Plants in the Rain — Some Macro Minis

I took advantage of a lull in the rain to get some closeup shots around our front door and on our balcony. Also one of our turtle under her sun lamp.

For the photographers, these were shot with a Nikon D300 DSLR and my all-manual, some 35-year-old 55mm/3.5 Micro Nikkor.

rain drops on leaf

rain drops on leaf

rain drops on leaf

rain drops on leaf

rain drops on blossom

Turtle face
Dori looks more orange than green with the warm color temperature of her basking lamp

The Cat and the Nap

Well that was a lovely nap.

Choco the cat kept following me around and “talking” to me this morning after my wife went off to her CPA study group.

I couldn’t figure out what Choco wanted. Food? Fed. Water? Watered. Cuddle? Rebuffed. Play? Ignored.

The cold, grey, rainy day should have been a clue.

At one point I went back upstairs to the bedroom and within seconds heard a bouncy jingle following me. She jumped up on the bed, and began talking again.

Oh, could it be…? I lay down, made an inverted V with my legs, covered up with a fuzzy blanket, and she slipped into the tent, curled up, and was snoring within a minute.

[Jeez those humans take long enough to understand!]

The snooze lasted about half an hour before she overheated, but that’s the highlight of my day so far 🙂 .

Thank you Lowe’s!

Just what you don’t want to see when you go upstairs to the kitchen to get a second cup of coffee — a puddle of water on the floor in front of the sink. The leak was coming from under the faucet so I pulled off the hot and cold lines, and redid the connections with fresh plumber’s tape.

As I was tightening everything up, damn, a drip. From where? Ah, even higher up! Dismantled the faucet and discovered the cartridge was cracked. Did the round of hardware stores until finally the folks at Lowe’s found what we needed in a bin of dusty spare bits and pieces, and let us have it for free. It wasn’t the exact replacement, but close enough to work. Thank you Lowe’s!

Otherwise it would have been a week or two to get another cartridge ordered in.

Shifting Volunteer Hours to Work-Related Endeavours

I’m rejiggering my volunteer time. Pulling back a bit from some of the fishy/enviro stuff, and shifting over to more work-related volunteering.

First step, meet the new Program Chair for the Editors Canada BC Branch :-).

I really enjoyed meeting lots of folks and renewing many acquaintances at the Editors Canada BC Branch Annual General Meeting tonight.

Thank you for your confidence in accepting me into the executive fold, and here’s to having more great programs for 2016-17 starting next autumn! And thanks to Kyra and Marianne for also joining the program committee.

I have some big shoes to fill, but I’m happy that everyone is happy to help.

Nikon, Broadway Camera Event at Iona Beach, YVR

I took in the Broadway Camera / Nikon Canada camera/lens event at Iona Beach Regional Park near YVR (Vancouver International Airport). It was fun trying out all the latest Nikon gear, and huge Nikkor telephoto and telephoto zoom lenses.

I fell in lust with the new Nikon D500 just as I figured I would. Amazingly responsive autofocus and blazing speed make for a superb wildlife camera. Going to need to save up a lot of coins in the spare change jar! : -)

I then shot some osprey and tree swallow photos with my, er, Tamron 150-600mm lens : -). Hey, I’ve got several Nikon DSLRs and half a dozen Nikkors, too!

Nikon camera event

osprey iona beach

osprey iona beach

osprey iona beach

tree swallow iona beach

tree swallow iona beach

Green Talks with Burnaby Board of Trade, City of Burnaby

I enjoyed the Green Talks this morning sponsored by the Burnaby Board of Trade.

The City of Burnaby was also at the event to solicit input into its Environmental Sustainability Strategy (ESS).

I had the pleasure of being a member of the ESS Steering Committee, and am also a former member of the BBOT’s Environmental Sustainability Committee, so it was great to see ongoing progress in such initiatives.

The Green Talks included several speakers in a rapid-fire format, sharing sustainability programs from their organizations.

green talks

ESS input
Folks checking out ESS panels and providing feedback