Random thoughts... Sunday morning.

I am angry at myself for a rookie mistake I made yesterday. I drove out of town...
all of about 30 kilometres, for a quick shoot at a community centre. It was nice to drop in and say hi to lots of people I hadn't seen in awhile. But I forgot to re-set my wonderful cameras to automatic. I was on a shoot Friday night, where i set the cams on manual so i could do some nice outdoor shots. The outdoor shots turned out nicely (see the photo at right) but when I did the Saturday shoot, i was still in manual mode and therefore forgot to focus. Only when I got back into town, did I notice my mistake. What a rookie!

Friday night was cold... when I was outside doing the shoot I really felt it. The windchill had to be minus forties. I used my bare hands to pick up the tripod and it felt like my hands were burning, and then nothing. No feeling at all. I was afraid of frostbite, so I tucked by hands into the top of my sweater... it worked. They warmed up fast. I was near Pearl Lake and figured if it was that cold, then the ice would be safe. Actually, it was been really cold for several days. So I grabbed my snowshoes and stepped onto the ice... the snow seemed solid, I decided to leave the snowshoes on the shore and just walk on top of the snow... well that worked for about ten paces and then the snow got soft and I sank a bit. Then I smelled something.... it was that musty odour of swamp-rot, cattails and loon-shit (that's what we call it here in Northern Ontario) and then I realized there was no ice... I had broken through to the bottom of the lake. Hmmm... this is not very smart I thought. So I gently began walking backwards and got back on shore.

Another thing about the cold. I really feel it in the morning, when I get into the truck. I don't have heated seats. Some mornings it feels like I am sitting on a block of ice! And it's colder than I expected... maybe it's an age thing. So I explored the idea of getting heated seats... Well, there are a couple of wonderful shops that will do just that, they will install brand new heated seats in the trucks, for about $1,200. So guess what. I went to Wal Mart Saturday and got a nice sheepskin pad.
Cost of driving to Wal-Mart: About $26 cents.
Cost of the sheepskin pad: $11.97
The feeling on my toasty warm butt: Priceless!

I never check my mailbox. That's because Canada Post drops my mail off in a stand-up postal box beside the street, about 100 metres away. Saturday I got a Christmas card that wasn't in the mail. It was hand delivered, which seems a pretty good idea considering that Timmins is not a big place at all. But the smart thing was that the card was left by the front door, and NOT in the mailbox. But you never know...I think I will get in the habit of checking the mailbox...hmmm, maybe once or twice a month eh.

We have a new restaurant in town. Boston Pizza had a big opening last night for all the important people and friends of the owner. I was only able to go because I had to snap a few photos. The interesting part was that the new owner, a prosperous guy in his late 30s, maybe early 40s paid a nice tribute to his dad. His dad is a well-known businessman in town. But what I didn't know is that he came to Timmins in 1949, as a poor immigrant fresh off the boat from Italy, worked on the railroad and then did pick-and-shovel work in the gold mines. Eventually he got his own business and did well. Today, that family owns 18 restaurants. Nice story. The first time I ever went to Boston Pizza was with Neil, in Sarnia. They had a promotion called "Drink your Dad's beer night". They were selling beer at $2 a bottle for Labatt's 50, Carling Redcap and O'Keefe Ale. Funny eh.

Speaking of Neil, about every two or three days I get a notice from his Facebook account, where somebody has posted a new photo of him. In every picture, there's Neil in some new bar in Vancouver, with a beer, a new lady and a big grin. What's THAT all about?