This scene was at the Royal Alberta Museum yesterday. Some of my friends and I went there to take some photos. From top to bottom, we have Vadim, Jeff, and Steve. It was a pretty fun trip, and I got some pretty nice shots I'll be sharing over the next couple of weeks.
Things have been pretty busy in my camp these days. I keep meaning to post a more meaningful post concerning some things I've been thinking about lately, but I haven't had much time to sit down and update things here. Yesterday I had one of the best sessions of poker I've had in a long time. I rode a wave of spiking cards and stacking players for a glorious run of about 2 and a bit hours of play. I ended up with more than 5.5 stacks of profit, playing $100NL.
I know that a lot of that is just variance, but I can't keep myself from feeling good after a session like that. I'm still kind of amazed at just how well that session went.
More posts to come soon I hope. Heraldk
Just a couple more photos from Christmas and then I'm going to go back and continue running through a backlog of photos. Hopefully I'll be able to finally get all my photos tagged and rated by the end of January. We'll see how it goes!
This is the mantle over the fireplace in Diane's parent's place. It looks real nice!
This is a rather neat crystal droplet that hangs in my parent's dining room window. It catches the light in a lovely way, and figured it was worth taking a photo of.
For Christmas this year, my mom made some lovely blankets for my sister, and Diane and I. All of them featured some amazingly soft material on the back, and the top was squares cut from some high quality Chinese silk. They are absolutely gorgeous! This is Diane's blanket which was blue and gold with a light blue backing. My sister's blanket is black and gold with a gold coloured backing. My blanket is several shades of blue with a dark blue backing. Thanks for the awesome gift mom!
Happy New Year everyone!
These are a set of candles that my mom had setup during Christmas time.
This is the tree at Diane's parent's place. I hope everyone had a good Christmas and that they have a safe and fun new years!
No, I'm not moving away from heraldk.ca. But I am announcing that Diane and I have launched our own wedding/couple blog. You can find it at http://www.minoragenda.com. Go check it out! Heraldk
This is the scene in my parent's back yard, where a mound of snow has covered the Water Feature that is normally visible there. I really like the shadow in front of the tall grass there.
I've had a pretty busy holiday and haven't really had a chance to work through my photos from the last couple of weeks, so I've got a recent backlog of photos to post over the next few days. This one was from the craft sale that is held in the University of Alberta Butterdome each year. This was the first year I've been to the show, and I was pretty pleasantly surprised. For the $5 entry fee, you get to tour the large number of booths and collect more than $5 worth of food samples. Very cool. I felt a bit awkward taking my camera out in the crowd, but afterwards took a couple of shots when we were ready to leave. I rather like how this shot turned out.
Another shot from the canyon. It's really quite amazing just how different the canyon is when you visit in the summer when compared to the winter. The change is extraordinary. You do get quite a different perspective when you walk down in the canyon!
I continue my backwards trek through my photo collection. This particular one was from back in 2005 on the computer science department ski trip. Each year the department goes to Jasper and spends Saturday skiing (or doing whatever) and Sunday trekking down Maligne canyon. It's a sight to see in the winter time!
This was taken with my little Canon powershot A10 since I didn't have my DSLR at the time.
On the tree tour that Diane and I went on around the UofA campus awhile ago, we came across this *very* lazy looking rabbit. One of the things about the campus rabbits is they seem to be relatively at home with the large number of people on campus. This one didn't look like it was going to move even if you walked right up to it!
This is Diane's family dog, which came with us to the family reunion we went to not too long ago. Her name is Juniper and she looks like she's behaving in this photo, but the very next photo I got of her she's got a pretty good snarl going. She's a well-loved dog though :)
My mom has quite a cozy little garden, and once in awhile I run around with my camera there. This is just one of a rather nice bunch of lilies in the back corner of the garden. The pink colour against a lot of the green surroundings was pretty cool to see.
Last week I returned to Bento in Millbourne mall to help them with the cash register and to take a few more food photos. The person is my Uncle Kong who owns the establishment. If you ever go check it out, say hi to him for me. You might notice the images across the top above the menu. Those were photos I took the last time I was there.
Here's another shot from my most recent trip to the Devonian gardens. I think it's a peony. At any rate, I rather like the crisp white colour on top of some pretty nice background bokeh.
Still working on the backlog. This is a photo I took at my family reunion. We had a chance to go for a walk around the camp, and I found these canoes that were resting for the winter. I like the colours.
Welcome to my backlog. I've continued working through my old photos in Aperture -- rating them all and getting them tagged. This is one of the first photos I took with my XT after I got a tripod. I was pretty interested in experimenting with night photography, so I took a number of shots like this. This one turned out pretty well, although if you look carefully you can see how the camera moved a little when I hit the shutter button. I'm happy I have a shutter release switch now! Still, I really like how the clouds look in this photo, so I thought it was worth uploading. This is the building across the street from my building.
It seems like this time of year is packed fuller than any other time. I think the only night this week that I am not busy doing something is Thursday. Yikes. This weekend was pretty fun. On Saturday, Diane and I made some apple crisp and headed over to her work's potluck Christmas party. The food that people brought was amazing ... I ate entirely too much, but it was super tasty. It's a little weird going to the party though since I didn't really know anyone. I guess I'm still not too comfortable in a setting where I don't really know anyone. The people were nice, but I'm not a strong conversationalist, so there's usually too much awkward silence for my comfort level. Ah well, the food was good!
On Sunday I spent the afternoon at home playing some poker for the first time in a little while. I ended up with a pretty profitable being up more than 4 stacks playing 100NL. I enjoy winning! The session started out real slow. I stacked off with KK against a set, but made that back fairly quickly when my AK beat AQ when we both flopped two pair. After that I went on a pretty big rush, flopping several sets as well as winning a KK versus AK allin preflop situation. There were a few significant setbacks but I kept the hot streak going throughout most of the session to make a tidy profit. Cake poker is turning into a pretty nice place to play. I think I've pretty much decided to clear the deposit bonus there before moving on. I'm about 1/3 the way through that now, and am already up quite a bit. I've heard other people describe cake poker being pretty soft, and I think I'm agreeing with them.
This week I have a dinner party to go to, as well as my condo's annual general meeting, and an evening to play poker with the members of the UofA CPRG. Should be a fun week!
Heraldk