Monthly Archives: December 2019

End of year trip

So the reason why there was no posts for 10 days was because we were in Orlando Florida enjoying the warm weather. 🙂  As a side bar, I love my Toyota Prius I drove 4,400km and spent less than $200 in gas!  Yes granted gas prices in the US are lower but man getting 600+km per $20 fill up was amazing.  While the temps were mid 20s, unfortunately it rained almost everyday we were down there which kind of dampened things.  Still we visited Disney’s Magical Kingdom, Sea World and even did a gator tour as well as me sneaking off to take some fun photography shots.

As we were enjoying the sights and sounds, all I could think of was just how damn lucky I am to have Maggie & Brandon yeah I do feel pretty damn fortunate with how my life turned out.  Even though the weather was lousy at times it was still awesome and relaxing.  There are so many things to do in Orlando and with the Toyota so damn efficient, I think we’ll definitely make another trip there in the future.

I took a few artistic pics but will post those at a later time.

Family time is the best

Last night Brandon’s school had their annual winter festival and it was alright, lol little kids aren’t the best artists but you can see that many do try quite hard. 🙂

The boy loves to sing and dance so I’m glad he’s able to do that at school and as I grow older, I understand how important things like this are.

This morning I went to Brandon’s school so I could see him accept an award of for Kindness and Sharing.

It was PJ day that’s why everyone is dressed in their pajamas.  Brandon does have a very kind heart and I actually worry that people will take advantage of him for that but I guess time will tell.  Sigh I sometimes wish he wouldn’t grow up and remain innocent the rest of his life.

Finally today we went to Megan’s house to celebrate an early Sun family xmas dinner and it was great.

We celebrated early because Maggie, Brandon and I are taking a road trip to Orlando starting tomorrow. 😉  The kids are the sweetest and while I may hate the holiday season myself, I do enjoy to see the joy in their faces.  When we got home, I allowed Brandon to open his presents early and lol for one of them, I wrote a letter pretending to be Santa and he said it’s exactly what he asked for.  He kind of believes in Santa and it’ll be sad when he stops, oh well he’s a great kid and I really feel lucky right now.

EF lens?

A couple of months ago I sold my Canon EF 24-70 F2.8L II lens as I got the EOS R but last night I ended up picking up another one…

Why you might ask, because it was only $1,000!  It’s a really good deal on a lens that still retails for over $2,100!  Why someone is desperate to sell is not my concern, it’s almost mint and I couldn’t be happier.  I do miss the F2.8 aperture especially since my other general purpose lens is the RF 24-105 F4L but then again the faster EF lens doesn’t have image stabilization grr.  Oh well it, I’ll flip this later on and pick up the RF 24-70, that has IS and will solve all my problems right…

Fun weekend!

Well I certainly had a great weekend!  The fun started Friday, I went for a hike with my colleague at work Shafi at the Lower Don Parklands and I don’t think I could have asked for nicer weather.  Cool enough that the ground was frozen but warm enough that after climbing some hills I was sweating a bit.  Unfortunately we didn’t see any birds of prey, I saw a falcon or something like that last year but oh well this year there were small birds that were really hard to shoot.

If you zoom in on the branches you’ll be able to see the birds.  We walked by the Christmas tree and someone must have redecorated because all the ornaments were new.  I guess the city is removing it but I wish they wouldn’t, I thought it’s rather nice that someone took their time to decorate a random tree that you only see if you  hike into the park.

Shafi and I went for lunch in Greek town then went our separate ways but I would see him, Mario and Eddy in the evening as we organized to go to the Aurora Winter Festival at Ontario Place.

Taking photos at night is definitely a lot more challenging as the camera wants to expose like it’s the day so you need to shoot manual. Since it was dark, all of us were playing with long exposures and I think the boat ride & ferris wheel turned out really well.  The LED lights were also really cool, I wish Maggie and Brandon came along as they’d both have fun but the wife thought it’d be too cold.  Hehe in the last photo Eddy is charming the TTC lady, she was asking him about photography stuff, if we were a club or something.

Saturday as typical was Brandon’s day with all of his activities but today was special.  Brandon went for his first Brazilian Jujitsu grading and he did great!

He really does love practicing BJJ and after a bunch of drills they got the kids to roll and the kids rolled hard!  Brandon dominated  his first fight completely moving from position to position and the second was a draw but Brandon got the takedown and stayed on top the whole time.  He got his first white stripe and was beaming with pride and I couldn’t be prouder.  Next year he wants to try some competitions, it won’t be easy but I think it’ll be a great learning opportunity for him.

After BJJ grading I dropped him off at a friend’s house to play while I relaxed at home.  A really fun weekend and with my time off I realize how damn lucky I am to have Maggie, Brandon and even Slinky!

Relaxing!

Yesterday morning I went to visit the two babies, Lily & Simone and they’re a lot of fun, god I miss it when Brandon was that age…  No pictures of Simone, Estelle doesn’t want any photos of her online but here are some of Lily. 🙂

Hehe Lily is starting to puff up and I love the folds on her arms & legs!

Later I picked Brandon up just before lunch so I could take him to a doctor’s appointment where he got an allergy test, proud he was tough and didn’t cry!

Getting pricked sucks and the results are that he has a strong allergy to dust mites so we’ll need to make sure the house is much cleaner and buy the more expensive filters for the furnace.  The rest of the day I cleaned then played games, man perhaps I should just retire. 😉

Getting dumber

So it looks like Canadians are getting dumber & like our Southern counterparts more and more people believe that we were created within the last 10k years…

A new poll has found a hefty minority (23 per cent) of Canadians reject the theory of evolution, and instead believe a god created humans within the last 10,000 years.

The survey, conducted by Research Co., found 61 per cent of Canadians believe humans “definitely” or “probably” evolved from less-advanced life forms over millions of years. That’s down five points from a similar Research Co. poll last year.

Seventeen per cent of people said they were unsure.

Source: Global News

Society is going backwards!  God is basically Santa for adults, it’s maddening that this is occurring at a time when we need science and reasoning to help us out of some of humanity’s greatest challenges.

Stupid WordPress!

Sigh sometimes I wish I were a web developer so I could modify WordPress myself, I’ve been using it for ~14 years and while it’s worked well I ran into a new problem with uploading images.  It worked yesterday but yeah it’s giving me a hard time today so I’m not sure what the hell is going on.  Anyway yesterday I went with Andrew to the Distillery District to take some photos and it was a lot of fun.  I saw a bird of prey eating another bird which is not something I’ve seen before.

We got there first thing in the morning so we didn’t have to pay to get in which was nice and as the day progressed it got busier obviously.  We left mid afternoon and called it quits, I was pretty tired from the walking and lol I ain’t in my 20s anymore.

Today was pretty low key, I took Brandon tobogganing and wanted to post some photos but it’s not working grr…  Well if I figure it out tomorrow maybe I’ll post it then I do have a lot of free time coming up as I’m off for the rest of the year but much of that time has been accounted for already. 🙁

Well that was fun

Last night my computer was having a problem powering up (it’d turn on for 2-3 seconds then turn off), after playing around with the hardware I decided to replace the power supply and that solved my problem but it got me thinking if it’s time to build a new system.  I built this thing I think 7 years ago so granted it’s pretty darn old but to be fair I no longer play video games on it so I don’t really need a power house for what I use it for.

Too bad December is such an expensive month, I’ll reassess in the new year and go from there, assuming that it makes it that long lol.

Walking around & fireworks!

Yesterday morning we went to Maggie’s company’s children’s xmas party and it was alright.  Brandon enjoyed doing the crafts and I like that they allow you to buy a gift for your kids that they’ll wrap and hand out.

LOL I guess I’ll have to get him that game. 😉  Brandon still kind of believe’s in Santa, he’s not sure but it’s cute that he gives it his all.  The boy had a birthday party to go to in the afternoon (as well as today) so I negotiated with Maggie for her to take him to the one on Saturday so I could do a photography thing.

Met up with Eddy downtown, unfortunately since it was so short of a notice no one else was available but that’s alright we still had fun.  I walked over 33k steps which I think is a record for me, boy are my ankles sore.  Anyway we went all over downtown and the pictures were totally worth it.

He’s more of an artist than I am, unfortunately it doesn’t come to me naturally but I still think I did alright.  I really enjoyed the nighttime shots, I don’t get to do it enough and it’s so much fun to experiment with the lights.  We wrapped up the night shooting the fireworks at city hall, it was the Cavalcade of lights, super busy but we found a pretty good spot with a great view!  Unfortunately my shots are a bit overexposed, next time I’ll need to raise the F stop slightly but it’s alright I learnt a lot.

We stayed home most of the day, it was super lousy weather anyway but in the early evening Brandon and I went to Kid’s fun city to celebrate Selina’s 8th birthday.  We know her from Scouting and it was nice to be there with the girl for her special occasion.  The roads were pretty bad but I have a great set of snow tires and drove slow so it was alright.  A tiring way to cap off a busy weekend but it was pretty good, suppose to snow all night so we’ll see tomorrow if I work from home or go into the office.