Walking Together, Then and Now

Yesterday, I posted this photo of Danica and me  holding hands while walking through her campus.

I love it as is but wondered if I could successfully put us in a different and less cluttered background, and so I did by compositing it with a photo from the park that I posted recently. You may not know this about me, but I like to experiment with my photos to see what will happen if I do this or that.

Those are both my photos that I composited together manually, sans AI. However, I do confess to invoking a modicum of AI to help blend the two images together in their lighting and colour.

When I showed it to Sue, she opined that I should also find a photo of us walking hand-in-hand from her younger years. I soon found one from August 2009. If I were to have kept searching, perhaps I might have found an even better photo, but this one suits the goal.

Then, I did a similar thing, as above, by compositing us into a current image, one that you haven't seen posted although you still might.

It was a fun process with fairly good results, in my opinion.

Danica at University

It was recently Jonathan's turn to be featured, but today is about Danica  

She wished to come home for the weekend, so we snagged a ride with Shauna to see her university and residence.

As we approached the campus in the car, the Rideau Canal was on our right with the lowering sun lighting up the bordering trees. It was lovely, and I couldn’t resist shooting from the car.   

We found parking, and Danica met us (below) to escort us to her workplace and to lead us on a little tour around campus.

She works part-time in the campus store. I stood back for a moment and got a big picture with our crew in the middle, although they don't exactly stand out.

We walked around a bit of the campus: not the full tour late on a Friday afternoon.

The bag: both Sue and I purchased university apparel.

She held my hand for a bit or I hers. It was my favourite moment. We haven’t done that for a long time: haven’t had a chance to. 

As we walked around the campus, I whispered to Sue and Shauna that she is all grown up now, and she is such a sweet and wonderful person. My heart bursts.

She shares a townie with three girls, one being her friend from high school.

Opening a gift bag, thoughtfully provided by Sue.

Grandmother and Granddaughter

We went to dinner at East Side Marios, but by then both Sue and I were too dazed to snap any more photos. However, Sue and I took a terrible selfie when we got home and tried on our university duds. Mine is actually a birthday present from Dani. I am pleased that is says, Grandpa, although it is missing the adjective, proud. I also bought a t-shirt, but that is already in the drawer awaiting summer.

It Begins

Thursday was one of those perfect September days. Despite beginning with a low temperature of 4C/39F, the day became bright with a very tolerable temperature of 20C/68F — perfect for a light jacket. Simply wonderful.

Amongst a couple of shopping errands, we grabbed coffees and proceeded to promenade through the park.

The park is mostly green, but there were those early autumn tinges to appeal to the senses. Two were across the river.

We walked to the eastern end of the park toward the high school, which I carefully avoided getting in the frame. I let photoshop do its thing and remove other distractions such as cars (my! the students have a lot of cars), wires and trash bins.

Those trees are the start of a wonderful row of orange in front of the school.

Walking back toward our car on the western edge of the park, I decided that this tree was worthy despite it not being flaming red. I liked the path forming a leading line before curving away.

Colours should continue to creep and maybe even begin to gallop, and I will likely drive you crazier than usual with my annual fall foliage feast.

Jonathan Plants Spring Bulbs

At the beginning of the month, Jonathan gave me crocus and hyacinth spring bulbs for my birthday along with the promise to do the planting. It is now time for the planting, so on Wednesday afternoon he came over after school to complete the gift.

The first order of business was to plant the crocuses along the south-facing edge of the garden because that is where the snow cover first disappears. It wasn't easy to plant 30 bulbs in the narrow space amidst rocks, especially because it also involved ripping up some weed-barrier cloth.

A hard-working boy requires his sustenance, and a Monster energy was presented and accepted.

After the crocuses came the hyacinths. There are tulips strewn around the actual garden, so we decided to plant the hyacinths in the lawn around the front edge of the garden where passersby would see them. We figured that the foliage will be gone before or shortly after first mowing. We shall see. Digging 10 bigger holes in a more open space was easier for JJ than 30 small ones in the confined space.

He arranged the bulbs and began to dig the holes, one at a time.

A plug of earth has been removed. He rests the bulbs on top for the photo.

He planted tulips for us last year. Let's hope that this planting is also successful.

Remembering Lacey

This is the first anniversary of Lacey's crossing of the rainbow bridge. Although I certainly posted about her passing at the time, I left a few photos in the queue from the preceding days and weeks, just to post today.

She, perhaps, paid her final visit to my lap almost three weeks earlier, or at least the last of which I managed to grab my phone. While she was not my lap cat, she knew that treats might, somehow, appear.

She was Sue's lap cat. I remain thankful that Lacey was able to get her portion of loving up until the end.

She ate a good final meal before we took her into the vet. Her jaw was cancerous, so she had been having difficulty getting the food out of the dish. That morning I sat on the kitchen floor with her and rolled up bits that she could pick up. I remain thankful that I thought to do that for the poor, old girl.

The Moon at 4

With the current meds for my ear, my sleep has been quite fitful, even more than usual. It's mostly from the decongestants, which the doctor declared that she ordinarily would not like to prescribe to a 79-year-old man.

When I awoke to unowat at 4, I was stunned to see the full moon is a spot where I had never seen it, just over the trees before it would soon begin to dip out of sight.

It was 4am. I went back to bed chair. My inner voice whispered, “No, John. That won’t do. You really must get up and try to get a photo.”

I didn’t want to waken Sue by pulling out the screen, so I shot through it and also through the window pane that I could have opened more had I not been tiptoeing. I pressed the shutter, with the phone commanding me to hold for 2 seconds, or maybe it was 3. That’s hard, but I did my best  

Those were not ideal circumstances, but I tried regardless, and with a little help from photoshop to remove extra window reflections, I think the photo is good enough to post here.

I did, eventually, get back to sleep until 6, which gave me a total of 5 hours — not great but just about enough to keep me from getting too crotchety.

Spick and Span

In a recent comment (of course I forget to whom) I recently used the phrase (not technically a phrase but you know . . .), spic and span. And then I wondered, where the heck did that come from. We all know the phrase means very clean to the average person, or "spotlessly clean and neat" according to dictionary.com.

What I didn't realize until I did my bit an internet sleuthing as that it should be spelled spick and not spic. Of course it was Spic and Span in the old cleaning product. I say old because I haven't seen it on the shelves or at least not noticed it on the shelves for quite awhile.

What interested me was the history of the phrase, and I discovered that it dates to the 16th and 17th centuries when it came to mean new and fresh. That is because spick was the word for nail, which a workman would use to fashion something new. The span part probably dates back to Norse, referring to a chip of wood, as in newly carved wood. If you put them together, it seems that you would be nailing something new with wood.

Although its secondary meaning can still refer to fresh and new, over time the spotlessly clean and neat meaning has become dominant.

I wonder if it is one of those phrases that will become lost as we are succeeded by a generation with new and rapidly evolving vocabulary.

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I searched for the cleaning product and found that it can still be found at Walmart, Amazon and fine retailers everywhere. I must remember to look in my own grocery store.