So here I am at the end of my vacation time for the rest of the year. The past week went by super fast. I did get lots done though and I managed to get out to Burnaby lake again too. It was raining lightly, but it stopped just long enough for me to take some photos of the animals that I love there.





I got to see one of my favorite geese; that light colored Canada goose x snow goose. This time he let me get really close. Some other people were feeding them, so lots of geese and ducks came around.







Well, I should be in bed by now, but I stayed up late. No biggie.

Ciao!

Today it was kinda rainy outside. I slept in late and skipped breakfast (silly me). Later in the afternoon I went to Ikea to eat lunch (I love the Herb Baked Salmon dinner) and get some gift wrap, jam and some other goodies.





I really wanted to get some mini Christmas lights for when I make a little Christmas tree (so I can show it off to my lovely J.S. in Ontario and her really cool photographer friend S.P.) but they ran out of the blue ones that I wanted. No biggie though, I got some nice gift wrap and a few other items.

I also found this: What the heck is Glogg?! I had to buy a bottle of it just because of the name!





I know I'm a nut.

But isn't Ikea great?!

I had a great weekend. The weather was nice for me and I got out and took photos. On Sunday I met up with a guy who purchased something from me on Ebay. It was an easy exchange; I arranged to meet him at 5 Senses Bakery on the corner of Georgia and Howe St. in Vancouver. 5 Senses bakery is where my journalist friend J. and I meet for coffee about once a week. It's a great place to have coffee.

So after I dropped off the item to the buyer, I called J. on his cellphone and it turned out her was near by in Gastown so we met at the train station and walked around taking photos. My main prerogative was to try to get some snow shots of the north shore mountains for my lovely J.S. in Ontario to see. As it turned out though, there was a lot less snow on the mountains than I thought there would be, so I didn't really try to take any of those shots.

We ran into (not literally) a couple of people who were taking photos of each other. After briefly chatting with them, they allowed us to take over the shooting so that they could post together. They were a really cool couple who were staying at the Pan Pacific Hotel in Vancouver. The guy, M. Had an awesome camera! I was thrilled when I saw it because it happens to be my favorite one, the Canon EOS 1Ds. Not only is this camera a technical marvel, it is the veritable 'Epoch' of digital SLR evolution. It's the first SLR to give you the image resolution of a medium format camera. 11 megapixels is outstanding! But anyway, I'm going off on a tangent here, so I'll get back to the story.

Here's some photos of M. and J. the couple outside the Pan Pacific hotel:







After they left the sun was going down. I like the way the light looks near the end of the day down town. It reflects off the big buildings and those reflections cast light in places you wouldn't naturally see it. I'd love to do some portraits in this end of the day reflected light.

Here's some images that I took right near the end of the day:






The day before I headed over to one of my favorite 'tranquility' spots; Burnaby Lake. As many of you know, I have great respect and love for animals. There's almost always Canada geese there and many other species of ducks and birds.

One of the most interesting geese I've seen is this one. It has all the markings of a Canada goose, but it's much lighter in color. Where a normal Canada goose would be dark brown or black, this goose is cream colored. Perhaps it's a cross breed with a snow goose? This one was very friendly and allowed me to get close for this shot:



Here's some more:









So that was pretty much my weekend. I've got lots to do this week, but hopefully I'll be out with the camera again within the next few days.

Yay! I'm on vacation again! This is the final vacation of the year for me. I haven't planned next years vacation yet though because I always like to know what's going to be happening with friends first so I can plan accordingly.

Yeasterday it rained like crazy and they gave me a really crappy job to do. It involved pushing wheelbarrows full of one gallon potted plants up hills, through creek beds, down steep muddy slopes and over little silly planks. Bloody hell. But yeah, I'm glad that's over with (for the next week anyway).

Today it's a beautiful day outstide, sunny and warm. I kinda slept in this morning though, so I'm a little late getting my day started. My kitties were out of their regular crunchy kitty food (because I forgot to buy some last night) and so this morning they wouldn't shut up about it. I temporarily redeemed myself by giving them a can of tuna (They go crazy for that stuff). That will hold them until I get to Safeway this afternoon.

Oops, it's been a while since I updated my journal again.

To be honest, the past week or so has been weird--or I just felt weird, but I'm pretty sure my planets are exactly lining up lately. I've been tired, and especially tired of my work place (forestry). Last week I felt like there was this burning in my chest, this anxiety that I just couldn't seem to shake. I was off work all week last week because my knees were really starting to bother me again. So I don't know, maybe I felt guilty or something for not being there, or maybe I was just feeling bad about myself. All I know for sure is that I'm getting very tired of that place in a hurry.

Last week I did manage to do some things that made me happy though--it wasn't all bad. I had some nice photographic prints made for my best friend L. for her Christmas presents. I think she'll like them, they're big 11x14 black and whites of some Calla Lilies that I took photos of last summer.

It snowed here a little bit last night, but it melted by about noon. I'm actually looking forward to seeing some nice, fluffy snow. I'd really like to get some nice show photos this year or early next year. A few years ago I was in Summerland and it was late winter (I think it was about February) and I was driving around looking for some scenery to take photos of. (Back then I had this great old camera from 1972 called a Canon EF. She was a beauty, completely mechanical.) But the weather was dark and grey and it was well below freezing outside, so I couldn't find anything all that interesting. Then suddenly as I drove by this old orchard, I spotted something really cool! It was a few frozen Golden Delicious apples that were still hanging on the tree. I don't now how they managed to stay there as all the leaves on all the trees were long gone.

So I was awestruck by the vibrant yellow of the frozen apples, especially with the dark greyish blue contrast in the background, and I quickly parked the car and shot off some photos. Looking back now, I wish I'd shot some more variations of the same image, but I only shot two. Here's my favourite one:

So I'd love to see something like that again and of course shoot lot of pictures of it next time.

My high speed cable has been screwed up past the past few days. It drove me crazy because I couldn't check my email, and I'd just sold some things on Ebay on the weekend, so I needed to contact the buyers. Today it's finally working again, but it's been really unreliable. I'm thankful it's working for the moment though, because the service technician can't even make it here until December the 1st to fix the problem. Bloody hell.

Well, that's all for tonight.

Back soon! Ciao!

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