Author: gfox (old content)

Clinic Faces

It’s like riding a bike. Except I was laying down, and I got to read. What I mean to say is that I still haven’t forgotten how to give blood. I put myself on hold for donations since before Beet was born, and today was my first one in over five months. My how times flies.

Not much has changed at that clinic. A lot of the same friendly faces, a lot of the same cookies and juice.

The donation took a little under five minutes. In fact the nurse doing the labelling of the various bags and collection tubes didn’t get to finish before I did.

I had eaten dinner just before going so I didn’t really feel like eating a bunch of cookies, but the volunteers get a little cranky if you don’t follow the rules. I managed to choke back a couple cookies 😉

Decent Morons

It’s amazing how quickly a pretty decent day can go downhill.

I had a great day at work, accomplishing more than I had intended. I was in a great mood when I left, the sun was out, and it was warm out. Perfect.

Driving home I approached Douglas and Pandora, and my light was green. I was doing about 40 KM/H through the intersection when some druggy looking idiot and his two pals, walk right out in front of me. They were wanting to cross Pandora and didn’t feel like waiting for the light.

I slammed on the brakes and layed on the horn (out of instinct). Dipshit looks at me and continues walking. As he walks through the next lane I notice he is holding up a bottle of some sort of pills and sort of waving it at the cars in the lane beside me.

The three of them continue on like nothing happened, seemingly stoned out of their minds. Morons.

This put me in a foul mood, and I am still feeling it now.

Sunshine Drivers

I rode my bike into work today. I got dressed expecting it to be as chilly as previous mornings, but I got less than a block from home and realized I was over dressed. I unzipped as much as possible, and enjoyed the sunshine on the ride.

Until the morons emerged.

The first dipshit passed me while we were approaching the train underpass right before the blue bridge. It is a 30 km/h zone, and I was actually doing 40km/h. Dipshit passes me, barely gets in front of me, then slowed down. Grrr.

Across the bridge I made my way over to Fort street, went up there and turned right onto Blanshard. I was going to turn left onto Broughton, but there was some traffic so I opted to keep going to the next street. Until dipshit lady came into the picture. She wanted to turn right onto Broughton, so she passed me, slowed down with her right turn signal on, then stopped and looked at me. She was still in the right hand lane of Blanshard.

I hate, hate, hate it when people do this so I stopped, unclipped, and looked back at her, waiting for her to leave the scene. Aargh, why do people do this weird shit?

A perfect day for a ride ruined by dumb drivers.

Camera Improvement

I’ve been saving for a new lens for my 20D for quite a while now. I recently changed my mind and decided to buy a new camera body to replace the 20D, sell the 20D, then use that money and start saving for another lens.

I had settled on Canon’s 40D, and as I was getting ready to make my purchase I started to hear rumors of a 50D.

Sure enough the 50D was released and now I don’t know what to do. Do I still buy a 40D expecting that it’s price will drop? The 40D was a definite improvement over my 20D, but the 50 is even better than the 40.

Right now I am leaning towards the 50D. I might even go for the 50D plus a kit lens that I can sell that lens with the 20D to increase it’s value. I know someone who might be interested in my 20D body but I have no idea how much I should sell it for.

What is a photographer to do?

Escaped Free

Last weekend I returned 2 dogs to their rightful owners. Although this might seem like something that would be out of my way, the dogs had actually escaped from their yards as I was walking past with Yoshi.

The first one was a very friendly little dog named Petal. The gate to Petal’s yard was open and she came out to say hi to Yoshi, then me, then Sprout. I didn’t actually see Petal escape, so I called the number on her collar, and the owner came out of his house to usher her back to the yard.

The next day I was walking Yoshi up to the grocery store, and a block away from Petal, another dog came to say hi to Yoshi. Bruno saw Yoshi, and lunged at him excitedly. He was tied to the stairs, but something broke and Bruno was free. The owner was on her deck playing a guitar and I called up to her to let her know that Bruno was free.

2 days, 2 dogs. Pretty funny.

Fair Delicious

Yesterday Sprout and his Gramma and I headed out to the Saanich Fair. We got there early, some time around 9:30 I think and it was perfect. The weather was a little cool, but that was ok. We browsed the animals, checked out the farm equipment, watched some horse competition (dressage I think), had a snack (mmmm), played with the model boats, skipped Pirate School (we already know), played on the farm equipment some more, perused the market, watched some of the rides, ate lunch, and I even got to take a quick tour of the photo competition.

The snack was had was amaaaazing. It was a langosh from the Ukranian food stall. It was a flat deep fried donut like thing that you sprinkled cinnamon sugar on. It was hot and delicious. Yum. Think mini-donut taste, but 10 inches in diameter and a half inch thick.

I didn’t spend a lot of time taking pictures, but I sure had fun showing Sprout the sights. We saw all sorts of animals: pigs, goats, sheep, cows, a calf, horses, guinea pigs, rabbits, ducks, ducklings, chickens, roosters, and donkeys.


After lunch we poked around a little bit, then around 1 we decided to head out. We were in the car at 1:20 and on our way. Leaving at that time was a good thing. During the morning the crowds weren’t too bad, but by the time we left, the place was packed. As we were driving, we saw the line up to get to the grounds. The traffic was backed up from the grounds all the way to the Pat Bay Highway! This is a distance of 2 miles or 3.2 kms of bumper to bumper stop and go traffic. Yikes.


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The sun had also come out and it was starting to heat up. All in all we had a great time, and we timed it well.

Sweet Crispy

These cute little sweet peppers were part of our SPUD delivery this week. Very tiny and very cute. They were supposed to be part of a very yummy recipe for roasted veggie quesadilla’s. Unfortunately they didn’t roast that well. Instead of the skin turning dark and separating, the entire tiny pepper dried up into crispy chunks. By the time I realized this, the entire batch was past the saving point. Bummer, I hate wasting food! I bet they would have been tasty raw too.

Outside Leaving

Jungle Kitty! Aphro has been more interested in being outside lately. Sometimes she zips out an open door when we aren’t looking and other times we let her out. The other weekend we were just about to leave for Nanaimo, when Sox thought to check on Aphro one last time before we drove away. The car was loaded and the kids buckled. That was how close we were to leaving. Sure enough Aphro was outside.

We managed to corral her back in the house, then we were on our way.

Here Aphro was exploring our deck, and in particular our tomato plants.

Cold Throat

I’ve been fighting a gross summer cold for a few days now. This cold started making its rounds in our household Thursday last week. I think the order was Sprout, then Sox and Beet got it. Poor Beet looked pretty pathetic with red, puffy, watery eyes and big sneezes expelling lots of snot.

I didn’t get hit nearly as bad, and it has mainly been in my sinuses and throat. A tickly throat does not make for a good sleep. Last night I suddenly woke up around 3am. As I was laying there wondering why I was awake I let out a huge sneeze.

Thankfully the cold held off long enough to go for my ride last Sunday.