Sharon's Week 3: The Devil is in the Detail

I was hoping for an awesomely productive day today, filled with the outdoors, a chore or two, the completion of a small project and some food prep for the week.  Instead I was sucked in by coverage of the Women's March on Washington and the sister marches around the world.  Going back and forth between the live blog on my CBC news app and posts on Facebook, I think I can reliably say that my eyes stared at a screen containing a lot of pink hats for at least four hours today.  I was kind of hoping for a glimpse of my sister in Washington but I guess the chances of that were one in a half a million!  I can't wait until she gets back on the bus and starts sending me her story along with some photos.  What an amazing once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be part of something so big.

My week has been a little less exciting than that.  I got over my illness and headed back to work only to get started on a whole lot of overtime which will keep me crazy busy for the next month.  I will have to make a serious effort to ensure my photography doesn't fall by the wayside.  I didn't shoot as much as I would have liked this week, partly because of working late each day but also because this grey weather is seriously getting on my nerves.  The benefit of the yucky weather is that it has forced me indoors where I have had to be a bit more creative than I have been for a while.

As I was wandering around the house yesterday trying to come up with ideas, I realized that I much prefer the 365 model of project over the weekly projects of the past two years.  It has taken my focus off of producing "perfect" photographs (which is kind of stressful) and made it much more fun...the ideas I come up with to meet the tasks may not produce a beautiful photograph but they will mean something to me, perhaps tell a story and will, in the long run, be more meaningful.  Take for example last week's selfie - me with my N95 mask on was certainly not a lovely photo but it told a story and it will likely make me laugh when I look at it in the future.

And now, on to this week's photos...

detail

I was wandering aimlessly yesterday when I remembered Levi's coin collection.  He has been interested in coins from around the world for several years now but until recently he had only a few coins, given to him by friends and family who had traveled to places like Cuba, Scotland, Mexico and India (that was me).  Last Christmas, the coin topic came up and my sister-in-law, Darlene rode in on her white horse.  At the time she was attending the NATO Defense College in Rome and her colleagues were from all around the world.  She sent out an email and the folks responded.  When we saw each other at New Year's, Darlene gave Levi the pile of coins.  Levi has since spent many hours enjoying these coins.  I think we need to find a way to store them that is a little more organized than a Ziploc baggie.  The coin I chose is from Iceland.  I chose it because it has the most detail on such a tiny space.

U

Smaug helpfully posed like this as I walked past her enclosure so I grabbed the camera.

yummy

Oh, such a hardship...I had to buy these so I could photograph them.  Now I have to eat them.

sleep

My cats were not very cooperative with this.  They seem to be a little too connected with me.  Every time I moved in the direction of a sleeping cat with the camera, she opened her eyes or even got up.  I finally stood beside Eclipse long enough for her to get bored and close her eyes.  They did not stay closed long though, so I was lucky to catch this.

frosty

Huh.  Who would have thought that I wouldn't be able to get a frosty shot in the middle of January?!?  But alas, we are in the midst of a January thaw.  The temperature has been hovering just above freezing and nothing looks frosty.  Even the icicles have become opaque and they aren't dripping.  My creative brainwave for this was a frosty glass of beer.  It might have been a creative brainwave but it was a faulty one.  The frostiness disappeared immediately upon pouring the beer and it does not show on the photo at all.  You will have to take my word for it that this is a frosty glass.

a sign

I was hoping to find a funny sign while out and about but that didn't happen so I had to reinterpret the word.  Given the weather we are having, I thought that the trees might be confused and think that spring is on the way.  I was right.  I found this bud on a tree at Whitefish Island this morning.  A confused sign of spring.

wild card

The shape of this melting ice caught my eye this morning.

And that's it for me this week.