Foto Friday

Time away from Blogger gives me time to work on photos. You may recall seeing a black & white version of the first one, below. I have tinted it in Photoshop. According to my memory these are something like the original colours, but my memory may be faulty. Men aren't all that great at recalling clothes, doncha know?



This one is supposed to resemble a stamp (please stretch your imagination for ole AC). Lanark is the county in which we reside.



Of course, you have seen many photos of Rocky. In the next two, I am playing with matting and framing.





The backyard from the bedroom window.



Neighbourhood winter scenes taken on recent walks.

Maybe I Really Am Dyslexic

A long time ago now, when I was still really a novitiate blogger, I wrote an entry called Saint Paul. One of the themes of that post was that I appear to be a trifle dyslexic, at least when it comes to mechanical things. I have always read well enough, at least to myself, but there are certain alignments of things that I don't seem to process very well. Then, about a year ago, I wrote about turning the thermostat on the fridge the wrong way. Unfortunately, my round-thing-turning-troubles are not ameliorating with the passage of yet another year.

The following picture depicts my latest defeat at the hands of said round things. The Mayo jar won't open (can you see the marks on it from trying?), and I've all but demolished the handy-dandy jar opener.



I really do know the righty-tighty-lefty-loosey memory hook and seem to be able to apply it perfectly well to hardware, but I can't seem to get the hang of it when it comes to round dials and lids. Just over the recent Christmas season, I wrecked the top to an expensive bottle of Bailey's by forcing it the wrong way. On the weekend, I turned the lid to the mayo jar righty-tighty before realizing the error of my ways making an adjustment — a too late adjustment, unfortunately. The damage had been done.

I had jammed the lid so tightly that nothing would budge it, not the rubber glove (which gives me a surer hand grip), or the super-duper-jar-opener. In fact, if you'll look carefully, you'll be witness to the fact that I applied so much force (little good did it do me) in my efforts that I managed to mangle and destroy said utensil (please observe handle). So, not only are we saddled with a useless and impenetrable jar of mayonnaise but with a broken jar opener as well.

As I said, I really get (no really!) that I should turn left to loosen things, but, somehow, I find it hard to grasp which way is which on a jar that circles forever around. I mean, it simply seems to my feeble brain that at some point left becomes right and vice versa.

I know that my lack of clarity in this makes no sense to the average reader, just as those ^&%$ lids make little sense to me.

Kid Anvilcloud

Fun Monday

The Very Nice Man had the notion to get as many people as he could to post some childhood photos today. Hating to be a party pooper, I decided to participate. Any excuse to dig through old photo albums, eh?



I've actually posted the above photo once before: a different version of it, however, back on Halloween, two years ago. I had remembered my first Halloween outing on the the day that Frisky (the dog in the photo) was hit by a car, and I was sent out on my first trick or treating adventure in compensation. I was four years old. You can get the whole story in My First Halloween. Since I have lost track of the previous scan, I decided to re-scan the photo and include it here along with the others. Besides, I think I look very cute in this one. We lived with grandpa and Uncle Charlie at the time, but, although you will see him three times in this blog, I don't have very many photos of Grandpa in the archive, and it is probably the only one of Frisky.

However, I am standing beside Grandad in the following photo. The other two people are Uncle Bill and Aunt Sadie. They were really cousins; my grandmother was their aunt. Because Bill was born without thumbs, his mother pretty well discarded him at birth. He was raised by Sadie's parents (a brother of Bill's birth mother, I believe). Bill and Sadie lived together their whole lives, whatever that may have entailed. This picture was taken in the dining room the grandfather's house in Montreal. The above photo shows the front steps.





I think I was either seven or eight in the Christmas when the above photo was taken. I'll guess at seven because I look pretty young sitting there on the floor. We had moved away from grandpa and uncle by then, and they were spending Christmas Day with us. It seems that I got a hockey stick for Christmas. That's Uncle Charlie sitting beside grandpa. Oddly enough, although there may have been other non-short distant relatives in England or elsewhere, grandpa was the only tall antecedent who I ever encountered; my parents and all of my other grandparents were diminutive folks. Uncle Charlie, his son, was the shortest of the lot, however. He was a really nice and fun-loving fellow though, and I have always appreciated the fact that he was in my life. Grandpa lived to be 78 years old, but poor Uncle Charlie didn't make it out of his fifties.

Below, you see me with him, quite possibly at another Christmas. Despite the recurring theme — hockey —— I do look a little older than in the above photo. I'll guess nine or ten. I'm thinking nine because I think I got a bike for my tenth Christmas. Obviously, the photo depicts that we were enjoying a very snowy Christmas that year, but I do remember another Christmas around that time when it was like this year —— no snow, very green. In fact, it rained on New Years in the year that I am recalling. I only remember it because I can recall my mother saying that it rained on New Years Day and snowed on Easter Sunday that year.



And that's my contribution to Fun Monday. I presume that you'll find a list of other participantsnts at The Electronic Firefly.

More Photo Restoration

I have been working with some more old photos. The first, below, isn't really all that old. I took that shot in 1973 when Butterfly was about a year old. This one was my effort from start to finish as I developed the negative and printed the picture myself. I only experimented with my own developing briefly. I really like the photo, but the original had some stains and scratches, so it was a good candidate for restoration. If you do go to see the original, you'll see a lot of darkness on her face that was very hard to get rid of. It was very painstaking work, but I like the result.

Once I had got this photo to where it is now (see below), I went through the exercise of tearing it up, scanning the torn pieces and putting it back together digitally. Some of you who dabble in photos might like to view the various steps here on Flickr.



The photo below is another of my grandfather and his fellow construction and/or bricklaying workers. I posted a similar photo taken in Montreal in an earlier blog, but this one was taken in New York City in the early 1920s. The family moved there for a few years because that's where grandpa found work. They later moved back to Montreal. My mother wondered why they did, but I expect it was for family reasons, and I wouldn't be here if they hadn't come back. There likely would have been another human in my place, but it wouldn't have been me.

This restoration was mostly about getting rid of the penned notes that were on the original. Strangely enough, most of them disappeared just by using the blue channel. Most of the marks didn't show up there but only on the red and green channels, so I discarded those. I include this information for some of you who will know what I'm talking about. Don't fret if you don't; it's not important. The original is also on Flickr.

No Words ...

... just a few winter photos from the past week, all taken within a few minutes walk from our house.

Sidebar Sounds

I have said here that I am excited about The Rankins Reunion Tour that is coming to town on February 07. They are crossing The Prairies these days: in Red Deer tonight and Edmonton tomorrow. I discovered this morning that they missed the first two tour dates when a sister died of a brain aneurysm. Apparently, Geraldine had been an original member of the band, back before I knew the group and they became famous in Canada. In the sometimes sad way of things, it has been seven years to the month that brother John Morris died when his car left the road and plunged into the ocean. However, after missing the first two days, the tour got going.

I have decided to play a Rankin tune, Fare Thee Well Love, in the sidebar (a somewhat sadly appropriate title it seems). As usual, I think this requires the Quicktime plugin, so if you don't use it, you'll not be aware of it. The player will appear at the top of the sidebar to the right, and you can turn it off or adjust the volume to suit. Perhaps, I'll update the song choice a few times in the next few weeks.

I was thinking that we Canadians are fortunate to have access to such music. Not only are we aware of the American scene, but we have our own as well. But I suppose that regions in the USA must also have their favourites that are not known nationally. Yes? No?

Paradise Lost

After we first looked at this house where we now reside, we went for a walk. We were wonderfully surprised to soon find ourselves in a park and by the river. What a great feature. Not long after we moved in, however, they started to dig and lay the infrastructure for a new subdivision. As you can see in the photo, it comes pretty darn near to the path. What a shame that they couldn't leave just a bit more room for nature and for us to enjoy it. It boggles the mind, but, then again, my mind is easily boggled.