Taking time to do nothing ...

... often puts everything into perspective (Doe Zantamata).

• Sitting beside my dog, giving her lots of soft strokes.
• Sitting on the deck, watching the geese fly overhead.
• Falling asleep at night, thinking of each of my grand-kids.
• Looking at my past photos, bringing back some good memories.
• Thinking of my wife, marvelling at how fortunate I am.

Life and Other Stuff

As anyone who knows me, photography is my main hobby. Almost a passion. So, when I saw the following anonymous quote on another photographer's Flickr page, I thought it'd be a good lead in to a blog post. The quote: "Life is like photography. You need the negatives to develop" (Unknown). It made me think that I must be well developed in some respects.

Maybe it doesn't exactly hold true in our present digital age. There are no longer real film negatives. But there are lots of rejects; images not worth using. Many of these images still reside in folders on our hard drives or (if we're smart) on backup CDs or flash drives.

You always think, maybe in the future, I'll try to do something with these rejects. But, realistically, the smart thing would be to delete them. Keep your best memories. Learn from and toss out the bad ones.

Candy Store for Cooks

It's actual slogan is "the candy store for grown-ups (and coffee people)". I've been visiting this store for about 30 years. The ownership has changed at least once but the goodies are still there.

First thing in the door, I grab a cart (always, even if I'm only going in for one thing). This day, I was going in to buy 3 or 4 ingredients for my own trail mix. That idea ended when I found one of their trail mixes (they had about a half dozen different trail mixes) that had everything I needed.

As I push my cart up and down the aisles of bulk bins, there's always something that catches my eye. Some items with eye appeal must be resisted. Too much sugar for me! However, they do sell some sugar-free items.

Other items include ingredients I'd like to try in my cooking. New spices top that list (although some people might argue that I already have too many spices at home).

Happiness is ...

Cabin at Eleanor Lake

I thought some of you would like to see what the cabin looked like that we stayed in at Eleanor Lake in the Whiteshell.

This is actually Cabin 8 of Riverview Lodge, next door to ours. Ours was cluttered out front with our chairs, dogs, and chipmunks.

If you want a virtual tour of our pet-friendly Cabin 9, go to http://www.riverviewlodge.ca/index.php?page=cabins&column_id=0&menuitem_id=3&sub_id=51&title=Virtual%20Tours&cabin=9&image_grp=80. Just copy and paste this URL to a new tab in your browser.

The cabin has two bedrooms, a fully equipped kitchen, bathroom, and a Jacuzzi. It also has satellite TV and air conditioning, neither of which we used. We did use the wireless connection at times.

What we liked most was the peace and quiet of our early September visit.

A Convoy of Semi Trucks and Traillers

Last weekend, a semi truck convoy circled Winnipeg's Perimeter Highway. The Truck Convoy is a celebration of the trucking industry and their support of the Special Olympics. It is a one day event in which Law Enforcement make special dispensation and escorts a convoy of trucks. Truck convoys like ours are held in other provinces and various states to the south.

When I was travelling home on the Perimeter, I saw the truck convoy heading in the other direction and managed to get a shot o a few of the trucks (always have a camera with you!).

The money raised by the truckers helps with travel and hotel costs athletes face in order to compete in the Special Olympics.

Hecklers

The classic hecklers are Statler and Waldorf. According to Wikipedia, Statler and Waldorf are a pair of Muppet characters. They are two disagreeable old men who first appeared in the television series, The Muppet Show, and heckled the rest of the cast from their balcony seats. I recently came across them as one of many wall paintings for the current show at Celebrations Dinner Theatre, "It's Elementary Sherlock".

If you've ever watched a Muppets show, you've seen these two guys.

Of course, we've all experienced hecklers in our lives. It's not funny when you have to deal with personal critics. Every time we've taken a stand or position on some issue, there've been hecklers somewhere in the background.

Can you think of some critics in your job?

Then and Now

"Always be demanding of the person you are ... and forgiving of the person you were" (Robert Brault). Looking back on my life (old folks like me tend to do that a lot), there were many acts and events that I now regret or wished I'd done differently.

I won't itemize any of them here because there are just too many and most of them are personal. Suffice it to say that I'm doing my best to take Brault's advice to heart.

Living in the moment and taking each day as it comes ... I guess that's what happiness is ...

It's Hard, Sometimes ...

One of Robert Brault's famous quotes is "It's hard, sometimes, when nothing's stopping you, to know what's stopping you". Many of his quotes can be found at http://rbrault.blogspot.ca/. His quotes are a great if you're looking for ideas to write about in your blog.

But, back to this quote. It got me thinking about procrastination. That's something I specialize in. Being as old as I am, I have decades of experience on the topic. Even posting to my blog, I run head-on into procrastination. It's gotten so bad this year that some of my followers have given up checking to see if I've posted something.

So, I resolved this morning to post something, post anything, today to surprize those followers. You're reading that post now, by the way. Unless you've been procrastinating about checking my blog.

That reminds me of Canada's big business leaders, bureaucrats and politicians. They're experts at procrastination; they never seem to make good on their promises.

Beating procrastination, at least once in a while, makes me happy. I should try it more often.

Peaceful Life at the Cabin

A few days at a rented cabin in the Whiteshell helped escape the hustle and bustle of city life. It's amazing how sitting on a lake shore and watching water and wildlife brings peace to the soul.

This was the same pet-friendly cabin we rented last year. One of the differences this year was the chipmunk activity around the cabin. Last year, we saw one or two chipmunks. This year, there were dozens of them. Watching them climb bur oak trees to clip off acorns was fascinating. After they clipped a dozen or acorns, they climbed down and gathered the acorns. First, they stripped off the shells. Then, they stuffed the green acorns in their cheeks. When their cheeks were full, they scurried away to store their acorns in underground burrows.

This is an image of one eastern chipmunk I photographed closeup, on the ground near my feet.

We saw all sorts of other wildlife over our 3 days at the lake, including otters, a beaver, Canada geese, gulls, ravens, Canada jays, brown creepers, and a hawk. Bear poop was seen on one of the nearby trails but, fortunately, no bears were encountered.

Happiness is ...