Christmas 2011 Wish List

I have been getting a lot of questions from people as to what to get me and/or Dave for Christmas. So like last year, I decided the best thing to do is to make a wish list.

Dave’s Wish List:
The Book of Cain
Diablo Archive
Archer TV series (Season 1, 2 and/or 3)
Bob’s Burgers TV Series
Movies: Bon Cop bad Cop, Hanna
Sin War Trilogy eBooks (Google eBooks; #1, #2, #3)
Gift Cards: Google eBooks, EB Games, Future Shop, Amazon, etc.

Steph’s Wish List:
Once again, I have broken it down into Camera and non-Camera related items.

Camera Wish List:
4’ wide white paper background;
8’ wide white, black or grey paper backgrounds
~4’x6’ piece of high quality black velour fabric
Bowen's softboxes
Radio trigger system (compatible with Bowen's 400 lights & Nikon D3s camera)
Bowen's battery pack
AF-S Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II Lens
AF-S Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 G ED Lens
AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED Lens
AF Fisheye-Nikkor 16mm f/2.8D Lens
Photo paper (Epson Premium Photo Paper [4+ stars], 8 1/2"x11")
Computer ink (for the Epson Artisan 800 all-in-one printer - code 98)
small white/gold reflector (maximum 10" or so but folds smaller - example).
Photo Books (Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers: The Ultimate Workshop, HDR Photography Photo Workshop, Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers; A Professional image editor’s guide to the creative use of Photoshop for the Macintosh and PC, Photo Recipes Live: Behind the Scenes: Your Guide to Today’s Most Popular Lighting Techniques)
Variable Neutral Density Filter, 77mm
Lens Cap Strap Holder, 77mm
Handy-Dandy Camera Strap

Everything Else Wishlist:
gift cards (Ricki's, Henry's, thecamerastore.com, Amazon, Lululemon, Photojojo)
picture frames (8x10 or larger, compilation frames);
Movies (Gnomeo and Juliet, Winnie-the-Pooh Movie, The Little Mermaid, Life After People, Sandra Bullock/Hugh Grant/Julia Roberts/Drew Barrymore movies)
TV Series (Being Erica, Powerpuff Girls, Beverly Hills 90210, Charmed)
National Geographic Magazine Slipcases for Years 2008 onwards
Nikon Lens Mug
Time Lapse Camera
OPI Nail Polish (you can find a list of colours I already have here. There aren’t many specific colours I want, but I would like the Natural Nail Strengthener, Any colour of Shatter, A bright orange colour, pastel pink, traditional bright red, pastel green, a plain white, a light grey colour, a taupe like colour, a true black colour, anything from the Femme de Cirque Line)
OPI nail polish case like the one below:

For any of the books, movies or TV series listed in my list above, you can find them in my Amazon Wish List.

My list seems (and is) much longer than Dave’s but once you widdle out the thing that people are not going to buy me (like the very expensive camera lenses and lighting equipment), it isn’t that big.

Way Back Whenesday: Classic Mortal Kombat

My brother and I used to play Mortal Kombat. No, he played Mortal Kombat with his friends and I would mash buttons against the computer when he would let me use his systems.
The Mortal Kombat movie is one of my guilty pleasure movies and I love the theme song, especially the techno version that is at the end of the movie.

I am mentioning this now because Dave just recently bought the new Mortal Kombat video game for PS3 for Justin’s birthday (it was an early present) and the two of them have been playing it in their spare time ever since.

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/)

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.

Way Back Whenesday: Tetris

Now I realize Tetris is still around, but the Tetris I am talking about is the one for the original Nintendo game system (NES).

I remember the system being hooked up to the television in my parents room (the television that was in a wooden case) and my dad playing for several hours. Come to think of it, it was one of the only games my dad really played. Later on, we got Tetris for the Nintendo Gameboy and I played it a great deal on that system. I do believe the Gameboy and Tetris are sitting upstairs right now…perhaps I will go play some classic Nintendo.

(photo found through Google)

Full Yet Relaxing

This weekend was a pretty good one. It started off with Dave's sister Jessica coming down on Friday evening. The three of us took some photos around town and played lots of Rock Band and Rock Band Beatles - and by lots I do mean LOTS!
We went out for a few big meals and pretty much eliminated the need for cooking by doing so which was awesome because Dave and I don't really have much food in the house right now and I wasn't in the mode to go grocery shopping.
I also got the chance to do a photo-shoot with our friend Kate, which was really fun. I am hoping to get the photos edited and to her shortly and will be sharing them everyone on Flickr and Stephanie Beach Photography after that.

Rock Band

Oh Rock Band…how I love and loathe thee simultaneously.
Justin’s parents were up over a week ago and brought his Rock Band with them. It is now set up in our living room and we have spent quite a while playing it. In fact, Justin and Dave are playing as I blog.

I like the drums the most but am still not very good at any of the instruments (guitar, drums, vocals). I do however, really like the free drumming parts like at the end of certain songs and when you want to activate your star power (I think start power is the guitar hero term, but I can’t think of the rock band term).

(image from Google – our version is also for the PS3 though the photos is the XBox 360 version).

The Horde

 

 

Okay, I know I geeked out recently about WoW but give me another second okay. Xanara is my first Horde character. I am going to be honest and tell you that I avoided Horde characters as they were not pretty. Trolls, undead, taurens and orcs tend to be less attractive than the Alliance alternatives. But ever since the Burning Crusades expansions, Blood Elves have been available and though they look spacey and ditzy they are pretty. Their ditziness was confirmed when using the /silly macro and all of their jokes were about getting facials or other superficial things. Oh well.

Xanara is a paladin and a tank at that. I am enjoying it so far and levelling her pretty quickly.

Two at Eighty

Let me geek out for a couple minutes...
First there was Laidelle, my death knight. Despite the fact that she was far from my first alliance character, she was the first to hit 80. But now I have two characters sitting at 80. My Hunter Cyndelle is now sitting at 80 as well. Now I just need to get her some decent equipment.

Vacation Recap

So vacations #3 and #4 are officially over and I am slowly working my way through the photos. As per usual, my summer collection of photos has grown at a much faster rate than I can edit. As a result I will likely be dealing with a great deal of summer photos through the Fall and Winter seasons (well more like the Winter as I tend to take a lot of photos in the Fall as well).
Despite the fact that I don't really have any photos to show you, the trips to Toronto and Quebec City were great. I have realized that Quebec City is awesome and far superior to Montreal, in my opinion and I am sure Dave and I will be going back again.
As previously mentioned, both of these trips revolved around Cirque du Soleil shows. They were both good shows but Totem has definitely won the title of favourite Cirque show so far. We absolutely loved it! Not only were the performers great, but the clowns had actual acts and the stage was amazing (especially when you consider that this is a travelling show)! Totally worth the money and I highly recommend seeing this one if it comes even remotely close to you. I am sure I will post more about the trips but for now, hopefully that answers some questions about how they went.
As usual, the end of a vacation has made me start planning the next one - not entirely sure what it will be though Dave is interested in going camping at Bon Echo and we both still want to go to Vegas sometime soon. I will of course keep you all updated on what we do next.

Sims Expanded

Dave got me a gift about a week ago – the latest expansions for the Sims 3.  I have not gotten any of the previous expansions for this game as they really didn’t interest me, but when I started playing Sims 3 again, the expansion definitely peaked my interest.In it you are granted new professions for your people. So far I have tackled stylist, interior designer and self-employed artists. I tried to get my sim to be a tattoo artist but the tattoo chair broke (by this I mean it is glitched somehow) and she was unable to give anyone tattoos or even get the tattooing skill.
I haven’t gotten the hang of it just yet – the professions are trickier than the normal careers and a fair bit more time consuming as well. But I am slowly getting it and my sims are starting to thrive in their new, expanding world.

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.

Busch Gardens

When I went to Florida with my family 18 years ago, we spent a day in Busch Gardens. To be honest, it is one of the parts of the trip that I remember completely on my own (in other words, without the assistance of photos). This is because my Mom exposed the film to the sun when trying to swap it for a new one and all the photos were ruined- including the ones of the koalas that were there on a special exhibit (and no Chris, there were no koalas at Busch Gardens, unfortunately they just cost way too much in upkeep for most zoos).
Dave and I went to Busch Gardens during our recent trip to Florida as well and it was awesome. First things first, we got adults tickets at the price of children’s tickets because we got them through CAA/AAA. If you plan on going anywhere for vacation in Canada or the States you should definitely check out their website to see if they have discounted tickets.
Secondly, we went on a Wednesday and there were very few people there. School groups normally wait until Fridays and families wait until the weekends. The locals have to go on the weekends because they work during the day. It was an excellent idea, and the weather helped too. It was sunny and quite nice, but a little chilly and I think it rained in the area before we got there because some things looked like they were just finishing drying up when we arrived.
One of the first things we did was a ride – oh yes that is right people you heard right, I went on a few rides while in Florida. At Busch Gardens on went on the Gwazi Tiger (the lion which runs along with it, was closed). It was a wooden roller coaster and had no flips or anything like that, but I still didn’t like it.
Next we went into the bird enclosure (which I insist are obligatory in any Florida zoo park). Dave bought some nectar for 5 dollars and few the birds which was really neat. There was only one other person doing it, a small girl, and since Dave was so much larger than her, the majority of the birds went to him (they did go to the girl once Dave’s nectar was all gone, so don’t feel bad for her). We then walked around the park looking at all the animals. Every once in a while Dave would go on a ride that I was completely uninterested in. He went on some crazy ones that went upside-down or dropped you straight down into a cave.

My favourite thing about the park though are the animals. They are well looked after (well they seem that way). Unlike some parks, you can actually see the animals in their exhibit and the park has a rail system and a sky tram that move you about the park nicely and enable you to see the animals really well.
Speaking of the sky tram, Dave and I loved that thing. It went from the top of the park to the bottom and back. It was the easiest way to move about the park, there was never a line, it was quiet and provided a nice view of the park.

And of course there was the obligatory self-taken photo of Dave and I while we were on the sky tram. This was actually take on our last trip on the tram as we headed out of the park after we got off this time.

Backed Up

About a month ago I realized that my photos from 1998 to 2006 were not on the hard drive. I of course realized this right after a reformat of my computer. I wasn’t too concerned at the time as I didn’t really look for them and assumed they had just been accidentally moved to another folder. Turns out they had actually been accidentally deleted at some point as tonight when I tried to go through these images to finish a post I started before the new year (also to try and find some path images for Lynn), I realized that they were gone. I started to get a little worried, and normally would have freaked out but was too tired tonight to go into full frantic-mode. Dave had a look at the hard drive with me and confirmed that they were in fact missing. Before I could get too worked up, Dave remembered my initial method of backing up my photos (pre-hard drive): CDs and DVDs. It seems like an almost archaic method of backup now, but it worked. I found my photos and am currently putting them back on the hard drive (and laptop).
They will work as a form of entertainment for a few hours as I go through the last 12 years in photo form.

Ctrl + Alt + Del

A while back, okay a long while back, Chris told Dave and me about a webcomic she thought we would really like = Ctrl+Alt+Del. She would periodically send me links to pages of it, most of which were about WoW. Neither Dave nor myself really got into the series, that is until recently. Dave has finished reading the entire comic series from back when it started in 2005 to the most recent posts. I am somewhere in the middle of 2006 and have a fair bit left until I am caught up, but am really enjoying it. Essentially it is a webcomic about two gamers. There is lots about gaming, obviously, and computers and comics and some movies (mostly game based movies), but also bits about their lives. I really like it and think it is actually quite funny. Everyone should check it out. (I have also added a link to it on the right)
(oh and the image is from the Ctrl+Alt+Del website)

Nintendo Wii

Dave and I have been looking into the Wii for quite some time. Originally I was going to purchase it back when he got the PS3 but figured that buying two consoles at the same time would lead to either fighting between who got to use to big television with their console or one console not getting played nearly as much as the other (with the latter scenario being more probably for us).

We ended up buying the Wii system this past weekend and have been playing it since. The reason we ended up buying it is because we got one as a Christmas gift for the Konings (who already know about it so on the off chance that they read my blog, I am not spoiling anything).

So far we only have Wii Sports but boy is it fun. The first day we played it, we tried out all the sports and realized that golf is the stupidest sport and we will likely never go back to it.

We went through the training levels and then tried our hand at the boxing fights which really kicked my butt, but I kicked Dave's so it was okay. We fought and played for about 4 hours and afterwards I was very tired and am now a little sore - but in a good 'I can feel my muscles' sort of way. It feels weird to play video games all day and yet be able to be happy with myself afterwards for being physically active.

We also purchased the Wii Fit Plus package (board and game) but we haven't tried it out yet. I suspect I will be equally sore and tired after it but also pretty impressed and pleased with it.

I want to buy a bunch of games that are out for the Wii like Mario Kart and Super Paper Mario, but for now I am just going to stick to Wii Sport and Wii Fit Plus.

(image found through Google)

Lost in Austen

Lost in Austen is a BBC miniseries that has been airing on TVO lately. I watched it for the first time when Dave as in Toronto for work and watched it again when he was in Brockville for work. Well, to be honest, both times I have watched it, I have only actually seen the third installment of the four part series. It is basically Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, with a twist. The main character is a modern woman who absolutely loves the Austen novel. During a somewhat peculiar time in her life, she ends up trading places with the heroin from the novel, Elizabeth Bennett. She then spends the rest of the show trying to fix the plot of the novel, but inevitably and quite predictably, messes it up even more.

I know it sounds slightly cheesy and ridiculous and some even say blasphemous as it is messing with such a popular book, but it is a really charming story with great actors and witty writing. Since I had only ever seen the third part, I decided to buy it from Amazon.ca and am so happy I did. I ended up staying up very late the night it was delivered watching this really great British romance. I strongly recommend it to anyone who loves that period of book or movie.

Super Ex

Sunday Dave and I got a phone call from my brother asking if we wanted to join him and Lynn at the Super Ex. It was rather unexpected, a random phone call and invite from my brother, but it sounded like fun.
We headed to the fair and took a tour of the rides to decide the best way to buy coupons. You could get a wrist band for $36 and go on an infinite number of rides, or you could get 22 coupons for $30. Both couples chose the latter as Dave is really the only person who can go on crazy rides and would therefore be the only one who could benefit from the wrist band.We went on the Scrambler (or Sizzler) first as it is apparently Lynn's favourite ride. I think it is also my favourite now, though I remember when I was younger I like the tilt-a-whirl and its many variations. I have learned in recent years, however, that my stomach is weak and can no longer enjoy the crazy rides, so I must now stick to the tame ones.
We then went on a really pathetic Haunted House ride. The 'scary' elements wouldn't have been able to scare a five year old, let alone some 20-something year olds. Also, the seats were so tiny and cramped that Dave with his long legs, could barely fit in. The seat belt barely went around us since his legs had to be so high up. Luckily, or sadly since we paid three coupons for the ride, it lasted only about two minutes and the pain was short lived.Dave was the most daring of the foursome and went on one of the aforementioned crazy rides. I forget what it was called, but it basically you sat in this seat, with your legs dangling. You were then tossed around, upside down and all over the place. I couldn't even imagine being able to go on a ride like that - even when I was younger I don't think I could have done it.
We also took a walk through the 4H/farm area where we saw many adorable animals, like baby goats and bunnies. We also so some male goats practicing their head rams, it was kind of neat. There were also these dyed chickens - seriously, green, pink, yellow and blue chickens - it was very odd.We watched the predator and prey show and got to see some big cats outsmart their trainers and be super lazy in general. But who can blame them really, it was really hot out and I don't think that was their first show of the day. And there were of course baby lions, that's right, lion cubs. Unfortunately, I was so overcome by cuteness that I didn't get a very good photo of them.
All in all, it was a really great day. I did get a sunburn and a case of sun stroke, which was solved later on by some gravol and gravol-induced sleep, but it was still a really fun day.

One Minute Writer #36

What would be your perfect night out?

My perfect night out is actually a night in. Sitting around watching movies or playing games, hanging out with Dave and possibly friends if they are available.
If I have to go out at night, it would likely be photography based or to see a movie in theatres. Perhaps a dinner out with friends, though if I have my way, this is done during the day and consists of shopping as well.
I am a homebody, I accept this.