52.22 - Cliché time
Image by dichohecho
I really quite like this :s
I've reduced the brightness a bit but apart from that done nothing to it.
Thissss weeeeeek:
Monday was Anna's birthday. We woke her up too late & I had to go to work at 3 so circumstances weren't super. But I'm not going to go into it here. Anyway, I met the others after work and we went to Pizza Express to celebrate. I took exciting pictures of their flowers/tables/Christmas decorations. The decorations were nice. They had a Christmas tree with silvery things on and lots of baubles hanging from the spotlight branches.
On Tuesday I got up at 8, made Afghan cookies (a New Zealand thing, chocolate bicuits with cornfakes in) and got dressed while they were cooking. Then I dashed off to Amber's house with a bag of walnut halves and a pot of icing sugar & cocoa, to which we added water to ice the afghans. Our family discovered Afghans when we went to New Zealand in 2003. I looked for a recipe at home and on the internet for ages before discovering it in Mum's faithful & frequently used 70s edition of the Penguin Cookbook!
Amber & I had a nice chat & tea & coffee, and I gave her her Christmas present. We helped her brother put the annoying adverts into the free local newspapers he delivers and admired the mosaic of photos her Mum had made for the departing gap year student. Amber's parents are house parents of a boy's boarding house & each year one of the gap year students who helps out with games is assigned to the house as a tutor & assistant.
After that I went down to the park & ride & thence to work (12-5) which I can't remember being particularly interesting. After that I was meant to be picking Mark up from the station as close as possible to 5. So I rushed up to the bus stop & joined the large crowd of people waiting for it. The traffic was awful so not only did we have to wait ages for a bus to arrive but when it did it could barely move. We were stuck on the roundabout in the centre of Taunton for almost 10 minutes and had to go a long back way round by the hospital to try and get past some of the Tesco/SCAT traffic.
I eventually got round to the station at about 6 & found Mark, who was remarkably un-annoyed by having to sit in the waiting room for an hour. We went home & made BLTs with cucumber instead of lettuce as we had none, with Kate as well. Mum, Dad & Anna went out for supper. Then Mark & I were meant to be meeting Amy, Meg & Caroline for a (non-alcoholic for those driving) drink or two in Taunton. But Amy texted me saying she was ill and couldn't come. I phoned Caroline to sort out what time I'd pick her up and she said "we're meeting in P&P, yeah?" which I assumed to mean she was going to get there herself. So I drove straight there, couldn't see her & phoned her to see what was going on. It turned out she'd asked me so she could confirm it to Meg & text her when I got to her house. Boooo.
Then I said I'd come back & get her and Caroline said no, don't, because she was ill anyway... I phoned Meg & told her what Caroline said and she decided not to come either. So that's how the evening fell apart. Now I think I should've just gone and got Caroline anyway.
Mark & I wandered around Taunton a bit and had a drink, went to show him what Bridgwater's like (he's from Poole), then went home and ended up watching Amélie.
On Wednesday we got up & had a look at a road atlas, decided Glastonbury was too far away for a morning visit and went up Cothelstone hill instead. We had a nice look at the view and the funny shaped tree over near Broomfield before going down into Taunton for lunch.
Mark went home again & I started work at 3. I'd been coughing a bit earlier but while I was working I got achey all over and dizzy and hot and cold which was pretty unpleasant. And I had to rearrange all the slippers and take some downstairs, which wouldn't've been too bad without the dizziness and aches. Meanwhile the other girl who was in for the majority of the time I was there was rearranging the sale stock. Not an easy task, but not one that required me to come up from sleepwear to serve every single customer instead of her. Grrr. I got 2 accounts though so that served her right...
I was on my own for the last hour, tidying things up as much as possible, and it was quite messy. It was still quite messy when it came to 7 o'clock and there was still a rail full of sale stuff standing there. But I had to cash up at the right time & get out to the park & ride by 7.30 to get the last bus.
I counted everything up & put it into the till and ended up with an imbalance. Which meant I had to find a supervisor to come & recount it all with me & sort it out. But all the people on womenswear had finished & gone so I was craning my head round the corner hoping that someone would come up the stairs as I couldn't just leave the till open & all the money lying around. Luckily I did get someone after a few minutes. I turned out to have counted it all right and have too much money rather than too little!
So I finished with the horrid till, left, dashed to the bus stop & had to wait, thinking I might've missed it. My head was aching too by now & my throat hurt & I was feeling all stressed by the imbalance so I was far from happy. I drove home ok, had supper and crashed.
Oddly I felt better on Thursday, mainly coughy and a little hot and cold. I worked 9-2 & survived ok. I visited Lils at Boots after work & discovered that the cake lady at the farmers' market is having a break until February :( Friday was pretty much the same but 8.20-12.20 so I had half a day left over, which I did nothing with!
Saturday morning was sleep & illness and the afternoon I spent writing Christmas cards & doing nothing. Apart from when Ashley came round to drop off her secret santa present (she couldn't make it to the meal).
I went round to Amy's house and we got ready and took a bus into Taunton. We were going to a kind of reunion of a group of friends, most of whom left Queen's in year 11. Out of 9 who said they were definitely coming, 8 turned up, one of the "maybe"s was late and another turned up after supper. We had pizza and swapped cards & presents before moving on to Café Mambo and the Perkin, colliding with at least one birthday party involving people some of us knew. Amy & I shared a taxi back with one of her friends from her village (which made it much cheaper) and I slept at her house.
It was a nice evening and everyone still gets on, which is great. The "definite" who didn't turn up was meant to be in the secret santa but we gave her present to the girl she was meant to be buying for so it worked out ok in the end, even if it wasn't terribly personal...
I've spent today lying about feeling coldy and doing a bit of room tidying so that my sister can sleep in here over Christmas (we've got Grandma and my great aunt coming to stay). I'm not feeling hugely Christmassy, but then I have been forced to listen to the music at work for over a month now...
Ummm.
Merry Christmas!
Children dancing around the Christmas tree
Image by IronRodArt - Royce Bair ("Star Shooter")
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Children dancing around the decorated Christmas tree - a 1918 vintage greeting card illustration, with the greeting, ''A Joyful Christmas''. This image was scanned from my personal collection and the color restored (digitally remastered). I also retouched it to remove scratches, cracks, smudges and age spots. This is typically about a 3 hour process. Here's a before and after restoration of this image.
FREE for Personal Use Downloads: This image is offered through a Creative Commons license. You can also obtain PRINTS or a commercial use license (and even larger downloads) at my SmugMug site. NOTE: Personal use requires attribution (credit ''The Stock Solution Photo Agency'') and a link to my Web site: ''The Stock Solution'' -- where you can also find many more free downloads.
Keywords: achr1052, children, dancing, joy, joyful, christmas, decorated, tree, lighted, candles, presents, season, tradition, traditional, nostalgia, nostalgic, retro, vintage, victorian, play, playful, fun, gay, merry, greeting, card, old, oldpixels, evergreen, sentimental, december, yuletide, illustration, antique,
Rural Christmas Scenic at Dusk
Image by IronRodArt - Royce Bair ("Star Shooter")
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As the sun sets, a father drags home a fresh-cut Christmas tree along the snowy road to his home in the country -- a 1909 vintage greeting card. This image was scanned from my personal collection and the color restored (digitally remastered). I also retouched it to remove scratches, cracks, smudges and age spots. This is typically about a 3 hour process.
FREE for Personal Use Downloads: This image is offered through a Creative Commons license. You can also obtain PRINTS or a commercial use license (and even larger downloads) at my SmugMug site. NOTE: Personal use requires attribution (credit ''Royce Bair'') and a link to my Web site: ''The Stock Solution'' -- where you can also find many more free downloads.
Keywords: achr1053, art, christmas, cold, covered, currier, cut, engraving, era, eve, evening, dusk, farm, fresh, home, house, ives, night, nostalgia, nostalgic, old, oldpixels, pastoral, peace, peaceful, picturesque, quaint, rural, rustic, scene, scenic, sentiment, sentimental, snow, snowy, sunset, tranquil, tree, victorian, vintage, winter, wintery, wintry, wonder, wonderland, xmas, yuletide, country, greeting, card,
That Birdy in the Window
Image by Johnny Peacock
My First Time-Lapse!
I know I told you that my first time-lapse would be of an ice cube melting and that you're all really excited to see that. Unfortunately, I've got to disappoint you. Yesterday, I shot a time-lapse...
Today's Photo: The Parrot in the Window
As a happy side effect of buying a second camera body, I took out one of my backup memory cards. Happily, I discovered some photos form New York I thought I'd managed to lose...
Click here for more on this shot at the Traverse Earth blog.
If you're interested in my HDR techniques, visit my FREE HDR TUTORIAL.
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