Mostly Rediscoveries

I have my photos fairly well organized into folders by year and then by month. Sometimes, when I click back for whatever reason, I rediscover something that I had forgotten. I may or may not have posted the photo at the time, but even if I did, it feels new or at least very nice to see again.

I like this photo of Sue and me from June of just this year. It was taken by Shauna before she took us to the Neanderthal exhibit at the Museum of History. The trip was my Fathers Day present, so the day was special.

I am not sure how I happened to revisit this photo of Danica and me from 2015 on Flickr, but I love it. It was taken during one of our summer babysitting weeks.

This was another photo from another day of that same week: JJ hugging the bolder where James Naismith used to play in the schoolyard. A cutout of Naismith looms in the background. (Naismith is the fellow who invented the sport of basketball, and he comes from this area though he didn't invent the game here.)

Then there is this new print of an older photo of a tulip with two blooms on one stalk. I have printed it and showed it in the past, but Shauna remembered it and asked for a new print that she wants to give to a friend for Christmas.

Framed.

Jonathan's Portrait

After printing the Danica portrait, I decided to print Jonathan as well. I wasn't as driven to print JJ because I really liked and still like the photo that I have posted in my little gallery. The Danica one (top right), I didn't like as much, so that was an easy call, but I still don't know if I want to replace Jonathan's photo (bottom centre).

When it came down to a decision, however, I opted for the b&w version in JJ's case.

Maybe some prefer the colour rendition. Which one would you have printed?

I did alter the crop in printing by trimming both from the top and bottom. This allowed me to print it slightly wider that the more squarish version above. I chose to print it off centre, which worked well for Danica's print, but I think I should have centered this one. But I can live with it.

And . . .

Danica Printed

Not long ago, I posted several versions of my Danica portrait in Three Danicas Plus One. When it came time to print one, I selected the one that I preferred then (the second in that post) but modified it slightly by removing the distracting light-bluish area at the top left.

The original.

Same photo, slightly modified and printed.

Holding the print..

Christmas Parade Outtakes

Courtesy of Sue: AC taking a photo while it was still light enough for it to turn out to be half decent.

AC and Bob chimping an image (chimping = looking it over on the screen and possibly saying "ooh ooh" like we imagine that chimpanzees might do).

Sue and Bob had a good natter. Bob is my opposite. Strangely to me, he likes people and likes to actually talk to them. Sue likes people too. I just don't understand.

Bob took some video with his phone. I just used my camera and alternated between video and stills. I took more video footage than usual but still not a lot.

This lady was also happily using her phone. Being an older gentleman, I remember when the only thing you could do on a phone was talk. I used to actually like to talk on the phone, but that was a long time ago, and I can't stand it (using the phone) now. I blame my poor hearing in part, but only in part.

I previously reported that our parade consists mostly of trucks, so when dancers or bands came by I was tempted to try to video them. This is a small pipe band playing Jingle Bells.

The Celtic Kitchen Party

One reason why we were out in the cold for two hours or more for the Christmas Parade was to take in the music of The Celtic Kitchen Party prior to the parade itself. They are a band from nearby Kingston that agreed to play in the cold for at least a half hour and probably closer to 45 minutes.

Brrrr. Hats off to them, or I guess I should say, "Hats on."

This was their stage, as it were, on the edge of the courtyard of The Grand Hotel. We got Sue and her new coat into the picture. The new coat was just in time for this cold evening.

Time for a closer look at the musicians. Doesn't they guy on the right look cold?

Tighter shots.

The lead needed a wee drop of fortitude in the cold.

Out front were swag bags for the kids. You can see them in the first photo in this post. When this doll walked by, Sue invited her to take one. She put the hat on. If this isn't the cutest thing that you will see today, I envy your life. lol

As is not my general habit, I did take some video and spliced 4 of the clips together together into a 45 second mashup. You can see how dark it was getting by the end, and how both the musicians and their instruments were taking quite a beating in the cold. Good on them for persisting.

A Chippy Game

I may get back to the parade, or the pre-parade, but for today, I am posting photos from Jonathan's most recent hockey game — yesterday. It is not the best of teams this year, and they have yet to win. I knew this would be another tough game when the opponents scored within the first minute of play. It could have been worse; the final score was only 6-1, and the team did get that one goal, which is something. It is a strange position for JJ as his team came within a whisker of winning the league championship in both of the last two years. This year, they are winless.

Onto the photos. I do have a few of JJ this time, so I will post those first. He was playing forward yesterday, so I saw a little more of him in action than when he plays defence.

A few other photos.

Our goalie was a busy fellow.

Last but not least, we have a girl player who was right into it, so I feature her in the final two photos. She is really waging war in the second photo. It was a very chippy game with must jostling and stick whacking. In the final few minutes, we had a player injured (not seriously) due to a vicious hit against the boards, and they aren't supposed to hit at all at this level.

A Small Canadian Town, Evening Christmas Parade

I shot Santa last night, and the photographic results are not exemplary. But stayed tuned for a taste of a small town (okay, maybe a decent size town, but a town still) Christmas Parade on a cold, Canadian evening.

First off, we miscalculated. With the temperature not going too much below freezing, we didn't dress warmly enough. Yes, I wore a proper coat, but I didn't layer very well, and I didn't wear a proper hat, choosing to wear a Santa hat to keep in the spirit of things.

But when you're out in temperatures below freezing, when there is also a wind, for two hours, you can get darn cold. In point of fact, I didn't warm back up properly until I went to bed many hours later. This is in spite of wearing a hoodie under a think sweater as I watched a hockey game and pored over my photos. My core just didn't warm up. I wonder what my body temperature was at by the end of the parade?

I guess it's true; there's no fool like an old fool.

We got there early because there was to be a Celtic music band at a certain corner for a half hour prior to the parade. That put us near the end of the route, so after the official start time, we had to wait for almost 45 minutes before the parade passed by.

So, by the time the parade ended, I was literally shivering.

One more mistake, photographically speaking, was that I was so intent on listening to and photographing the band, that by the time I was ready to choose my spot for the actual parade, there wasn't a good spot to choose. I ended up a row or two back, so I opted to pull out the LCD screen, tilt it, and hold the camera way over my head to grab whatever shots that I could. (Even holding the camera high, you will see people and other cameras in the way in the pictures.)

So no: in my position, in the cold, and with the camera held over my head, I just did what I could. It was dark, so I had to set the camera at an insanely high ISO (sensor sensitivity), but I still got some usable, if not stellar, images.

After all of that palaver, here we go: A Small Canadian Town, Evening Christmas Parade.

A dog dressed in a seasonably suitable Christmas coat as we waited for the parade to reach us.

The core of such a town parade is trucks, small or big: many trucks, maybe 50 trucks. They were all decorated. This one was pretty impressive.

An occasional tractor.

Sometimes horses.

Other animals show up from time to time, usually walking, but this one was riding in style.

This isn't Macy's in New York, or what used to be the Eaton's parade in Canadian cities like Toronto (I don't know who sponsors those big parades now that Eatons is long gone), so forget fancy floats for the most part. Mostly, it is people sitting on the flat beds of trucks.

But there are exceptions.

Finally, Santa came. Due to my brain freeze, I didn't realize it for a moment while I busied myself shooting the lighted reindeer. But then I got some photos. He was a bad Santa though, lol, because he never looked to our side of the street despite having to linger a bit at our spot.

And that, dear folk, is A Small Canadian Town, Evening Christmas Parade.

Caturday 9

It does my heart good when Danica visits and Lacey grants her some lap time, for we wondered if this cat would ever be petable, and here Danica is almost a stranger.

It turns out that if you sit in this chair, you may get visits, particularly if you are female. The only time that I sat there in Sue's chair, I didn't get a visit.

Going to her still doesn't work all that well, but when she comes to you, good moments can happen. This occurs to me only in my den chair and not all that often. This is partly because she confiscates that chair more than I do, and when she can't have it, she tends to go elsewhere.

I do get some nighttime visits, however, and she is petable then if I bestir myself to do it. We are rather unlikely to every get pictures of that, though.

A Short Walk Not Far from Home

I dislike winter tires. They add noise and feel different on the road. So, I like to put off having them installed, but the need seems to get earlier in November nowadays, so I went in on Wednesday. I could have used them a week earlier when we had our first snow, but I didn't have to drive far in it, so all was well.

I had a little walk around near the tire place with my compact camera while I waited for the procedure. Although it wasn't too cold or windy, I didn't gad about for very long. But I did take some pictures, so I'll share them now. Keep in mind that this is less than a mile from home.

It was garbage day. This is how the tire place gets its trash to the curb. All of the cardboard and anything in the blue box will be recycled.

Fire hydrants are made ready for winter by affixing yellow 'arms' that will stand out above fairly high snow banks.

Just to the left of the hydrant was a stop sign or at least the warning of one up ahead. There is a trail that you can see faintly to the right of the paved path and left of the road that runs for a long way. We have cycled it, or some of it, in the past.

I found this cherry picker just off to the left behind the tire place. I realized that its purpose is to help with the installing of signs,

There is a new subdivision on the other side of the road. There are new subdivisions going up all over the place as people look to our town for less expensive housing than in the city. But it is still expensive enough lt me tell you. I didn't go past the sign in case they were serious although there are people living beyond it. You can see a house under construction in the background.

New subdivisions don't get mail delivery to the door. This has been going on for some time. Our house is more than twenty years old, but we have boxes too. Except our boxes aren't as efficiently designed as these. Ours are higher but narrower. There are boxes for parcels below. If you get a parcel, they put the key to the pertinent parcel box in your mail slot. Once you obtain your parcel you return the key via the outgoing mail drop.

Farther up the street, a new hotel is being built. It is probably needed in this growing community. There are only two older and not terribly appealing motels on the highway and one smaller and older but very nice hotel in town.

Well that was just a little but uninspired look around the area quite close to home.