Apples of my Eye! - #30

Oh my, I look forward to the Opus Gluei Challenges! This one involves apples and in honour of it, I just ate an apple. Well, not really. I was hungry. I did enjoy doing the LO though. I love harvest time.
The good news is I got up this morning and got under the hood of my truck and fixed my burnt-out tail light issue. Myself!!! I am so proud of myself! I dug around until I found the burnt-out fuse (which I thought was the problem) and I replaced it. Not a big deal to most people probably, but it is to me.
So it's been a great day today.
Happy Halloween!

pulled over by the RCMP tonight

for having no taillights on the truck. who Knew. I thought he would give me a warning instead of the ticket, cus I was SO surprised, but he didn't. Gave me a full-fledged ticket. The bum. Maybe he'll run into a moose on the way back to his detachment. OK, that was wrong. A squirrel. Maybe he'll run into a squirrel. It wouldn't have a effect I'm hoping for though.
Note the car. This little ride-on lawnmower was parked out front of our house the other day and I simply HAD to take a photo of it. Can you imagine this in a car chase? I would win, hands down. Too bad it wasn't the city police who pulled me over. I could have outrun them.

FRIDAY FILL INS:
It was a dark and stormy night under the stairs in my furnace room.
My cat was busy hiding in the Xmas decorations under the stairway in the furnace room, so I offered to take the books myself.
Rushing out, I tripped over the snow shovel I had left by the front door.
Oh crap,I think I heard a howl!
Shhhhhhhhhhhhh, maybe it won't notice me.
Listen you cretin, I said to the child dressed as a little witch, "Give me something good to eat"
As for the weekend tonight I'm looking forward to an uninterrupted sleep, tomorrow my plans include getting the taillights working on my truck, and Sunday I want to make sure I remember to set the clocks back so I don't end up at work an hour early!

Halloween Warning!!

This is really important!!! Do Not, I repeat: Do Not leave alcohol near your pumpkins!!! You could be very sorry if you do!

Scrapperlicious Giveaway!!!

Irene Tan has a scrapperlicious giveaway at the Crop Spot happening right now
here
Her talent alone is worth checking it out, the giveaway is just a bonus. I love her style, she has NEVER, and I mean NEVER made anything I haven't loved. You will too!

Computers!!!

I've spent the last few hours trying to sort some things out on my puter. Nuff Said. I feel like the little boy in this pic.
Other than that, it's been a bonnie weekend. Spent some time yesterday and today at the Digital Photo Expo, and took some terrific classes. Plus I got a great deal on a camera bag, so now I don't need to carry my equipment in my Betty Boop backpack anymore. I feel like such a grown-up!

The Shining

Do you remember the movie "The Shining"? I do, scary-scary. I took this photo of the Prince of Wales, which at the time, had just been boarded up for the winter, and couldn't get the movie out of my mind. It's just SO "The Shining"! Spooky, kind of magical, I think. When we looked in the windows, the furniture was covered with sheets...you just know there is someone or something living in there that was waiting for everyone to leave at the end of the season so it could.........

My Kindergarten Grad

Is it really possible to have some meories for over 50 years ago? Cus I do. I remember dancing around with scarves at my greaduation ceremony at age 5. I also remember being happy. Things were so much simpler then.
Not that I'm not happy today. I am, I'm just too tired to enjoy it. Getting up early again tomorrow, although not as early as 4:30 AM. Good night.

It's late

and I must get to bed. Need to be up at 4:30 to pick up some staff and go out of town for drug court training. It will be worth it, but I can't promise anything uplifting about my mood. Heck, I'm driving, I don't need to be pleasant. They're young and perky, I may have to hurt them if they are too perky. I hate perky. Of course it's Friday, which is always a happy day, so I can do anything for 8 or 10 hours.
Good night, I shouldn't make it any worse than it could be through lack of sleep.

Jackrabbit

We found this early one morning somewhere in Arizona. I had read about the giant jackrabbit on some Route 66 website before we left on our Great Canadian road trip this summer, and we arrived very early in the morning, before it was open, or for that matter, before anyone was up. That allowed us to be silly. I won't post the picture of me up on that giant rodent, (I needed help getting down after a fairly feeble EEHAW!?! but as you can see, the girl had a blast. I used Virtual Studio on the print, because it makes me think of an old Poloroid photo in a kind of whacked-out-maybe-it-fell-in-a-vat-of-hot-steaming-toxic-chemicals-kind of way. Try to say that fast five times while patting your head and rubbing your tunmmy. If you can do it successfully, send me your email and I'll send you something very special and very valuable. But be honest, because I have cameras hidden everywhere. Everywhere.

Kara Haupt's class

I found this cool blog here
and took an online class from her. In spite of dropping my camera in the lake when I went out for the day to take picutres for this album, I enjoyed the whole class. I pretty much made the album without many pictures, kind of used other things. Well, ya makes do with whats ya gots. At any rate, check out her blog, she's young and very talented.

Fall in Love Album

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Dare 53: I wish

I quit my Bollywood clases. I am simply TOO clumsy and my already fragile self-esteem could handle it no longer. It got to the point where the instructor wouldn't even look me in the eye anymore and I was in the front row, directly in front of him!
To get to this point, I had to bash myself mercilessly for being too unncoordinated, too fat, tool old, blah, blah, blah. But then, I discovered Rebecca's Dare
here and was able, through the planning and execution of my LO, to purge my Bollywood demons. I feel better now. I can't dance, but I do some other things very well. And I'm OK with that. Bless you Rebecca.

Magic

So I checked in at Opus a little while ago and learned that they are looking for a magical submission. I had been thinking about making a card for a little girl and lo and behold, what an opportunity! Plus, it was make the card or clean the oven. duh. So the card is made!

Chinook!

After all my whining this week about the crummy weather (aka snow), we have a Chinook. This guarantees warmer weather on the way. This is a picture of part of it. Basically, it's a huge arc of clouds across the city, something to do with the mountains west of us. Whatever the reason, it makes me very happy.

Learning to Link

Sweet Gini from Opus has given me some info on how to post a link, so I am going to give it my best shot. God willing, this will take you to the Order (my favorite, the bestest blog I know): here
Enjoy!

Opus Blue

I just edited 800 photos. Too many. My brain is fried. I took some and had them printed at Costco. Wow, very impressive! I think I'll do some more. tee hee

Opus asked for "Blue" this week, and "Blue" it is (mostly). I did this for a Bliss challenge awhile back and never noticed that I had a typo on the words on the photograph. How embarrassing. So I reprinted the photo the other night and corrected it. I like it much better now.

"Blueeeeeeeooooo".....do I sound like Joni Mitchell?

Warming Up

There is a Chinook Arch in the sky, the snow should all be gone soon. Life is back to normal :-)

One more day in the work week left, that makes me happy. It seems I'm not keeping up these days, but I just need to acknowledge that and move on. Then it will be OK. There's a little healthy self-talk there. I should listen to me.

That's a wrap.

Traffic Chaos!

says the headline. My job is to find a way into work that does not involve a hill. The radio reports that paramedics and the police are busy, I see fire trucks blocking some lanes. There are two buses stuck at the top of the hill just north of work, luckily, I can turn off and go in another way.

I hear there is an 8-car pile-up on 14th, better not go that way. A car is facing backwards on the Calf Robe. Deerfoot is a parking lot. For hours. HOURS. I give thanks for my 4x4 and horn.

Cars are littered alongside the road, no one is going over 15 MPH.

Winter happens every year. Why is it that every year, the first snowfall breeds a nightmare on the streets of my city?

God, I wish I lived in Bermuda.

Thanksgiving

I've had turkey twice this weekend.  (URP!)

and didn't have to do dishes either time.  Could life be any better?  Having had a break for three days from the daily grind, I am now willing to go back to work and do it all again tomorrow.

It's been nice to have the girl in town for the long weekend, she goes home tomorrow morning.  I hope the snow stops and that she has a safe drive back home.

It's REALLY cold now, apparently at the Waterton gates it was minus 22 yesterday.  How rude is that????

It is however supposedly going to be 19 degrees ABOVE zero by the weekend. that's Celsius.  What is that in English?  65?  Oh, who knows, at least it's warmer.

Only in Canada do we make the kids' Halloween costumes big enough to go over parkas.  ;-)

Opus Scrapjacked

I shop at a store called Scrapbooker's Bliss and they have terrific LO's on display.  Everyone who works there is very talented.  I scraplifted this LO from one done by Teresa, when I first saw hers, I thought it was brilliant.  I made a couple of changes in that I used photos for the trees and photos across the bottom.  But Teresa takes all the credit for the design!

It's winter!!!!!

Jeez Louise, it was in the 90's two week's ago and it's minus 16 tonight. Has the world gone mad? I'm sorry, I can't listen to this global warming drivel ANY MORE!

I drove to Drum Wednesday and in a blinding white out, stopped to take some pictures. Later on, further down the highway, I pulled over cus I could not see to drive, and noticed that the entire right side of the truck was covered in hard ice. Thick hard ice.

It's just silly.

I am, however in a better frame of mind tonight. My girl came to visit and we went out to buy her some clothes for a birthday gift. We went to a new huge mall outside of the city and had a blast. Found some good deals (ie that I could afford) on some funky stuff and a couple of really nice tops for me. entire shops 40% off? I'll be back.

Then when we left there was another snowstorm and that's poopy cus we need to take the highway back. But we made it. Kaitlin said it's all arranged by the mall so that we panic and start to Christmas shop.

I had my overnight staff quit last night with no notice. Called in drunk. Well duh, at least he had the presence of mind to know that he couldn't supervise a bunch of violent offenders in that state.

So I had to do some fancy footwork and my awesome staff stepped up to the plate to keep the joint running for the week. It looks like I have someone to interview first thing Tuesday AM.

If you're American, this weekend is OUR Thanksgiving. The cook of course, is still sick. So I went in tonight and cooked the turket et al. I was a hit, I'm a fine cook.

Long day

NO cook today for the 3rd day in a row. She called me tonight while I was still at work after 12 hours and said she's not coming in again tomorrow. I about bit her head off.

We had a memorial service tonight for one of our peer support group members whose husband died in jail. Corrections took the money he made working inside to pay for his own funeral.

So sad.

That's about all I have for tonight.

Good grief.

Monday

Once, when my girl was little, we were wondering out loud what it would be like to be a cat. Specifically, to eat with one's face. without hands. the way cats do.

So, we invited our friends over (because of course you never want to do these sorts of things alone) and I made a big pot of spaghetti and we set the table for supper. Then we wrapped ourselves with big black garbage bags (in lieu of big black bibs) and with our hands behind our backs, dug in.

If there is anything to be learned from such an experiment, it's that you should never eat spaghetti like a cat in a kitchen with white walls.

And that, my friends, is today's lesson.

As always

my day is ending and it's time for me to say goodnight.

It's been a good day, first, lfelt-making class, then Kailtin showed up, then out for supper then I almost finished my I Love Fall book. There is only one more page to complete. That page is a piece of felt I made in class, and I've glimmer misted it and shall embroider it. I love surface embellishment.

These two ATC's were an afterthough for the day, I felt like doing something before I do go to bed and that's what I've come up with.

That's a wrap.

BLING!!!!

This will be a short post for tonight, only enough to post my Opus BLING submission. I did my first felt making class today (and loved it, I might add) and have been working on my Fall In Love book since I got home. Look at the time! Have to be up early for tomorrow's class, so I need to turn in.

Since I haven't had access to a camera, I've had to do a digital LO this week and it's far from as blingee

as I would have done otherwise. I guess the good thing about it is that I learned how to do a circle of embellishments. I enjoyed doing it nonetheless. We can pretend it's real bling.

Just lke we're pretending you can actually be a rock star with a tuba.

Right.

It's October!

and it seems like only yesterday we were trudging along the Vegas strip in 114 degree heat.

The sky is threatening to snow tonight, a couple of days ago it was 35 degrees (Celsius) hotter than it was today. It you don't like the weather here, wait five minutes, it'll change.

I've almost finished grieving the drowning of my camera. I have a new one and insurance is going to cover some of it, but it was an expense I was not ready for. (Stupid deductables)

However, it's 15.1 megapixels. There is a god.

I was able to print some of the pics from the memory card at the photo kiosk. Apparently memory cards are waterproof. Who knew? But I can't get them to my computer. My ex has agreed to upload them to his and then let me put them on a jump drive and bring them home. then I can Photoshop them, which is lots of fun.

Having said that, I've done no crafting this week, except for a digital LO for the Opus BLING challenge. I'm not all that happy with it, cus of course I'm a bling-girl, but it's better than nothing. Now that I have a camera again, I can soon get back to normal. I do need to install the software tho.

This all happened in the midst of the I LOVE FALL class I'm taking online from Old Lady Teaches. So I've done none of the photo prompts, I refuse to use last year's pics. I did start with some artwork tonight for it and feel good doing what I love again. It's been a long week.

Tomorrow and Sunday all day each day, I'm in a felt-making class at the Alberta College of Art and Design. How cool is that? I'm so excited about it, this is something I've wanted to learn for awhile now. So, I should get to bed. I don't want to fall asleep in the middle of it!