Saturday, December 24, 2011

Twas the day before Christmas

Today was the first day of the Christmas break and all we did was relax. Our Christmas shopping is all done and we don't have the family reunion before next week. So today was a day to relax, sleep in, a late breakfast, an expresso or two, three, reading the news on my iPad. Finally I decided to go walking despite the fact hat it was -13 degrees celsius (9 degrees F). What decided me to go out and freeze? The sun, bright beautiful sunlight. In the winter I'm like a plant, I need sunlight, which this time of year is in short supply, The sun rises about 7:30 am and sets around 4:15 PM and a lot of the time this past month, it has been grey and cloudy. So since the sun was out, so was I. I went walking at the Cap St-Jacques, a nearby nature park that I often go to. I usually cross country ski there, but right now we only have about 2-3 cm of snow, not enough to ski on without scrapping the bottom of my skis. So today I walked 9 kilometres aroundd the park. Here are a couple of photos I took as I was walking. So in the immortal words of old Saint Nic. "Happy Christmas to all and to all a goodnight!"

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Christmas and an iPad

It's almost Christmas vacation but we still haven't had any snow yet so it seems that we'll be having a green Christmas. The kids at school are all excited none the less and we are finishing off the orals for the Christmas project and munching on Christmas cookies that they baked as a part of the project. All in all, the cookies are very good and I'll have to do a lot of walking to burn the calories since cross country skiing is out of the question for the moment. 
I've also been playing around taking pictures and using my new iPad to edit them. I bought it for traveling but I am surprised at what I can do with it to edit the pictures I take. It'll be much easier to carry around than my MacBook Pro and easier to use than my iPhone.
Here is a sample of a picture I edited with Snapseed (weird name but highly effective) I thought it gave just the right atmosphere for the Canadian Parliament since the Conservative election. ;o)