Susi's measurements: 122+-69-60

I was chatting with my buddy Susi last night, and while she knew it had been snowing here, wanted to know how much. She's an engineer, and wanted measurements. This is a lot of snow for Calgary, but at least it's a dry powdery snow that shovels easily, though it doesn't pile up so well. My neighbour's idiot shovelling service insists on piling it up on top, and lots of it comes down on my side, like where the level is in the second last photo.

This level is 1.22 m long.  This is beside the driveway on the lawn, and I'm pretty sure it's not jammed all the way down to the grass. It's been piled up a bit, but the major pile is further back. I can't reach that far.

This is down at the bottom of the driveway. I'd lose the level if I jammed it in at the top, if I could reach the top. This is just stuck into the overflow, and I tried to shoot the camera level. It's maybe 1.3 or 1.4 m deep. If the neighbourhood kids try to play king of the castle on top of it, I'll totally be that grumpy old geezer running out of the house shouting, "Hey you kids get off my pile of snow!"

This is on the front lawn, and has very little shovelled on. I try to push the snow a bit further along and cover up the south end of the side flowerbed. That's probably a metre deep.

Much of the lawn is a similar depth.

And it's still snowing hard. The driving will be major league crappy today. Retired life is wonderful on days like this. I'm sorry, does that sound like gloating?

This is what my morning has been, in between shovelling. Life is good, snow and all. Maybe I'll go photo snowshoeing a bit later.

Am I a coffee snob?

You can see me, hard at work on the coffee this morning.

Well, actually, this shot is after making, and after the first sip, but before the second sip as I got an idea. I suppose technically, I'm not hard at work on the coffee at all, but rather am hard at photography.

But lets stick with the coffee part of it. Some people get up, dump some ground coffee into a filter basket made of bleached paper, add water, and push a button on the drip coffee maker. The disgusting gurgles at the end put me off. Sometimes it smells and tastes of plastic, just a bit.

Some people even set it all up the night before, so all they have to do is push the button in the morning. That the grounds go stale overnight never enters their minds. Such people might not even let the full pot brew, but stick their mug under it to get it faster. Speed is more important to them than taste. Some even spring for the fancy coffee makers that work on a timer, so it's ready when they stumble out of bed, if they remembered to set it up the night before.

There are some who use the little landfill cloggers that are reputed to contain a coffee-like substance and who's name begins with K, but they are beyond the pale. We will not discuss them and their uncivilized ways here.

I try not to think about what happens to nice fresh coffee after it's been poured in the pre-heated mug. (Umm, you DO pre-heat your mug, right?) Things get added to it, which dilutes the coffee goodness. As an uncle of mine told me once, if you aren't man enough to drink it black, don't drink it all. So wherever it comes, I drink it black. It baffles me that a particularly popular and expensive "coffee" chain sells drinks that are mostly sugar and various 'flavourizers' added to bad coffee, and continues to get customers.

It takes me about 20 minutes from stumbling out of bed to the first sip, and most of that is waiting for the water to boil. In the meantime I'm dealing with the cat horde and starting breakfast, so it's not wasted time. I'll pick the beans I want and run them through the conical grinder. (Yes the kind of grinder really matters.) Normally we have three kinds on the go. Here's the current selection, delivered to our house a few days ago. I always buy a dark, a medium, and whatever the coffee of the month is.

After the water boils I carefully pour it over the fresh grounds, stirring firmly. The coffee smell coming out of the french press is almost as nice as that first sip. Set the timer for 4 minutes, stir again somewhere along the way. Press, pour into cup, remainder into thermos. Sip. Ahhhhhhh!

In retirement I've come to love sipping the coffee in a leisurely way, and coming to grips with whatever new insanity the world has come up with overnight. I try to overlook the worst of it as I think about what my day will be. It could be anything, who knows? Certainly not me at that point, unless I've got something scheduled. Right now I'm inside of course, but during the summer it's particularly nice to be on the patio, smelling flowers with the morning sun.

Eventually I come up with a plan, except when I don't and am a total slackerpants. The day I wrote this was lots of blogging stuff. Updating my photo blog. Getting ahead on blog writing. Doing an experimental macro shoot, with one really nice shot, and a few so-so ones. Some puttering around the house. Delicately molesting the cats as they were trying to snooze in the afternoon sun. Life is good.

2017 almost a wrap

It's Saturday as I start write this. Saturday a week ago. It might get added to several times. Who knows? Another year closing down, seems appropriate to include a sunset photo, even though it's dawn as I'm writing this bit. I'll bet you didn't know reading a blog could be so temporally confusing.

It's been quite a year. I almost don't know where to begin, but if you've followed my blog, you know what's happened. If you haven't been, then you need to do a bit of reading to catch up to my regulars. (And I do thank my regulars and irregulars (and some of you are quite irregular) for showing up and reading.) Only 315 blogs so far this year, thats not so bad. Get the tipple of your choice and get started. I'll still be here.

I've talked a little every now and then about money, and how at first the question is "Can I afford...", and then after a while it becomes "Do I want to afford...". It turns out the same thing is true of time. When you're a child, time is a bit paradoxical. It seems to take Christmas and birthdays FOREVER to arrive. When the last few minutes of class take an eternity for the clock to tick, the whole week seems like a lifetime. Then summer vacation goes by in an instant.

Then it gets bad when you get into work life (or work death depending on the job), and it seems the work week drags along and you live for the weekends with your buddies. Unless you are one of those fortunate people who find a job doing what you love.

Now I have all the time in the world, and I can mostly decide what I want to do. Of course there is a hard end to it, but I don't know when that will be, and hopefully not soon. Could I take the car and drive somewhere on a day long photo ramble? Sure, as long as Linda doesn't need it. Stay home and cuddle cats? They like that. Work on the novel, edit photos, de-clutter the basement? All good, as long as I don't touch Linda's stash of goodies. Which of my buddies is free for some mutually desirable activity? Somehow when you are choosing what to do, it's a lot more fun, even if under other circumstances it might be considered a chore to get done before doing fun stuff.

Let me just say it's surprising how fast the days go by. Although I'm tentatively penciled in to a project starting next year, I'm beginning to wonder if I'm going to have the time to work again. This being retired is hard work.

I'm still finding the pace. Some days are really busy and it seems I barely have time to blow my nose. Other days are a bit slower paced and I wonder if I want to start digging seriously into some of my ongoing projects, or start a new one.

Then there's various fitness activities. Just the last couple weeks I've dialled back a bit with the intent to give myself a bit of a rest, and start up again in the new year. Gradually, of course. Plus it's been minus WTF cold lately, which makes it easy to stay inside. I'm still not decided for sure about races, though I'm being encouraged to sign up. I think I want to see how the training is going, and then sign up. Saving a few dollars by signing up early just generates stress for me, because then I feel I HAVE to train. I want to swim bike run hike snowshoe whatever because it's fun.

What has been fun this year is photography. Right now I've taken about 28,000 photos this year. Don't be impressed too much, my buddy Neil has taken more than 10 times that. I'm not completely consistent in my keywords, but according to them my most popular subject is Yukon, by far. Those include lots of things, but mainly aurora and landscapes. Flowers, Fish Creek, Macro, and Sunrise are the next most popular. I have periodically thought about my keywords, and the process surrounding them. I will no doubt think more on the topic.

Of those 28,000 or so photos, I've edited about 1650 (not counting those assigned 4 or 5 stars), assigned 4 stars to 175, and 5 stars to 18. Keep in mind I'm not entirely consistent in star ratings either. If you do the math, that means I work with about 6.5% of my raw photos. There are probably 3 times as many edited that I look at in the editing process to winnow down to the one of several similar shots that I'll edit. It's  been fun looking back over the years work. I would like to believe I've improved, but I suppose it depends on what the criteria is. I've been deleting lots of them, mainly because they qualify as clutter. Out of focus, out of exposure, one of several quite similar shots, just plain boring evidence I was out of my mind when I clicked the shutter.

Coming up soon on my list of things to do is to update my photo blog. Some of the photos will drop off, more will be added. I'll let you know when. Stay tuned.

I can see where 2017 continued to suck for lots of people, what with the economy and idiot politicians, both here and in the USA. But things are getting better economy wise. Not so sure about the politicians, though. My neighbours elected Kenney. Sigh.

We have some friends that retired a little while ago, and we had been asking them all sorts of retirement questions. They were right. It's all true. You do spend less money. You are more relaxed. Getting started on things on your own time (provided you actually start) is a wonderful thing. There are idiots on the road at any time of day, not just rush hour. The difference is there's more road rage during rush hour, and more unpredictability the rest of the time. I'm not sure which is worse. You see a whole different crowd and a different vibe at your workout centre. I still haven't figured out the good time to go to Costco.

When we started 2017 we were both looking at a busy start to the year. Linda finishing off a 35 year career at the city, burdened with more crazy work than ever. I was going into a short term part time contract, but knowing it would be crazy busy. We figured the first part of the year would go by quickly, and so it did. Suddenly we were both here, learning to deal with a slower pace of life. It's been nice.

Next year? Who knows? More photography, with better photos. Regular exercise, preferably with like-minded buddies. Maybe some paid contract work. Some de-cluttering, that's for sure. Other projects that seem like a good idea at the time. Just making it up as I go along.

Don't forget, I've had several people make their suggestions for Image of the Year, and you could join this select group. On the other hand, I've had no questions at all for the Ask Me Anything. I figure that people want to get Christmas out of the way, then settle into the process of asking a question that will test my ingenuity. I look forward to it!

A night walk

One of the nice things about retirement is that you can schedule your time as you like. At least, that's the theory.

I'm generally a morning person. Left to myself I'm usually in bed before 10, sometimes before 9, and I'm usually up before 6. Being in bed at 7 is rare, and past 8 is almost unheard of. In the summer that means I'm not going to get much night shooting done.

Places that are boring in real life and even worse in photos can turn into interesting and dare I say, even magical places at night. So that's one nice thing about this time of year, I can go out in full dark and explore the light and shadows of the city. And right now, night starts about 6:30 (there's an app for that). I can get some lovely shots and be home for bedtime.

The Camera Store organizes a beers and cameras event every other Thursday. Last night was it, to get you onto the cycle. People show up with their cameras at a pub, eat and drink and talk camera stuff, then stroll as they please to another pub to drink and talk more.

It's fun going by yourself, and even more fun with buddies. Last night I'd planned to meet up with my buddy Sean, and it turned out one of the women there had been in a Zeller class with me. She had brought a neighbour, and the four of us strolled amiably towards the new Zoo bridge set to open this weekend, then to the other pub.

A technical camera aside for those that care, feel free to skip a couple paragraphs. The sensor in your camera records the light that falls on it. You can control how this turns out through your camera settings. One of these is ISO. Don't worry about what that stands for, it's just a measure of sensitivity that used to relate to what film you bought.  Film, that's, oh heck you can look that up yourself.

For most cameras it starts at 100 and goes up, 200, 400, 800 and so on. The better the camera the higher the numbers go. (It's more complex than a tweet!) If the sensor doesn't see much light, you get a dark photo. You could hold the shutter open longer to let more light in. That's fine for a scene where neither the camera or subject are moving, or where the moving things (like tail lights) are creating an effect you want. Yes, your heartbeat is enough to move the camera.

Or, you can increase the ISO, which makes the sensor more sensitive to light so the shutter doesn't need to stay open as long. This might be the right thing, if you don't have a tripod or your subject is moving.

So why not crank up the ISO and leave it there? Noise. It's like a false positive. The sensor sees a dark sky, but it's all twitchy and jumpy like a person that's had too much coffee and it's seeing stuff that isn't really there. So the dark sky we see is replaced by this grey with coloured speckles in it, and it looks gross. During the day the photo would be over exposed. The usual trick is to keep the ISO as low as possible and adjust other settings.

(Technical aside over. You can start reading again.)

So my buddy Sean and I get together periodically for a beer and a meal, and chat about the state of the world. We've known each other since 2002 or so, and both do similar kinds of work. I hadn't known he was interested in photography until I started. So we decided to join the beers and camera thing this time. My main camera thing was to explore where higher ISO settings bring in unacceptable noise on my new camera, which isn't as simple a thing as you'd think it would be.

The first pub was unexpectedly crowded, so we drank and walked. There are a number of nice scenes in Inglewood, and we had a nice time strolling and chatting, or waiting while one of us was engrossed in a scene.

Part of the challenge of shooting at night is balancing what our eyes see compared to what the camera sees. I don't want to tweak the photo so it looks like daylight. I want to leave in the shadows, and the subtle light reflections.

Once upon a time this place was the fashionable place to go, then it was really seedy for a long time, now it's a really good restaurant.

A splash of colour in a shop window.

I'm not sure about this one. I wanted more of a halo around the person but it didn't quite come out right. Maybe if I'd held off the shutter a fraction of a second longer.

This is actually a dangerous photo. As some of my buddies know, those numbers relate to a specific colour. Now they can hold up a skein to their computer screen, and wonder where the colour calibration is off.

Two of my photo walk buddies, eager to get to the next place. Love the hail battered window ledge as a leading line.

I'm really not sure about this one. This is what I was thinking of when saying a shot might be boring during the day. At night, I'm thinking the shadows and lines make it more interesting. Then again, you might think I'm smoking dope. Don't be afraid to tell me.

Yes, it would be easy to push the exposure and light up this building, but it would boring. I like the shadows, and the pattern of lights. Beats me why they have two lights together on the left side and not one.

Gateways

In the movie Arrival, (close your eyes for a second if you haven't seen it and still want to, and don't want to be spoilered) the premise is that by learning an alien language people can learn to remember the future. This isn't new, lots of science fiction stories have seeing the future as a premise. Even the ancient Greeks had that idea, though Cassandra was cursed that nobody would believe her. (BTW, Arrival is a terrific movie if you haven't seen it yet. All photographers drool at the composition of the opening scene.)

But the theory often seems to be that you would remember everything about the future, and why should that be? How much of the past do you actually remember? Pop quiz, what were you doing at noon, a week and 5 days after your 12th birthday?

(Crickets.)

Now, you might end up having a memory of the future that includes a look at a calendar that shows you planning an event for a particular time and place in 2047. Maybe that's a possible future you, and there are other branches of you that die a week tomorrow in a car crash. That's why you wouldn't have any memories from then.

We choose our future every moment, often without realizing it. Sure, picking a school, picking a job, deciding which city to live in opens up a path to a future you, and simultaneously closes off other paths. Maybe you'd have met the love of your life if only you had taken that short term contract in Vancouver. It rolled over to a longer term, and you met that cute co-worker, blah blah blah. Or maybe that's where you died in a car crash and by staying here you got a long fulfilling life but you slide into senility with nobody but a paid nurse to change your diapers.

We usually don't know the results of our choices, though some are obvious. Getting into a car being driven by a drunk is a really bad idea. No brainer there. I think it's a no brainer that voting for Jason Kenney or anyone in their new political party is a bad idea, but then again, some people are so demented as to think that Trump is doing a good job.

There is an open gate. Inviting, provided you don't trip over the leaves, or run into the obstacle just past the gate. But there's another gate right beside it, closed. Someone in a rush might not even notice that closed gate. Maybe it's closed because going that way is a bad idea, or maybe, just maybe, the prize for opening it is substantial. You get to choose, and you probably won't have as much information as you'd like.

Again and again, you get to choose. Which shirt and tie to wear to work today? Doesn't matter. Oops, maybe it does, there's that big meeting with the new boss. Which route to take to work today, car or transit? Did you think about how long the egg salad sandwich you grabbed as a meeting leftover had been out of the fridge, or who had breathed on it? What kind of toothpaste do you get on the way home, you'd think you'd recognize something you pick up every day for several weeks, but no, and your spouse will get cranky with you if you get the wrong stuff, and therefore doesn't want to have sex and that's the day you'd have got pregnant.

On and on, decisions, decisions. Big, little, and unknown. Go through this gate to this path, but not that one. Oops! Goofed, but now it's too late. Live and learn.

Sometimes I think this getting old thing is just getting tired from making so many decisions. I remember talking to older people, and them saying they liked things slowing down as they got older, living a simpler life by excluding choices. I didn't get it then. I do now. I've really enjoyed this 4 months off. There are days so busy I don't know if I'm coming or going, and days I do very little. The balance is nice.

There are some gates beginning to loom up in front of me. Their shadows are becoming more clear, but who knows for sure? In other news, our financial advisor is building us an income allocation plan to get the money we need out of our various investments, while triggering as little tax as possible. The assumption being made at the moment is that there is no other work contract for me because, really, until there is an offer on paper to be signed, there is nothing and I'm free to go photograph whatever seems good. But life changes. All the time. Stay tuned.

I didn't think staying caught up on sleep would be so hard

This retirement thing is harder than I thought. I figured I'd take some vacation, then get into retirement groove, find a routine, and be good to go.

When I'm working, and working out, I'm usually in bed by 9, sometimes earlier. Up at 5. Usually not sleeping the whole night. Busy all day, ready for bed again. It makes for a fast day.

The days go by even faster now. Who knew? I'm trying to get up when I get up, but there's been a surprising number of days I've set the alarm clock. I see no need to drive downtown in rush hour for a swim, so that affects my timing a bit. I've ridden my bike there a few times, which takes a bit of planning.

I've had a couple days where I deliberately planned to do very little, and that's nice. Usually there's something on the schedule. I try to get up and get at it, but a couple things on my list have slipped all week. Really, how difficult can it be to make a phone call and book an appointment?

Today was sleeping in from being up late yesterday (fireworks), then some flower shots, a nice run, (5K in 35 minutes if interested), lunch, working on some macro photos (they will be posted Monday), making some calls to see if something ordered has come in. I found out too late it had, but I wasn't going to drive there on the off chance. So installing that can't happen until Monday. There will be photos.

Yesterday was a nice swim, and a chat with some buddies I see at the pool. One of them tied right into recent blog topics, and it was interesting to get another take on the situation from someone else in the industry.

I certainly don't want to get in a rut, doing the same old same old every day. But part of a fitness routine is that it is a routine. Regular. That hasn't happened so much since my race in June. How can that be two months ago, so fast?? It seems there is always something bumping my schedule around. Oh well, it just makes life more interesting.

One bit of interesting was my uncle contacting me via Facebook. I'd hand written (HAND WRITTEN people, when was the last time you hand wrote a letter?) a letter to my Granny who will be 98 later this year. I made the mistake of mentioning the writing. She's been on my case about the book I've been writing since shortly after starting it. My regular readers will know that book is far older than this blog, and has undergone far more revision and transformation. It's oscillated between being a techno thriller, a love story, and a mystery. It's opened and expanded out into a far bigger story, but what's important about it being a book is that it's not a commercial property. I couldn't easily market it, mainly because it isn't an easily defined genre, and worse, it doesn't follow a standard plot outline. That makes editors nervous.

It's also huge, something on the order of 350K words. After some back and forth with my uncle, I sent hime a text file for The Bone in the Digester. He went back and forth with it on his laptop to find an app that would open it and look like something Granny might read. Well, no. It took less time than the laptop took starting, for Granny to decide it wasn't a book, and she wasn't going to read it on screen. She wanted paper in her hands.

Sorry, Granny, it's not going to happen. I am not going to kill a bunch of trees to print out a draft copy, and put a dent in my bank account mailing it. Neither am I going to burden other relatives with the concept of taking a file to a local printshop and transporting the resulting pile of paper to Granny. Just my luck she wouldn't like a mound of paper either, because it isn't a bound book.

The current work is about a new character, and I don't know him and the people around him as well as I know my other characters. Right now I'm stuck on something, and I think I need to give it a bit of a rest. It's worked in the past. Or I could skip back to the other books and work on them. Or I could pick up the camera and take photos.

Here's some of the recent flower photos. I know some of you are a junky needing your fix. Not sure what I'm going to be able to do for you during the winter.

Some fitness babble, and flowers to reward you

Let me rewind. 3 weeks ago I ran the Millarville Half Marathon. It didn't kill me, so I guess it made me stronger. I've been a bit of a slacker since then, only running and swimming occasionally.  But first, to get everyone's attention, here is the awesome Michelle (#BRBE) after a one hour swim, and a 2:15 run. I was along for part of it. A little over 3 hours of workouts, and still smiling!

She was a total champ supporting me along the way to the half. Now I (and others) are supporting her  on her training for Calgary 70.3, and then IMZ in November. For those not in the tri community, that's Ironman Arizona, 3.8 K swim, 180 K bike ride, and a 42.2 K run, all one right after the other. There will be a watching party, time and place to be announced.

My hips are feeling less cranky, and I think my shoulders are doing better, and I'm trying to build a retirement fitness routine. Both my swim and run are a bit slow now, and being on the bike has been almost non-existent.

I knew going into today's run that if I made 10 K I'd be really happy, but didn't really think it would happen. I knew that running the whole 2:15 was right out. We hit the pool first. That felt slow and clunky at first, then settled in. Then it was down to Fish Creek to run in the (mostly) shade, before it got really hot.

8K nice and easy came up with my hamstrings talking to me a bit, so I decided to have a nice walk to cool down (such as it is), rather than push through. The next little while is going to be lots of that. Swim or run till complaints happen, then cool down. With any luck the distances will increase gradually. The plan is to get on the bike periodically. I will need to do some research to figure out what time/distances I should aim for.

No races in mind. I was sort of thinking of pushing for Chaparral, but then got asked to do the photos for it. That was an easy yes, and I've done a bit of research about getting better race photos. Maybe I'll race it next year.

The retirement groove is settling in. No rush. I figured I'd take a week of "vacation", then start "retirement." Stay tuned to see how that's going.

Here's some more of the recent photos. The questing H&C blossom from a different view. This gives you a sense of how small an area the macro photo from yesterday was zoomed into. As a hint, I could print that one in superb detail (better than what you seen on screen) 18x12, or even 24x16. Just saying.

The peony in the back has the most amazing full blossoms. I caught the morning light just right.

Yet another lily. I'm quite taken with this shot for a bunch of reasons. I remember it being a bit more orange than that, but I'm not going to complain about the purple. There was almost no tweaking in Lightroom for this.

13,011 days, didn't go postal

Today is a big day for Linda. Really big. Once in a lifetime big. So is this post. Get a drink.

It's her last day in the office after 35 years, 7 months, and 15 calendar days. Technically, she's still a City employee for a while longer. She has current and accumulated vacation to use up, and lieu days, so someone in the office has to do all the math to make sure she's paid for all the right number of hours, and that everything is balanced and closed off in an orderly way.

Some people coast into retirement, with a weeks or months long winding up of affairs. Not Linda. Since the beginning of the year her business unit has been an ant hill stirred with a stick on several fronts. The current plan is not to replace her because there is a software package coming real soon now (any month, really!) that can do much of her job. Except, well, details that are troublesome and difficult for the managerial mind to grasp.

They gave her a checklist of things that must be done before she goes, and she's been chugging through it, repressing the people asking her to look into various other things, of which there are a great many and they all have to be done RIGHT NOW. I told her to bring out The Look, the one that reduced one of her bosses to say, "I'm being glared to death."

Yes, she's happy. She is done. Done like dinner, and more. We had thought about doing something to celebrate, but mainly she wants to collapse in a heap for a little while. I can understand that. It will take a while to sink in.

It's been a bit of an evolution. A bunch of years back I wanted her to retire the instant she hit her 85 factor. That would have meant a few years till she could actually draw her pension, but my thinking was that if we couldn't afford to live on one income at that point, we'd have done something terribly wrong. That particular work place was poisonous, and I wanted her out of it.

Much of the last decade has been in a much better place. She tracks money going back and forth between the City and various property developers. That is the limit of my understanding, and I don't want to understand any more. We decided that since she mostly enjoyed it, working a few "extra" years to plump up her pension a bit, and fund some home stuff was a good idea.

There is a pension calculator tool that provides an estimate of your pension. She has been consulting this regularly for years, calculating our expenses, her pension and income from other sources. Plus tracking my investments and the potential return from them. (No workplace pension, remember?) She started from a place where a "fixed income" meant poverty, and has been slowly evolving to a place of understanding in her guts that it isn't true for us. (Not that we're going to be taking yearly round the world cruises in the finest cabin on the Queen Mary or anything.) It doesn't matter who told her we'd be fine, she had to do the numbers herself, and let them settle in. Again and again. Years, and I'm not kidding.

The pension numbers are sort of like a reverse mortgage. When we bought our house, it seemed like all the money in the world, and we had to scrape to make it. We were fortunate there were no expensive emergencies the first few years. Every year we got a statement of the amount paid and the principle still owing. I think the first year we paid off about 95 cents of the principle. Slowly it gets whittled down. The interest rates dropped, and we got paid more, so the amount of the principle generating interest dropped, and it got paid down faster and faster.

The pension is the opposite. I worked for the City a few years a very long time ago. The first pension deductions were painful, but I didn't have a choice. I got a statement that my pension amount was the cube root of diddley squat. Being honest, if I'd been offered the choice I probably would have taken it as cash. It seemed at the time there were lots better things to spend money on.

Linda was the same. Over the years the pension amount grew slowly. About 20 or 25 years in it starts getting worth noticing and paying attention to. For some people, the pension becomes so valuable they can't leave the job. They call it the golden handcuffs. Then you start getting tired of work and begin to think of alternatives, and you're glad it was deducted and invested. It's one of the ways that money works for you, if you let it.

Now, before you get all excited and start ranting about gold plated pensions, keep in mind that for at least part of that time she was not especially well paid, and that is reflected in her pension. Read this rant from a couple years ago for more details.

The bigger part of the journey is emotional. Keep in mind that handing in your retirement notice at the City is irrevocable. It doesn't matter that you made a terrible mistake, or acted out of short term anger. So you want to get it right, and credit to the City, they go to some effort to help people get it right. This is one of those major life-changing decisions.

I've left so many jobs over the years I can't even count them all without writing them down. It's old hat to finish up and move on. Linda has been in this position almost 10 years, and was in the one before that a long time. She stressed about that move, and a change this big has been stressful as well.   Not just the pension math. She has friends from that job, some retired some still working. She has a routine, trading time for money. The security. So much of our society revolves around people working, that it's hard to make the choice not to be working. Even if you don't have to anymore. Force of habit is a powerful thing.

Linda has seen any number of people working at the City succumb to various ailments that change their working life or affect their retirement plans. Just this week one of her close co-workers was diagnosed with leukaemia and just started treatment. He's a few years younger than us. I think it's safe to say this will have an impact on the remainder of his life, working or otherwise.

Some of the cruelest outcomes have been people that finally retire after working much longer than they "needed" to, and drop dead after a few years. We don't want that to be us. We have plans. We've both worked hard to maintain our health. By current standards we've got another 20 years or so, maybe a little more. We want to enjoy them.

Part of the retirement process is cleaning out her desk, and bringing home all her personal property. There is a surprising amount of it. One thing she's hung onto all these years, right back to day one, is vacation statements. If she wanted to go through them, she could figure out exactly how many hours she was working, and how many on vacation. I'd better not laugh, I cleaned out one of my drawers of paperwork and found a pay stub from 2009. Still, it has to be dealt with. She has been dumping boxes of paper into the shredder. She has a decade of cover your ass emails to archive. I don't even know what all.

One of the things is a digital picture frame. It has vacation photos on it, plus I think some of my recent photos with the good camera. I'm looking forward to finding a place to have it going. There are almost certainly photos on it I haven't seen for years.

One of the stresses of life that we don't think about much is the whole getting up and getting to work thing. Traffic is going to suck around here for a while so I'm glad to miss that. Getting to work, and getting home seems like it's always a rush, and the day you're running a bit behind seems to be the day when stuff goes wrong. One of the things that makes me crazy about her work is that people notice if you're late, or you take too long at coffee or lunch, or leave too early. Then they beak off about it.

The last time I can remember for sure an employer caring about my work hours was at NOVA, when I had to deal with faxes time stamped up to 4:59, but not the 5:00 ones, and I could go as soon as they were done. Since then my employers have assumed their people were grownups, able to manage their time to meet their deliverables as well as deal with all the other stuff in their lives.

We are looking forward to getting up when we get up, having coffee on the patio, discussing whatever our plans for the day are, and getting about them as seems appropriate. I've got a few more work days left on this contract, 9 to be exact. After that the alarm clock is going to start gathering dust. I'm sure there will be days that one or the other of us wants to be up at a particular time for some reason. All things considered, to have both work careers end essentially at the same time is pretty amazing. I'd like you to think we planned it that way, but no. It was an accident. Plus I don't think I'm done working. There might be a few more part time short term contracts here and there. Or there might not be. I'm not going to lose any sleep about it, or go looking under rocks desperate to find the next one.

But mostly we want to sleep till we wake up. This might get interesting for us. I'm mostly an early bird now. Linda is a bit of a night owl, at least as much as she can be with having to wake up early for work. It will be interesting to see how that shakes out.

We've decided that we are mostly going to be home bodies this summer, enjoying the garden and puttering about the house. Relaxing. Coffee/lunch/other activities with buddies. We want to get out to the mountain parks for some hiking and sightseeing, but that's about it. Later on we'll plan a big retirement celebration trip.

Linda is home now, escaped at last. She had to work right up to the last minute. Not that anyone was standing over her with a whip, just trying to get things as orderly as possible for her despairing
co-worker who now has to do Linda's job in addition to all the stuff she didn't have time for already.

The big celebratory dinner? Tonight it's pizza and wine. Maybe something more elaborate tomorrow. She's all giddy and giggly with happiness, and that's only two sips into this glass of wine.

She has been fixated on this day for a while now. It's been crowding out lots of stuff. It's almost been as stressful for me as for her, waiting for it to happen. Now she's free. I am taking bets on whether she gets another cell phone or not. The one from 2002 died and hasn't been replaced. I'm pretty sure that some of her buddies would like to text her, but she doesn't believe it.

I think Monday is going to be a celebratory or ceremonial sleep in.

Photo Gallery news

I've been teasing you for a while about the possibility of a photo gallery. Zenfolio was the first suggestion, and to be thorough I looked at a bunch of others, Squarespace, 22slides, Format, Photoshelter, 500Px, 1x, Smugmug, Shutterfly, Photobucket, and probably some more. I'd go from one to the other, trying to keep track of what I actually needed now, what I might need, and what I didn't need.

I had a full scale dither happening! I couldn't make up my mind. Even reading the various 'getting started in x' didn't help encourage me to dive into a free trial. I was almost landed on 22slides, when I had a brain wave.

Why not see if the tool I already had would work? Why not indeed? I spent a happy little while puttering between templates, and thinking about layout, then pushed the button.

Basic and simple is the word. You'll see some tabs with different groups, such as Landscapes, Skyline, Cats, and some others. You'll need to go there to see them all for your self. Don't be afraid to click on the photos to embiggen them, all of them should be worth looking at big.

Go where, you ask? I'm glad you did. Here. I've also linked to it on my blogroll. Just remember Keith Cartmell Photography and it's easy. Check it out, I'll wait till you come back. There's still work to be done, and some more images to find. I'm not as consistent as I'd like to be about keywords and star ratings. Serves me right. Now I'm going to have to scroll through a great many images to find the ones I want.

That blog is going to concentrate on photography. I'll add new photos as good ones arrive. Maybe a year from now I'll wince at seeing the ones in the gallery now, but that just means I've grown. I might blog about photo adventures, or if there's a good story to tell. I'm too lazy to write the same thing twice, or even do copy paste, so I might tease you with the start of the story, and link to the other blog so you get the whole picture. I might add a couple more groups, but I'm limited on how many I can add. There's always limits; you pick the ones you want to live with.

What's going to happen with this blog? I'm not entirely sure. I've liked the idea of putting up a photo a day, and photo of the month. I might still do that. I'm pretty sure I'll continue doing rants once in a while, those seem popular. I'll babble about fitness but won't harp on it. The fitness people reading this know the ins and outs already, and the rest of you don't care that much. There might be a bit more about the writing process, and progress, or the lack of it, or the attempts at it.

Maybe it will turn into the retirement adventures of K&L. We've been good for so long, maybe it's time to cut loose, kick up our heels, and frisk off into a whole new world! Stay tuned.

Here's one of the abstracts that didn't make it into the gallery. I think of this one as a bit of an old fashioned map. Lots of mountain ranges in the darker shades, with some valley in the yellows, and a long skinny lake. Now I'm thinking about the people that could be living there, and what they'd get up to.

Inversion murk

This first photo is not going to be picked up by the Calgary tourism department, but that's ok. They want the image of a nice clean city washed in the pristine air coming off the Rockies.

Some days, not so much.

No, I haven't done anything fancy in Lightroom. That's really what it looked like from the south end of the city. I've got several others from various perspectives, and they all look much the same. It's called an inversion, where a temperature difference traps atmospheric pollutants. It looks terrible from here, but the people downtown probably didn't notice unless they looked carefully.

In the department of lemons and lemonade, I thought maybe the murk would be a good thing for a skyline sunrise shot. There were some adventures along the way, and either I didn't drink enough coffee beforehand, or my eyeballs need calibrating.

I took 189 shots, and 103 of them were so badly out of focus they are useless for anything. They will be trashed. I started with 43 given one star, meaning look at them in more detail and compare to others to see what gets worked on further. Some of these got moved to the delete bucket.

In the end, 7 photos were developed, and I'm not even sure how much I like some of them. The murk as skyline backdrop idea turned out to be a bust, and the light wasn't anything to write home about.

But this is the one I want to talk about. Look at it carefully.

Sure, it seems a little flat and dull compared to the other one. This is straight out of the camera with absolutely nothing done to it but convert it to JPEG. So why didn't I work on it? I could, and in some senses it would end up looking fine, much like the one above.

But.

I'm thinking more about composition now as I actually take the photo, or trying to. Some things you can fix in Lightroom by cropping or other techniques. That isn't going to work here. Why? Because I should have stood about 10 or 15 feet to my right to take this shot. Then the Calgary Tower would have entirely disappeared. Even better, the new Brookfield Place tower would have been nicely framed between the two condo buildings, and I'd see a touch more of the Suncor building and it's reflection. Sigh.

It's the small things that separate great from good. Before, I might have been happy with it, but not now. I know I can do better. Live and learn.

The better applies to other things as well. Workouts. Not every one will be longer, faster, or stronger than the one before, but the overall trend should be better and better. Writing. There's lots of ways to tell a story, but part of the trick is finding the right way, and using the right words. Otherwise you might end up trying to drive a gravel truck down a goat path and that probably isn't going to work out so well.

This retirement thing is almost 3 months now and I think I'm settling into a groove. This is good. The run today was almost in the groove. I could feel myself almost settling in, then I'd get jarred out by something. The whole run was balanced between not quite in and almost in the groove, with just a few groovy bits. 5K 33.

Now that the cooler weather is coming in, I've got an idea for a indoors downtown photo shoot. Just before I started at Penn West I wandered through all the +15s and took some photos. Who wants to join me for a long ramble? We can meet up for breakfast and plot a course.

A bridgy sort of mood

Not abridged. No, you get the full version.

Just bridges inspiring some transitional thoughts today. First things first. After shooting downtown yesterday I took a scenic route home, checking some vantage points along the way. There was one I hadn't known of, where I got this nice panorama. (Look maw, no tower!)

From the same place I got this bridge.

Then a little further along I drove through Brittania. There are some very swanky homes there, most of them being classy and elegant, rather than cheesy McMansions. Some of them have a stunning view of the Elbow River and downtown. If I were to come into a ton of money (and you'd need it!) and happened to need a home, I'd love to buy there. I digress, I got the other bridge of the day from there.

Yesterday afternoon I met up with some Penn West alumni for drinks. Some are working in their field, one has changed industries, one is looking hard, and then there's me. Technically on vacation, in that I told one project manager I needed a month of vacation. That's winding up and I'm awaiting news of that project. Perhaps they've found other people more eager to participate, ones that could start now, and I'm no longer involved. At least they could tell me. Or maybe it's taking a little longer to get everything lined up and they have no news for me. Whatever.

Without going anywhere I've had a lovely vacation. It's been a busy month! The running has sucked slough water this month, which I think puts the October marathon out of reach. I could probably finish it, but I've no need to suffer through to just finish a race. Yesterday's 5 K, 33:18 was the first good run in almost a month. My legs felt springy and strong. The Tuesday 5K, similar time still felt a bit choppy and feeble.

I've been out on a number of photo shoots and taken a zillion pictures. Many are slight variations on what you've seen already. What boils down to the one skyline shot where the light and everything is nice, might have taken several hundred shots at slightly different times as the sun rises. Then you can pick the best one.

What's interesting to me about the photo shoots is finding neat little spots that I hadn't known existed in a city I've lived in for 36 years. I'm loving all the different shapes to the skyline, and how different it looks as the light changes. I'll probably keep doing skyline shots for a while as a way to practice composing shots, doing panoramas, dealing with all the choices in an HDR photo, and trying to get the light just perfect. Plus bridges, and landscapes/cloudscapes, and flowers, and who knows what else might catch my eye? I find I'm looking at the world differently now that I'm thinking about what the camera sees. I've got some nice compliments on photos so far, thank you very much. Don't be afraid to leave a comment about what you like, or don't like.

When I didn't work much in 2009 I found that I was busy almost all the time. Part of it was looking for work, of course. I was beginning to seriously wonder if I'd ever work again, or where I'd find the time to do so. I'm having some of the same thoughts now. I'm liking being able to swim in the morning and not have to be at work right away. I'm liking to be able to meet buddies and have lots of time to choose from. I'm liking being able to do what interests me during the day (well, except for this tax paperwork thing, there's some serious procrastination happening) or at night. I've been up late a few times and might do that more for sunsets, moonrises, or aurora chasing. Even getting up early to catch a sunrise is fun when you're also thinking about where you want to catch it from.

So, yesterday, I knew perfectly well that I was too close and too low for a really nice skyline shot, and I suspected the vibration from the trains a few feet away might ruin many shots. Even so, I wanted to do it and see for myself. I knew the sun was rising behind me, and there might be some good reflections. It's all about the experience of trying different things to see how they work out, and what you think. Sometimes the result is "won't do that again", and other times it's "holy crap that was awesome!"

The novel(s) have been on pause for this month, but I think things are coming together in time for a run up to NaNoWriMo. The mysterious behind the scenes villain has been making some noise in my head. Something one of the panelists said at WWC is "remember that the antagonist or villain is the hero of his or her own story." Stay tuned. Anyone else taking a run at NanoWriMo this year?

And X never marks the spot

Where have you heard that before?

We all know, or can know (there's an app for that) how many days since we were born. None of us know how many days till we die, not even those who have been told by their doctor to put their affairs in order.

That number of days is probably biggest variable in retirement planning, and nobody knows the number. Leaving money to your children is ok, but it's money you earned and could have had fun with. Or if you don't have children, and your money lives longer than you do, you can gift it to an organization you like.

More fun, though you won't live to see it, is to gift it to a relative. There are many novels built around that premise, where the rich deceased leave their money to an already rich person, or to a relative not in the line of succession, or one considered undeserving. If you're really over the top you can put clauses into your will to torment those left behind so they earn your money. Such fun!

The living longer than your money thing is on my mind lately. Medical technology has been extending life expectancy by leaps and bounds. It seems reasonable to consider the possibility that they will continue to extend it, perhaps to the point that death becomes a voluntary act. At that point your choices would seem to be working on a regular basis, though perhaps nothing close to full time. In that case you'd better be doing work you like. Or do something that lets you accumulate a pot of money big enough that you can live on it in perpetuity. With a sensible lifestyle that number is probably smaller than you think. Part of the problem is that almost everything people are exposed to leads them away from a sensible lifestyle.

My current thinking is that I could work more now if an interesting project came along, or if it turns out there is something really expensive that I want, maybe I'd work on a less interesting project. (Really expensive is more than a new car and less than a new house, in case you were wondering.) But as time goes by it becomes harder and harder to work, and the pay gets less and less, and paradoxically, the work gets harder and harder. Working as a Walmart greeter, for example, pays the cube root of diddly squat and is a close approximation of hell on earth. Wait too long to find out you are living longer than your money, and there you are. Some might consider it a suitable punishment.

To not change the topic, this morning I was listening to the swim club kids in the hot tub. They are mostly high school age, and perhaps the oldest are in university. Their outlook on life is charmingly naive. They have a mental model that says if they do certain things, that they'll get certain results. A car, a boy or girl friend, a degree, a job, whatever, they just have to follow the path laid out for them. I wish them well in the learning experience they are setting foot on.

The famous X on the map that marks the spot never moves. In the books I read as a child it marked buried treasure. The books never talk about the getting past decomposing corpses on the way to getting the pirate's treasure chest out of the ground, or the finder's disappointment in the contents of the chest. Or even if they survived the experience, since there were usually other people hot on the trail. By definition it's someone else's map, not yours. That's what you get for chasing someone else's goals.

So much of what passes for information about life is all one time satisfaction. X marks the spot. X being marry the prince and live happily ever after (LHEA). Win the lottery and LHEA. Get that right job and LHEA. Live in the right neighbourhood and LHEA. Drive the right car, date the right person, drink the right beer, it goes on and on. But so does life. It's more than a one time thing. How many divorces do you hear about where the people involved were sure they were marrying Mr or Miss Perfectly Right? Yeah.

Happiness in life isn't a one time event. It's finding happiness every day. What makes you happy today might not make you happy tomorrow. Find happiness today. What will you do, or have already done today to find happiness? Feel free to tell me in the comments.

A change of life

My last day at Penn West was Aug 31. I have deliberately tried to think of myself as a retired person, rather than a working person on vacation. For a start, I don't (yet) have a job to return to. Not that I'm out there digging under rocks looking for one. There's been some expressions of varying degree of interest, but there's lots of ways for the wheels to fall off the various wagons before the paperwork is signed.

The first couple weeks of retirement have not been entirely unalloyed pleasure. I got a sniffle as a departure present so I was fighting that off. There was a 26 K run scheduled for the 3rd, and I bailed out at 22 K. From then till now the running has essentially been a no go zone. I don't think I actually injured myself, but I do think I was right at the ragged edge. My running mojo was in the middle of that zone where I couldn't get at it.

Other things happened as I gave my legs a break. Lots and lots of photos, some blah, some good, and some spectacular. They haven't all made there way to this blog, but some will, at least one a day. You may have missed yesterday, a skyline shot from the west, since I posted it quite late in the day.

Naturally I've been taking some time for reflection. Lots of people think of September as a time of new beginnings. A new school year. Coming back from vacation. Lots of people schedule new jobs for a September start after the kids are back in school. Money managers in various corporations look at their budgets and decide if they are actually going to spend, because now is the time if they're going to at all. Moms with kids going to school get together with their mom buddies to have a little celebratory freedom drink, then get down to the serious business of whatever it is that newly free moms get up to. It's probably best if their husbands don't know. I know some moms read this blog, and some might have kids that age. Feel free to comment!

The trees are changing colour here, meaning lots of golds, yellows, and almost orange. Not much red. Still, it's pretty spectacular.

The other day while rolling and stretching I got a huge thunk from my back and things started feeling better. There was a baby 3K easy run that felt pretty good, as did an easy spin on Thursday. Today I was itching to run, and ended up 5.5 K around the neighbourhood with my run buddy. We were forced, FORCED to stop and admire the view of Fish Creek. (Assembled from 7 individual photos, the resolution in the original is amazing.)

Since the clock wasn't running, we didn't mind taking a minute. That's been my mantra just lately, it doesn't matter if things take a few minutes longer. Unless it's traffic on the way to a place to watch a celestial event. Then minutes might matter.

So far I'm enjoying it, sniffles aside, and I'm glad that's ovre. The run felt good, and stretching after produced another series of good noises. I am hopeful I'll be back in the running groove soon, though I'm not going to push for the October marathon. I've seen too many buddies injure themselves trying to come back too fast, too soon, too hard. Not me. I'd rather settle into good volume, quality runs, and postpone a marathon till next year.

I'm having fun taking photos, and learning more about Lightroom and other photo related software. Still lots to learn. I've seen a couple more potentially good places for skyline shots I'm going to explore. Photo buddies, feel free to reach out for shared photo trips!

The long run glow

Todays long run brought to you by the Nose Creek path, from 32nd ave beside the Rockyview building, all the way up to the Huntington Hills golf course. We had turned around there during an 18 K run with Patricia, so this filled in my map further north.

It was cool overnight so we started a little after 9. The start was good. Maybe too good, as we discussed on the way back. There was a reason for the discussion. My legs were still feeling a little tired from the Wednesday run that I haven't told you about yet, and the massage.

So lets rewind a bit. I hadn't been sure how my last day at work would go. Perhaps I'd be told to not come in at all. I had hopes...

I ended up having to go in, so I planned for the 15 K hard run for the morning. I dropped Linda off at the LRT and came back to get changed. I got started at dawn, and it was lovely. Every time I looked the sunrise was a little different. The plan was to warm up, and then do 5 x(1K at 5K pace and 1 K easy). Except I goofed and that's not what the phone told me. I ended up doing it by keeping track myself. You can bet I didn't go over.

There was some thought of doing it around the reservoir, but decided that if I needed to bail out for some reason, that would make life difficult. I chugged a loop the loop pattern around the neighbourhood and it all went well. 15 K, 1:40:33, average 6:42 pace. The fast K were all just over 6 minutes, so I'm pretty pleased. All the easy ones were about 7 minute K pace. Overall felt pretty good, glad it wasn't any longer.

Then the last day at work. Then the massage. She worked me over pretty good, but she could have done ever so much more. The right ham needed it so bad.

Thursday, my first day of official "retirement" started busy. Swim. Donate some nearly perfect blood.  I was disappointed to see that the main donation clinic has the same crappy cookies as the mobile clinics. The chairs are more comfortable. My nurse had a beautiful singing voice going along with the oldies station, in between their memorized patter. 72 donations. Run some errands on the way home. Nap. BBQ.

Slept in, drank coffee, ran some more errands. Scoped out a starting place along the canal for the 32 K run in a few weeks. I want that one to be FLAT. As in, no hills. Started getting a nose sniffle after eating a spicy lunch. Watched Love and Friendship and loved it. I just love movies with witty dialogue.

Saturday the schedule says 26 K run. We started about a 7 min/K pace, and I felt great! I was happy running along looking at new scenery. The sun was up, and surprisingly warm already. I was sweating, Michelle was glowing. We followed the path, though it got a bit confusing, and we turned around where we would have ended up going into some northern neighbourhood. I was nervous. The customs might be different there.

Back and then up beside the golf course where there was a scenic lookout. I got some iphone photographs.

Up to about 12 K it went really well, then it got a bit hilly and we slowed down a little. I did, at least, I think Michelle was still ready to bound along. Walking up the hills felt pretty good. The wheels started coming off my wagon about 19 K. My legs, especially right ham were sending stiff notes of protest upstairs. 20 K was 7:35 pace slowest yet, 21 slower yet at 8:02 and several walk breaks, half marathon time of 2:32:34, and at 22 hearing 8:14 pace I was done. I figured no point in running myself into an injury, and I did not want to suffer through 4 more K taking nearly a half hour. Yuck. If it had been a 23 K run, maybe, but who does 23? Nice walk back to the car to cool down, and stretch. (As of later my legs are feeling better.)

Overall I'm pretty pleased. We discussed if we'd gone out too fast, but my legs were happy with the pace, and we were chatchatchat. (why are none of you surprised?) Sometimes I find running slower to be harder. It was all good till my legs got tired of the game. I'd had good nutrition all along, drinking about a litre of energy drink, plus eating maybe half a cliffs bar.  The hydration pack is working out really well.

The recent reads are

I am not an advanced marathoner, but it's Katie's bible. I think my training course is based on it. My difficulty with many non-fiction books is finding the sweet spot between "subject x for dummies" that doesn't tell me anything I don't already know just from being a breathing adult at least somewhat aware of the world. Some of those authors should be ashamed of themselves. The other end of the spectrum is "everything under the sun about subject x.1.2.3 (and not x.1.2.2 which is outdated as you should know) by and for experts." The info I might want is in there, but I'm not likely to find it, buried as it is under mountains of related material.

This is on the subject expert side of things, especially the training plans. I don't have it in front of me as I write, but I think the base plan was build around someone who routinely does about twice the weekly milage I do. I had slowly worked myself up to 100 K per month, and felt pretty good about that, although I fully realize there are some who do that nearly weekly. I figure I'm just barely at the point of being fit enough to get through a marathon, and with any luck I won't get sick or injured. Being able to sleep extra this month should be a big help.

The problem with the retirement book is that it's old. Not sure it's outdated, but it's from  almost 10 years ago. Our financial advisors are telling us this stuff and more beside. I zoomed through it, not finding anything I didn't already know. If you are new to the subject it's pretty good. I've covered some of the basic basics earlier in this blog. Spend much less than you earn. Debt is an emergency. Some of it is long term manageable debt, but work on getting rid of it. Credit card debt is an all hands on deck adrenaline fueled emergency. Until you've taken care of most of your debt, you don't need this book.

I'm not sure what's next on the reading list.

If this is retirement, bring it on!

Thursday, water ran an hour, doing slightly different variations. The straight-legged one with toes pointing up is tough. Remember, no float belt. Short work day, with people bringing stuff for me to do, and me frantically trying to prod Maximo into doing it before I had to leave. For a super-duper program it's awfully slow.

I've been meaning to get out onto Estela again. I had some rides early in the year, then I started focussing on the run, and we had all that crappy weather. But today was the day!

I'd been thinking of scouting some photo locations, and decided to work that into my bike ride. Turned out to be 65 K in 3:14 mostly just riding along. Lots of stops along the way to enjoy the scenery. Here's one of them, I think we all know where this is, plus the most photogenic bike ever!

It worked out pretty well, but I goofed on hydration and nutrition. I figured I was only going a couple hours so I took only one water bottle. Shortly after that above shot I had to decide which way to go home. I could have gone down Elbow, or the Bow. I chose the latter knowing it was a longer ride. By 50 K was getting a bit hungry and if the ride ended then it would have been perfect. By 60 K I was out of water, getting hungry, and my legs and butt were getting tired.  Home to hydrate and a quick snack. Then Linda got home and we had a big lunch.

Stupid blogger, upside-downing that photo and not letting me fix it. Or maybe it's Apple's Photo whatever. Grrr. Sorry.

No, that isn't a little baby dessert plate. These are the tomahawk cut from the Italian Store. Pretty darn tasty! Yes other things were added to the plate.

After a big meal it's nice to torpor in the shady patio, then I went for a power nap.

My swim buddy graciously invited me to come along as her spotter for an open water swim. I was a bit unsure at first, then decided what the heck! The worst that would happen is I'd vomit from the exertion of trying to keep up, and I could swim away from that, and besides it would be a first experience. No doubt the lake has had worse. I try not to think about it when I'm swimming open water. We scoped out the swim exit and transition, then called it an evening.

Closer to sunset I zoomed out to one of the spots I'd scouted for a sunset shoot. BUGS! I'd forgotten about bug spray, and that detracted from the experience. I had a picture in my head of what the photos would turn out like, but I didn't quite get there based on what I've seen on the back of the camera. Later today I'll put the chip in the laptop and find out for sure what I've got.

From there I scouted for locations for the Perseid shoot. Holy cow Calgary is a bright city. My thinking was to go south a bit and try to find the lee side of a hill, but it didn't work out that way. The light bounces off all the dust and crap in the air.

Since I was there I tried anyways, then shot some of a distant lightning storm, then some stars off to the SW, since it was dark in that direction.  This is a learning experience so I don't expect much from any of these.

All in all an active happy day! I'm not sure I want to be that busy all the time, but there's lots to do and a limited time.