sigh.

Today was more exhausting than a Saturday needs to be.

It didn't start well -- when we arrived to pick up a compost bin and the dirt inside it, we ended up disturbing a wasp nest. It was surreal -- the wasps just streamed out of the top and bottom of the bin, angrily buzzing and chasing Hubby who was the unfortunate one holding the shovel that made the fateful hit. He was also running toward Kiddo to get her out of the way but that meant they both got stung (8 between them). I managed to escape their wrath. Happily, we now know Kiddo is not allergic but what a crappy way to find out.

Things didn't get much better -- lunch sucked and we were rushed for the rest of the afternoon. One good thing: Kiddo is enrolled in more Science Venture stuff -- clubs instead of camps. Another good thing, I was reminded that Hubby is generally very good at dealing with crises, despite my ... uh... deficiencies in the same situations.

AAAAAAnyway.

Tomorrow is birthday-palooza (one family celebration, one party for Kiddo to attend) and then I have one week to work through before we take our usual anniversary-vacation. Which reminds me, we decided not to do the road trip now -- instead we will do almost the same route next spring when we head down to Drupalcon 2010, in San Francisco.

Here's a shot from this month's Victoria Grid Project grid:

I do love our city.

The last couple of days in photos:

This, that and the other.

Yesterday proved to be one of the most frustrating days of work in the time I have held my current position. All I will say is that working on projects which involve multi-institution collaboration have far too many opportunities to run off the rails or into walls. I left work so grumpy and annoyed that even an hour of transit travel didn't give me enough time to decompress.

This morning, I slept in. Hooray for sleep! (It's been difficult re-adjusting to the 6 a.m. alarm now that I am back to full time and my regular start time of 8 a.m.) It doesn't help that I am fighting a sinus cold. Bah.

In between doing some laundry, I made some pie pastry (and Kiddo helped me) so that Hubby could bake an apple pie. He used about a half dozen large apples; it's HUUUGE.

This afternoon, we went out to Glenwood meats -- we got turkey sausage, turkey & cranberry sausage, buffalo sausage (yes, we like sausage), beef bacon (mMMMmmm), Ayrshire bacon (a traditional Scottish cut of bacon, similar to back bacon or "Canadian" bacon), and some chicken thighs -- to round out what's in our freezer.

After grabbing some lunch, we drove out to deep Gordon Head to take some photos in this month's Grid -- it's likely that it will be our only chance to do so this month, so we tried to make the most of it.

Back home, kiddo helped Hubby make fresh pasta for dinner -- lasagna, her choice.

...And now I am about to settle in to making some more catnip mice!

A tiny bit less clutter....

Over the weekend, I got some Grid photos taken, went to our nephew's 16th birthday party, tidied, rearranged, filed, sorted, and cleaned... and played Chuzzle ;)

Happily (despite playing Chuzzle) we now have less clutter. Not a lot less but less ... and every little bit counts.

This evening, we had guests over (one of the people we met through the Grid project and her kids, one of whom is the same age as Kiddo) and after they left, I actually put the table leaf away.

With the leaf out, I tend to leave stuff on the "other half" of the table, because it's big... but with the leaf away the goal is not to clutter it up. The other part of that plan is that I had been keeping a basket on the table (which grew into a basket plus a file rack in a crate) for stuff that needed to be filed. Needless to say, it just kept growing. I filed/recycled everything that was in there and then used the basket to declutter my desk, found a new home for the file rack (which I will still use for "current bills" and so on), and am using the crate to store my craft stuff (for now).

***

Earlier today, kiddo was outside playing, and got her hands covered in blue chalk... again... I had to take a photo because she did it wearing the same jumper as she was wearing nearly two years ago in one of my favourite shots of her....

September 2005:


August 2007:

Grid Article....

I almost forgot! The Victoria Grid Project was featured on page B3 of yesterday's paper. The article, Seeing the city with new eyes, is also online. I wasn't quoted, but hubby was, and neither of us showed up in the accompanying photographs. I do love the opening line:

"Far from Victoria's most photographed landmarks, seven shutterbugs scattered like insects living under a lifted rock."

It's good press and now that the project is 6 months old, I think the timing was good; we've found our footing for the most part and can easily explain to others what it's all about. I'm very proud to have been in on it from the beginning.

Grid-tacular!

This morning several photographers from the Victoria Grid Project met with a reporter from the Times-Colonist to tell him what the heck it was we did. We met at Camosun College's Lansdowne campus which is in this month's grid. Later we met with a T-C photographer for group and "action" photos to accompany the piece. I'm not sure which edition it'll run in... so if you get a subscription, let me know if you see an article (if I find out first, I'll let you know).

We spent about an hour this morning doing the interview and some photos in the pouring rain, then picked up kiddo from my mom's, had lunch, and went back to Camosun and ended up taking more photos. The fun part was that after lunch, everyone brought their kids, so kiddo had new friends to play with. They played well together, and we got to thinking that we should get together more often to take photos with the kids in tow.