept like babies we’d be waking up every few hours to eat and maybe check for messages, then fall asleep again in a pram pushed by someone else after the umpteenth feeding of the day. Imagine how our days (and nights) would change!

I may sleep less than the average person due to my nutty schedule but at least all the slumber I do get is top-quality and I’m generally not cranky when I’m tired. I just get a bit punch-drunk (or slap-happy, as one person told me). I’d rather be the Sleepy dwarf than the Grumpy dwarf.

Ice cubes to the rescue! It would work better for the emergency-ness of the photo if the ice cube tray were red, though. Eh, what am I talking about, I’m a little delirious in my non-air-conditioned third-floor apartment. I broke down and used the fan last night, it was sweltering and I was trying not to fall asleep while working. It feels like I’m melting into my computer chair.

Cat in heat. Temperature heat only, thankfully! They both loll about the house, sprawled with their paws out, but only Xena lies on her back. Beano still insists on sleeping right up against me, despite the heat, while Xena prefers to sleep a foot or so away. I think they miss me because I’ve been gone so much recently.

Late last night I put in a load of laundry because I was down to the Last Resort clothes… you know, the items of clothing best worn only around the house and not in public? I was nearly out of work clothes, too. When I was downstairs I noticed the door to the basement was unlocked and it was in the midst of renovation. I ignored it and should have picked up the clothes when they were done, but was too tired and left them for this morning.

This morning I went to fetch the clothes and got LOCKED OUT — the lock to the basement had been changed while I was out of town and I didn’t notice because it was dark. Alas, I was one door away from clean clothes! I contacted the property management company, got the handyman’s mobile number and left a message. As of 10:30pm, I am still waiting!

They look pretty calm now, but I heard they went berserk when the earthquake hit at about a quarter to two this afternoon. Xena was tearing around the house and Beano probably went into deep hiding.

I didn’t even feel it at all.

I was making myself a fruit salad in the kitchen at The Firm, slicing strawberries and minding my own business when one of the IT guys walked by and asked, “Didn’t you feel the earthquake a couple of minutes ago?”

I work in a company full of pranksters so I let that one go by. Earthquake? In Ontario? Last time I felt an earthquake I really FELT it — stuff was falling off the shelves. If I’d felt the building move, the first thought would be a bomb. I was certain all sirens would start blaring and the police state that we’re currently working in would escalate into a full-on emergency situation, complete with alleged links to terrorism. But nothing happened. Oh no, untrue: someone in the office claimed to have farted.

I was in Vancouver during two earthquakes, the first one was at night while I was fast asleep and it moved the bed across the floor! It was so forceful I thought a small airplane had crashed into my apartment building on Beach Avenue. The second one wasn’t much later, maybe only a year or two, and it was during the day when I was working from home. I remember thinking to myself, ‘Eh, earthquake”, and holding on to the shelf so it wouldn’t tip over but that was only because the second time I was wide awake and could comprehend the situation. Being woken by an earthquake is enough to give a person a heart attack.

Fancy wrote about it, she was much closer to the epicentre.

Oh, and there was also a tornado nearby tonight.

What’s next? Maybe the G20 fake lake will flood?

One of my favourite photos from last weekend, I shot this at Jones Beach after the airshow was finished. I’ll be heading for another beach with my camera pretty soon: I found a very good (less than $400 total) flight deal to Barbados and will be celebrating my 38th trip around the sun with some fresh coconut and a touch of rum. (Just to clarify, “fresh coconut” is not a euphemism for anything.)

I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has donated to my Relay For Life campaign, which is now at the $345 mark towards my goal of $500. I can’t thank you enough for your generous contributions! It means a lot to me.

Still editing and uploading in my free-ish time of course, but the rest of the photos can be viewed as [thumbnails], or better yet, as a [slideshow] or in the Pictobrowser below. (If you are marked as a friend or family in my Flickr, you will see more photos than the general public.)

It’s been years since I watched the NHL playoffs, but it’s pretty hard to avoid them while living in Canada. When I was in Vancouver the buses had “Go Canucks Go” alternating with route names, the scores are all over the broadcast media, and screens everywhere — airports, intersections, any large monitors — show stats and scores. I’ve turned into a lousy spectator, it seems. Unless I’m photographing an event live, I lose interest because the screens just don’t do it for me.

I shot this picture in the courtyard of my friend’s workplace in Vancouver. They play ball hockey to blow off steam. (A great idea, don’t you think? There was a ping pong table in the back part of my office and the guys had tournaments, but now the area is being used more regularly and they had to fold up the table and store it. ‘Tis a shame. In a company full of men, there is much steam to blow off.)

Not my average Sunday, that’s for sure. Aside from photo editing most of the weekend, I met with a client today at the nail salon for a manicure/pedicure. Only my second pedicure ever (the first one was the night before her wedding), and I feel obliged to tip big since my feet are otherwise completely neglected. I have enough calluses and raggedy cuticles to keep them busy twice as long as everyone else. I’m sure there are men who take better care of their feet! Plus, I have NO IDEA what I’m doing — I stand there like a numbskull until the shop ladies tell me what do.

I know what you’re thinking: how complicated can it be?

It’s very complicated, people. First of all, there are a MILLION bottles of nail polish on the wall. Maybe the salon should take a pointer from McDonald’s — there’s a reason why McDonald’s has such a limited menu! And while no self-respecting nail salon would only have five bottles of nail polish to choose from, it sure would make the CHOOSING a lot faster! Even though nail polish bottles are clear, the polish has all sorts of attributes found only at closer inspection: frosty? glittery? must scrutinise. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

And then there’s the chair. It’s a massaging chair with a bubbling foot spa, and one lady’s tackling one foot while another lady’s tackling one hand. They each have a scary-looking tray of stainless steel implements not unlike you’d see in an OR, each telling me to switch to the other appendage — foot up please, other foot please, you move your hand too much — while my head is turned towards my client, listening intently to her speak over the din of foot-spa-bubbling and instructions in Vietnamese-heavily-accented English.

Guys have it easy: they meet clients on the golf course. I don’t play golf, but I don’t think there’s any way I could convince a bride to have a meeting on a golf course, anyway. Maybe I should suggest a meeting at an Apple Store; there are four in the GTA. And so it goes… maybe I should get used to this salon thing and call it a business expense. Hello CRA?

The next challenge this afternoon was what to do while the nails were drying. I didn’t have my DSLR with me, so I decided to postpone any sakura expeditions until tomorrow morning when the crowds are at work, and run some errands instead. First stop: nearby IKEA. For food, seriously. I haven’t been to IKEA in years but if there’s one food I know they’ll have, it’s meatballs. IKEA food is really good value for money; it’s the closest thing and cheapest alternative to home cooking. The trick is to go near closing time after the parents and kids clear out.

I have to eat before I grocery shop, otherwise I engage in this terrible habit of buying hot food from their baking stations (chicken, potato wedges, etc.) and eat while I’m shopping. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve shown up at the cash register with empty containers that get scanned and immediately chucked. If you’re in a Sobey’s and see someone holding a box reading the label with one hand while eating a chicken wing or a samosa with the other, it’s probably me. I am a chronic label-reader and this makes grocery shopping very, very SLOW. Which means I have to eat dinner while pushing the shopping cart because otherwise when would I eat dinner? Besides at IKEA, I mean.

I am the Queen of Eating On The Move: I eat on the subway, streetcar, in my car, even walking down the street! When I travel solo, which is pretty much all the time, I don’t eat in restaurants, I get food from takeaways and eat in parks or public spaces or I eat from street vendors. (Which makes it easier to strike up random conversations with strangers.) If it’s good enough for local people, it’s good enough for me. I’ve only gotten gastro-sick once from eating street vendor food, in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico in 1998. I got a little too adventurous with the hot sauce and never ventured far from the bathroom for days.

The title of the post is from this afternoon’s discovery while driving between IKEA and the grocery store. Instead of turning east on Lakeshore, I went straight on at Kipling and found the marvellous brick buildings of Humber College’s lakeshore campus. Until now I had no idea where it was, and now I know. Lots of construction happening, but the brick is good for photo ops. I went for a short walk along the shore and shot these pics with my phone during Golden Hour. Glad I took the long way home today, I’ll be sure to stop by again with my DSLR. (More pics and a video after the cut.)

Video: of course, “Take The Long Way Home” by Supertramp, a live version performed by Roger Hodgson (shot in the late 90s?) with lousy video quality but pretty decent audio. Hearing any of Supertramp’s songs reminds me of my “coming of age” time in Banff and getting a music education from the Quebeckers.

Strange Days

Grenadier Pond, High Park.

Duck Season

Also High Park, but a different spot.

Excess Baggage

4:35 am, Georges’ studio in Quebec City. You can probably tell by the excess baggage under each eye. You know, after experimenting with studio lighting, I’m kind of warming up to it. I’m still not a big fan of flash, but I’m trying to get over it by teaching myself how to use it more effectively.

It’s funny how Xena always perches on the same shoulder. Such creatures of habit. It’s a rare occasion that Xena stays still long enough for a photo; she’s a captive subject this time, if I stand up. But it takes some co-ordination to hold the phone and use the mirror reflection at the same time while getting Xena to look in the right direction.

In other news, I’m transitioning back to the Land of the Living: I went to work today. (Insert terrible zombie pun here.) I’m sure my desk neighbours could’ve done without the hacking, but at least I do the bulk of the nose-blowing away from my desk.