Green Ideas: Heating #1

Planning a party? Turn the thermostats down. Each guest is the equivalent of a 175-watt heater, and a large group will warm up the place without the furnace or the heating units in operation.

Quotable Thursday #53

“Those who spend too fast never grow rich.” – Honore de Balzac

Quotable Thursday #52

“We are chameleons, and our partialities and prejudices change place with an easy and blessed facility."” - Mark Twain.

Way Back Whenesday: Pocket Organizer

I remember when I was younger and loved the idea of electronic gizmos and the assumed importance of people who had them (and even more so of people who actually needed them). I got a little pocket diary and I loved it. I used it as an address book and calculator and of course diary as that was its original purpose. I used to make up stories and pretend to chat with people online (this was before this was a common thing for children to do). It was a great source of entertainment for me. Every so often the little watch battery that ran it would die and I would have to start all over again. Sometimes I would lose it and by the time I found it, it was dead and needed a restart. Eventually it lost its appeal as chatting because an everyday thing and as I really didn’t have a need for the other features, I stopped using it. I haven’t seen it in a very long time, though I suspect that it it sitting in a Rubbermaid container in my parents’ shed back home.

(photo from http://www.canstockphoto.com/)

Happy Birthday Big Brother!

My brother turns 30 today and 30 is looking to be a good year for him. All the best Tyler, Happy Birthday!!

7 Wonderful Years

Happy Anniversary Sweety. I love you more than I could ever put into words.

Quotable Thursday #51

“There is no wealth but life.” – John Ruskin

My Family’s Big News

On top of my and Dave’s engagement, my brother and sister-in-law had their own big news to share with our family this past holiday season. They are going to be parents. They shared this with my parents and I through Christmas cards for Grandma, Grandpa and Aunt. I absolutely loved it and am so incredibly excited for my niece or nephew (they will be finding out if the baby is a boy or a girl when the 5 month marker comes around). I can’t wait to spoil the baby with toys and clothes and shower it with love and of course take lots of photos.

Mission Goal 2011

In 2010 I defined my mission goal as being “I want to be happy, healthy and comfortable in 2010”. I wanted to do these things by losing weight, saving money, traveling and getting a puppy. I did not lose weight. I did save money, in fact Dave and I are well on our way to getting enough for a down payment on a house. We did not get a puppy. We did travel – we went to Florida, Quebec City and Toronto as vacations and of course the cottage on Lake Erie. So all in all, could have done better, but could have done much worse as well.
My mission goal for 2011 is unchanged: I want to be happy, healthy and comfortable in 2011. These things are likely to happen this year if I lose weight, buy a house, travel and work on my wedding plans (including the process of saving money for the wedding).

Quotable Thursday #50

“The man who will not execute his resolutions when they are fresh upon him can have no hope from them afterwards; they will be dissipated, lost and perish in the hurry and scurry of the world, or sunk in the slough of indolence” - Marie Edgeworth.

Way Back Whenesday: The Munsters

For Christmas we got my dad the complete series of The Munsters.

Similarly to the Adams Family, The Munsters was a sitcom about a monster family. There was the Frankenstein dad (Herman), the bride of Frankenstein wife (Lily), a vampire Grandpa, a werewolf son (Eddie) and a human neice (Marilyn). They of course didn’t see themselves as different but rather worried that their normal neice Marilyn would never find a man. Great show that I remember watching with my Dad.

My Big News

As some of you already know, I have some  big news to share with you. Over the holidays, Dave proposed to me. It was perfect and amazing and I of course said yes. The story, since I have been asked so many times, goes like this:

On Thursday, December 30, 2010 Dave and I went to Upper Canada Village in Morrisburg to take night photos of the Alight at Night Festival. During our 2-3 hours there we walked around and took many photos of the night lights and even had fresh gingerbread, so yummy. We then got back to our car where Dave brought out the hot chocolate he had made for us and snuck in our thermos. We then drove back to Ottawa listening to the Glee soundtrack that he had so nicely downloaded and put on his new Google phone. When we got back to town he drove us towards downtown and I thought he was driving us to Parliament Hill as I had also wanted to take photos of the lights on the Parliament buildings. Instead he turned onto Sussex and parked overlooking the Ottawa River. He had music playing on his phone and had packed blankets and pillows for sitting in the back of the car - it was very nice. The evening was great and because it was so cold (it is Winter in Ottawa), the ring actually fit me.
It is now at the jewellery store being resized as even though Dave took his iron ring as a reference, it was still too small (only be about one size though). His iron ring fits my right hand but not my left unfortunately.
I am very happy and looking forward to all the planning and organization that is involved in getting a wedding set up. But first things first, Dave and I are still planning on getting a house this Spring.

Ambrose Bierce

A little while ago I used a quote from Ambrose Bierce for my Quotable Thursday feature. I usually try to link the quoted person to their wikipedia page so that you can go and learn more about them if you so please. In the process of doing that this time however, I saw that this person had an interesting story – he disappeared.
Ambrose Bierce was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist. He was born in 1842 and earned himself the nickname “Bitter Bierce” primarily because of his motto ‘nothing matters’.
In 1913 the then elderly writer traveled to Mexico to gain a firsthand perspective of the country’s ongoing revolution. According to Wikipedia:

“In October 1913 Bierce, then in his seventies, departed Washington, D.C., for a tour of his old Civil War battlefields. By December he had proceeded through Louisiana and Texas, crossing by way of El Paso into Mexico, which was in the throes of revolution. In Ciudad Juárez he joined Pancho Villa's army as an observer, and in that role he witnessed the Battle of Tierra Blanca.

Bierce is known to have accompanied Villa's army as far as the city of Chihuahua. His last known communication with the world was a letter he wrote there to Blanche Partington, a close friend, dated December 26, 1913. After closing this letter by saying, "As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination," he vanished without a trace, becoming one of the most famous disappearances in American literary history.

Oral tradition in Sierra Mojada, Coahuila, documented by the priest James Lienert, states that Bierce was executed by a firing squad in the town cemetery there. However, all investigations into his fate have proven fruitless, and despite an abundance of theories his end remains shrouded in mystery.”

I don’t know much more than what is in the Wikipedia link, but thought it was rather interesting and wanted to share it with you.

Blog of Note: January

The Graphite Art of Clive Meredith is a blog similar to my photography blog in that it displays the works of an artist. Clive Meredith is an extremely talented artist who draws amazing portraits in graphite. Check it out.