He was disconsolate

Poor Curtis. I told him was going back to work part time to assure the future supply of crunchies and this is the expression I got.

Celina just gave me some stink eye. They don't think our absence has anything to do with the supply of food, that's a well deserved gift from heaven, or something.

He sure had a lot to say when I got home, and made it clear he was getting behind on lap time. I only just now escaped.

First day of work at Keyera, so far so good.

Another Fish Creek view.

Eye take another kind of selfie

Yesterday I published a reflection photo that was not quite a selfie. You can see it here. I've had some very nice comments on it, thank you very much. I have to admit I'm quite taken by the colours. I'm in it, but the only way you'd know it's me is because I've told you. Look again.

Weather was crap on Friday and nobody wanted to join me for the walk on Fish Creek so I bailed. Sunday both me and BRBE were due for an hour run. Neither of us wanted to run indoors on the track or treadmill, but we were reluctant to run outside with a bunch of inches of fresh snow over some random ice left over from the last Chinook.

I suggested she dig out her skis and I go on snowshoes, and go for whatever length of time felt right. That seemed like a good compromise, and off we went. Once you get on the river it's a wonderful walk full of views I've never seen before. It turned out to be 7.5 K in 2 hours, for anyone that's keeping track. I got some lovely shots, and I'll spread them out over the next few days.

The 100 mm macro lens has been getting a real workout lately. I've been in the mood to take macro shots during my walks, but it's good for other photos too. In fact, it's a superb lens. The more I use it, the more I love the image quality. The trick is knowing what it will frame, and being prepared to move around to get the shot. Or carefully take several shots and stitch them together in a panorama, like this.

Michelle was surprised how far away I had to be to get a torso shot, and astonished how close I could get. I'm not sure how she wasn't constantly blinking in this shot. This isn't cropped at all.

Now look closer. You can see a reflection of me taking the shot, plus the shadow of her eyelashes, and some of the river valley background. I think the end of the lens hood was only a few inches from her eye. She could send it to her ophthalmologist for an opinion about the health of that eye.

I was in the pool for a swim today, but my inner basking shark took over. I spent lots of time in the hot tub, and yay, it's a rest day tomorrow.

Imagery

Today I've been thinking about images. It's been a peaceful contemplative morning. Once I got the cats fed, of course. I was outside for some quick photos. Every time I go near the front door, Curtis is right there, demanding to go out so he can hunt the hot, buttered mouse that he is sure is out there. It's minus 18 or so, it's snowing, so the mice are all snug in their burrows.

On the way back in I saw this.

Here's a different take on a selfie. Look harder. So far this is the image of the month for February.

Lastly, the image of the month for January. This was a tough choice, as each of the top contenders sparked a mood. In the end I thought about which I'd like to frame and hang on the wall where guests could see it.

Assorted

I've spent the last couple of days working my way through this book.

I've even taken notes, that's how good it is. There are 52 photographs. I'd look carefully and think about it. The author explains why they are good photographs and the photographer adds their 2 cents. Sometimes it gets a bit artsy-fartsy but I'm pretty pleased at the level of detail.

Digression 1. My problem with how-to books is finding the right level of detail between topic x for dummies, and topic x by experts showing off to other experts and expert wannabes. Don't get me started on how-to videos, I usually only want to watch the relevant small number of seconds, and I'm forced to sit through blither.

This book hits the sweet spot, explaining what it is that makes it a good image. Some of them break "the rules" and that makes it even more brilliant. The book is out of the library so I've got it a few more weeks, and I'll be leafing through it some more. Making more notes, thinking about how to apply the ideas to my own photography.

For once it isn't about equipment. Most of the time they mention the technical side, and it's often a medium format camera and film, but they don't go on about it. One of the photographers makes a point of not saying what equipment, pointing out that the person is the important element. The photographer needs to develop an eye for light and learn how to use their camera to capture the image they see in their head.

Just in case you were curious, The cheapest medium format digital camera I could find is $5K. The most expensive? Take a deep breath. $45K, American. Yes, 45 thousand dollars for a camera, then you have to go buy lenses. You would have to be a very serious, very experienced, very committed photographer to make it worth buying one of these.

On to fitness. Still working on that, coming off a big training week. Yay me! I tried the first CSS swim set today, swimming essentially the same speed but with only 10 seconds recovery instead of 15 to 20. So far so good. The running is going well, cranky hamstrings aside in the most recent run. I've even been on the bike for a spin session.

Did you notice I signed up for a half marathon in June? There's 4.5 months to build consistency and try to pry some speed out of my legs.

Digression 2. There are a bazillion training plans out there, and that's before the customized ones from a coach show up. Lots of people are deeply into training plans, figuring the right one will optimize their training time in their busy life. They obsess about running the right number of minutes at the right effort level the right number of times a week. I have quite enough to keep track of, and I'm going to work at consistency first, and a more gradual build than last year.

It may all get a little trickier what with a short term contract I've accepted, but it's part time. It's going to be interesting going back to work. I've already starting tweaking my clothes. The black pants I wore last at work were a little loose, but the next size down was too tight.

Well, in 5 months loose has become baggy. I went shopping for new pants. My female readers, please don't hate me. From the time I left the car, bought 4 pairs of pants (2 dress, 2 jeans) and a belt, and got back to the car was 20 minutes.

I didn't feel up to shirts, but I know that one of the regular shirts is feeling a little snugger than it used to. I'd like to believe that's from bigger shoulders from swimming. Maybe I'm just not used to buttoned shirts any more, mostly I wear t shirts or a sweat shirt. I'll probably have to do some shopping there too.

Here's a splash of sunset colour to play you out.

Some random images to amuse you

I posted some long, long Facebook comments today, and did some writing. The cats 'helped.' Now I'm all written out. So here's a few photos from the recent Fish Creek photo walk.

I found a great spot

The sunrise had possibilities, but I didn't want to go too far this morning. It didn't look THAT good. I remembered the path that heads down into Fish Creek park from the very south and east end of Woodbine, the one where I nearly killed myself on a bike many years ago, and thought it had a nice view to the SE.

The trees have grown enough the view doesn't work for photos, but if you head north there's a nice-ish open spot. During the summer it might work really well, or if the clouds are over that way. Unfortunately today the clouds did not cooperate, and the actual sunrise was plain.

But not very far away is a great spot, one that I'll be going back to. I hadn't realized you could get this mountain view.

The sunrise view off to the SE is open and there's some nice landscape in Fish Creek, with the bump of the hospital on the horizon. Get the clouds and timing right and this could be spectacular. This photo, of course, is ruined by the nasty lens flare, even though the worst of it is already cropped.

Cropping it even more to get rid of the flare entirely gets this. It sort of works. Next time I'll compose better.

Attack of the fuzzy brain

Today started wonderfully. The paperwork was in an envelope with my phone sitting on top of it. I had a plan, and all my gear packed. I decided to do a swim and a run today, since I had a meeting downtown mid-morning. Both went very well. Extremely well.

We did a CSS test to see what my Critical Swim Speed is. Not going to go into detail. If you're a swimmer you either know what this is, or can look it up. And if you're not, you won't. My times are a bit better than the last time I tried this, but not much. Enough to go from trying to swim 1:52 on 10 seconds rest to try to swim 1:46 on 10 seconds rest. Lately I've been doing 1:45 or less on about 15 seconds rest. My 400 m time was 6:47, and the 200 m time was 3:14, though I didn't push hard enough. I wasn't especially out of breath at the end.

Walked a bit to warm up, then ran 4.25 K in 30 min on the treadmill, varying the speed and watching my heart rate. All good. Walked more to cool down. Started getting changed afterward, then wondered where my phone was. Oops. Fortunately in several senses of the word it was still on the treadmill when I got back.

Then I had lots of time to park and walk to my meeting to deliver the paperwork. Which, as I figured out just as I got going north on McLeod Trail, was still sitting on the kitchen table. Oops!

One of my major rules for life got huge validation today. When you leave lots of time, things will go well. You'll catch the lights, you'll get the rock star parking, no idiots will be in your way. Since I was in a rush to zoom home and then get back downtown again, I caught every light red, sometimes just as I thought I was going to get through. A cab cut me off on Glenmore to get in front of me on the exit to 14th, and drove 30 kph around the exit, and dithered about changing lanes. There were several geezers that impacted my drive. Let's just say I lost my shiz in a fairly major way, but there was no actual road rage. I'm just glad nobody was with me in the car.

The paperwork was delivered, and I start at Keyera next week on a short term data migration contract. The idea is that it will be part time, matching up vessel data for them, and identifying what needs to go out to the field again. Then again, I haven't seen their data yet.

This fits in well with my semi-retirement model. I've had 5 months off work, and loved it. Now I'll work a bit, over the last bit of winter and spring when the weather is, shall we say, unpredictable. Then I'll have the summer and fall off when it's nice, and see what happens on the contracting front.

I am pretty sure that forgetting the paperwork was a momentary brain spasm, and not a sign of impending dementia. Just because the person thinks they still have all their marbles in an orderly pattern doesn't necessarily mean that other people think that. Then again, maybe my brain is getting a bit fuzzy, as demonstrated by this photo from the Fish Creek walk the other day.