January photo Day 30: Down

Day 29's theme was "Grow," which is not an easy task to accomplish in Canada at the end of January.  Even the snowbanks weren't growing because we hadn't any new snow.  I was at a total loss of what to shoot, so I moved on.

Day 30 is "Down."  I stopped at the school playground near my house to snap this pic. If it hadn't been cold in addition to a metal slide, I would have slid down.

January photo Day 28: Through

How about "through the server cabinet?"

January photo Day 27: Sun

A pic of the sun at Saint's Rest Beach on a very cold day.

January photo Day 26: Together

My Snuffles bears are together on their shelf, keeping watch and being happy.

These are just the white group. The other colors are on the rest of the shelf.

January photo Day 25: Landscape

I snapped this pic near my house. Not much to work with this time of year.

This is a better photo I took last fall while in Tucson:

January photo Day 24: Stripes

At the office, we're cleaning out older files to make room for the new year. The floor is filled with Banker Boxes.

January photo Day 23: Electric

Yesterday's task was "electric."  I took one "staid" pic, as John calls it, of telephone poles on my way home.

Later, I took a picture of the electrical substation up the street.

My red dashboard lights ended up reflecting onto my picture

January photo Day 22: Corner

Today's task was to take a picture of a corner.  This piece of furniture in my home has many.

January photo Day 21: What I do

What I do for work is IT.  That usually involves dealing with computers in some fashion.  I took this pic a while ago, but it is representative.

One of our many walls o' recycling for electronic equipment that we've phased out

January photo Day 20: Something I saw

Today's prompt was pretty vague. Since I left the house only once today and didn't go far, I stuck with what I saw inside.  Romy pushed Sapphire out of the way to be on "his" pillow.

January photo Day 19: Delicious

Few things are more delicious (to me) than freshly popped popcorn.

January photo Day 18: Shadow

I wasn't able to get a good shadow on the day, so I tried to get something today instead.  John posed for his best Alfred Hitchcock impersonation.

January photo Day 17: Ready

Today's task was to take a picture of something that signified being ready.  I snapped this just before Zumba began and I was ready to start.

Always have to have your water and towel ready.

January photo Day 16: Two things

Wednesday was "two things" -- look for things in pairs.  I snapped this pic of a pair of fire escape staircases.

January photo Day 15: Ordinary moment

An ordinary moment in our house is seeing our cats relaxing on the couch.

January photo Day 14: Something yellow

For "something yellow" I chose the peppers I walked by in the supermarket tonight.

January photo Day 13: Circles

Circles was a toughy.  I wasn't feeling overly inspired on that one, didn't have time to go on the hunt, and rejected an idea that was on my desk because it had been done before.  So I snapped a pic of my shoes.

January photo Day 12: Surprise

Surprise was hard to capture. The biggest surprise of the day ended up being the Broncos' loss to the Ravens, but taking a picture of the TV wasn't what I had in mind.  Other surprises on Saturday was how tasty our food was.

I somehow misled my husband into thinking I had bought him a coffee cake as a surprise treat, when really I bought him something for Valentine's Day.  He was disappointed that he had no coffee cake for breakfast, so he found his mom's recipe for raspberry coffee cake.  We substituted strawberry jam since that's what we have a lot of in our house right now.  It turned out quite well, though next time we'll try to remember to turn the ends.

It looks a bit alien-like here, but it was tasty. Need to work the dough less next time.

The other tasty surprise was our baby back ribs, cooked in Sweet Baby Ray's sauce.  We hadn't used the sauce before, nor had we baked pork ribs, so it was a toss-up as to how this would go.  Turned out that John picked the right length of cooking time and the sauce was delicious.

We added some corn bread and away we go.

January photo Day 11: Water

Today's theme is water.  We drove to Calais this afternoon, so along the drive home I took these two photos.

January photo Day 10: 1 o'clock

Day 10's plan is to shoot what you were doing between 1 and 2 o'clock.  In the pm version of that time frame is when I usually take my lunch.  On Thursdays, I head uptown to pick up John's comic books.  A couple of doors down from the comic book store is the City Market, where I stopped to grab a sandwich.

January photo Day 9: Paper

For paper, I chose these molded packing form shapes that housed our networking equipment at work.

January photo Day 8: Starts with T

I had this idea earlier in the day, but didn't seize the opportunity to snap a pic of my co-worker's toast with a decent camera.  So here's evening toast.

Why RIM should send me a new Blackberry 10 phone

RIM's new Blackberry OS 10 announcement is coming at the end of this month.  This is a make-or-break time for the Canadian company.  Their market share is dangerously low, and even their core corporate customers are jumping ship for the iPhone or Android devices.  My co-worker has said that his next upgrade will be to an iPhone, and another co-worker has already jumped ship.

My last Blackberry upgrade was Dec 2011, which means I'm not eligible for an upgrade discount until Dec 2013.  That's eons worth of time in today's technology market.  I resisted upgrading when I did, but my old hardware was giving me so much trouble that I had to take the leap.  I'm currently using the 9900, which has been fairly decent for messaging, but the more I use it for surfing, clicking links out of Twitter, its total inability to display anything on Instagram, etc. the more frustrated I get.  I started regretting not jumping ship when I had the chance; maybe I wasn't forward thinking enough.

Now I'm excited at the news and hope the launch will cure my woes.  I don't really want to switch brands, but something has to change so that Blackberry doesn't become the next Betamax.  I'm not the only user who thinks this, I'm sure: and we're the people RIM should be targeting to help spread the word on their new OS.  Here's why RIM should send me a new smartphone:

• Loyalty.  I fight to the death for my QWERTY keyboard in a world full of touchscreens, which is the main reason I didn't jump ship when I had the chance.  I want to stay with Blackberry, want to keep the great keyboard of which no other device can quite get right.  RIM will have a tough time turning those who have already jumped ship, but for those who are still loyal, don't leave us languishing on the older platform -- we're the people you want to tell the world how great the new product is vs the old.
• Social media.  I'm relatively young and tech savvy, and a user of social media, so I will be vocal about how much I like the new hardware and software.  I will blog, Facebook, and tweet about it.  Word of mouth is one of the most powerful methods of marketing.  Not to mention its cost, free, would help RIM's budget right about now.
• Corporate influence. My employer trusts me to provide advice and guidance on what IT devices we use, and that also extends to smartphones.  If I recommended we all needed to switch to iPhones, my opinions would be taken seriously and I would have some say in the final purchasing decision.

So RIM, if you're listening, send me a new device. Don't leave me frustrated and wishing I was using an Android for the next 11 months.  Let me tout your new device for you.  If we're going to be slammed with marketing, it might as well come from me.  :D

January photo Day 7: Street

I made a quick stop uptown to take a shot of the street I used to live on when I had an apartment. This is farther down from my apartment, but still representative of the great architecture of the street.  After the Great Fire of 1877, architects from Boston came to help rebuild.  When movies are occasionally filmed here, our uptown heritage district often doubles for Boston.

January photo Day 6: Mine

John got me this recipe easel for Christmas and I think it will come in VERY handy.  I'm glad it's mine.

January photo Day 5: Movement

Movement was a tricky one. Cameras don't often want to catch something in the act of moving. I had help from John on this one to get the right lighting and subject and pretty much everything except pull the camera trigger.  ;)

Our wood stove fan at work

January photo Day 4: The View From Here

Day 3 was "take a picture of a heart" but I wasn't feeling inspired, so I decided to skip it.  Today's theme is "the view from here."  If I had more free time during the daylight, I would have snapped a better pic, but by the time I get out of work, it will be getting dark.  I stopped at the top of the hill near my office to snap this pic. Not the greatest, but at least it's a view of something other than a shopping area, which was the only other place I visited today outside of work.

January photo Day 2: Something New

I opened something new today: a brand new box of chocolates my mom gave me for xmas. Since John doesn't like nuts, I took a box of Turtles into my office to share with my co-workers.  I unwrapped the shrink wrap and found this:

A brand new package, and I'm already missing a chocolate.

Turtles are sold by weight, not quantity, and the chocolates did seem more full than usual.  It still seems like they might have a quality control issue to be missing a whole chocolate, though.  Oh well.

January photo Day 1: Today

Today I cleaned off my desk and started to undecorate.

I hate the post-Christmas look of bland January, but it can't look festive forever.

Yes, compared to this morning, this is clean. And John installed our new printer/scanner/copier.

Looking forward to trying out our new MFP.  It should help me with my photo project, when I have time to get back on track with it.

New year

January is here again. Can't say as I'm all that much of a fan. We'll be getting into heavy winter, and I'm just not that excited about the prospect.  I just want winter to hurry up and get over with so we can move back into the months that are easier to deal with.

I enjoyed the daily photo project, and I think I will keep it up for January.  My pictures aren't artistic, I just don't have the eye.  But it does force me to get out my camera, try and look for something to suit the prompt, and maybe I'll get a gem here or there.  It's also reminding me to blog more in general.  Not trying to win any prizes, just trying to do something different.  For those who are wondering, I skipped Dec 31st intentionally as I don't like self-portrait and I'd rather move on to January's list.

My unofficial resolutions for last year were to exercise more, and to not leave piles of dishes beside the sink for too long.  I think I was quite successful at both.  The dishes got done sooner (whether by me or John) and I started -- and stuck with -- Zumba.  I finally found exercise that is fun, so it's been easy to stick with the program, and the flexibility to attend other classes when life intervenes helps me stay on my goal of 2 classes/week.  I didn't want to break over Christmas, but instructors need rest too, which unfortunately means I've been lazy.  That will make it a bit difficult to get back into the swing, but hopefully I'll get back into gear next week when the normal schedule returns.

This year, I need to do a couple of additional things to help myself.  John and I don't have good eating habits, nor do we particularly enjoy food.  If/when they invent the food pill, we'll be the first in line.  In the meantime, John has instituted a weekday meal plan.  If we can write down a base meal/meat, then we can have items ready to cook.  Doing this, we hope, will also force us to eat more healthy foods, rely less on the laziness of eating out, or just not bothering to have a meal at all.  We have to start somewhere, so here it is.

The other thing I hope to improve upon this year is my level of stress/worrying.  I've always been a worrier, but lately it has gotten to unhealthy levels. It's been physically and emotionally draining, and mostly of my own doing.  Christmas this year has been particularly stressful, but not anyone's fault other than myself.  I need to make an effort to stop worrying so much about the future and "what if" scenarios, and try to focus more on the present and enjoy my surroundings.  I would like to have more energy, so between the food changes and mental outlook, I hope I can accomplish that. Otherwise I'm going to end up with an ulcer.