Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot

Well it must be said Smiffy, definitely picked a good time to come over and land weather-wise. The past few days have been gorgeous. Friday was by far the hottest day. My lawn chair has seen some action this week and I am starting to get a bit of a tan going now. The weather spell got broken though this weekend and we have had some rain...Boo. I am sure it will be back to sun again next week though.

I met Smiffy for lunch on Wednesday, we had lunch at a cafe opposite where I work, the food is fab there and it was pretty packed when we got there. He has been busy meeting people and networking for future employment in the area. He has also possibly sorted out some future training with some of the software guys at my place of work. Rob and I saw him again on Thursday evening when he came round to our place bringing lots of beer with him...Thank you again Robert for that it was very kind of you.

Wednesday evening was the last meet up of the camera club before the Summer break. It was awards night for the end of year comp and I am pleased to report I placed in 3 of the 8 categories, winning the Macro category for my Oil on Water image. For this I received a framed print of my image.

One of the upcoming events next month is the Tall Ship festival. I have not actually seem them here before, so I booked up to go out on a boat for the day to photograph the ships from the water which I am really looking forward to. I have a week off coming up in July and will be spending the week mostly out and about with Nancy. We have booked a motel in Cape Breton for at least one night, we may end up staying a couple. No doubt we will take far to many photos.

I am also excited to report that Dallas has returned to TV...I love it. It's a blend of old and new characters, focusing on the next generation, John Ross and Christopher Ewing, but of course, it wouldn't be Dallas without the old faces, Bobby, Sue Ellen and good old JR are also back along with the the original theme music. I have included a trailer below. If it comes on TV in the UK watch it.

Oil on Water - 1st Place Macro

A Postcard from Abandoned Nova Scotia -

2nd Place Digital Darkroom

Rural Shed - 3rd Place B/W

Smiffy has Landed

You may have read the comments on the message board from Robert (smiffy to his web cam friends), he has been going through a similar immigration process ours. Well this week he finally landed and got himself registered officially as a permanent resident. He is spending 10 days here networking and sorting stuff out before he heads back to the UK to finish up his life there. He will return for good to Nova Scotia in the Autumn.

His landing was not quite as pain free as ours as he had to land in Ottawa due to his direct flight being cancelled. He was met there by what sound like a 'jobs worth' of the highest order. He was given a grilling over his finances. (You have to show you have a certain amount of funds available to be accepted into the country). He has the funds but they are mostly tied up in his house in the UK. Point of fact is, he wouldn't have got his visa to land if he couldn't have proved this in the first place, so the grilling he got was just plain stupid. Luckily he made it through eventually as was able to get his connecting flight to Nova Scotia.

We met up with him on Friday night for the obligatory trip to Wharf Wraps for Fish and Chips (which was well received). We decided to head out on Saturday for an excursion along the South Shore to Some of our favourite haunts, as Robert want to catch up on the progress of the Bluenose II in Lunenburg. I invited Nancy along for the ride too. All four of us had a lovely day as the weather was beautiful, as you can see from the images below.

In other news this week, the Focus went in for it's 100,000 km service and MVI (Motor vehicle inspection)...$900 later the brakes got fixed. This was a blow to our finances I can tell you.We were expecting it to cost a fair bit for the service but not that much!

A quick shout out to my dad...Happy Fathers Day! I hope to see you tweeting soon! I love the fact you called it my tweeting page :o)

Finally, I have also added the latest additions to the Rona Ads...Cutting corners hanging doors has to be my favourite so far.

Beautiful, Colourful Stonehurst

The Old Out House, Stonehurst

Blue Rocks

Smiffy Photographing Lunenburg

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Rona...Cutting Corners...The best ads on TV!

Tweeting

Well the day has come, I thought it would never, ever happen but I have broken into the world of social media and started tweeting. It happened quite by accident really as I was looking at an interesting art blog that had featured one of my images, I wanted to see what all the tweeting was about and had to join up to expand the conversations and now here I am following, Kevin Spacey, Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, Karl Pilkington, Denis Leary and my brother! So if you are of a mind to, you can follow me on there. You can be rest assured though I will still never do the Facebook thing!!

Follow @AJNovaScotia

Not much to report this week, been a bit quiet socially apart from a quick trip out to the Photo Club on Wednesday night. Only one more meeting to go and then it all breaks up for Summer. Work has been crazy busy, our company has bought up another business in Halifax and is expanding once again. The new part of the business (offset printing) has just moved in next door and there has been a lot of noise and dust this week as the builders knocked through from our side into the other units. I think my role will be changing slightly as I will become more full time admin and invoicing (and boy will I have my work cut out), but I am pleased about this as I will be less involved in the production side of things.

In other news, you may have heard they caught up with the suspect in the body parts case, they found him in an internet cafe in Berlin. Thank goodness they caught him I say. Another foot and hand turned up in the mail in Vancouver at two schools this week...They were from the same victim who's parts were mailed and found in Montreal. Now they just have to wait to extradite him back to Canada. They still have not found the head yet. Awful story!

TV and Big Brother UK has started...Hooray! I am just getting warmed up to some of the people in there, no instant favourites as yet, but I am hopeful it will be an entertaining Summer. I watched the final of the Apprentice and thought the right person won in the end. Just a shame he goes by the name Ricky Martin...Living la via loca, popped into my head every time they mentioned his name.

New Faces and Places

Sunday again, I have no clue where the time goes these days. When I was in the UK I seem to have tons of time on my hands and never wanted to do much with it, since I have been here I don't feel like have stopped.

Busy week at work as always. In the evenings I have been wading through a 1000 plus images I took on the model shoot last weekend. I have to have a disc for each of the models by this Wednesday and I am no where near finishing at this time.

As you know I upload many of my images to Flickr and through Flickr I Have made some great friends in the last 3 years. On Saturday Nancy and I headed over to Halifax to meet up with Bev and her husband Jim her were visiting from Ontario. They were in town for a Quilting event and had a few days in the City before they head off to Lunenburg to visit with family and do some sightseeing.

It was great to meet them, what a wonderful couple. We had a lovely lunch with them down on the waterfront as it was such gorgeous weather. We decided to get the ferry across from Dartmouth to save on parking, Nancy made me laugh so much as she has only ever been on the ferry once, and found it all very exciting.

Once on the Halifax side another happy coincidence took place, We spotted Dean (a fellow member of the Photo club) in one of the restaurants, he jumped up to say hello and introduce us to his lunch friend, Keith...Also a visiting Flickrite from Vancouver and I contact of mine. It was so neat to put faces to these people I have known in cyberland!

Nancy, Rob and I also took a ride out to the Valley this weekend. The goal...To see this year's art installation. Personally I think these doors have to be my most favourite yet. We then headed out Canning way. I must have passed the lighthouse there so many times and not even noticed it...So it was a real treat to photograph it. It was once active up until the 1930's guiding ships into Canning Harbour after that it was moved and restored by Fieldwood Heritage Society. Hopefully this isn't on the cull list of lighthouses!!!

After stopping at Canning we headed to a small inlet nearby called Pereau. I hadn't been there before. Great little view, the tide was out exposing all the red mud.

In other news, some terrible goings on this side of the pond. I have been following the awful story of body parts that were found in Montreal and Ottawa. I am sure you must have all heard or read about it by now. They have a suspect and they think he has fled to France. There are plenty of images online of him and a video audition of a talent show he applied for in Ontario. He is young and beyond creepy and he has the profile of a classic serial killer. If they don't find him I firmly believe he will do it again. And then just yesterday there was a shooting in the Eaton Centre in Toronto. Several people injured some critically, reports say the suspect is still at large. Canada in my mind was the last bastion of a fairly safe place to be as far as crime goes but now I am not so sure.

Moving on from the macabre, I have a new addiction, and my brother will find this amusing. First time I drunk the stuff I hated it, but for some reason, I have changed my mind and now I cannot get enough of it...Root Beer. I love it! My memory is pants these days, as I drift through a new life and seem to be struggling to remember parts of the old...So do we have Root Beer in the UK? I don't know. Wishing everyone a wonderful, long Jubilee weekend.

The 2012 Doors in Grand Pre

Borden Lighthouse

Pereau

Bev and Jim

Impressive clouds along the waterfront - taken from the ferry