I’m still trying to spread Christmas cheer right on into spring. At last years Christmas party we had an auction for which we donated our time or talents with the idea that co-workers might bid on them. It was a lot of fun and what I’d donated was a characture framed in a cheap Wal-Mart frame.

Well…I’m still not finished. But I’m making headway and it shouldn’t be long now till I’ll be able to deliver on my obligation. ‘Lucky’ chum Rico gets to be immortalized with his little dog Charlie. Caddy Bill Monkman chipped in so Rico could afford his bid so he gets thrown into there too. Progress so far;

If I had the time and inclination I’d fix the line of action and composition. Golf club action could be stronger and the dogs position is crowded and makes Rico’s stance unclear. I’m not sure if I need to throw the tones on there…may be better as black and white line. It’s losing something as I go.

I’m borrowing a 50mm 1.8 lense from my buddy Derek at work on his recommendation that it’s a great lense for shooting around the house and low-light situations.  Wow! I have to find one. The sharpness, DOF, and bokeh are fantastic compared to what I’m used to. A world of difference and all of the sudden I have some images I consider interesting. I’d like to get a 1.8D as Derek’s ends up being something like a 75mm with the 1.6 crop factor so you end up having trouble getting stuff in frame.

Few pics with it here

Usually its easy for me to enjoy life in my sterilized bubble of happiness, but today I witnessed something so horrid and vile that I couldn’t maintain my candy-coated view of the world and was ripped into reality.

Sitting on the fairly busy skytrain on my commute home a man standing near the doors caught my eye.  He caught my eye because he had his pinky finger jammed up his nose and was rooting around for something he’d apparently lost. Pulling his finger out, he took a good look for any goodies, gave it a couple of flicks, turned around and used the self-same contaminated hand and pinky to hold onto the bar we all use to keep ourselves from toppling over when the skytrain is unsteady.

Jolted to the core of my being I’ve considered bringing a healty supply of rubber gloves with me on my daily commute. Maybe just stay home till I can delude myself into believing that everyone is as concerned about having clean hands as I am…

It was Amy’s last day at work today before embarking on her maternity leave and we are really looking forward to her being able to stay home. We’ve both seemed more relaxed lately knowing that she’d soon be off. I think it’ll be great for everyone. So much prep to do before the baby comes. I have many of my own things on the go that I know will be difficult to get to next month so I’m hoping I can clear as many of them off my to do list as I can. Amy’s looking forward to getting some feet up time in these last ‘big tum’ days. I really don’t know how she functions at all. Human body is an amazing thing.
Work usually has me on the go but it seems a bit extra busy right now which I do enjoy-nothing worse than going to work and twiddling your thumbs. This does create concerns about maternity related time I have to take off though. I think it’ll be fine because all the busyness is caused by deadlines which should have passed by next month.

In a search to find take-out food we found ourselves looking on the internet for a Boston Pizza menu. You get a splash screen with a generous ‘enter’ button which doesn’t work. The smaller ‘french’ button works but alas je neh parlez vous franchaiz, nes pas? ou est la salle de bain? How do schools manage to teach so many hours of french and have students learn so little? (…nothing to do with the students I’m sure…) Googling “boston pizza menu” ended up a fruitless endeavor also. Finally found the locations and menu on page 2 of my original “boston pizza” Google search. Why do I have to go through that?! This is a large chain of restaurants. Why in this day in age and internet savvyness is it so hard to find a simple restaurant menu? Particularly of a prominent restaurant? I still think theres a huge need for someone to show restaurants the need for them to have an attractive presence on the net and to get their act in gear. Get them searchable and get their menus online so we can use a richer and more satisfying media to find food instead of the phone book. Maybe make a little money while they’re at it.

We had Pizza Hut.

This picture wasn’t taken with the new camera, but it may as well have been as I don’t know what I’m doing with it yet and have been getting similarly incomprehensible images from it.

The above image is from our 3rd ultrasound and I have it on good authority that it is in fact an image of a baby. Grandma swears she sees finger and toes, but I’m not there yet.  In order to aid me in seeing the baby in the blur I had a highly detailed artists rendering done up that helps greatly.