Two Unusual Images

Over a period of time, Sue was asked to take photos of various parts of herself dressed in various outfits and then combine them later. She took the photos and combined them in her own way, but I decided to see what I could do in Photoshop. I used a recent photo from the trail and then superimposed the various clothing images, including one of her head.

The boots and pants went well enough, and the head isn't too bad, but I couldn't make the top fit as well as I would have liked.

Sue had taken photos from various positions and focal lengths. I hope her group does a similar project next year because we will know to take the four photos using a similar pose and focal length. It was interesting to try to put it together like this, however.

Then for something very different, while poking around on FB, the app showed a base photo of me and asked if I wanted FB (Muse) to make a poster. Well, why not? I am often in a fog, so to speak. 

I didn't know that I was about to become a star in a movie, but here we are. I had no input into this creation. The app just did what it did.

Oh my goodness, it just offered to make another. What⁉️ It sees me as old⁉️

I will not keep doing this, but I wanted to see what the app would come up with. lol

Gomez and Grandma Again

Sue and I indulge ourselves with coffee out, probably too often. It is always plain coffee, and a drive through Tim Hortons is a reasonably inexpensive $4.83 (tax included) for 2 large. But when this ↓ came up on Facebook from our other favourite cafe, Dark & Deadly, with a Movember fundraiser included, we couldn't resist.

Gomez

Our Gomezes

The book is for signing if you so wish, but no one bothers or at least hasn't for quite some time.

It was quite yummy, but by the time we got to the bottom, it was seeming to be too sweet. It was a special treat, but we can purchase three rounds of coffee at Tim Hortons for the same cost, and we enjoy them very much.

Oh, I found a version of the annotated photo of my grandmother that I posted about yesterday. Except the font makes it difficult to read. I may have to reprint the image some day. I have reposted the text below for now for your elucidation.

Charlotte was born in Glengarry County on March 11 1880.

She married Arthur Joseph Quinlan in 1913, and gave birth to

Mary Elizabeth Quinlan in 1915. Charlotte died

in Montreal on December 21 1949

And Barbara wanted a photo of grandma's embroidery. My mother had this one framed a long time ago, and it has been hanging in our spare room for all of our 21 years here. Sue also found another piece, but it is somewhere out of sight for the moment.

Dipping Into the Old Photos

I have been doing a little writing and gathering for a family project of sorts, so I thought I would post some of the recent photos that have become involved. Of course, some, if not all, have appeared in this blog in times past. Once I added the first five photos, I went on to add three more from times my past time.

This first photo wasn't really part of said project, but it has also come to my attention recently. Sue recently came across a piece of my maternal grandmother's embroidery and suggested that I put her picture with some info on the back. Me being me, I don't have a copy of the annotated photo that I made and printed, but here is the base photo.

Charlotte Ann was born in Eastern Ontario in 1880 and died in Montreal in 1949, two years after I was born, so I have no memory of her. Her framed embroidery still hangs on the wall of our spare bedroom.

I do remember her husband, my grandfather Quinlan. We lived with him until I was 7 years old. I am sitting with him and his dog Skippy on the front stairs of his house in Montreal.

Here I am with my dad and other grandpa, Rayner, in front of grampa's garden, maybe in 1952. We are dressed in suits and ties, so it almost had to have been taken after a Sunday dinner after church.

In the late 40s, my father was a lay preacher. I have this photo of him and my mother with a few from the little congregation in Gananoque, Ontario.

Now for a photo of Mom and me, from the late fifties, possibly 1958. Dad was also in the original of this Christmas photo, but I needed one of just mom and me from that time for the project, and it wasn't a good photo of him anyway.

While, I have not required the next photos for my project, I think I may as well as well go on. Phillis Croft was the longest living of my grandparents. She followed us when we moved from Montreal to Toronto, and for a number of years would spend the day at our place before returning to her rented room at night.

Which leads me to one more photo since it completes my whole family. My Uncle Charlie was a diminutive bachelor who only lived into his early fifties. I loved my little uncle with the good sense of humour.

On my wedding day, May 17 1969, my friend took a picture of my with my family before we headed to the church. Yes, everybody was there: the whole clan of four. We are not a much larger family almost 60 years later, there being just 6 of us. There could have been two more thought marriages, but those marriages did not pass the test of time.

Uncle Charlie, Mom, and Dad with me looming behind.

Bark Bark Bark

Apparently, this is how Jake carries on whenever I leave the house, and he simply does not stop. He'll stand near the door and carry on incessantly. Press play for a sample.

It was a bit of a learning experience to send Sue's phone files to my phone and from there to get them to my computer. After that, I merged the sound files with the still photo and uploaded to Blogger.

I don't why he does this, for we are not exactly bosom buddies. Sue and I usually go out together, but the one time that she left Jake with me, he did not carry on.

We continue our twice-daily walks. The morning stroll is often away from home as in the photo. The afternoon walk is frequently just up the street. Night walks have been abandoned. Dog is sent to the backyard ~8 o’clock and that's it until morning − very early in the morning I am sorry to say.

Sue and Jake on the nearby trail on one fine recent morning.

Sue made a collage to send to Jake's humans the dog is his various sleeping spots.

The Larches are Turning

I repeat this every year, but the last stage of autumn for us is the colouring of the larch trees. Larches are coniferous trees but not evergreen. They turn colour and drop their needles, and so they are also deciduous trees.

There are several larches in our local park, and I will undoubtedly post their progress over the next few weeks.

I think it is correct to call these trees tamaracks, and I usually prefer that name. All tamaracks are larches but not all larches are tamaracks.

The bench is nestled between two tamaracks. One of the trees has turned colour, but there are just tinges of yellow in the tree to the right of the bench.

From the bench there is another larch tree on the other side of the pond.

There are a few others in the park, and I am sure that I'll be back for more photos.

From the park we continued along the trail on a very nice day. As is the usual case, Jake met dogs. As is not the usual case, we spied a cat coming out of the background bush. I don't think we need to worry about it appearing form the wild bush, for it seems very well taken care of. Despite the wild background, there are houses that back onto the park just behind me as I snap this photo, and I am pretty confident that it belongs to one of them.

Now that I think about it, this may very well be the same cat that we met on the trail more that a year ago.

Caring and Sharing

It was Danica's reading week, so she spent it back home but mostly working with not much reading. She booked a little time to visit her grandparents who due to age and diminished capacity neglected to take any photos.

One thing we did do was to share our grocery card with her. If you recall, we won a $250 grocery card from our winter plow guys. What better use than sharing it with a college kid to help her stock up. There were also instructions to buy brother some treats too.

She hit the grocery store on her way out of town and sent the pictures that I asked for.

That left a hundred dollars for our use. We think that would make a nice donation to the food bank.

Oddly enough, on the same day Amazon Photos sent me a link of a slideshow of me and my girl. After much rigmarole, I think that I have embedded it here, but I did not find the process easy. I hope it actually plays for you, but I won't know until I press Publish.

Halloween Busyness

On Halloween Day, I looked out my den window and seemed to see neighbour’s garage open. The yard was full to overflowing, but were there more Halloween creatures inside? I had to go out and look. By golly there were.

the very busy yard and into the garage

I don’t think it would be possible to fit one more piece into that space.

the new garage addition this year

At the end of the Eve, he posted this photo of people milling around his display even after they had run out of treats, having only 234 pieces to offer, which is most neglectful.

Another local house said they ran out after giving out 300 treats. Meanwhile, others in town had few treaters; Shauna only has 12 come by her place  

For our first few years here, we tried our best for Halloween, but so many non-neighbours came to our townhouse street for a treat-grab that we gave up. We’d shutter the house and sit tight. When the grands came along, we would hand out treats at their place while the parents took the kids out. Then, it was back to being shuttered.

This year, I did purchase a box of 40 chip bags, of which we put 38 outside after commandeering 2 bags to accompany a sandwich lunch. The youngest kids were coming around before 6, so we rushed to get the box out. I don’t know exactly at what time the box became chip-less, but it didn’t last too long, so we shuttered again.

The next day, yesterday, neighbour already had most of the display down and was muttering something about his wife not allowing him to start on the Christmas display yet.