Don't Judge a Book...

Here's a great article published on The Ooze awhile ago about The Passion of the Christ.

Pure Delight

For a Monday, it's been pretty good. I got home from work and decided to try some more Fall photography in the park behind my house. And everything just worked. The sun was blazing, and the leaves were pure gold. I found some images that I loved; some that I looked for and some that just materialized in front of me. (Like the ducks swimming in the lake.)

There are times when photography just sweeps me away. When I see everything around me through a lens, and it all looks like magic. Those moments are joy and happiness in it's purest form. When you wouldn't change even the tiniest thing, because at that moment, everything seems perfect.

That was the kind of photography moment I had today. So of course I needed to finish off my film (only 2 pics left!) so that I could take it in to London Drugs tonight and get it developed. I used the last 2 frames for a still-life and an abstract pic at home. And I have to confess, I was so excited to get my pictures developed that I could hardly sit still in my car on the way to the store! Like a kid at Christmas...

Alas, I will not be able to pick up the photos until tomorrow, as they were already full for tonight. Sigh.....

So I settled for buying a book :-)

And that was my fantabulous photography day. I'll let you know tomorrow how the pictures turned out.

Sunday in September

It was an absolutely beautiful Fall day today. The leaves rustled across the parking lot with the breeze, and the sun shone warm on my face. I went to the early service at church, and it was fantastic! The sermon today was the 3rd in a series, all based on music, and it was entitled "Faith that Sounds like Blues." The worship team did a few amazing blues numbers, aside from our regular worship songs. Then I went for lunch and was out and about all afternoon, enjoying the day. (Complete with ice cream from Dairy Queen!) I capped it all off with a productive yet relaxing night.

This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Aaarrgghh!

For some reason I am unable to add any of the links promised in my previous post. I will try again tomorrow...

The Missing Link

The Missing Link

I've added a few links....

Compassion Canada - because I sponsor a child through them, and I think they are an amazing organization. One day I would love to be able to visit my sponsored child...

The Off Broadway Dinner Theatre - because they rock! Seriously, the food is fantastic and the acting is top notch!

[Aside: While surfing the web, I happened across a site entitled Canada Only. Apparently if you're outside Canada and you have a hankering for some good old fashioned canuck food, you can order it here. The funny thing is, if you go to the Marketplace section, where you can order your food, you have to change the currency because "All prices in the Marketplace are in U.S. dollars." It's an all-Canadian site and still the prices are in US dollars?!? How much sense does that make? I mean, I suppose if you're ordering from the site you're probably not in Canada, but wouldn't it make more sense to have it in Canadian dollars and then convert to whatever the currency is wherever you are? Anyways...I didn't know that Maynards Wine Gums are Canadian. They have the funniest commercial right now....the one where the girl backs into the car? Funny. As an aside inside an aside, you can find reviews on just about anything on the web. Here's one on Maynards Wine Gums. Incidentally, it was posted by someone in Ireland. A former canuck??? Possibly ordered from the Canada Only site??]

The Motley Fool - a good place for unbiased financial advice that anyone can understand.

Fabulous Fall Foliage

Fabulous Fall Foliage

Aahhh...Autumn. The trees are awash in color, longing to be photographed. So out I went, in search of stunning Fall photos. With my camera bag strapped to my back, I hopped on my bike and took a tour of the neighbourhood. I started with the wonderful park behind my apartment complex, and found one shot along the bike path. Lying on my back, looking up through the lens, I captured this tall golden tree, flanked by the tops of two evergreens. With such a promising start, I carried on to a few more parks across the way. Alas, I was only to find one photo tonight. The sun was almost a bit too bright, and washed out the colors a bit. (Although I'm not complaining about the gorgeous weather we had today!)

I decided to check out my favorite spot next - the grasslands. I love to hike and take pictures out there, but hadn't been there yet this year. (That I can recall, anyway). I figured that with so many different kinds of trees and grasses it would yield at least a few amazing shots.
Well. It was not exactly the picture-paradise I'd been hoping for. Rather, it was bug central. So here's me, walking down the skinny paths waving my arms like a windmill, mouth clenched tight lest I swallow a swarm of flies, barely even noticing the beautiful riverside scenery. Needless to say, my hike did not last too long.

And now I am home. I hope to go out again tomorrow, perhaps into some of the older neighborhoods, to photograph this city that is daily changing. Today it is greens and yellows and reds, tomorrow browns, until the snow-white of winter covers the land...

Melange

I went to the library today after work. I love going to the library. I could spend hours there. Sighhh....so many books, so little time. I went to see if they had a particular book in - The Wealthy Barber. I've read it before, but I want to try and implement some of the guidelines into my own life. The book was not at the branch I was at, so I decided to look some other financial planning/investing books. There are a lot of them. And while I do know a little bit about investing, I would like to learn more, and be able to apply it as well. The problem with me is that I like to learn things, but I have a short attention span. I would like to read a few pages of a book and then know how to successfully invest my money. Or read part of a tutorial on HTML and then be able to design a really cool web page. Or learn a few chords on the guitar and then be able to solo with the best of them. So....I must learn to be patient and methodically study something, anything!, and then apply and practice what I know. Just one more thing on the "to do" list....

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I've been getting back into photography a bit. I would like to start a photo blog, but at the moment I do not have access to either a scanner or a digital camera. But hopefully I will have one or the other soon. Until then, stay tuned.

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I came across this interesting article the other day. (When I googled "Mary Poppins".)

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I added a new blog (dooce) to the list of blogs that I like to read. It can be quite comical and also quite touching. The last sentence of yesterday's post is one of those that just cycles through your brain because it is so poignant...."my soul wrapped inside the palm of a baby." Read the whole post to get the big picture.

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melange: a motley assortment of things (as per dictionary.com)

Oddly enough, the word, omnium-gatherum means the same thing. wha...???

Mary Poppins

I had an original thought today while dusting and cleaning up my house. I wonder if my mom is actually Mary Poppins? The reason being, her house is never dirty. Ever. I have never accidentally come across some forgotten layer of dust in some out-of-the-way place. At my house on the other hand, there are forgotten layers of dust in just about every room. That may be because I rarely dust. And the reason I rarely dust is because there are so many surfaces in my house! I started yesterday and still am not finished today. How in the world can someone possibly keep all of those surfaces dust-free? All the time? That's what got me thinking....Mary Poppins.

The View Is So Much More Colorful

Good Article.
link

An Investment in Happiness

You know, it's funny how inconsistent I can be. I'll drive to the store specifically to pick up toilet paper if it's on sale, and then pick up a bunch of other stuff that I really don't need while I'm there. So I decided today to make a concerted effort not to spend money unnecessarily. As a result, I talked myself out of buying everything that was on my shopping list tonight. Except for a gorgeous spray of yellow daisies for my kitchen table. How can I justify cut flowers that will just die in a little while? Well, I consider it an investment in happiness. They are so bright and cheerful, they improve my mood as soon as I walk into the kitchen. And while I am trying to be a little more frugal, I think that you still need to make room for those little extras that can mean so much.
Hey, they even made the checkout lady at Superstore smile!

Hang a Question Mark

Hang a Question Mark

"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted."
Bertrand Russell
English author, mathematician, & philosopher (1872 - 1970)

The Casino

So I've been watching the reality show The Casino, which is about the Las Vegas casino The Golden Nugget. One of the current storylines in the last couple of episodes is about a couple who wants to get married at the casino but is having some financial difficulties. Case in point, the running total cost for their wedding is at $113, 000 and they had only budgeted for something like $42, 000. Hellooo-oo?!? Perhaps they need to think about scaling back a bit. But no. Instead the groom-to-be decided to try and win some money to finance this wedding el grande. Instead, he lost $25,000. In 2 bets. Then he makes a comment which triggered a memory of a sermon I heard not too long ago. He says, "I don't know how I got here." In other words, I don't know how I ended up on the verge of a massive wedding with no cash to pay for it. To anyone watching the show, it seems pretty obvious how he got there.

The sermon I heard was about the paths we choose in life, and how the destination of a particular path is always the same. In the same way that a physical road will always end up in the same place, the paths we choose in life all have pre-determined outcomes. I always follow the same streets when I go to work, and in 6 years, they have never taken me anywhere but my place of employment. In the same way, if you choose a path of physical fitness, you will end up healthier than the person who chooses to eat bonbons and watch tv all day. Or if you choose the path of compulsive gambling, (some might argue that if people are addicted to something, they're not really choosing it, but that's a whole other blog), then at some point you will lose a lot of money. Probably when you can least afford it. The point of the sermon was to wake us up and make us realize that the path we're on will not lead to any destination other than where it's always led. And hopefully, if we sit back and figure out what paths we're on and make any necessary adjustments, we won't end up saying "I don't know how I got here."

Amen

If anyone knows the whereabouts of this restaurant...

Desk Drawer

In the first chapter of the book, True to Form, by Elizabeth Berg, the main character ( a 13 yr old girl) is describing all the things she has in her desk drawer. One of the last things on her list is a box of crayons.

I have a box of crayons that I intend never to use, I just like to look at them all perfect and read the names of the colors out loud, and I like to smell them deep, like I smell the test papers at school that have just come off the mimeograph machine.

And then she says something that I can totally relate to:

Sometimes I think, what if I died and someone looked in my drawer? I wonder what they would understand about me. Probably not so much - for one thing, they would get the crayons wrong. I think, actually, that none of us understands anyone else very well, because we're all too shy to show what matters the most. If you ask me, it's a major design flaw. We ought to be able to say, Here, look what I am. I think it would be quite a relief.

So true...

Passing Along a Comment

Passing Along a Comment

I received an interesting comment on my "simplicity" entry awhile back, and I thought I'd pass it along.

Interesting to me that people spend so much time trying to make their life so much more simple. Seems to me as though they are making it more difficult by "trying" to make it simple. What ever just happened to a breath of fresh air to feel pure contentment?

It's That Good

It's That Good

I just finished reading a fantastic book by Harlan Coben entitled No Second Chance. The storyline itself is not necessarily original - a guy wakes up in the hospital recovering from life-threatening wounds only to discover that somebody shot and tried to kill him; his wife was murdered, and his 6 month old daughter is missing - your typical murder mystery, right? Not so.
First of all, it's written in the first person, which I love. It seems like the character is actually talking to you, the reader.
Secondly, there are many unexpected twists, and a surprising ending. Now, the book I read previously to this one was a run-of-the-mill murder mystery with no surprises whatsoever. (Capital Crimes, by Stuart Woods.) It tried to leave you dangling at the end, but I just wasn't having it. That may have influenced my intense enjoyment of this book, because it was so much better by comparison.
Finally, it has that certain "je ne sais quoi." That creative cocktail that elevates a book from good to great. That elusive quality that you can't quite capture in words, so that when someone asks you why it was so great, the only possible response is, "read it yourself and you'll know."

Now, having extolled the virtues of this book, I feel the need to add a little disclaimer here. I'm not trying to sell this as the best book ever written, only to say that I quite enjoyed it. Sometimes I get a little carried away with words....

Enjoy!

Not So Surprising, I Guess

I noticed something tonight while I was at the library, browsing through the biographies section. The books on Madonna, Shania Twain, and various other music and movie stars were rather dog-eared and tattered, and the book on Mother Theresa looked almost pristine. Not so surprising I guess. But rather unfortunate, I think.

To Eat or Not to Eat

So it's 10:00pm and I realized that I forgot to eat supper. I pull out a package of Mr. Noodles, and the though occurs to me, "is it better to eat this, or not to eat it?" I mean, really, how much nutrition am I going to get from a package of dried noodles? I don't have the answer and I must go now, before my noodles boil over....

I Wanna Do It All

I Wanna Do It All

What a great song by Terri Clark....the bolding is mine....

I'm sitting in traffic
For the 5th year in a row
Wasting my time
Just to get
Where I don't even wanna go
I started jotting things down
On a krispy kreme sack
Everything I'd do
If I could leave this place
And never look back

I wanna do it all
Visit Paris in the fall
Watch the Yankees play ball
I wanna take it all in
Catch a few beads
Down at Mardi Gras
Start a tradition
Lay down the law
I wanna do it all

I want to drink tequila
Down in Tijuana
Say why not
When somebody says
Hey do you wanna
I wanna get my heart broke
Once or twice
Settle down with the love of my life
Rock little babies to sleep at night

I wanna do it all
Visit Paris in the fall
Watch the Yankees play ball
I wanna take it all in
Catch a few beads
Down at Mardi Gras
Start a tradition
Lay down the law
I wanna do it all

I wanna spend a day
Every now and then
Just doin what I want to do
When I wanna do it
Anytime I wanna do it

I wanna do it all
Visit Paris in the fall
Watch the Yankee's play ball
I wanna take it all in
Catch a few beads
Down at Mardi Gras
Start a tradition
Lay down the law

I wanna do it all
See Niagara falls
Fight city hall
Feel good in my skin
Beating the odds
With my back to the wall
Try to rob Peter
Without paying Paul
I wanna do it all
I wanna do it all
I wanna do it all

2lb Smoothie

2lb Smoothie

When I get home from work each day, usually around 4:45, I like to fix myself a snack. Often the snack of choice is chips, which I know, require little "fixing." But on occasion, like today, I prefer to make a smoothie. Now, smoothie-making is an interesting process. For me, anyway. You throw in the frozen fruit (a la Costco), and you use the "pulse" feature to chop it up into little bits. Usually there are no problems at this point. In fact, it may bring back memories of cruising on 8th St, revving your engine at the lights, knowing that you can beat that Chevette off the line at the first hint of green. (Or not. Probably not. Probably that's just me. And it's not even really me, cause I've never dragged on a public street.) Anyways, the pulse feature is fun. Then you throw in a little yogurt, and juice and commence the mixing. There are a few key things to pay attention to when using your blender. When it starts to whine like an engine that's red-lining, it's reasonable to think that something might be stuck. If so, open up the top and giving it all a good stir with the wooden spoon. Additionally, a faint burning electrical smell indicates that the blender needs a rest, so why don't you just pop off that top and do a little manual "blending." Replace top. Wait a few seconds. Commence mixing. Stop when you hear a ringing in your ears, signally another go-around with the spoon. Repeat several times. When it's just about done, add the ice cream. What's a frozen treat that doesn't involve ice cream? Give it an initial stir and finish up your blending. (I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't be easier to just chop up the fruit and then mix the rest by hand.) Voila! Your cold, fruity, treat! Thick and yummy. I like my smoothies thick, which is good, because that seems to be the only way I can make them!