I had a prang in the car this morning.....

a dog ran out in front of me whilst driving to work. Why couldn't it have been a small dog?!?!?! It was a St Bernard, it got up and ran away, but it has really damaged my car quite badly. It is going into the garage tomorrow to be assessed, I will take a photo of it tonight and post it so that you can see how much damage a St Bernard can do to a car going at about 25MPH!!!

Chris and I did a talk at Photography Club last night!!!

We didn't really know how it was going to go down, as most of the membership is male and over 60....

We decided to talk about how we had got interested in photograhy.....which was, of course, through scrapbooking. We started by asking the members where they kept their old photos, you know, the ones your parents handed down to you....... the answers came back, as expected, in a box under the stairs.....in the bottom of the wardrobe........at the top of the book case. We then asked if they knew who ALL the people were in the photos and where, when and why the photos were taken. Mostly they shook their heads.....so far so good.

We then went on to explain what Scrapbooking or Memory albums were and how we started doing it. They seemed very interested, even asked questions as we went on. I don't think we will have any new members to our scrapbooking club, but now they know what we do with the photographs we take, and that we really can be serious when the mood takes, it just doesn't take us that way very often!!!! :)

Have had puter problems

Paul decided to "fiddle" with the registries, and we lost Windows!!!

So puter has been in hospital for a few days, but as you can see, it is back now and I am trying to find my way around again!!!!

Why does everything move when puters go into hospital?!?!?! One wonderful thing though, it went in with Photoshop, and came out with CS2!!!!

Vikki had her birthday on the 26th, she is now 28!!! doesn't time fly!?!?!

We went round to Adam's dads' house and his wife Viv made us a fabulous dinner. A full roast with beef and pork with almost every veg imaginable!!! Unfortunately, I had had to go to the dentists that afternoon, and had a huge filling, but I managed to eat almost everything. Dessert was a wonderful home made trifle, yummy. Had a wonderful evening, Vikki thought it went well too, so that's good.

Vikki and I went down to London on the 29th for the weekend, we saw "Dirty Dancing" the musical on stage at the Aldwych Theatre in Covent Garden. It was absolutely fantastic, the stage was spectacular, the dancers were brilliant, the singers were "just like the real thing". If you like the film - Vikkis' favourite ever film - you will thoroughly enjoy the West End Show!!!

I think Vikki wants to go again, but this time I think she would rather go with her girlfriends, as I think I slowed down her shopping in Covent Garden on the Sunday, but she was very patient, letting her dear ol' mum stop to take photos of everything!!!!! :)

Although the photos didn't turn out very well at all!!!!! :(

Middle of September already!!!

Here we are and it is the middle of September already, it is my "littlest's" birthday on Sunday, he will be 25 - he says he is getting old now - a quarter of a century!!!!

I am going to see James Last on Sunday with my mum, my sister and my friend Chris. My mum has been asking me to find a concert she could go to see him for the last few years, but he hasn't done any that she could get to. So when she read that he was coming to England for his "farewell tour" this year she tried to get tickets through a coach company. They couldn't guarantee that they could get a ticket with no steps, as she has difficulties with too many steps - so she was resigned to the fact that she wouldn't get to see him.

So I surfed the net, and found some tickets at Manchester MEN for Sunday night, I rang and they had 4 tickets in the disabled section, so I bought them.

Had a phone call from my sister about 2 hours ago, to say that my mum isn't well, she has a bad chest. My sister is going to see her, as I am in work, and is going to try to persuade her to go to the doctors, but I know my mum won't go!!!!

I just hope that she is well enough to go on Sunday.....

Chris and I started another on line photography course again last week, we are trying to learn about Aperture priority photography at the moment, so we had a play last night, I took about 100 photos of her living room, using different Apertures, Shutter speeds and ISO settings!!! I haven't looked at them all yet, but I would think almost all of them will be rubbish :)

Have given up on the Acupuncture for my knee, everything started off fine, I definitely found it a help to begin with, but recently I have had more pain - enough sometimes to take a painkiller, which I don't like taking!!!!!

Got to go now, will try to post some photos from the photography course in the next couple of days......

Middle of September already!!!

Check out my Slide Show!

Morning....

It is the 11th of August already......



Last Sunday Chris and I went to Leeds to the Golden Acre Park, a beautiful place, only minutes from the city centre. It has a formal garden, a large lake, with ducks and geese and a woodland walk. Took loads of photos, including this one of some "wild" californian poppies, I quite like this photo, and might even use it in the photographic society competition











I also like this photo as well....it was taken down a country lane, while we were looking for red kites, which we were reliably informed were there.....but they must have been having a siesta, as they were nowhere to be seen. This seed head popped its head up above the hedgerow, and was silhouetted against a bright cornfield, I thought it would make an interesting photo, and it actually came out how I wanted it to......for a change!!!! :)




I took yesterday afternoon off work, as the sun was shining, but by the time I got home the sun had gon in, so I had a "play" in the garden. I wanted to get a picture of the fuschia, but I wanted to have the pollen in focus but the flower out of focus, and this photo was straight out of the camera, the only thing I did in photoshop was cropped and re-sized for the internet. I can't believe that I actually got the photo as I wanted.....






Chris and I are out all day today scrapbookin, and then Vikki and I are doing a carboot sale tomorrow at the Chester Rugby Club. Mum wants to get rid of her cabinets in the living room but needed to empty them first. So we went up on Thursday night and wrapped it all up ready for the car boot tomorrow. Just need to look around now for anything I need to get rid of as well.

Speak to you again soon

It's the 1st of August....

....As promised I have come back to post more often :)

On Sunday Chris and I went to Tatton Park in Cheshire and took quite a few photos, mostly flowers, but did manage to get a photo of a few aeroplanes, which were taking off from Manchester Airport every few minutes.......

On Monday night, we decided to go to Chester, down by the river, as the sun was going down, to get some photos of the river at dusk.

I quite like this photo, it is a bit different to the photos I usually take.

Enough of photos, what else has happened since I last posted???? i made an appointment at the dentist for a 6 monthly check up back in January, and the appointment was for tonight at 4:45, why is it, that I started with a tooth ache last Thursday???? She couldn't find a reason for the pain, so I am using Sensitive toothpaste, to see if that improves it...we will have to wait and see.

Chris and I are going to Leeds on Sunday, to meet up with our friends from http://www.photography4allforum.co.uk/ which is a photography forum we belong to. We are hoping that the weather will hold until at least Monday, as every time we all meet up, the weather isn't too good....

I have lost another 2lbs so I have now lost 36.5 lbs in total.....still a long way to go.

I have another lot of acupuncture tomorrow, on my knee..... this will be the third go, it does seem to be helping, but would probably be better if I gave it a rest at the weekends :)