Its all over!

Well vacation has come and gone in a heartbeat! Or should I say heart pounding breathlessness coupled with exhaustion, fatigue and pain. But it was all worth it! We backpacked through the wilderness and learned some valuable lessions in ultra light weight backpacking. About two km's into the hike it became apparent that we packed too much and our backpacks were way too heavy! Its funny because everything we desided to take with us was desided upon because "this is pretty light" funny when you add all those pretty light objects into a backpack and throw it all on your back how heavy it suddenly is all together!
Photos of the trip? Well I will try to have them up by the end of the week. Who knows if they will be any good I desided not to take my camera ( thank god on one hand and damn on the other) My camera would have been too heavy to add to my already 50lb pack so I desided to leave it at home and take a disposible, which I dropped in a pot of water on the second night so cross your fingers that the shots still turn out!
I am back at work this morning and cant believe how fast a week passes when you are having fun and not dealing with LMS! One hour until I see her wonderful smiling face again and begin the dance for another undisclosed amount of time until I have the opportunity to escape again!

YAY Vacation!!

Where do you vacation? Do you board a plane and head to a tropical paradise? Do you rent an RV and tour the country? Do you spend the time fan tanning in the backyard? For me a vacation is any time more than 3 days that I don't have to deal with any customers and little miss ray of sunshine! Who is little miss ray of sunshine you ask? Little miss ray of sunshine is one of my employees, she is the daily thorn in my side, the 40+ year old lady I have to babysit. She reminds me daily how much I hate 40+ year old baby's. Honestly my 6 year old niece needs less supervision. Need an example of what I mean? Okay you asked for it. (Well no you didn't but I'll tell you anyway) Little miss sunshine was scheduled 9am to 5:30pm yesterday, Little miss sunshine believes that if you are working until 5:30 that means at 5:30pm you should be on your bus on the way home. Now I may be wrong about this however as I understand it when you work until a certain time that means that you sign out and leave at that time... Not 30 minutes early so you can be outside leaving the neighbourhood when your shift ends. So yesterday I get a phone call from little miss sunshine at 5:05pm, it goes something like this: Ring.. ring.. (me) Hi little miss sunshine (I already know it is her) ( LMS)Jennifer I have a customer that has a return.. (me)Okay what do you need me for? (LMS) I dont have time to do a return.. I have to get ready to go... (me) LMS it is five after five you are scheduled until 5:30, it only takes a minute to do a return.. please just help the customer and then you can sign off.. your replacement isnt ready to relieve you yet... (LMS) But...well...oh alright.. Click.. Now if you are like me you are thinking good god woman just help the customer and do your job.... So now I am thinking I can't believe I have to convince my staff in front of customers to provide my customers with some kind od decient customer service. Imagine you are this customer and the cashiere in front of you is complaining on the phone to her boss that YOUR return is going to take too long! ... Ring..ring.. (me) What LMS? (LMS) this lady has lots of returns to do.. whine.. I NEED you to come here... I donnooooo..... (me) LMS you haven't done this return yet... you know if you just stopped complaining and do it you would be done by now...(LMS)Jennnnnnn... (another whine) I donnooooo... (Me) Oh jesus LMS I'll be right there (click) Now all I care about is this customer leaving my store happy and I will deal with LMS later... So I go out appoligise to the customer for her wait and am done the return in a matter of minutes.. Meanwhile LMS is signing off her register and going to count her till... I just picture an office worker whining to her boss saying something like can you finish this call I have to go catch my bus, and getting on the elevator 5 minutes before the actual end of her shift.

Do you now understand why I need a vacation? This year my vacation will consist of my partner myself and our puppy will be backpacking in Algonquin park. The trip will take 4 days and span 35+ km. Nothing but us and nature.. Ahhhh sounds wonderful to me! After the backpacking trip we will be heading to Grand Bend to spend the rest of the week on the beach. Lake huron is beautiful, it is as close as Canada gets to the tropical ocean.

Pray that we dont get eaten by any bears on ourtrip and know if any do well we died on vacation and at least it wasnt at work...LOL... LMS wouldnt know what to do if I was injurded at work or god forbid if I hurt myself too close to her time to go home...

Random shots in time

I work as a retail store manager and often I keep my camera right in the car in the event I see something that I have to take a picture of . On this occasion I was thrilled to have my camera on hand. the grocery store next to my store has a garden center which i often check for perfect plants that would make good pictures. I am not sure what the above flower is but it caught my eye and is a very odd looking flower. Of course I had to take pictures of it! I am lucky I saw it when I did because mere moments after I took the shots someone came along and bought the planter it was in.

I love experimenting with fire shots. I like to slow the shutter speed and try to get some sweeping flame shots. Often the shots do not come out as I envisioned them but sometimes I get a cool effect regardless.

I have this expensive thermal spring water spray that was purchased to help with my rosacia. The spray feels great on your face it is refreshing and cooling however more often than not I use it for these types of pictures. Ever see something that would look really cool if it had just been raining or if it was still morning and had dew on it? This fine mist spray is perfect for those occasions and as you can see above does a pretty decent job of making it look as though nature has moistened the earth.

i have been playing a lot lately with shutter speed and still trying to wrap my head around how long of an exposure you need for certain shots.. This one of the moon I left the shot open for 30 seconds hoping I would get the clouds passing over the moon and the cresent of the moon. Instead I got this... dont get me wrong i like the effect although it is really grainy but it is not the shot i was going for.

Here is another of the fire shots I love how this one turned out! I was going for swooping flames but got this effect.. Its neat...

this is my partner and our best friend chillin out with eachother they were both so happy this was taken just months before all of our worlds crashed down around us. It is nice to see pictures from this time and remember how carefree we all were.

Refreshing dip anyone? Cuban sun, cool pool and a Mojito waiting for you by your chair... What can I say heaven.

I love summer time! My camera and I have so much opportunity to go out and get shots. I just replaced my tripod and will be attempting some moving water shots with a slow shutter speed.

This picture was taken outside of my work in a planter.. Can you tell it wasnt taken on a trail somewhere?

I love this flower however no one knows what kind of a flower it is... believe me I have asked around!

Finally I was able to get one of these little flowers in focus. This flower is in reality about half the size it looks here and I have had a hell of a time capturing it. But I like how this one turned out.

Meet Sam!
Sam happened upon our campsite a few weekends ago. I love these little guys they are so colorful and graceful. My friends however have a different opinion of them so I snapped a few shots of him and put him safely on a tree back in the woods so he wouldnt meet a squashy fate at the hands of some of my friends.

I must have snapped about 50 pictures of this last one! At different angles and closer and further away... I just couldnt seem to get it right. Finally I snapped this one... I would have liked it if It had better focus but damn it I tried!

Thanks for stopping by again to see my new photography.