Retired

Dave and I attended two retirement ‘parties’ this weekend; one for my mom and one for his dad.

My Mom worked as a nurse at a psychiatric hospital since she graduated from nursing college. She started off in the ward (working shift-work) and when I started high school she got a promotion to Outpatient Nurse. She would work in three different locations throughout the week helping many different patients. My mom is a very hard-working and dedicated person who helped teach me to be the same. She deserves her retirement and I hope she enjoys every minute of it. To celebrate, my Dad arranged a surprise dinner for her at one of their favourite places, the McIntosh Inn in Morrisburg. She seemed very happy to see all of us there (Tyler, Lynn, Dave and myself). We then went for a walk near the water in Morrisburg. It was a really nice evening – I am so glad my Dad set it up.

Dave’s dad retired from the fire department, in which he was a Captain. This is obviously I very honourable job as he risked his life on a daily basis to help save others. He too is a hard-worker and I know this is where Dave gets his work ethics. He will be spending just over half of each year here in Canada and the rest in Florida – that will definitely lead to a happy retirement. To celebrate, Dave’s parents and sister came to Ottawa for the day. We went out for lunch and walked around Hogs Back park and did a little bit of browsing around a few stores in Nepean. I really enjoyed the day and of course took tons of photos of everyone (and a few geese).

Cirque Vacations

You may have noticed, that with the exception of our two weeklong vacation to Florida, Dave and I tend to take long weekend vacations rather than weeklong ones. I find this to be a more effective use of our vacation time and also allows for us to go to several different places, albeit for less time at each place.
We are currently planning Vacation 2010 #3 and #4, Toronto and Quebec City respectively and as a great deal of our trips do, these both started out because of Cirque du Soleil shows.
The Toronto trip will be mixed with a trip to see Dave’s parents and his mom’s side of the family. We will be spending July 2 at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and then seeing Cirque’s show Alegria at the Air Canada Centre. Then we will spend the 3rd in Peterborough and then head to Guelph for the family reunion on the 4th. We plan on taking the 5th off from work as well to drive home and relax from all the visiting. It should be a nice semi-vacation.
The Quebec City trip is based around Cirque’s newest show TOTEM. It is currently showing in Montreal and is then moving to Quebec City for a month (as all new Cirque touring shows do). I don’t really know what else we will do as I just thought of doing this and also just bought the Cirque tickets, but we still have plenty of time to get everything else set up.
We were also planning a Vegas trip (also based around Cirque shows) but due to all the other smaller trips, and the rest of the events we are doing in the Ottawa area, I think we will push this to further in the year. It would also be nicer to go to such a hot location when it is cold here at home.

K and S Have it Covered

Dave and I went to see the Eddie Izzard show last night (called Stripped) with Chris and Jerrica. Though it was really good and very funny, it wasn’t as amazing as I thought it would be. To be honest, I spaced out during one long bit about Latin and then came back in for the punch line. I also kept getting distracted by the lit square in the set. It started out as a sun then changed to an eye and then later to a moon and finally to the whirring stars. It was neat and I took a bunch of photos in the different states. I think one of the best lines was about the letter C. Eddie thought it was a stupid letter and it could fuck right off. But don’t worry, K and S have it covered.

Extreme Sheep Herding

Dave found this one day at work and I was simply amazed. Yes it is technically an add at the end – but the abilities of the sheep herders (and their amazingly talented dogs) is amazing.

Quotable Thursday #26

"Be great in act, as you have been in thought." - William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Sweety’s Birthday

Today is Dave’s 25th Birthday. Don’t quite know what we are doing to celebrate other than the Eddie Izzard show later this week and the fact that we just got back from the cottage, but I hope he has a fantastic day. I love you sweety.

Birthday for Chris

Today is birthday #26 for the beautiful Christine. We are spending it with her at her family cottage on Lake Erie with tons of friends – should be really fun.
Happy Birthday Chris!
psst...check out my photography blog for more Chris goodies...

Way Back Whenesday: Mr Dressup

Mr. Dressup is a classic children's show. It was wonderful and definitely part on my childhood.
The show aired from 1967 to 1996. Mr. Dressup was actually Ernie Coombs and this happened to be one of the very first names I knew (of actors).
When I first started watching the show, Casie and Finnegan lived in the treehouse in the backyard, but later on these characters were dropped from the show as the puppeteer retired. They were replaced by some other characters such as Chester the Crow and Granny, but they weren't as good. Or perhaps I had just grown up enough to not be as interested in them as I was the previous puppets.

What’s in a Name

Like most people, I have searched my name before and realized that you can find my blogs and Flickr account through that. I have also learnt that if you search something relating to the Naruto character Kisame (specifically if you search Kisame costume) you came find photos I took of Dave and Justin’s Halloween costumes from last year. I have also learnt that if you search Winnie-the-Pooh you can find some of my photos from my 100 Possibilities Project. That being said, today I learnt that of a search term that leads to me that isn’t so obvious.If you search night beach you can find some of my night time photography photos. This is not because they were taken on a beach, or have anything to do with a beach, it is actually because they are night photos taken by Stephanie Beach. Apparently my name is not only awesome, but also quite handy at drawing people’s attention to my photos.

I Hate Crocs

“Nope. Still look stupid.” – SoMuchPun.com

 

Dave found the above comic on the I Can Haz Cheezburger family of websites that he loves oh so much. The comic is hilariously true because Crocs are stupid and shouldn’t exist – I really wish people would stop wearing them.

Quotable Thursday #25

“Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant.” – somuchpun.com

Features of a Drink

I have decided that the most offensive features of a drink  (other than a taste I do not like), are carbonation, pulp and alcohol content. Perhaps I am forgetting something right now, but I am pretty sure those three cover the basics, for me.
Orangina, with it’s 12% juice and 2% pulp, has two of these three offensive features. Add some alcohol to this guy and it would be really nasty. Dave absolutely loves it and whenever I see it in a store I pick one up for him as a special treat. But in doing so I remember I am reminded of the types of drink I do not like.

Out for Delivery

Whenever I buy something online, I spend the next little while tracking it. It becomes a daily event that must be performed. Eventually the little tracker tells me that my purchase it Out for Delivery and this makes me very happy - at first.
Most of my purchases are too large to stick in either our door slot or the little mailbox we stuck to the door to prevent magazines getting wrecked when being jammed through the aforementioned door slot. They therefore end up getting dropped off at either a Post Office inside the nearest Quickie or Shoppers Drug Mart. When this happens I can't get them for another whole day which is just pure torture. My purchases came so close to my house, and because I had to be at work, to earn the money to buy them in the first place, they leave my home and sit at the Post Office where I cannot get them until the next day.
My latest Amazon purchase is now Out for Delivery and I know it won't fit in the mailbox.

How-To Tuesday: Write in Windows Live Writer

With my review of the program now written, I decided to show you just how easy it can be to write a post in Windows Live Writer.

First things first, open the pro gram and select the blog you wish to work in.

Begin writing the post. You will need to know a couple things to be able to format it the way you want. To get a new line you have to hit Enter while holding the Shift key (a little annoying but you get used to it pretty quickly). The reason for this is because just hitting enter gives you a break – this will separate text from an image so that it is all one giant link.
When you get to a point where you want an image in it, simply find it on the computer and drag it into the program (you can also click insert on the right hand side and follow the prompts, but dragging it is easier and faster in my opinion).

Place the image where you want it in the post and then select your style, etc on the right hand side (must have the image selected for the options to appear). I usually choose Text Wrapping of Centered, Borders of Inherit from Blog in the Picture tab and then under the Advanced tab, Medium for my Photography blog and Small for this blog. It is under the Advanced tab that you can edit your image as well, if you haven't done so already.

Once you have your images in the post and your writing is done, you can set up your tags. Clicking on the Set Categories bar at the bottom will bring up a list of your existing tags. Either scroll through the list and select the ones you want, or start typing and then hit enter as the list shortens based on your entry. Once you are done, click out of the list and your tags will be ready to go. If you want a new tag, simply write it in the box and click add.

Once you are done, you can either save the post as a draft or publish it directly to your blog using the buttons on the top left hand side, right under the normal file, edit, view, etc options. To schedule the post to publish later, select the date and time in the bottom right hand corner and then publish it.
You can also insert videos, albums and tables into posts. Either click the items in the right hand side, or drag the item (for the case of videos) into the post itself. For albums, you can once again use the list on the right hand side, or drag multiple photos at once into the post. Live Writer will prompt you asking if you want to insert them as individual photos or as an album.
It really is just that easy. Hope that helped.

Windows Live Writer Part 2

A while back I posted about Windows Live Writer and how I was going to be trying it out for a little while. Well a little while has passed and pretty much all of my posts have been done through this program since I installed it on my computer. I have learned basically how it works and have even updated my templates since installing it – so I think I have a pretty good feel of the program and am therefore able to make a proper review of it.
My favourite thing about it is that i can easily switch between my blogs. You see, normally when I create posts I do so on all three of my blogs and will post several scheduled ones as well. This is really easy with Windows Live Writer. I just click and boom I have switched from Great Abyss to Stephanie Beach Photography. If I start writing a post in the wrong blog I click again and it switches to the right one without losing any of the information.
Now onto the images. I had heard from other Photographic Bloggers that this program was really good for places images in your posts and enabling you to make them whatever size you wanted. Though this last part is correct (you are no longer bound by the three options that blogger gives you when uploading images), I find that I can no longer use my regular Photography format of an image with centred writing below it. I have since dealt with this as it is easier to size them and significantly easier and faster to upload them. You can simply drag them from a folder over to the post in Windows Live Writer and presto – the image is in the post.
The program also downloads your template and enables you to see exactly how the post will sit in it. You can tell if the words are breaking properly around your image, or if there is a line with just one silly little word on it. It keeps your font and styles too so you can see if that link looks right or if the italicized words are going to be published correctly.

I do most of my posting from home and have therefore not used the remote access features, but I am told they are there and you can use Windows Live Writer from work or a public space without much additional effort.
Things I don’t really like about this program is the recently posted list and the lack of a scheduled post list. Don’t get me wrong, you can do scheduled posts, but you can’t see the list of upcoming posts – so I am still going into blogger to see if posts are scheduled for x day or y time. The list of recently posted is quite short and for me, lists posts from all my blogs not just the one I am currently working in. The tags for you posts are still there and link to the ones in blogger, but they aren’t as fast to insert as you have to check each one you want instead of starting the word and then hitting enter like I used to in blogger.
Even with the aforementioned cons, I am continuing to use this program and would suggest to almost any of my blogger friends, that they try it out too.

If you are interested in using the program, first consider how you blog. If you insert a great deal of images or want to know exactly how the post is going to look before you publish it, then it may be worth your while. If your posts are more or less just words (ie. no images, videos, etc) then the normal blogger or wordpress modules may be good enough for you. Hope this has helped.

Finally a Header

The Great Abyss finally has a header! This also means that there is no longer an “Under Construction” sign above my posts.
The header was made by me with the use of Photoshop Art History brush. It is a little tricky to use sometimes, but I think this came out pretty good considering this is really only my second time using the technique.

Evil Kitties

 

 

 

           

The above kitties are my brother and sister-in-law’s cats. They are adorable yes, but they’re evil. Evil Kitty #1 is Nibbles. He was the first kitten they got when they lived in Kingston. Evil Kitty #2 is Gizmo. They got him to keep Nibbles company because he was getting lonely during the day when Tyler and Lynn were at work.
Dave and I have been watching them for the last week while Tyler and Lynn were in Florida (Disney to be precise). Though I haven’t even really noticed going to their place to feed them every day, I have noticed the significant increase in cuts and scratches on my arms and legs (hence the name Evil Kitties).

Tulip Festival 2010

Yesterday was the first day of the tulip festival – my favourite festival in Ottawa.
I ventured out to Commissioners Park, the tulip site I visit the most during the festival, a week before it all started to see how the tulips were doing and was able to get some shots of the early bloomers. You see, like the tulips in my backyard, the Tulip Festival tulips also bloomed early, I suspect due to the odd weather we had at the end of winter/beginning of spring.
Dave and I went out on the starting day of the Festival as we had the day off from work (a nice reward for working 20 hours the weekend before – 14.5 of which were consecutive). There weren’t too many people out and about as it was a Friday, but there were enough that I actually had to be patient and wait for tourists to take photos with their iPhones and of course the obligatory self-portraits.
I was able to get a few good shots, though not as many as I would have liked.
Anyway, the point of this post was to direct you to my photography blog and my Flickr site as both will have numerous tulip shots from the festival for the next little while. Photos on my blog will be interspersed with 100 Possibilities shots and a few other things I have done recently, but worry not as the tulips are out in full force and my camera is more than ready for them.

Above Photo: White Stuff

Way Back Whenesday: Ace of Base

Ah Ace of Base. She saw the sign and it was all that she wanted.
I remember not only listening to this band constantly, but also doing dance routines to it for class. In Ms. Veltkamp's grade 4 class she had us do a song and dance routine. She had fake guitars, keyboard, etc and you would lip synch to any song you wanted. My group of 4 or 5 girls chose Ace of Base The Sign as our song and it was fabulous. I can remember some of the steps we did while we sang (that is what my role was - dancing and 'singing'), but unforunately can't describe them well enough for this post.
I also remember the rehearsal I skipped to hang out with my boyfriend. During the rehearsal Crystal fell and hit her head on the corner of the keyboard and cracked it open. She had to go to the emergency room and have stitched put in.