Memory Lane

So last week I mentioned I was off to Memory Lane with the camera club to photograph some Vintage cars. The cars were indeed fabulous as were the surroundings, just a shame about the weather, it absolutely pee'd down with rain on and off throughout the day and worst of all the rain was accompanied by thunder and lightening. I have a huge phobia of storms, so I was not best pleased! Thankfully though I remembered to cover myself from head to foot in bug spray so at least I didn't get bitten to death as well.

The mosquito's are well and truly in season now and having spent a couple of hours outside with our neighbours the weekend before I had some horrific bites up my legs. There's something about the biting insects here that just love me, and I seem to have no tolerance to them at all.

The week has flown by as work has been hectic! The weather has been shifting between really hot and sunny to windy and rainy (which is is today). We are supposed to be heading out tomorrow on another model shoot, but so far the weather forecast is not looking good.

It's a sad week this week as Peter Falk died on Thursday aged 83. I was a massive fan of his and all the Columbo series. At least his memory will live on as somewhere on TV there is always a Columbo to watch!

The talent competition 'The Voice' reached the semi final point this week and the right 4 contestants have made it to the final for next week. I am eagerly looking forward to seeing who wins. I am routing for Vicci or Beverly to win! (Videos below)

The nice thing about 'The Voice' is the fact that all the mentors really did care about their artists and they get up and sing with them on the show. The show does knock spots off The X Factor!

Back to reality and Rob started his new job this week. He seems really happy with it. The side of the business he will be working on is just getting up and running, so the hours are not full time as yet, he has done 3 days so far this week and supplemented some hours at UHaul. The good thing about UHaul is he only has to do a shift once in 3 months to stay on the books there, so it's a helpful back up when hours are short.


Fordomatic


Feel the Shine (Best car in show in my opinion)


Friends for Dinner...1950's stylee

RBC and a Royal Request

Wow, what a busy week!

Robert and I have been on the hunt for a second car as I mentioned in an earlier post. After much searching and looking at plenty of rusty vehicles, Rob found a small dealer about 10 minutes away from our place who was selling a 10 year old Honda Civic, which was really tidy, with good tires, hardly any rust, air con that still works with 2 years MVI on it (MOT equivalent)...So we bought it.

The whole process of buying this second car has left us really annoyed with our current bank RBC. We went to them for a loan which we didn't get. We have had a credit card with them for a year now. That credit card is what they call a secured credit card, it's for people with a bad credit rating, or in our case no credit rating at all as we were new to the country. With the secured card, the bank retains $1000 of your money as a deposit against the card and the limit on the card is $1000. We were told initially that we would get that money back after one year. Not so! They carry on holding on to it. So the irony is, they wouldn't give us a loan, but they offered us another credit card, all the while half the money we needed for the car was in their clutches!

Well as you can imagine, we were not best pleased, having discussed this with our neighbours, they suggested trying Scotia Bank, and made us an appointment with their branch to see how they could help us. They were great. We now have a new bank account there, which is 'charge free' for the first year as it's what they call a welcome account, for people who have been in the country less than 3 years. We also get a credit card with an unsecured limit of $5000 instead of RBC's poxy $1000 and in 3 months we can most likely pop in a set up a credit line, which is a cross between a credit card, a loan and an overdraft at a very cheap rate of 5%. Nearly every one I know has one here, once we have that we won't really need to use the credit card, but even the interest rate on the credit card is lower than RBC!!!

So a lesson learned! We took the advice of UK 2 Nova Scotia on banking and I wish we hadn't! We will now start slowly moving our money across to the new account, starting with Rob's new job wages. If you are left scratching your heads as to how we paid for the car in the end, we put half of it on an English credit card and Rob managed to scrape together a few last shackles from the UK to pay the other half.

Wednesday night was a big night at the camera club. It was the last meeting of the season and awards night. With so many talented members in the club and me being a relative newbie, I didn't expect get anywhere with it, but was thrilled to be placed in 4 of the 12 categories (Trucks and Cars, Food, In the Garden and Reflections). I was presented with little engraved tags to put under my images in a frame (not that that will ever happen!) I won a $10.00 gift card for Henry's (Canadian version of Jessops), a magazine subscription and $5.00 off our next membership to the club.

In other photo news, thanks to those who have supported my entry into the Canada Post Contest. I haven't won anything as yet, BUT I was contacted by them today and this is what they wrote:

Thanks for entering Canada Post’s “My Canada” Photo Contest.

We’re so impressed by your entry "Stonehurst Cove" that we’d like to include it in a photo book for the Royal Couple, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge! We’ll be delivering the book to them during their upcoming Canadian tour. A few days after the official delivery, we’ll also create an album on our Facebook page (facebook.com/canadapostpromo) to share the photos with fellow Canadians!

You will be given full credit for your work, which will be featured in the book alongside the photo title and your first and last name.

So now one of my images will feature on Wills and Kate's coffee table :o)))

I am updating the blog early this week as I shall be gone all day on Sunday, there is a photography field trip at to a Vintage Car show at Memory Lane plus various other locations, just hope the sun comes out. We have actually seen the sun a couple of times this week which makes a change. When it does come out it is so hot, but the temperature is up and down so much right now and ranging from 12 degrees right up to 21 degrees.

Finally, Happy Fathers Day Dad!!

Our New Old Car :o)


Left: 3rd place Gherkin Reflections Right: 2nd Place Two Ton


3rd place: A Bowlful of Colour


3rd place: Frosty Morning at Stourhead


A right royal image of Stonehurst

BBQ & Gardening

The sun made a rare appearance this week on a couple of days in fact. Best of all it was sunny on Friday and Saturday. Our neighbours Chris and Gord invited us round for a BBQ on Friday night, Rob helped Gord put up the new swing seat they purchased during the day and we got to try it out in the evening. The food and company were great.

I decided that I would try and do something with our 'shit heap' of a back yard on Saturday, my word it was hot! Sweat, yes I did! I dug a new flower bed under the back window where there was just a patch of mud, the ground, as I discovered is terrible, not much play to dig down as it is just solid rock. I finished that and cut the grass which was horrendously long, and generally swept up all the leaves left over from last year. When Rob returned from work we headed out to buy a few plants, having planted them it does look a lot better, just hope they can all survive in the limited soil.

While we were out looking for plants we also looked at some second hand cars. Most of which were pricey and a bit rusty, but we did find a couple that would meet our needs. Rob is still looking and we hope to find something this week if possible as he now has a start date for his new job, which is Monday 20th June. Still unclear as to how many hours it will be a week, but at least it's a start.

Last weekend we took a stroll out around the Public Gardens. It was the first time we had been there and it was very nice indeed. You can certainly tell how far behind in the seasons we are as Daffodils, Tulips and Magnolia were still out in bloom. The best part of the gardens for me is the tea room, where you can pick up a huge 2 scoop ice cream!!

Tulips in June in the Public Gardens


Have no clue what it is, but very pretty


The Pavillion at the Public Gardens


The newly created flower bed, complete with Meerkats

A Flying Visit

Another busy week has come and gone. Work has been literally frantic this week with the end of the moth billing which is now a part of my job...lol...I know, anyone who knows me, also knows my maths skills are sadly lacking. So this is a whole new adventure to me.

On the upside this week, I did find out that I will be getting on the company benefits plan soon, which is just as well as my Blue Cross doesn't cover the massage therapy I badly need for my back.

Our friends from Toronto made a flying visit this week, they were here from Monday to Wednesday, celebrating Blake's Graduation from Dalhousie University. Well done Blake!!! We managed to catch up with them on Tuesday evening and headed out to Wharf Wraps for Fish and Chips. It was great to see them again and I hope we can make a return visit to them at some point in the near future if we ever get any spare money!

Rob and I attended the camera club on Wednesday evening and caught up with the gang at Tim's afterwards. Everyone was chuffed to see my image in the Mark Wilkinson book. I have just entered into the Canada Post Competition online and need some likes and tweets to stand any chance, so I am listing the links here and if anyone reading this is on Facebook or Twitter (or know people that are) can you please vote for me.

http://mycanadaphoto.ca/node/4907
http://mycanadaphoto.ca/node/4909
http://mycanadaphoto.ca/node/4910
http://mycanadaphoto.ca/node/4914
http://mycanadaphoto.ca/node/4916
http://mycanadaphoto.ca/node/4918
http://mycanadaphoto.ca/node/4919
http://mycanadaphoto.ca/node/4921

Lisa, Craig, Eunice, Rob and I at Wharf Wraps

Trash the Dress

This week has flown by thankfully as we only had the 4 days to contend with thanks to the Bank Holiday.

As I mentioned in my last post, I was out with the some of the camera club on the Monday for the 'Trash the Dress shoot" I took along Rebecca as my model and several photographers and models turned up for the occasion. We all split into smaller groups and headed off to photograph our models in various locations around the city.

We were all supposed to start at the same time and end up at a beach location at 1pm, I have to say that our group failed that challenge as we were having way too much fun with our models and props! We actually finished at around 6 pm.

Having never shot people before I was definitely out of my comfort zone, but loved it. Rebecca and Happy (our other model, and yes that is her name) were fantastic and were willing to dress up and slap on the war paint in Tim's on route to the next location. You can see some of my results below here, to see more take a look at my flickr stream.

All that crouching and squatting for the shoot, left me in agony on Tuesday and Wednesday, I think I pretty much tore my thigh muscles to shreds. That said, the pain was so bad that every other pain I had faded away. Now my legs have healed, by back has starting playing me up again, so I headed to the doctors today and have been told that I have so much stress in my back that I need to go for massage therapy and have a referral note to get that done. After the therapy I will have to try and improve my slouchy posture!

Next week we have Lisa and Eunice visiting from Toronto, they will be on a whistle stop trip see Blake (Lisa's Son, Eunice's Grandson) graduate from Dalhousie University. We hope to catch up with them on Tuesday at some point and are really looking forward to seeing them.

Happy on the Rail Tracks, we all ran when the train came!


Alice in Hubcap Land

Happy Jump

A Landmark Date and a Publication

After a frantic week we finally reached the weekend...hooray! Work has been picking up pace over the last few weeks as the architects and tenders get into full swing after the winter weather and the new annual government budgets have been put in place.

Saturday sadly was a no sun day, but we have been promised some sun for Sunday and Monday as it is a bank holiday weekend.

Rob had some good news this week. Through a friend of ours, he was introduced to a chap called Eric who has several businesses in the heating and plumbing trade. He is going to take Rob on with a view to getting him through the exam process so that he can become fully qualified. The starting wage is already $5.50 and hour better than he is currently on and there is the potential to up those earnings the more qualified he gets. Initially we are not sure if the hours will extend to a full time week, so he may well keep some hours at UHaul as well. Hopefully he will be starting in a couple of weeks time.

The down side of this is that we really need to get another car. Not really sure what we are going to do about that just yet, but Rob is looking into perhaps getting finance, although this may not be possible as we haven't been here that long.

In 3 days time we will have been here exactly one year! I am guessing the time has flown by for you reading this, for me it has been quite a long year, I cannot honestly say it has all been plain sailing, because it hasn't, we have had some ups and downs and no doubt we will continue to struggle financially for some time to come, I get homesick and miss my friends and family of course, but we have met some great people here and have experienced so much of what Nova Scotia has to offer. No one said it was going to be easy, but when I think back to some of the challenges we have overcome, who would have thought I would have been taking a new driving test and driving on the wrong side of the road! (Which incidentally you no longer have to do as you can just swap your license over now...typical!)

Tomorrow I am out and about with the camera club for an annual event called 'Trash the Dress' We have models dressing in old wedding dresses and unusual clothing and photograph them in various locations. I am bringing my own model Rebecca, who you may remember I photographed before. I have encouraged her to be edgy, so I am looking forward to seeing what she wears and what props she brings. Hopefully I will get some half decent shots.

In other photographic news this week, one of my images has been featured in a very posh designer book. Someone contacted me (when I was still in the UK) about using a photo in a book, they said they would send me a copy when it was completed. I thought it was a scam and never thought I would see the book so gave them my brothers PO Box address to send the book to. Well it arrived, Clive kindly posted it on to me.

The book is actually a catalogue, if you can call it that! It must have cost a fortune to produce the book and features the furniture designs (kitchens, bathrooms offices) of Mark Wilkinson. He is designer to the likes of Anthony Worrall Thompson, Gary Rhodes and various high profile music industry people and celebrities. You have to have some serious cash to afford this stuff. So I am really chuffed! Who knows maybe some famous will look me up now!


My Gothic Cottage image from Stourhead, now featured in the 'Unmistakably Mark Wilkinson' White Book.

Wet Wet Wet!

Not really too much to report this week. The biggest news is the start of The Apprentice for me! So good to see Sir Al back on the TV. A great start to the series with the usual bunch of hopefuls and ego's all in the same room. I already desperately want Edna out!!

The other major TV event this week was Eurovision. As you all know I am a big nut for Eurovsion and the madness that goes with it. some pretty decent songs all in all this time round with just a sprinkling of crazy from Moldova! My personal faves were Iceland, Romania and Spain who didn't really do very well at all. I actually thought Jedward (the ADHD twins) did a surprisingly good job and Blue put in an okay performance for the UK, but it was obvious it wouldn't win. As for the winner, Azerbaijan...instantly forgettable!

So enough of that, what can I tell you from this end...Well the weather is the big topic of conversation over here, it has literally done nothing but rain for nearly 4 weeks now, I think in total we have seen the sun twice in all that time and it is really getting everyone down. Of course the UK has been having lovely weather and boy do I envy you that. We just hope that the crappy Spring will bring a decent Summer.

Obviously as the weather has been so rubbish we haven't really been anywhere or done anything. However we did venture out last night with Melissa for fish and chips at Wharf Wraps, it been a while since we have been down there and it didn't disappoint.

Next weekend is a a bank holiday weekend, so fingers crossed we get some good weather and hopefully I will have more to report.

One odd thing I have noticed since the wet weather started is the amount of worms everywhere, they all look pretty pale and skinny and are literally all over the car park here and on the pavements. Not really sure why that is unless the ground is still so hard underneath and the rain has just washed them out?

Halifax Skyline taken under a murky sky last night.