Illusions of Height

I took this photo of Amanda and me on Good Friday.  We had headed over to the Prairie Mall, not really expecting it to be open and/or busy, and did some wandering around.  We stopped at Coles and a few other places, and took this photo near my car.


It never occurred to me before, but I must hold my phone at about 30 degrees from horizontal when taking these photos...  You can clearly tell by the background of this particular photo, but also by how close Amanda and I appear in height.


Amanda's reasonably tall, but I'm still about five inches taller than her.  In that photo, it looks like we're only about an inch or two apart.

Illusions can be interesting...

Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall...

...who's the fairest of them all?

Amanda!

Yup, the weekend before last we continued with my obsession with reflection photos.  Amanda and I took this photo in my bathroom.  I'm wearing the Starman hoodie my brother gave me for my birthday, and Amanda is wearing my infamous pink hoodie.

Amanda was tired of wearing the hoodie she had brought to Tumbler Ridge with her, so I offered her the choice of my yellow one or pink one.  She didn't care, and we decided that my pink hoodie looked better with her t-shirt.  Of course, I wanted a photo of us kissing while she was wearing it.  My bathroom mirror was handy, and the photo turned out pretty good!

With that, I've posted all the photos from Amanda's last trip to Tumbler Ridge.  Tomorrow night I'll start with the photos we took over the last few days around Grande Prairie!

Quiet Evening at Home

Amanda and I had a quiet evening at her place tonight.  We picked up supper from Five Guys Burgers and Fries and watched Mad Men.  After logging in to type this blog post, I realized that I hadn't mailed any photos from my phone.  I could've grabbed it and done it, but my phone is currently charging.

So instead you folks are seeing a very casual couch photo taken with the webcam in Amanda's Macbook.  Enjoy!

Swingers

Here's yet another photo from last weekend in Tumbler Ridge.  To make up for the swing photo we *didn't* get to take in Grande Prairie the previous week, we stopped by the swing set at the elementary school for a few minutes.

It was incredibly awkward and I just about fell off, but I enjoyed taking this photo of the two of us!

Good Friday, Good Times!

Hi everyone!

I missed posting last night because I was on the way to Grande Prairie.  I left immediately after work (8pm) and arrived here shortly after midnight Grande Prairie time.

Amanda and I thoroughly enjoyed our day today, though we really didn't do much.  After breakfast we did some running around which ended up taking *much* longer than expected.  We both added detours to our route, and mine included a run to Future Shop to play with the new iPads again.  ...I think we were there 20 minutes.  Amanda played around with some games, while I toyed around with Numbers to see if an iPad would work okay for me to keep track of my spending and such when I'm on the road.

I was really impressed.  I was having fun with the iPad, and could imagine all the awesome things I could do with one.  I considered for a *long* moment, then asked Amanda to get me out of there before I grabbed a salesperson to sell me an iPad.

She (very helpfully) reminded me that I've got a stove to buy, and we escaped.  It made for an awkward afternoon though.  After *not* spending ~$600, spending money on pretty much anything with a two figure price seemed really reasonable in comparison...

I managed to restrain myself to a $2.00 purchase -- a discount book from Coles about the final days of Bear Stearns.  I think that's pretty good!

Sunny Days

Amanda and I took this photo on the way back from our walk on Sunday.  It's just below one of the lower entrances to the Rec Centre in Tumbler Ridge.

Here are some of the finer details you may miss in this photo:

1)  most of the snow on the ground (visible to the right of Amanda) has melted, but the ground is still wet

2)  Between my white hoodie and the shadow cast on my face, my stubble looks really bad in this photo

3)  Amanda's hair looks even more amazing in person

4)  The dark pole sticking up from my forehead is not, in fact, a unicorn horn.  It's a lamp post that was inadvertently caught in the photo.  Photo composition is kind of tricky when you're holding a camera out at arm's length and are focusing on other things.

Dangerous Walking

Tumbler Ridge has gradually becoming busier and busier since I moved back here in 2008.  The town is louder, busier, and quiet moments are harder to find.


...except on Sundays.


During our walk on Sunday, Amanda and I were crossing the street at a reasonably major residential intersection when we stopped and looked around.  Not a vehicle in sight.  So we decided to get a photo in the middle of the intersection.  We took our time taking the photo, and just after we finished and walked to the other sidewalk, a truck appeared in the distance.


I still really enjoy the quiet moments I can find here, especially when I can share them with Amanda.  Now all I have to do is have her out here on a Sunday morning in the summer so we can go for a walk at 6am.  I think that's pretty much the definition of quiet around here.


As an aside, I look pretty scruffy in the photos from last Sunday.  Amanda and I showered a little late and when I asked her if I should be Rugged Jake or Clean-Shaven Jake for the day, she chose the former.  :-)

Stopping at the Street Light

With this photo, Amanda and I have completed our set of photos near the street lights in Tumbler Ridge.  I'll admit that it's not an incredibly impressive accomplishment given that there are only two intersections with street lights in Tumbler Ridge, but I'm still happy to have completed the set!


Sunday afternoon was a fantastic time to go for a walk with Amanda -- it was sunny and warm, and I thoroughly enjoyed wandering the streets of Tumbler Ridge with her.


I've still got more photos of this walk to share, and they'll be coming in the next few days.


Stay tuned!

I am not an "-er"

(This is going to be a little different than most of my blog posts.  I've felt like writing something about this for a little while, and the first sentence finally came to me.  If you're not so inclined, please feel free to skip on down to the next post, where there's a photo of Amanda and me together.  I won't be offended.)

I am not an "-er."  I generally don't call myself a painter, gamer, knitter, walker, runner, biker, programmer, designer, writer, or baker.


The definitions of most -er or -ist words are usually worded something like "a person who does X."  That may be the proper definition, but to me the -er words imply a certain amount of skill or talent.  A person who knits is someone who can use two needles and some yarn to make something.  A knitter is someone who can use the same implements skillfully to create an attractive and useful finished work.

That implied skill level is the reason I try not to refer to myself as an -er.  Stating one of my hobbies as a fact is one thing, but proclaiming in the same breath that I am very skilled at that hobby as well seems a little arrogant.  You can test this for yourself.  Imagine you've met someone new and are having a conversation when he/she says one of the following phrases:


"I paint."


"I'm a painter."

The first is a statement of fact.  The second comes across as an implication that the speaker is far more skilled than someone who merely paints.  It may be true, but shouldn't that judgement be left to an external audience?


I was lucky enough to see the reverse of this a week or two ago.  Amanda and I were in her apartment talking.  Amanda's been to art school, and I think she's fairly artistic.  In the course of our conversation, I called her an artist and she replied without any false modesty "I'm not an artist."  ...have I mentioned lately how awesome I think Amanda is?


So, my suggestion to everyone is to leave the -er and -ist labels behind.  Tell people what you do, and certainly show them your work!  ...just leave the labels for them to apply.

Library Adventures

I had to work yesterday.  Amanda walked me to work at 9, then headed off while I got ready to open the library.  She showed up again a few minutes after the library officially opened at 10.

Amanda told me she didn't really want to laze around my condo knitting and playing video games while waiting for me to get off from work.  She had missed me a lot last week, and I felt the same way.  We both knew that it wouldn't be okay for her to just hang out next to me all day (and in fact, during my eight month tenure as interim head librarian, I had to reprimand a staff member for a fairly similar matter).

So Amanda asked if there was some work to be done that she could do.  She thought, and I agreed, that if she was able to do some volunteer work and we made sure to keep our visiting to a minimum and *made sure* it did not interfere with my ability to help patrons, it would probably be okay for her to stay at the library.

I thought about it for a minute, then decided that I could work on adding DVDs to our catalogue.  Quite a few had piled up over the past few months and I hadn't been able to catch up with them.  So while I entered DVDs and created basic DVD cards to put on our shelves and in the DVD cases, Amanda worked on cutting out the DVD cards, attaching barcodes to the DVD cases, and applying our TRPL labels to the DVDs.

With the exception of the final task, Amanda was mostly doing work that I normally do.  So we plugged away at DVDs until lunch at 1, and then from 1:30 to 5.  I estimated that if I had been working alone, I would've only finished around 20-25 DVDs, and would not have cut out the to-be-laminated DVD cards or applied the TRPL labels.  Between the two of us, we finished up nearly 70, and all that's left is for the library's clerk to laminate the DVD cards, make spine labels for the DVD cases, and check-in the DVDs.

It's funny, but even though Amanda and I were only working five feet apart, we really didn't spend much time talking.  It was enough just to be near each other.  I got to be with Amanda all day, Amanda got to be with me all day, and the library had a ton of extra work completed.

Amanda later joked that she should submit a timesheet to the head librarian for the work she'd done.


Late in the day, just before it was time to close the library, Amanda and I took two photos.


Amanda took a photo of my working at my normal desk.

I took a slightly different photo of Amanda.  She was adjusting her glasses and was looking down her nose towards me while doing so.  It struck me that she looked vaguely like a stereotypical librarian at the time.  So I asked her to push her glasses down her nose slightly and hold her hair up in a bun so I could get a photo.

So I present to you Amanda the Librarian:

...that photo makes me happier than I can possibly say.  :-)