Hair Today

I'm off to get my hair cut tonight. My hairdresser works downtown and it's worth the trip to get down there to see her. For example, because my hair is short and oh so very straight, I usually get a haircut about once a month to keep it tidy. Imagine my surprise to look at the calendar this week and realize it had been seven weeks since I last got it cut! No wonder my bangs were driving me crazy! But part of the reason I didn't notice so much time had gone by is because Teresa does such a good job with the cut. It doesn't matter that I'm overdue, it still looks (I think) pretty good (except for the fact that I ran out of mousse the other day and haven't been to the drug store to get more yet so my hair is looking seriously flat this week, but that's not her fault!!)

While I'm downtown, I might pop in to the museum afterwards to have a quick look around, since they are open late on Friday nights. Or I might swing by the Eaton Centre and do a little shopping (note to self: buy mousse!). Depends how energetic I am feeling.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with this photo of my darling Max, which I took a couple of weeks ago. I really love the way it turned out and the way his little paws are all tucked up underneath him as he is curled up on my bed. Basically, I just really love him!

I Need a New Gadget

What would you do if someone gave you $500 to spend on anything you want? What would you buy?

There are a couple of things to consider: (1) it's a credit card in your name with a $500 credit balance, it's not cash - so you can't give it away or apply it towards the hydro bill; and (2) it's a windfall, so you have to spend it on something for yourself that is out of the ordinary and special, not just use it to buy groceries or gas or some other regular expenditure that you would have bought anyway.

This is my current quandary (not that I am complaining!). My company very kindly gave me said $500 credit card as a bonus for having been with the company for five years. Now that I have the money in hand, I'm not sure what to spend it on. Maybe I'll get myself a new gadget of some sort.

Have you seen those new Kobo ereaders, for reading digital books? Kind of like a Kindle only cheaper and as of earlier this week, now available in Canada. The book I'm currently reading (Diana Gabaldon's "A Breath of Snow and Ashes") is just under 1000 pages and although it's a softcover, it's rather large - only a little bit smaller than 8.5 x 11 inches in size, so it isn't exactly easy to carry around, let alone read in bed, so I'm thinking this gadget might be useful.

I've also toyed with the idea of buying myself a fancy new DSLR camera or maybe a laptop, both of which would cost more than $500 but at least I wouldn't have to pay the full price. Pr perhaps I'll buy myself a plane ticket somewhere?

I figure I'll know what to do with the money when the time is right. In the meantime, the card sits in my wallet waiting to be used and most of the time, I forget that it is there.

What I really need is a new gadget to replace the one on the right hand side of this blog counting down the number of days until my trip to France and Spain. Sadly, the Paris and Barcelona weeks have been cancelled (hopefully Paris is just postponed until spring of 2011) so instead of 105 days until I leave, it's actually 112. Only trouble is, I can't figure out how to edit the date and I can't find where I got the gadget in the first place. I tried looking on Blogger and online for a new countdown clock but haven't found one I like yet. No worries, I'll just have to keep looking for just the right thing. I'll know it when I see it.

Don't Believe Everything You See

Have you received this email? A friend sent it to me today. It's supposed to be about somebody's dentist - he's the guy in the kayak, describing what happened. The text of the email says:

"Hi! My niece sent this. She lives in Alaska and shared this amazing shot of this happening. I just wonder who and where was the person who took that picture. Patti

The photo was taken at the entrance to Katlian Bay at the end of the road in Sitka. The whale is coming up to scoop up a mouthful of herring (the small fish seen at the surface around the kayak). The kayaker is a local Sitka Dentist.

==================
His comments:

"Yep, that is me in the picture. Yep, that is a whale that was just around the corner from the ferry terminal. 'Paddle really fast' is the only thing I could think of at the time. Also thinking that I don't look like a herring, don't smell like a herring but with the same herring instinct of 'get the hell out of the way of that big mouth!! Still living to tell yet another story."

Rich K

Sitka's very own Dr. Richard Kraft during one of his routine oral examinations!"

Sure, it's a cool picture and an interesting read but I immediately contacted my friend and said, "You know that picture is fake, right?" and she said, "But the guy's a doctor, it must be real!"

Not so, and a quick Google of the words "whale eating kayak" will lead you to this link http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/bdpbu/kayak_in_whales_mouth_real_or_fake_source_says/, which contains a really good explanation of why the picture you see above is fake (the short answer is, notice that the kayaker doesn't cast any reflection but the whale does). The whale photo is real and so is the picture of the kayaker but someone has merged the two together to make an image that is not real.

But it makes a good story, doesn't it? :)

Days of the Week

Here's an update on my "Week in the Life" project (as first mentioned back on April 26th: http://cynfulcreationscanada.blogspot.com/2010/04/week-in-life.html).

I thought you might like to see the "cover" pages for each day of the week. For each page, I printed out 8.5 x 11 inch photos and added cut-outs from a package I got at Michaels craft store that includes all sorts of different colours and patterns of letters.

Tuesday's photo was taken in a historic building in downtown Toronto where we had gathered for a company meeting. I loved the view out of the window of an old building across the street and the way the chandelier stands out against the dark background of the room I was in.

Wednesday's picture is a chestnut tree in bloom a few blocks away from my home. I was driving home from work that day and passed by this tree, had to stop and take a picture of it, it was so pretty.

For Thursday's cover, I used an image I downloaded from the Internet in honour of Earth Day. On Friday, as I discussed in my blog back on April 23rd (http://cynfulcreationscanada.blogspot.com/2010/04/doing-good-deeds.html), my company took part in Clean Up Toronto, a 20 minute exercise where a bunch of us went outside and picked up garbage from the sides of the roads around our office. My co-worker Kathy took this picture of Coretta and I with our garbage bags.

Saturday's photo was a bit of challenge to scan for some reason. My new printer had to try three times before it captured the whole image - perhaps because there is so much light space in the photo? It's a photo of a stoplight post near where I live. I like the way the paint is peeling off the street sign and the way the lines of the image look so stark against the grey sky of that day, with the blue signs and yellow stoplight adding just a touch of colour.

For Sunday, I took a picture of Max and I relaxing on the couch. On this particular relaxing day, I hung out in my pyjamas all day. When I'm home, Max is usually found somewhere nearby - either on my lap or sitting within a two foot radius (although even as I type this, he's actually sleeping in another room, which is quite unusual!)

Tonight's Walk

It was such a pleasant afternoon, I went for a walk as soon as I got home from work tonight. One of the first things I saw was a bunch of trilliums blooming in a wooded area about a block from my house. It seems super early to be seeing them but maybe that's because I usually see them up at the cottage in about 3 weeks time, on the May long weekend. They bloom a little later up there because the cottage is further north than Toronto. Still, the trillium's appearance is one of the final stages of spring's arrival as far as I'm concerned and there they were, tucked into a little grove of trees looking pretty as a picture.

I discovered that the lilacs are also in full bloom here in Toronto. I saw several different colours of blossom when I was out walking - white, light purple, dark purple. I couldn't take a picture of any of them though, as every lilac tree I saw was located beside someone's house, often close to their front door, and every driveway had a car in it, which means the people were home and would have wondered why I was trespassing on their property. So you'll have to take my word for it and admire this photo taken by someone named Rundy off the Internet instead.

Lilacs and trilliums always mean the end of spring to me, appearing late in the season to delight us. The fact that it is only May 3rd makes it seem a little early to me. It has been warm this past month but I didn't think it had been warm enough to speed spring up by several weeks! Then again, the humidity we had on the weekend felt a lot like summer, so maybe it's going to be one of those wacky years when the weather doesn't behave like what we think of as normal. Not that I'm complaining, as lilacs are one of my all time favourites so I don't mind having them around any time.

As I arrived back at my apartment building, I was surprised to find several fire trucks pulling into the driveway. I did a quick scan of the building and didn't see any smoke billowing out, so I was able to relax and stop worrying about my cat Max alone upstairs on his own. I sat on a bench across the street where the sound of our fire alarm (more like an air raid siren, if you ask me!) was sufficiently muted and waited for the all clear, then headed upstairs.

Roadside Cemetery

I was driving back to Toronto this morning and happened to notice this cemetery out my window as I drove by. I quickly turned the car around and headed back to take some photos.

What you see from the road is a row of headstones and a wooden entryway that says, "1834 Pioneer Cemetery 1901". What caught my eye as I drove past in the Cherry Bomb was the contrast between the creamy white colour of the stones and the bright red and yellow of the tulips. Even on this overcast morning, it was lovely.

Once I got out of the car and had a closeup look, what I found unusual is that many of the stones are still quite legible. I don't know enough about headstones to know what they are made of - could they be marble to be that well preserved? Surely limestone would have corroded more by this time? But it was quite easy to read the inscriptions carved on these stones, which is not always the case with stones this old.

It was a pleasant spot to be on an early Sunday spring morning. It seemed very peaceful and quiet, even though it was directly beside a highway that can be quite busy at times. The beauty of the spring flowers made me think these pioneers would probably be quite happy with their final resting place.

The Nascar Book

A friend has invited a few of us over for dinner tonight to watch the Nascar race. Since she is hosting at her new condo, I thought I'd make her an altered composition book as a hostess gift (I'm also taking a bottle of vodka and a batch of homemade cookies, just to cover all the bases!)

Her favourite driver is Jeff Gordon, so I printed out a bunch of photos of him from the Internet and put them in the book, as well as various Nascar logos and related images.

This the front cover:


and this is the back:

This is an inside page I made using a security envelope, so it flips open on a slightly smaller scale than the pages of the book itself. I positioned a really sexy photo of Jeff doing a very good impression of Tom Cruise on the inside so you can just catch a peek when you look through the window part of the envelope, then added other pictures, some colour and cutouts.

I had a lot of fun putting this book together, I hope she likes it!

Luckily, the race is taking place in Richmond, VA tonight and not here in Toronto, where it would have to be cancelled on account of rain and thunderstorms. May is certainly off to a wet start!!