I took a break

So yeah, I decided to take a break. My 365 didn't work out as planned, oh well, life doesn't always go as planned. So from now on, I'll post some photos here and there, and lets see how this goes...

Yesterday I was out at Dow's Lake, it had finally stopped raining and I wanted to go see the flowers. I took a few photos, this one was my favorite.



Here are a few other photos that I took...

#W2P At the Ark

After work, I headed over to the Ark Hotel Lounge for a #W2P event. It was a nice return to the Ark Lounge, where so many meetup's have taken place in the past. It brought back some old memories. I took a few photos within the Ark, but by no means taking advantage of the great retro-modern look of the hotel. I just sat in my little corner and took a few photos, chatted with a few people who passed by, and enjoyed the after work gathering.

Colorful afghan on these cold Spring evenings

I decided to take another photo of something in the apartment. Stephanie brought home an afghan that her grandmother had made for her, and I really like the multi-color look. Since it's wet rainy and cold, I figured it would be appropriate to take a photo of something comforting.

Stand by our troops bumper sticker

As we were driving back from Palmerston to Ottawa, we stopped in Belleville for a quick bite to eat. When we were leaving the city, I noticed this bumper sticker on the car in front of us, while stopped at a red light. It stated: "If you don't stand behind our troops, feel free to stand in front of them". After reading that statement, I felt the need to take a picture and use it for my blog post for today. I have family and friends that have served in the Canadian Forces, and I have family and friends that are currently active in the military, some even in Afghanistan now. I stand behind our troops 100%. I am humbled by their sacrifices and often think how lucky we are because of our Troops. On a side note, today was the last day for advance voting and I voted! Voting is a privilege that we have here in Canada, and if you haven't voted yet, please go vote on May 2nd. Think about what it means to vote, your vote counts! And if you don't vote, don't complain!

Ontario wines and Easter celebration

Today we celebrated Easter, had a really nice dinner and enjoyed some wine throughout the day. Here's a photo of a few of the bottles, there's a few I think that didn't make the photo as they were in another room and I didn't go looking. Surprisingly, all the wines we drank today were VQA wines from Ontario and I was quite impressed by the varieties and tastes of these wines. If you want to hear more about these wines, there will probably be a review about the wines in the next few days on our wine blog.

Yesterday's photos, Angel's Gate Vineyard..

Yesterday, as we were headed towards Palmerston from Niagara, we decided to stop at a few wineries and try some wine. I decided to take a few photos of Angel's Gate Winery. Their wine was good, we had a really good experience there. Lovely location and site. The location is great, within 300 yards, you can visit 2 other wineries. We visited Thirty Bench just before getting to Angel's Gate. Thirty Bench had just released four new wines, which they offered complimentary tastings. Their Riesling was quite impressive and tasty! As for Angel's Gate, we purchased some Cabernet Franc and some Merlot which were also very tasty and well worth the purchase.

Good Friday in Niagara Falls

Here's a few photos of me from today. Started out with a quick trip to the US, and by quick trip, I am really being ironic! There was the longest lineup I've ever seen to cross into the states. It was approximately a 1.5 hour wait to cross over. Somehow, I wasn't able to find border wait times (CBSA's site was N/A), which is kind of too bad! However, the trip was a success, and I was able to get what I was looking for :)

After a nice dinner with the family, we headed down to Clifton Hill and rode the SkyWheel. This was my first time on a Ferris-wheel. It was fun. Here are a few photos from today (including a dinosaur from what looks like to be a new mini-putt course)...

401 Toronto

Today, I drove from Ottawa to Niagara Falls to spend Easter with the family. I decided to stick to the 401, and even though it was rush hour traffic, I opted to not take the 407. This basically added about an hour to my drive, but it was good, and tried to catch a few photos, here's a photo showing the oncoming traffic!

Patio spaceship or skynet has arrived

Today as I was reading through my RSS feeds, I saw a reference to "skynet" being launched. In the terminator movie, the reference to launching skynet was on April 19th, 2011, which was yesterday. The end of the world should be happening soon. All that being said, I was looking for something different to take a photo of, and went into my back patio/porch and grabbed a shot of this, which looked a little spacelike and I made the correlation with the skynet article that I read today.

One of those days...

Just one of those days. I came home after my gaming night and still felt a bit hungry (I had a donair sub from Centretown pizza). I was looking for some junk food and ended up having some ice cream. There wasn't a lot left in the container, but I guess that's a good thing, cause it meant I didn't eat a lot of it.

Spring growth

As I was walking to my front door, I noticed this in the front yard and had to take a photo. I've been living in this apartment for over 2 years, and each year I notice these tulips popping up. Last year they were cut as soon as the lawn cutting company came in and cut the grass. On an interesting note, yesterday I went for a walk around Dow's Lake and the tulips were just starting to come out of the ground compared (all I could see was some green stuff) to these which are already blooming (at least kind of blooming, they are proud and happy to be out!) These are the first flowers I've seen in the neighborhood. It's nice that they are in my front yard! :)

Dow's Lake is running low

Today I went out for a walk in the neighborhood and decided to walk around Dow's Lake. Surprisingly, the lake kind of felt empty. In the Spring time, the NCC/City drains the canal, try to lower the water, and this affects the water at Dow's Lake. We would think that with the Spring thaw, that the water levels would be up, however in this case the water is quite low. Dow's Lake is not a normal lake as it is a man made lake. Once upon a time it used to be a swamp, and now it's a pleasure space that is used at different times of year, skating in the winter, paddle boat in the summer, has tulips on one side during the tulip festival, etc. As you can see from my photo, the water is quite low...

Rainy Preston Street

Today was a wet and rainy day. At some point today I saw some freezing rain/mini hail falling down, which was kind of depressing. However, the day was saved when a few friends invited us out for dinner at IL Primo. The food was really nice, I had their gnocchi and some really good wine. We then proceeded to go to The Prescott to catch the rest of the Habs vs Bruins game, and I was happy to see the Habs win the second and be 2-0. On the way home, I took these pics of Preston, where you can see the wetness on the ground.

Librarian's nightmare

When I saw this today, I had to take a photo. However, I should state, that it wasn't in a library, but still made me think of the state of libraries and how some are saying we don't need books anymore. This was taken in a government building, nevertheless it does reflect a few of the government libraries that were shut down in the last few years.

A hole or many holes

Was looking for something different to take a photo of, and realized that this was something that I had in my apartment. So there's a hole or many holes, depends on how you look at it.

Rainy Day Filter

Today, it started out being a cloudy day, the sun finally appeared for a little bit in the afternoon. However, the rain soon came and I decided to see how rain could act as a filter in my photos. I took a few photos, and selected this one below.

Should I go?

Should I also go down this path? I think so...

Opening in the sky

Tonight the sky was really nice and dark blue. I captured a variety of shots including movement, however this shot stood out as the key shot! These shots are all off the camera (small point and shoot) with no editing.

Here are a few other notables:

Spring rain

This day felt like a true Spring day in Ottawa. The day started out by being a very gray day, and it eventually progressed to rain and I tried to get a few photos of the rain and the misty/foggy Ottawa. This shot looks Ottawa facing North/East from Little Italy. You can see in the distance the foggy areas that cover the top of buildings.

The other photo is an attempt of capturing the rain falling on the ground and seeing the water accumulate on the ground. I also like the different looks of the ground and the pooling of the water.

Which road to choose?

Sometimes in life we are faced with different choices, which will get us to different places. Today's photo made me think of that, as I saw the train tracks split into three lines, and made me wonder, where did each line lead to? In life, our choices often bring us on different paths, and as the train tracks we don't always know the destination or what will happen at the end. However, if you do get on a train, hopefully you have an idea where you will be getting off, unless you have an open ticket, then you can always come back and stop where you really want to.

BBQ Time

Today I opened up the BBQ for the first time this year. The weather was really nice, the BBQ warmed up nicely and I did some burgers, yummy burgers! The smell of a BBQ really reminded me of the Spring, warmer weather and envy of nice steaks, baked potatoes, veggies, and other good stuff cooked on the BBQ. As you can see in the lower picture, the burgers were really tasty! I'm really looking forward to more BBQ'ing and nice weather.

Wah Shing Store or Washing Store

I had seen this sign a while ago, and it made me laugh. It's a neat play on words, and when I first read it, I thought oh maybe a laundry mat, or something to do with cleaning. However, it's a grocery/utility/kitchen equipment store in Chinatown (at least it seems like that from the outside, as I've never gone inside). There are other neat spaces in and around Chinatown, I hope to get some more as the year progresses.

Toys and travel

As I waiting for my flight back to Ottawa at the Montreal airport, I decided to take a photo of my travel toys. It is crazy when I think about the technology that I carry around with me and what it is capable of doing.


Since I liked taking the photos in the plane yesterday, I figured I could take a few more today.

In the air...

Shortly after taking off in YOW (Ottawa), this was the view from my window. It was a short and sweet flight to Montreal, and now waiting for my flight to Moncton. Always a pleasure going home, even though this trip is a short one.

One of my cameras

Tonight, as I was trying to figure out what I was going to take for my photo, I decided to take a photo of one of my cameras. This one is a special little camera that came to me as a gift a while ago, and it always reminds me of that person and how I like taking photos. I always get a kick at hitting the little button on the top and seeing the flash go off. I might be a toy, but it's fun and reminds me of how fun photography can be. As my 98th post of the year, here's the a photo of that camera.