Dos regalos para mi

What's in the box, Mom?  Cookies?

Nope.   It's a present.  For me!  This is the Tamron 18-270 (!) lens.  Ooh, ahh.

Just look at the zoom on this baby!

Lens hood, included.

I can't wait to test drive it.

I spent the morning on-line checking out a couple of gorgeous girly camera bags because I knew that my new lens wouldn't fit into my old bag.  I didn't really like it anyway, so I didn't much care, but I didn't want another regular camera bag.  Found these by a relatively new company called  Epiphan!e   Started up by a female photographer who wanted a camera bag that looked like a purse and didn't scream CAMERA.  She couldn't find anything, so she made her own.  Word got out, orders started pouring in and boom! she was in business!  I couldn't decide which of these I love the most. This turquoise beauty is called Belle

Love that green interior

 and this is Lola, in red

and she has a pretty lavender interior.

A moot point really, because at 165.00 USD plus 50.00 for shipping, I can't afford either one of them, but as soon as I win the lottery....

Or, maybe not.  As I was leaving the camera store with my shiny new lens, I noticed that the Boutique of Leathers, right across the corridor, had a giant SALE sign on their handbag table so I wandered over to check them out.   Look what I found for 39.00!!  Super soft leather, 6 (!) outside pockets for batteries, cards and stuff, regular handles and a shoulder strap.  And in my favourite colour to boot!!!

 My camera, even with the big honkin' lens attached, fits quite nicely. 

I think with a bit of padding added for protection, this will be perfect!   I'm not quite sure how to go about that yet, but I'm thinking some cardboard, some foam, some nice bright fabric and some velcro oughta do it.  It won't be as professionally finished as the beautiful Belle, perhaps, but it's considerably cheaper!

Later: 

Taz & I went over to the the local park to play with my new toy.  Just to give you an idea of the range of this new lens - these shots were taken from the park bench.

This is at 18mm  (same as the kit lens that I've been using)

 This is at 55mm.  As good as it got with my old lens.

 And THIS is at the top of the range - 270mm!!  I love it!

Later still:

Wow!  What a sunset tonight!  It started out fantastic...

...and it just kept getting better...

...and better!!!

Beautiful Autumn Day

It was a fantastic day in Calgary!  Warm, sunny and just so freakin' beautiful!

An excellent day for a walk

Great views of the city from Tom Campbell's hill

Pretty pathway

Guess who else enjoyed it?

I used to hate this time of year.  Mostly because it means that winter is right around the corner.  But now that I no longer have to be concerned about Calgary winters, 

I LOVE FALL!!!

For Nancy - The Lady In The Moon

Feeling a little melancholy tonight.

Aaaaoooooooooo!!

Many thanks to Rowena for generously allowing me to mess up her incredible  photo of the almost harvest moon with some 25 year old poetry.

Nancy, of course, is the inspiration behind the title for this blog.  She died in 1982 just a few days shy of her 27th birthday.  Almost 3 decades later and I still howl at every full moon in her honour.

The long and the short of it

Every once in awhile I wish I had long hair again, and I try to grow it out.

Then I wake up one morning and I CAN'T STAND IT ANYMORE!!!

Before:  Aaaaagrrhh!

After:  Ahhhhh!

The good, the bad and the mediocre

Another cold and miserable rainy day.  It was a good day to have the oven on, so this afternoon I made a couple of quiches.  One for dinner and one for the deep freeze. 

Spinach/mushroom/onion/tomato/cheese with a breadcrumb/cheese topping.  Not great, but okay.   I was roasting some baby potatoes to have with it and if there's a trick to doing that without smoking out the house, then somebody needs to tell me.  Shirley dropped by just as the smoke alarm was going off and was still brave enough to stay for dinner.


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I was looking through some old photos this afternoon and came upon these.    The first is the most disgusting thing I've ever eaten and the other one is the best meal I've ever had in my life.

This is a night time street market somewhere in China.  (X'ian, maybe?)

  

 As we were strolling past the stalls, every once in a while a really repulsive smell wafted our way.  We finally traced it to the black stuff on a stick.  It smelled absolutely putrid (that should've been a clue),  but it smelled so awful that I just HAD to taste it.  They told me it was tofu - I love tofu!  How bad could it be?

Imagine, if you dare, charcoal briquettes, marinated in a heavily salted turpentine then brushed with tar, dipped in manure and deep fried in rancid oil.....Yes, really!

Eight years later and I can still taste it in the back of my throat.

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Fast forward a few years.  This is in Lima, Peru.



On our last night in Peru, Lesley, Dave, Dan & I splashed out and went to one of the best restaurants in town.  (Sorry, I can't remember the name of it.)  This little fishy came swimming in a heavenly-scented pool of squid, shrimp, scallops and tiny lemony/garlic potatoes.  Washed down with the local specialty - Pisco sours.  Ahhhhh!!!!  If I was on death row, this would be my last meal request!

P.S.

Too much of a good thing:     Remember the pickled beans?  They turned out pretty good.  Dan didn't like them, so I had the whole jar to myself.  At first I thought that was a good thing, but I've been eating them non-stop for a week now, and frankly, if I never see another pickled bean in my life, that'd be okay with me!!  Sometimes things are just better when they're a rare treat.                                                     

...and coasters.

I think I've skipped a generation.  I'm not turning into my mother, I'm turning into my grandmother.  Well, maybe not my grandmother, but somebody else's.

Or maybe I'm just getting back to my roots.  Anybody need a granny square afghan?

Or perhaps a nice crocheted vest?

Do I hear snickering?  Stop that!  I used to have items just like these and I was quite proud of them!  Okay, maybe not the vest so much - that was a short-lived fashion craze.  Really short.  I wore it once for about 20 minutes, then somebody laughed at it, so I threw it out.

I also made a blanket exactly like this one.  I thought it was SO beautiful!  Ahh, whatever happened to the daisy wheel loom?

Laundry room make-over

This is going to be my winter project.  I want to turn this nasty, cluttered mess into an organized, functional and NICE room.

This is the laundry/mechanical/utility/storage/junk room in Casa del Sol and it's desperately crying out for a make-over.

Hmm, how to hide this mess o' pipes?

Right now, I hate this room.  I want it to be pretty and tidy and organized.  I'd love to finish the walls by hanging gyproc, but until we get the terrace leak under control, that's not feasible.  This room tends to flood during rainstorms, so it'd be ruined in no time.  I was thinking maybe a cheaper alternative would be to use peg board to cover the metal studs??  I'd like to get rid of the open shelving, but I don't think cabinets are in the budget, so maybe some nice looking baskets to hide the clutter??  So far, my only real plan is to remove EVERYTHING, scrub it from top to bottom and slap a coat of paint on it.  I'm thinking something along the lines of:  Pacific Coast.

This little room gets stinkin' hot, so I'm hoping for the illusion of a cool ocean breeze.  I'm now accepting any and all ideas to transform this dingy little room into a pleasant space to do laundry.

Surfing the internet for ideas:  See?  Pegboard.  Very handy.

Seeing as cabinetry isn't in the budget, maybe I could hide crap behind curtains.  A tad cottage-y maybe, but in a nice bright ocean-y print, it could work.

I liked the boxes on the shelves in this one.

This one, of course, I just liked the colour!

Oh, for a front-load washer... this could actually work