Merry Christmas everybody!!

It's a snowy morning with another 10 cms overnight. I'm so happy to be walking instead of crawling to work in traffic. All we want for Christmas is an end to the bus strike.

Combine the weather and a strike by the Bus Drivers Union and you have a wonderful way to build up those pre-Christmas stress levels. I'm so thankful that I walk to work each day.

The red berries are in stark contrast to all the black and white around them.

In an effort to be more prolific like Rob, I'm starting a series called "On my way to work in the morning". This is what 7 AM looks like today.

Downtown Ottawa on a warmer evening. I'll post something current when I learn how to capture lightly falling snow.

I went looking for a picture of somewhere warm and sunny. Found this one of the beach in San Diego from 2003.

I'm ignoring the snow outside and thinking of warmer times when I really appreciated being in the shade.

A little splash of color to start the day.

One last blast of colour from the back yard. It's now a colorful mulch...about ten mulched bags of it.

A beautiful piece of art if I ever saw one!

For Rob and all the other old farts still playing hockey taken during a beautiful weekend in Kingston. Saw the Vinyl Cafe live and had a couple of fabulous meals, our wedding gift to our recently married friends Judy and Arnie.

Nothing is more perfect than a walk in the fall woods with great friends and weather.

The Gatineau Hills from the Crown Point side of the Ottawa River. The colors are peaking for Thanksgiving Day around here and finally the brilliant reds are showing. I'll get some good shots this weekend as we head to Montreal for the day.

This whitewater kayak course has been set up in a diversion channel of the Ottawa River as it passes through the EB Eddy paper plant just up river from the Parliament Buildings

Naan bread, made on the premises at Host India, one of Ottawa's finest restaurants (quality not price). Today is Jean's birthday and this was just part of the surprise evening I had planned for her.

Rob...I hear you need a new boat. I think something like this would suit you.

Last Sunday, Jean and I attended a wedding at the National Arts Center. This glass chandelier filled the ceiling of the salon we had dinner in. Congratulations on a great wedding Arnie and Judy.

This Friday is Home Alone at the Neelin compound south of Ottawa. For some reason, this artpiece outside the NAC reminds me of our annual binge except the guy on the left would be shaking his head in amazement at the stuff grown men will do and call fun.

Is there a cleat missing or is it the boat?

Jean an I spent a brief hour on one of the beaches at Wasaga Beach a couple of weeks ago. It was the first time I'd ever been there and I bet it's a blast (and crowded) on a really hot long weekend. Maybe it was Elvisfest in Collingwood but the beach was empty at 7 on a Friday.

Our afternoon monsoon has brought the garden to life. Water droplets everywhere, on my mini roses and on our sole late summer clamatis

Marsha's Garden

I'll post some Rob shots while he's travelling west. This is the fifth cleat down the right side.

I never get tired of the view from the end of Rob's dock. That's my property about a 500 metres onshore the other side.